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Comment by waiseristy | Hacker News Reader

I find it hilarious when affluent areas complain about food costs. That 17$ salad is a product of their 10,000$/mo lease on the building, 15$/hr living wages, and healthcare for the employees.

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It is very much incorrect to put $15/hr wages on that list. The minimum wage is lower than it ever has been, inflation adjusted, and back when the minimum wage was actually that high, it didn’t blow up fast food prices or kill small businesses like everyone seems to fret over today. It is obviously not a problem to pay everyone a minimum wage of $15/hr nationally, and the only people who think it would be are extremely wealthy shareholders who would see slightly less capital flowing into their own coffers if they had to share any with the rabble.

A more likely culprit is the number of people walking around SF who pull down $350k+/yr, since they are willing and able to buy $17 salads, as well as overpriced real estate. It all comes down to the amount of money in flux in that location.

I didn't put the 15$/hr min wage in my comment to deride it, I think it should be even higher in metro areas. But it is no secret that 30-40% of operating costs of a restaurant are employee wages. It is definitely a factor on the price charged to customers.

Restaurants (unless you are some michelin star joint) also don't really have the freedom to charge "whatever the customer is willing". Between rent, wages, and local competition, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be an average 10% profit margin in whatever area you are at.

IMO, the biggest culprit here is the astronomical rent prices charged to these places sucking out all of the extra capital gained by these 17$ salads

This. But it would require some kind of introspection to see that the extraordinary salary which caused them to move there in the first place might be actually a contributing factor for a lot of the problems they are complaining about.

It's basically real estate costs all the way down. Restaurant wages need to be higher because it's so expensive for the workers to rent. A one bedroom apartment is at least $1000 more expensive in SF than say, Dallas. That $1000/mo is $6/hr for someone who works full time.

Literally everything you buy in SF costs more because the workers either have to afford a place in the city or have to make some crazy commute.

His 2-bedroom lease was $4,000. It doesn't sound terribly above the median or gratuitous.

I fully understand that this is relative, but your perspective on it is almost as shocking to me as the cost.

I own a 5-bedroom home on 1/2 acre - my mortgage is ~$570 before escrow, and ~$900 total.

I don't understand your usage of the term "hilarious". Are you just saying that the price of the salad reasonably reflects the average salary/benefits of the people in the area?

It's hilarious in an ironic sense that the decisions that SF'ians make drive food prices up in a way that they then complain about. The same way that nearly every metro area makes compassionate human centered decisions which drive the baseline cost of goods up. It's the byproduct of living in a city

The price of salad is largely the same -- the high cost derives from paying someone to bring it to your table, and the rent on the square footage your table requires

no one needs a $17 salad but this is the same type of talk which tries to convince people you cannot eat healthy by spending less than what junk food costs.

However the cost of living does bring along a feeling that if life is this expensive why doesn't it feel or appear better.

Why is that hilarious? Rich and poor alike get shafted by freeloading landlords.

which is the result of policies that make construction extremely expensive or straight up prohibited.

So you're assuming the same owner owned the building for several years if not decades? You do realize real estate is a market just like any other, you buy at the market price, finance that purchase by borrowing money from banks, finally you rent it out to recover some of the monthly finance costs, taxes and maintenance expenses. To continue saying landlords this landlords that makes you sound like you discovered a hidden truth that explains away the issues related to the high prices we're seeing. In fact most likely majority of real estate investors in the Bay Area are earning very nominal returns on their investment compared to other markets, see local housing price growth rates.

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