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Comment by mgo | Hacker News Reader

What a perfect way to price the poorest people of society out of the most valuable resource - food.

Think of the damage all this unhealthy food loaded with sugar, saturated fat, and sodium is doing to the community. Heart disease and diabetes are rampant problems among the poor because this kind of food is cheaper (often due to govt. subsidies) and more readily available. Not to mention all the damage we're doing to the planet with the industrial ag practices required to sustain this low priced crap. I'm sorry if I don't lament if the fast food industry is failing.

Fast food is more of a luxury...if you want the best value on food then go to the grocery store.

if you want the best value on food then go to the grocery store.

Assuming your time and transportation has zero cost. And even then you're going to have to be buying pretty massive quantities to get a big enough of a bulk discount to even have a chance to make yourself a burger for anywhere near $1.

Rice and beans are healthy, filling, cheap, and can be stored dry in large quantities. Nobody HAS to eat a fast food sandwich. The real problem here is that companies want to pay their employees so little in order to enrich their investors that they are reducing their own customer bases.

"Researchers compared access to supermarkets, smaller grocery stores, and convenience stores in largely black, Latino, white and racially integrated neighborhoods in a national sample of more than 65,000 census tracts. Earlier research showed that convenience stores and groceries, which are smaller than supermarkets, stock foods higher in fat, sugar and salt.

The study found that living in a poor, mostly black neighborhood presented "a double disadvantage" in supermarket access. Unsurprisingly, poor black neighborhoods had fewer supermarkets than wealthier black neighborhoods."

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/30/science/la-sci-sn-po...

There are reasons dollar menus are so popular at low-end fast food restaurants. In more poor areas of the US, supermarkets are hard to get to. The people in these places really only have access to CVS or corner stores that are high priced and only sell high margin, low quality food like canned ravioli.

Plus, a lot of poorer people already work at these places, so it's pretty convenient and cost competitive to the products from CVS.

Lost jobs with no basic income will do that just as well.

They would actually be better off if fast food was more expensive. Cooking for yourself is cheaper and healthier. And it's not hard to do if you have a minimum set of skills.

Fast food is not the most valuable resource.

I didn't say double the price. Also, jobs are also a valuable resources for the poorest people.

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