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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

But this ignores the fact that if wages rise too much, the product or service the company sells may become uneconomic. I literally have seen people complain about how "the man" is trying to keep wages down while at the same time bitching that their fast food meal costs $11 dollars. I guarantee many of these small business owners of places like restaurants are not exactly raking in the dough (in most cases a software engineer with like 5+ years of experience can make more money with less risk). I make a good living but I've noticed myself eating out less because it's tough for me to stomach a $100+ per person bill at even a reasonable (i.e. not super fancy) restaurant.

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McDonalds has literally written into their quarterly filings that people who make below $40k/yr can't even afford to eat at their restaurants anymore and that their pricing (driven largely by rising wages) has moved their customer demographic up-market.

Thanks for that tidbit, I didn't know that. Totally agree. I always used to think of McDonald's as about as "cheap but gets the job done", now I think of it as "not-that-cheap and I can get the job done better at home".

I make a good living but I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten at a $100/person restaurant. I can't even fathom that being just a "reasonable, not super fancy" meal.

Pre-pandemic I would have probably said the same. But I'm guessing you don't live in Austin, TX, or you don't drink alcohol.

> tough for me to stomach a $100+ per person bill at even a reasonable (i.e. not super fancy) restaurant

food has gotten more expensive but it's not that expensive. $25 entrees is unaffordable for most people, how are you getting to $100/head at reasonable restaurants? Does everyone order the ribeye?

$100 a person at reasonable restaurants? lol. I guess one way to win arguments is to just make things up. Send links to the online menus please.

It's not hard at all. Obviously things are very location dependent, but here is what I would call a "nice but not fancy" restaurant in downtown Austin, TX: https://www.tavernabylombardi.com/austin-downtown-menu#menu=.... First, note that "100+ per person" really means the total comes to 75-80 per person before tax and tip. It's not hard to hit that with a glass of 1 alcoholic beverage, some shared appetizers, a main course, and a shared dessert.

To emphasize, there are obviously cheaper restaurants, and given how much it costs to live in Austin, I'm not bemoaning their prices. I'm just saying that pre-pandemic I would have thought of a $100+ meal in Austin as "very fancy, special occasion" place, and now it's easy to hit that at tons of places in Austin. I used to eat out a lot more at places like the above when it was ~$60 pre-pandemic, but it's not worth it to me at $100+.

I’d recommend Ramen Tatsu-ya. I didn’t get by all that much during the pandemic, so I was shocked when I did finally return and a bowl was still like $12. I’ll take that over McDonald’s every time.

Oooh, thanks, great recommendation. I love Ramen Tatsu-ya but haven't been in a while. Just taking a look at their menu online and I'm also pretty shocked how comparatively low their prices are. Like their Hibi-Gibi Punch with Sake is $6. I can hardly remember the time I paid less than $10 for any alcoholic drink besides beer.

tatsuya is old news, their tonkatsu broth is too thick IMO. Lot's of new ramen places to check out - Sazan (different style, really good, reasonable $), marufuku (overpriced but better than tatsuya), ichiumi (quite good and reasonable $)

You can get really fancy food for ~$100/person in austin like barley swine or Uroko. You can get fantastic tacos for less than $3 each.

The market gives you the opportunity to overpay if you want to, though. It's not a representative example.

Yes, of course, I never said it was. Point being that I wouldn't consider Taverna to be on the level of Barley Swine or Uroko, yet it's easy to spend a hundred bucks there, while pre-pandemic it would have been more like $60.

Ok, I see what you're getting at. I think downtown is alot worse about this than anywhere else in atx

What impact do you expect laxer child labor laws to have on a restaurant like that?

> But this ignores the fact that if wages rise too much, the product or service the company sells may become uneconomic

It doesn’t ignore it, it welcomes it.

If the business requires underpaid or poverty level wage workers to survive, it is not a sustainable business. It is a transfer from the poor to the better off. Corporate profits can always come down if the business wants to attempt to survive, and failing that, it can close up shop.

We’ve been living on aggregate suffering of a underclass to deliver consumer excess, broadly speaking. Like I said, structural demographics is breaking capitalism. The total fertility rate will continue to decline, locking in further future working age labor participation compression.

Fast food is first, but it’ll work its way up the value chain as other low wage but high value jobs hit the wall (CNAs, home health aids, etc).

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/01/global-fertilit...

https://www.axios.com/2023/08/27/labor-shortages-air-traffic...

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