How long do you have to work to earn a Big Mac? | Hacker News Reader

How long do you have to work to earn a Big Mac?

economist.com

49 pointsqeek44 comments

The extremely small amount of time I have to work to earn a big mac seems grossly disproportionate to the labor involved in sourcing, manufacturing, and serving a Big Mac.

Am I really generating N sandwiches worth of value every few minutes?

Or am I (systemically) skimming value off the top of what's produced by individuals who are being paid disproportionately to the value they produce?

There is a lot of labor in "sourcing, manufacturing, and serving a" [large number of] "Big Macs".

However a single Big Mac does not cost so much. It's efficiencies of scale basically.

Comparative advantages and division of labor allow consumers to afford big macs and mcdonald mochas. Your input is greatly apperciated.

Also automation

A classic essay related to your question: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

Am I really generating N sandwiches worth of value every few minutes?

Yes, you really are. We're programmers and businessmen -- our value scales waaaaaay the heck out of proportion to the amount of time we spend on something. I think that is awesome. (If I was a big proponent of income equality, I'd really hate it. I can do an honest day's work while sleeping by setting a system in motion to do it for me -- no manual laborer will ever be able to do that, which suggests that I will make rather more money than them, by a lot, and the gap is going to get larger over time.)

As awesome as it is for us, it is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in asia.

I am pro capitalism, but the current system does have pretty deep social costs. [a second caveat being I can suggest no superior practical alternative]

it is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in asia.

No, poverty is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in Asia. Nike didn't invent poverty. It got there a long time before Nike -- or America, or the nation of China for that matter. Poverty is the natural state of the human condition.

For most of human civilization, we've had societies where almost everyone was desperately poor and then a few people were marginally less poor. (Poor Americans eat better and have better healthcare than European aristocrats from a few centuries ago. Plus, they don't defecate in buckets they sleep next to, which is a plus.)

The newfangled innovation brought about by capitalism isn't poor people: its rich people. Rich people who are so overflowing with money they buy frivolous shoes, enabling some Chinese peasant to get off the farm. Chinese peasants are pretty much in favor of getting off the farm -- it gives their kids a much better shot at surviving to the age of 5, and means you don't have to deal with famine.

In what sense do poor Americans eat better than European aristocrats from a few centuries ago?

More calories, more variety, more cheap GMO tomatoes in their store-bought sauces and ketchup (European aristocrats thought tomatoes were poisonous -- hah, hah, funny right? Funny like scurvy, a constant scourge of all social classes back then), cleaner drinking water (!), less food-borne pathogens, less periodic bouts of famine, less dependence on seasonal variation in available food sources, hot and cold food available on demand.

Your points about health are reasonable, but I don't think the modern diet really has more variety than the Medieval aristocrat's did. The kinds of meals eaten by the upper classes back then would still be considered extremely luxurious today.

A middle class person today can if they choose have a much more varied diet than anyone could in medieval times. Even as recently as the 19th century it was an extraordinary luxury in northern Europe to have fresh fruit or vegetables in the winter, for example.

And of course medieval Europe did not have any of the species they later got from the Americas: no potatoes, peppers, corn, tomatoes. There was no coffee or tea or chocolate either. And no ocean fish unless you lived close to the sea.

If you were a rich person in medieval times you could basically have a much roast beef as you wanted. (That was apparently Charlemagne's undoing.)

Just consider variety in terms of ethnic foods. No Medieval aristocrat had easy access to Indian/Chinese/Thai/Japanese/Korean/Mexican/Greek/Ethiopian/French/Italian/Brazilian/Cajun/Cuban/Vietnamese/Taiwanese food, all of which are available within a half hour drive from my house.

in the sense that they aren't malnourished, like a huge percentage of the population used to be, causing widespread disease.

Diseases are still spreading, albeit of different kinds. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Epidemiology_... https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Diabetes_mell...

The newfangled innovation brought about by capitalism isn't poor people: its rich people.

This is an excellent aphorism. I wish I'd been the first to put it that way!

[M]ost of the wealth being created today is unearned, a "free lunch" that should, by rights, accrue to society as a whole. "A fundamental implication of modern research on economic growth is that past advances contribute far more to today's economy than current activities."

http://raisethehammer.org/article/818

Its nice, I had a delicious lunch today and an even more delicious dinner and all it took was just a few lines of code. I think i wrote maybe 100. Those 100 lines accomplished a lot though. So thanks for the sushi jquery, and I enjoyed the sandwich .NET.

Thanks God. The potential energy you've locked up in matter is totally useful! Without a potential difference, I wouldn't be enjoying this Big Mac. Thanks again!

The market is efficient.

It doesn't matter. There are millions of people getting paid who produce zero or negative value (if that's possible?) their entire lives. Not that they have intentionally done anything wrong. Many people just end up on a path they believe is right but ends up going nowhere (ever hear of CIA agents chasing some guy their entire life only to find out it was all for nothing?). It's necessary for us to advance so don't feel bad. You chose your path. They chose theirs.

Your comment reminds me of something I saw once. I worked a night shift in a video factory in London years ago when I was backpacking around Europe and running low on funds. At one point I was working next to a guy whos job it was to prevent videos going into a shrink wrapper crooked because they'd get stuck in the machine. Thing was, they were all going in straight anyway. The guy was so tired he'd occasionally try to "straighten" the odd video to show he was doing his job - it would then get stuck and start melting. Fortunately after about 20 mins of nodding off he actually fell asleep in his chair at which point everything worked perfectly. Here was a man who was more productive while asleep.

Bad analogy; if the parent takes your advice he is like a CIA agent who figured out chasing some guy is all for nothing, but then keeps doing it.

Things have no intrinsic value, only what people are ready to pay for them. There's no "fair" price for an ounce of gold; could be worth a lot right now, or nothing in another context. Same with your labour, or the labour of those making the big mac.

You're generating the consumer price of N sandwiches of value every few minutes. Don't forget that, at least in the United States, many food items are heavily subsidized by the government. You (and to a larger extent, people richer than you) also pay for part of the actual cost in taxes.

The reason this seems counterintuitive is not that there's some dark matter of people who are somehow not subject to market forces, but simply that we're surprised by how much more cheaply things can be made by mass production. If a Big Mac were made by an individual farm family that raised the cattle and grew the wheat and the other ingredients, and then prepared it for you in quantity 1 in their kitchen, it would cost a fortune.

Our surprise at this variation is equivalent to the surprise of someone who doesn't know anything about programming at the fact that a piece of code can be made 100x faster.

Right, but there's also the government skimming from all kinds of productive business activities, to subside farming in the US. Thus making, corn, beef, etc, much cheaper then they would be without this market interference.

True, but almost certainly less than 5x so, which is rounding error by comparison.

Of course, you're comparing apples and oranges because the price of a Big Mac is determined by the local market for Big Macs. In some places, McDonalds is considered upscale food because it's American, because it's less common, etc. In some places, the quality of McDonalds is much higher (kosher burgers in Israel, I think).

The data is also a good indication of brand consciousness in a country. People are paying a premium for the American brand.

In Beijing, a big mac meal could cost double or triple what you could get at a local restaurant. It's seen as high class (partially because it is so expensive) and parents treat their kids to a happy meal on their birthday.

This is exactly what I've seen here in Mexico. The majority like to go to McDonald's for a mediocre event, like good grades, a pay raise or something to that effect. You would still be able to get a better meal for much less at your regular taco stand, but people pay the premium for the American brand. Whereas in other parts of the world some people go even twice a day.

Sitting here in Michigan, going to McDonald's is of course a total non-event, but going out for a birthday party at the local Mexican joint would not be considered out of line. All of the local Mexican joints are far more "upscale" than a taco stand, of course. (Oh, and Taco Bell is of course lumped in with McDonalds.)

The grass is always greener...

I would argue the east asian McD's are more seen as trendy than 'high class'. High class perhaps in pricing, but nobody sees it as 'high class food'.

How are kosher burgers higher quality?

It's somewhat subjective. This seems like a good summary:

http://www.kosherblog.net/2006/11/02/faq-is-kosher-meat-bett...

"In some places, the quality of McDonalds is much higher"

Definitely. When I lived in Thailand I used to eat at McD's fairly regularly, just for that taste of something western. I was amazed at how good it tasted - fresh salad, high quality meat, just really well made like a burger from a good restaurant. Completely different from the effortless slop I'd get in Australia.

Their "global average" is under 40 minutes. I guess they're only counting the 73 cities in the study for the globe.

Yah, that's quite a meaningless average. They should really weight each city for the population it represents.

For all of us who saw that title, did a quick calculation, then thought: "25 seconds", this should serve as another reminder of just how good we have it as computer programmers.

So yeah, you're making 10x the national average. That means you can take all but 1.2 months off every year to work on your startup and still earn as much as the guy stocking shelves in the grocery store.

It's the reason that bootstrapped software companies work at all: we have a huge (possibly unfair) advantage over everybody else when it comes to time/money balance.

I'm guessing this is before taxes (since it works out to about $15/hour in Toronto, which seems right without deductions). It would be interesting to see the tax burden taken into account.

It says in the description the wages were net wages. Toronto proper (forget the big box store suburbs) is a great place to find cheap food. You can find tastier, healthier food at a cheaper cost than fast food, which is why I find our fast food prices tend to be lower than a comparable American city. They're forced to compete for the low cost takeout food market. Why buy a Big Mac when you can get Vietnamese submarine sandwiches for a fraction of the price ($1.50), a chicken and beef swarma, a quarter of an extra large pizza (how big slices usually are), or countless other cheap ethnic take-out food? While I was living alone, it was cheaper for me to eat well (quality, taste, variety, health) by dining out than it was for me to shop for all the groceries and cook at home.

What's your opinion on the tax burden in a city like Toronto? When I was an employee I found it wasn't as bad as I was raised to believe it was, though I was only up into the second-highest tax bracket. As a naive comparison (as of 2008/2009), CDN$100K would result in $19891.48 in federal taxes. South of the border, US$100K would result in $21720 in federal taxes. At a provincial/state level, if we compare Ontario vs California, then that same $100K would result in $8458.61 in provincial taxes and $6693 (for a single person) in state taxes. Obviously this isn't a precise comparison because the U.S. has some deductions (notably regarding mortgages) that Canada does not. But the reverse is true too, and in any event, it's not like some order of magnitude difference that I thought would exist with all the complaining I used to hear on talk radio here :-)

Yeah, looking at my Canadian paychecks vs. American paychecks, it's basically a wash (you didn't mention the nightmare known as FICA). There are a couple of other things to consider - In Canada your healthcare is paid for by your taxes, but in the US sales tax is generally lower (and on some things like liquor and cigarettes, significantly lower).

About a decade ago a group of contract software developers (of which I was one) decided to figure out how many seconds it took each of us to earn a cup of coffee (working for a bank, nothing was free!).

For the person who earned their coffee fastest, the machine hadn't even dropped the cup into place before he'd earned it.

No wonder everyone in Chicago is a little on the large side ;)

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