I’m not sure what happened to fast food restaurants. Yeah, sure, they were unhealthy for us but they used to taste good. Now, the portions are smaller, they cost a lot more, they have the texture of wet cardboard with sauce, and it doesn’t taste good. I guess if all you have ever known is the fast food restaurants of the last 20 years then you probably never experienced a real Big Mac or Whopper from the 70s and even to the 80s. Somewhere around the 90s shit just started falling apart. Greed right, it’s always greed.
last 20 years
70s
Oh boy, guy is over here outing himself in broad daylight...
lol
Still fapping strong at least. Forever young.
LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU
I had a similar moment yesterday when I realized Anchorman came out 19 years ago.
FfffffUCK that hurts
Well that escalated slowly.
This is straight up violence.
I'm not a huge McDonalds fan, but I used to get lunch there occasionally because it was fast, convenient, and inexpensive. Now it's none of those things. I think the self-serve kiosks somehow made things worse.
Gotta love touching something god knows how many other people touched before you right before you get some food.
You probably don't want to see how the food is prepared, then.
They are mandated to wash their hands. Unlike the customers.
Ok, but ask yourself why there needs to be a mandate, and think of all the things that aren't mandated.
ask yourself why there needs to be a mandate
Because we can't get enough people to vote any other way.
This just in: after laws and rules enacted, prison intake rates drop to 0 and nobody does anything they aren't allowed to. Why didn't we think of this earlier? Back to you, Tim.
Okay, maybe you think health departments don't give a shit, but they have the power to and do close restaurants for a reason.
I've worked in a kitchen before; I assure you, just because rules exist and random checkups occur, doesn't mean shit.
If you think that’s bad you should see inside the soda machines.
It's not like your phone or wallet are exactly clean either. Or the restaurant door, for that matter. Or the human cashier you'd be passing money to.
If something like this is a concern, just wash your hands or use some sanitizer before you eat. I struggle to imagine that kiosks caused a demonstrable increase in disease, but hey, maybe there's some data out there.
So something you use when leaving that McDonalds? And something most McDonalds don't even have? What's your point?
The video clearly shows that you have to pull a door handle to enter the restaurant.
I hadn't considered that before. Now I won't be able to stop.
You'd hate to know how many people have touched the change you get from a store.
Is this something that I'm too 21st century to understand? Who pays in cash and coin anymore?
It’s been years since I handled change. Tap to pay is way more sanitary.
Which is why contactless payment exists.
The metals used for coinage are fairly antimicrobial. Fun fact.
Dollar bills, less so.
Yeah, McDs was a no-brainer back in the day.
The cost is absurd for value now. I'd rather go elsewhere.
Yeah the dollar menu to value menu pipeline has been nothing but disappointment.
One thing mcds does have that’s good and cheap still is their breakfast. I use their app and it always has the $1.5 breakfast sandwich. I’ll get one and a hash brown and it’s $3 something. Compared to other places that’s super cheap.
A quarter pounder meal is around ten bucks, so is a cheeseburger and fries from a local restaurant or diner. The attractiveness was cheapness and now it's not even that
Hard to find a restaurant burger near me for less than 20 bucks(usually with fries...usually)
Same thing that's happening in every industry. When the objective of the company is profit, not the product, the product suffers.
I miss Welfare Wednesday. $.59 hamburgers and $.69 cheeseburgers.
29c and 39c here back in the early 90s, but couldn't even compete at that with their next-door competitor (hardee's) doing 25c and 35c
Ah ha! That was the old price I couldn’t remember. Go through the drive through, order like 50 of them plain, toss in freezer.
Capitalism. They need to increase profits year over year. They continuously sell less for more.
Yes, people like to forget where this particular brand of greed comes from.
I miss McDonald fries from the 80’s. Y’all just don’t know.
They should bring it back for a limited time like the McRib, or offer both fries and label it as Classic fries.
I think one factor is probably “advances” in food science. Look how many ingredients go into an average fast food bun, for example.. we have so many hyper-processed foods made with not just hella preservatives, but instead of wheat flour and butter it’s like wheat and corn starch, gluten, various vegetable proteins and several different oils, etc all recombined in a rather industrial way. It’s cheaper, and it’s sometimes specifically engineered to appeal to our palates, but it’s been taken too far imo. This is not just an issue in fast food by any means.
I dunno. The thing about the Big Mac is the convenience. It doesn't really compare to actual burgers, but it's got a distinctive taste, a handy size and no waiting time.
On the other side of the burger spectrum are the restaurant café burgers that are difficult to eat even with utensils and still taste like something you could do better yourself.
The best burgers are from some shady unknown local grill, but those are hit or miss.
Anyway my point is that the Bic Mac is a fair product, but it's not really comparable to actual food. I'm not disappointed with it because I didn't expect it to be different from whatever it is and sometimes that is good enough. Like, I wouldn't want to eat a gourmet restaurant every day even if I could afford it and had the time to wait for the bill.
Tl;dr: fast food sucks because it's not food, but fast food rules because it's fast.
So they'll reintroduce the old size with a larger price tag now that they shrank the others while keeping them priced the same. More of a reason to stay away
McDonald's prices are actually lower today than they were in the 1980s when adjusted for inflation.
However, incomes are lower than that, so we're still paying more.
No real incomes adjusted for inflation are higher then in the 1980s. Though comparable to where they previously peaked in the 1970s.
Current real wages are similar to that 2019 number.
Still terrible when you consider it took 50 years for real wages to just effectively tread water though. The economy grew a ton over that time period. Means all the increased value didn't make it's way into more wages. So on average people make a little more than in the 1980s even considering increased cost of living, but they should be making much more even than that.
It's not the wages. It's the proportional cost of living. Proportionality matters more than anything.
TVs are proportionally cheaper than ever, but housing is not.
That's wages weighted to the cost of living. That's what you're looking at in the chart I posted. You can find the same chart from many other sources. And yes it absolutely includes housing costs not just tvs. Even includes services too. Anything people spend money on to live, and in the proportions they spend money on it. If people aren't spending very much on tvs it becomes a smaller part of the measure and is weighted less.
Part of the reason you see the jump in real wages in the 2008 recession on that chart is related to the crash in housing prices. If things are proportionally costing more in relation to wages then the line goes downward, if things are proportionally cheaper compared to wages, then it goes upwards. It crashed in the 1980s, was flat for many years as wages and cost of living both were increasing at about the same rate in the 90s so no real gains. It was only recently we even caught up to where we used to be in the 70s. The commenter above you said our wages are lower than they were in the 1980s, that's just totally untrue. If they said 1970s they'd be closer to reality since we're hovering near that number.
Wages not weighted to the cost of living would look more like this and basically almost always be going up. I can't find a chart of wages not weighted to that over the exact same time period though but you get the picture.
I find that incredibly difficult to believe considering the minimum wage is hardly gone up. That my parents were able to afford a house, but I can't.
Not disagreeing at all with you on minimum wage, you're absolutely correct. These are average wages across the whole economy (or non supervisory wages or something but close enough). If you plotted real minimum wage vs where we used to be it's waaaayyy lower now. It's nowhere near kept up with increased cost of living (certainly federal, not sure if any state has increased theirs enough to compensate).
If you're interested in more on how the cpi works or what is or isn't included and some of the arguments both ways, I found this to be an interesting read that summarizes a lot of the controversies about the cpi figures well.
The ⅓-pounder? A&W already tried that, and it flopped, because people don't understand fractions.
*Americans.
The rest of the world doesn't bother with fractions of "pounds" in the first place.
Fractions work with metric too you know.
Metric weights for things like meat is basically always expressed in grams here in the EU. Using fractions is pretty pointless.
But you don't need them since the units already neatly divide. You don't use a quarter kilo, you'd just say 250 gram.
Ignoring that where I live the weight of the burger isn't part of the name in the first place. They are just called "royal".
We have that too. The "Big" Mac.
You mean the Royale with Cheese, right?
Different burger.
No shit? You are just being argumentative now.
Naming a different burger was hardly an argument, I just explained it to you in case you accidently mixed them up.
I was so sure you guys were gonna go off on a Pulp Fiction tangent.
I'll have the 0.333333333333333... Kg burger.
I love the metric system and think we should all use it, but 12 (inches in a foot) and 16 (ounces in a pound) both have more factors than 10.
I still think metric is the best system, but I wish our ancestors had used base 12 counting so we could all use a base 12 metric system and everyone's life would be better.
Chippys list burgers in half pounder or quarter pounder.
The 150 grammer
Due to branding, they're still called 1/4 pounder elsewhere.
More likely a half-pounder. They already sell a double quarter pounder. And all Americans know that halfbacks are larger than quarterbacks, from watching Real Football every week.
The 33 and 1/3 e10-3 pounder.
It seems pretty successful for Hardee's/Carl's Jr
both BK and McD used to sell a 1/3-lb burger for a while in the early-mid 00s. Wendy's, too, IIRC. to my recollection, it did ok in sales, but was maligned for being "unhealthy", and both chains stopped selling it shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, modern Wendy's is all, "Here's three patties on a greasy bun slathered in ketchup/mustard/mayo, and if you manage to take a bite it's all gonna come sliding out the other side like bloody pus. Comes with bacon as an option, too. Don't forget your quart of sugar water."
In a combo meal for only $14
the bacon is for traction!
No kidding, sometimes I have to take a napkin and wipe most of it off. Really excessive.
I was thinking the same thing! Sure, a 1/3 burger is bad for you but a baconator is totally fine.
I've heard this a million times. And it honestly sounds like the kind of thing an executive would blame to excuse bad sales.
No no, never the pickles. Management gets mad at you if you use the incorrect number of pickles. They act like there's a pickle famine.
The first six paragraphs (plus the headline) of this "news article" are the same thing with slightly different wording...
I’ve noticed that on many articles now. By the time I get to the actual article I’ve read the headline and the opening paragraph at least three times. I don’t know why but it bothers me.
SEO as "news"
They probably aren't even written by a human at this point.
I think the idea is to pad out the content on the page so you have more ‘reasonable’ landscape to display ads. Like if you have ad breaks between every paragraph, more paragraphs = more ads.
AI weitten probably.
I'm not sure if that is just old fashioned lazy writing, or the even more lazy option of having AI generate the entire thing and not even bothering with proofreading it before publishing
Well, they only shrank due to shrinkflation. In addition, they cost more than the bigger ones they used to make. So, really, they're just planning on gouging us even more
this was my thought. they can't shrink it down anymore without it getting ridic so now make "premium" options that they can shrinkflate on later.
I think it should read “McDonald's plans to go back to selling bigger burgers”.
"...having a larger burger is an opportunity,"
...customers want "larger, high-quality burgers that fill you up."customers want "larger, high-quality burgers that fill you up."
Bigger burgers. High-quality burgers. Not more meat. More meat is easy, just add more meat. This is going to be some kind of filler, or a mix of "beef" and ground beans.
Worst of both worlds. Just give me a damn black bean burger
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Sure their motives aren't great but if it tastes fine who cares. Probably healthier for you and definitely better for cows & the environment.
Bigger burgers. Larger burgers. Meat goes on it. Much meat. Pile it up. High meat burger that fills the customer up.
Wonder what they price will be.
Less, definitely less...
This is what our founding fathers fought for.
they fought for slavery and not to have to pay their taxes. i get that you're joking, but it's crazy to me that people still use this argument to defend... anything. Our founding fathers had some decent ideas about democracy and the separation of church and state, but when it came to their vaunted "all men are created equal" concept, they clearly didn't mean what they said. What they really meant was, "Down with the aristocracy, down with nobility! We want all rich, white, Christian men on the same top echelon of society, regardless of bloodline!" Also, "Can i purchase that human?"
all men^1^ are created equal
1 - Property-owning white men, no women, no poors
It really needs to be stressed that the founding fathers were not in any way a single group with cohesive ideas. There's a reason that 90% of early American history is these guys arguing about essentially everything.
Some were genuine true believers in Enlightenment philosophy. Some agreed with it in principle but were willing to make sacrifices for the sake of pragmatism. Some didn't give a shit but saw which way the wind was blowing and realized it would be more profitable to go along. And some were simply virulent pieces of shit.
And some were simply virulent pieces of shit.
enough that slavery, racism, sex/gender inequality, the inherent exploitation of a capitalist system, and many other terrible things were enshrined into our constitution from the start.
as for their cohorts whose noble and enlightened ideas fell to the wayside? well, when they could stand up to a king but wither at the idea of standing up to their peers - especially in the name of profitability - there could hardly be argued to have been any honor in it. This just sounds like the "it's a few bad apples" bs we hear whenever there's some news story about police bruality/corruption.
enough that slavery, racism, sex/gender inequality, the inherent exploitation of a capitalist system, and many other terrible things were enshrined into our constitution from the start.
Well... Yes. That's how politics work. You need to live with and agree with those people about how we're going to govern society. What do you expect to happen?
That, in retrospect, we would see them for who they really were, not for who we wished they were. 
Please. This is the MAGA philosophy. Kick and scream until you get what you want and burn everything down if you don't. 🙄
Uh… I’m not following you. Reading what I’ve said, how could you connect me with their philosophy? How could you say that the simple act of protest equals MAGA philosophy?
Look, I don’t really think you believe that. And I’m not trying to shut anyone down. What I’m trying to say is that the founding fathers were a lot more flawed than most people realize, and we should stop worshipping them. It’s time we moved on and started forging a new republic founded on modern concepts of equality and equity rather than the compromised, elitist, and extremely bigoted attitudes of 300 years ago.
OK?
oh boy can't wait for another 10$ burger with my 5$ fries
The refresh includes having thicker bun bases to preserve heat, pieces of onion poured directly onto some of the patties as they cook, and adding more sauce to Big Macs,
Oh sure, just what they needed... More bread and sauce. Fucking gross
Big Mac's do need more sauce.
Big Mac sucks. They're mostly buns and they use tiny patties from cheeseburger. It's basically double cheeseburger but with 3 thick ass buns with sauce. Why the fuck do people like those?
McDouble is where it's at.
McDouble like a Mac. I discovered it when I had no money, but even now that they have closed the gap (they charge for the sauce and lettuce and probably an assembly fee because why not) I order a McDouble like a Mac over a Mac everytime. What's this garbage middle bun for?
I used to get big Mac's with the QP patties, it costs more but McDonald's hasn't been a budget meal since I was a child anyway. Honestly though ever since that chef on tiktok posted his version of the Mac sauce, I've been making them at home. Haven't been to McDonald's all year because of that
Let me guess, they’re patriotic Americans so intentionally coming out with a 1/3 pound burger to disprove that apocryphal internet story once and for all. When it takes off, it proves Americans really can do basic math
I need quality over quantity. It's one of the reasons I rarely go to Olive garden nowadays. If I want fast food Italian, I'll go pickup on olive garden.
If I want a nice dining experience. I go to a local Italian restaurant I know of. (same price, half the food, 10x better quality)
Most of the time I find myself having to season anything I pick up from olive garden.
That's great but a lot of people are doing calorie per dollar calculations.
Implying they would be giving up their famous “quality” now? You need a certain quantity for quality. The burgers now are so small, with such paper thin meat, that the proportions and texture are all wrong. The value proposition is terrible either on quality or quantity.
I was going to make a crack about them inventing a time machine to get Big Macs from like 20 years ago, but I actually kind of wish they'd bring back the angus 1/3rd pounder, those burgers were great.
I believe they currently use CPU tech to make molecular thin beef patties
the value and the experience of fast food is just not there anymore. some startup is going to disrupt all of this with something so deliciously reasonable soon i hope.
Food is a much harder industry for new tech to disrupt, because no new startup can ever compete with the beef supply chains that McDonalds etc. have established.
It's easy to launch a website to a some online thing. It's much harder to an absurd amount of agricultural products all over the country for cheap.
i agree, and am convinced it wont be beef. or fried potatoes.
If it was that easy, we'd be flooded with reasonably priced sources of food and other things.
The ability for the "free market" to fix all our problems has always been vastly overstated.
The ability for the "free market" to fix stuff is antiproportional to the stupidity of customers being manipulated by obvious advertising lies.
The solution is education and teaching critical thinking skills.
Thats one aspect, yes, but capitalists aren't just going to stop being capitalists because people are a little less likely to succumb to advertising. People still need food, still need housing, still need fun and leisure to stay sane. And there will still be people there eager and willing to exploit that need to the best of their ability... and more than willing to ignore them if its not worth their time.
it was never easy. if it were i would have done it myself.
Guess some executives finally saw WALL-e and saw a goal they should shoot for lol
I don't think they needed to see WALL-E to decide that if they can sell even more meat for Americans to stuff into their fat faces, they will do so.
So are they returning to the original sizes of burgers before shrinkflation?
Well, since the original patties have always been 0.1lb precooked weight and the quarter pounder has always been (checks notes) 0.25lb precooked weight, I'd say shrinkflation is one thing that hasn't come to McDs. Actual inflation? Oh, yes - $4 for a double cheese burger (with 0.2lb of beef) is straight up insane. That's $10 for a half pound burger - nearly the same cost per ounce of burger as a Five Guys standard burger, which isn't even in the same league.
more fat in them nowadays than there used to be, and the buns have less 'substance', too.. oh, and the cheese is wafer thin now. so yea. 'shrinkflation' has definitely hit even mcdonalds
Still waiting for them to bring back their good chicken. Nuggets are thinner and more dried out since Covid, and snack wraps still AWOL.
Remember: McDonalds gave free food to the IDF. You might not want to buy one of their bigger burgers.
Would you rather they gave free food to the terrorists?
I'm not sure which terrorists you mean in this instance, but how about McDonalds not give free food to anyone involved?
It's their business and the IDF is protecting their rights to operate. The terrorists in Gaza want to remove that right.
It's their business and it's my money. Or do you think I should be forced to eat at McDonalds?
I don't believe anyone is suggesting it.
Okay? Then what is your objection to my post?
None, McDonald's can do whatever they prefer as can you.
Okay, then I have no idea why you replied to me in the first place.
The fact that the big mac - their 'iconic' burger - patty only covers 2/3 of the bun it's paired with.... the fuck took so long to realize their shit is small af?
I just want some veggie options in my country. I'd settle for a single burger on the menu!
The French fries aren’t even vegetarian in the US… they contain beef extract.
Hey you guys seem to love greasy garbage. How about bigger sized greasy garbage, Huh?
A mcdouble isn't that big, but somehow I feel like I am going to explode after eating just 1 of them motherfuckers. I can't imagine them being more filling. Other burger joints don't get me feeling like I over ate with just 1 burger and a small fry the way McDonald's does.
Mondoburger?
Bet it will be the size of a whataburger.
Here in EU their biggest in diameter is the Big Tasty. Do you also get that in the US?
I have never heard of the Big Tasty, but I looked into it and apparently it's also called the Big 'N Tasty in some markets, and is in the lineage of some older burgers such as the McDLT and the Arch Deluxe. They tried it in the US from 2000-2011, but discontinued it. Not sure if there's a current equivalent.
I’d laugh if all they did was make the bun bigger to make a “bigger” burger
I’m not sure what happened to fast food restaurants. Yeah, sure, they were unhealthy for us but they used to taste good. Now, the portions are smaller, they cost a lot more, they have the texture of wet cardboard with sauce, and it doesn’t taste good. I guess if all you have ever known is the fast food restaurants of the last 20 years then you probably never experienced a real Big Mac or Whopper from the 70s and even to the 80s. Somewhere around the 90s shit just started falling apart. Greed right, it’s always greed.
Oh boy, guy is over here outing himself in broad daylight...
lol
Still fapping strong at least. Forever young.
LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU
I had a similar moment yesterday when I realized Anchorman came out 19 years ago.
FfffffUCK that hurts
Well that escalated slowly.
This is straight up violence.
I'm not a huge McDonalds fan, but I used to get lunch there occasionally because it was fast, convenient, and inexpensive. Now it's none of those things. I think the self-serve kiosks somehow made things worse.
Gotta love touching something god knows how many other people touched before you right before you get some food.
You probably don't want to see how the food is prepared, then.
They are mandated to wash their hands. Unlike the customers.
Ok, but ask yourself why there needs to be a mandate, and think of all the things that aren't mandated.
Because we can't get enough people to vote any other way.
This just in: after laws and rules enacted, prison intake rates drop to 0 and nobody does anything they aren't allowed to. Why didn't we think of this earlier? Back to you, Tim.
Okay, maybe you think health departments don't give a shit, but they have the power to and do close restaurants for a reason.
I've worked in a kitchen before; I assure you, just because rules exist and random checkups occur, doesn't mean shit.
If you think that’s bad you should see inside the soda machines.
It's not like your phone or wallet are exactly clean either. Or the restaurant door, for that matter. Or the human cashier you'd be passing money to.
If something like this is a concern, just wash your hands or use some sanitizer before you eat. I struggle to imagine that kiosks caused a demonstrable increase in disease, but hey, maybe there's some data out there.
Hi there!
- Door handles
Kool-aid man: my time has come
You mean something McDonalds doesn't have?
Hi there!
- McDonalds door handle
So something you use when leaving that McDonalds? And something most McDonalds don't even have? What's your point?
The video clearly shows that you have to pull a door handle to enter the restaurant.
I hadn't considered that before. Now I won't be able to stop.
You'd hate to know how many people have touched the change you get from a store.
Is this something that I'm too 21st century to understand? Who pays in cash and coin anymore?
It’s been years since I handled change. Tap to pay is way more sanitary.
Which is why contactless payment exists.
The metals used for coinage are fairly antimicrobial. Fun fact.
Dollar bills, less so.
Yeah, McDs was a no-brainer back in the day.
The cost is absurd for value now. I'd rather go elsewhere.
Yeah the dollar menu to value menu pipeline has been nothing but disappointment.
One thing mcds does have that’s good and cheap still is their breakfast. I use their app and it always has the $1.5 breakfast sandwich. I’ll get one and a hash brown and it’s $3 something. Compared to other places that’s super cheap.
A quarter pounder meal is around ten bucks, so is a cheeseburger and fries from a local restaurant or diner. The attractiveness was cheapness and now it's not even that
Hard to find a restaurant burger near me for less than 20 bucks(usually with fries...usually)
Same thing that's happening in every industry. When the objective of the company is profit, not the product, the product suffers.
I miss Welfare Wednesday. $.59 hamburgers and $.69 cheeseburgers.
29c and 39c here back in the early 90s, but couldn't even compete at that with their next-door competitor (hardee's) doing 25c and 35c
Ah ha! That was the old price I couldn’t remember. Go through the drive through, order like 50 of them plain, toss in freezer.
Capitalism. They need to increase profits year over year. They continuously sell less for more.
Yes, people like to forget where this particular brand of greed comes from.
I miss McDonald fries from the 80’s. Y’all just don’t know. They should bring it back for a limited time like the McRib, or offer both fries and label it as Classic fries.
I think one factor is probably “advances” in food science. Look how many ingredients go into an average fast food bun, for example.. we have so many hyper-processed foods made with not just hella preservatives, but instead of wheat flour and butter it’s like wheat and corn starch, gluten, various vegetable proteins and several different oils, etc all recombined in a rather industrial way. It’s cheaper, and it’s sometimes specifically engineered to appeal to our palates, but it’s been taken too far imo. This is not just an issue in fast food by any means.
I dunno. The thing about the Big Mac is the convenience. It doesn't really compare to actual burgers, but it's got a distinctive taste, a handy size and no waiting time. On the other side of the burger spectrum are the restaurant café burgers that are difficult to eat even with utensils and still taste like something you could do better yourself. The best burgers are from some shady unknown local grill, but those are hit or miss. Anyway my point is that the Bic Mac is a fair product, but it's not really comparable to actual food. I'm not disappointed with it because I didn't expect it to be different from whatever it is and sometimes that is good enough. Like, I wouldn't want to eat a gourmet restaurant every day even if I could afford it and had the time to wait for the bill.
Tl;dr: fast food sucks because it's not food, but fast food rules because it's fast.
So they'll reintroduce the old size with a larger price tag now that they shrank the others while keeping them priced the same. More of a reason to stay away
McDonald's prices are actually lower today than they were in the 1980s when adjusted for inflation.
However, incomes are lower than that, so we're still paying more.
No real incomes adjusted for inflation are higher then in the 1980s. Though comparable to where they previously peaked in the 1970s.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/50-years-of-us-wages-in-one-chart/
Current real wages are similar to that 2019 number.
Still terrible when you consider it took 50 years for real wages to just effectively tread water though. The economy grew a ton over that time period. Means all the increased value didn't make it's way into more wages. So on average people make a little more than in the 1980s even considering increased cost of living, but they should be making much more even than that.
It's not the wages. It's the proportional cost of living. Proportionality matters more than anything.
TVs are proportionally cheaper than ever, but housing is not.
That's wages weighted to the cost of living. That's what you're looking at in the chart I posted. You can find the same chart from many other sources. And yes it absolutely includes housing costs not just tvs. Even includes services too. Anything people spend money on to live, and in the proportions they spend money on it. If people aren't spending very much on tvs it becomes a smaller part of the measure and is weighted less.
Part of the reason you see the jump in real wages in the 2008 recession on that chart is related to the crash in housing prices. If things are proportionally costing more in relation to wages then the line goes downward, if things are proportionally cheaper compared to wages, then it goes upwards. It crashed in the 1980s, was flat for many years as wages and cost of living both were increasing at about the same rate in the 90s so no real gains. It was only recently we even caught up to where we used to be in the 70s. The commenter above you said our wages are lower than they were in the 1980s, that's just totally untrue. If they said 1970s they'd be closer to reality since we're hovering near that number.
Wages not weighted to the cost of living would look more like this and basically almost always be going up. I can't find a chart of wages not weighted to that over the exact same time period though but you get the picture.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/243842/annual-mean-wages-and-salary-per-employee-in-the-us/
I find that incredibly difficult to believe considering the minimum wage is hardly gone up. That my parents were able to afford a house, but I can't.
Not disagreeing at all with you on minimum wage, you're absolutely correct. These are average wages across the whole economy (or non supervisory wages or something but close enough). If you plotted real minimum wage vs where we used to be it's waaaayyy lower now. It's nowhere near kept up with increased cost of living (certainly federal, not sure if any state has increased theirs enough to compensate).
If you're interested in more on how the cpi works or what is or isn't included and some of the arguments both ways, I found this to be an interesting read that summarizes a lot of the controversies about the cpi figures well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/technology/inflation-measure-cpi-accuracy.html
Or archive version https://archive.is/zvtPw
Though be aware that article is from a year and a half ago, so none of the inflation figures it gives in it are current.
I was totally ready to call your BS, but you're right.
Cost of big Mac combo in 1980: 2.59, 10.24 after adjusted for 2023
Cost of big Mac combo in the app today: 9.20 (For my area anyway)
I had looked it up in the past. Now size wise it is probably smaller.
Really that renders the "defense" of their prices pretty meaningless.
You think there's the same amount of beef at the same quality level?
The ⅓-pounder? A&W already tried that, and it flopped, because people don't understand fractions.
*Americans.
The rest of the world doesn't bother with fractions of "pounds" in the first place.
Fractions work with metric too you know.
Metric weights for things like meat is basically always expressed in grams here in the EU. Using fractions is pretty pointless.
But you don't need them since the units already neatly divide. You don't use a quarter kilo, you'd just say 250 gram.
Ignoring that where I live the weight of the burger isn't part of the name in the first place. They are just called "royal".
We have that too. The "Big" Mac.
You mean the Royale with Cheese, right?
Different burger.
No shit? You are just being argumentative now.
Naming a different burger was hardly an argument, I just explained it to you in case you accidently mixed them up.
I was so sure you guys were gonna go off on a Pulp Fiction tangent.
I'll have the 0.333333333333333... Kg burger.
I love the metric system and think we should all use it, but 12 (inches in a foot) and 16 (ounces in a pound) both have more factors than 10.
I still think metric is the best system, but I wish our ancestors had used base 12 counting so we could all use a base 12 metric system and everyone's life would be better.
Chippys list burgers in half pounder or quarter pounder.
The 150 grammer
Due to branding, they're still called 1/4 pounder elsewhere.
More likely a half-pounder. They already sell a double quarter pounder. And all Americans know that halfbacks are larger than quarterbacks, from watching Real Football every week.
The 33 and 1/3 e10-3 pounder.
It seems pretty successful for Hardee's/Carl's Jr
both BK and McD used to sell a 1/3-lb burger for a while in the early-mid 00s. Wendy's, too, IIRC. to my recollection, it did ok in sales, but was maligned for being "unhealthy", and both chains stopped selling it shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, modern Wendy's is all, "Here's three patties on a greasy bun slathered in ketchup/mustard/mayo, and if you manage to take a bite it's all gonna come sliding out the other side like bloody pus. Comes with bacon as an option, too. Don't forget your quart of sugar water."
In a combo meal for only $14
the bacon is for traction!
No kidding, sometimes I have to take a napkin and wipe most of it off. Really excessive.
I was thinking the same thing! Sure, a 1/3 burger is bad for you but a baconator is totally fine.
I've heard this a million times. And it honestly sounds like the kind of thing an executive would blame to excuse bad sales.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/
The bun will be twice as thick or something.
It'll all be lettuce and onions
A fat stack of pickles.
No no, never the pickles. Management gets mad at you if you use the incorrect number of pickles. They act like there's a pickle famine.
The first six paragraphs (plus the headline) of this "news article" are the same thing with slightly different wording...
I’ve noticed that on many articles now. By the time I get to the actual article I’ve read the headline and the opening paragraph at least three times. I don’t know why but it bothers me.
SEO as "news"
They probably aren't even written by a human at this point.
I think the idea is to pad out the content on the page so you have more ‘reasonable’ landscape to display ads. Like if you have ad breaks between every paragraph, more paragraphs = more ads.
AI weitten probably.
I'm not sure if that is just old fashioned lazy writing, or the even more lazy option of having AI generate the entire thing and not even bothering with proofreading it before publishing
Well, they only shrank due to shrinkflation. In addition, they cost more than the bigger ones they used to make. So, really, they're just planning on gouging us even more
this was my thought. they can't shrink it down anymore without it getting ridic so now make "premium" options that they can shrinkflate on later.
I think it should read “McDonald's plans to go back to selling bigger burgers”.
Bigger burgers. High-quality burgers. Not more meat. More meat is easy, just add more meat. This is going to be some kind of filler, or a mix of "beef" and ground beans.
Worst of both worlds. Just give me a damn black bean burger
Is that necessarily a bad thing? Sure their motives aren't great but if it tastes fine who cares. Probably healthier for you and definitely better for cows & the environment.
Bigger burgers. Larger burgers. Meat goes on it. Much meat. Pile it up. High meat burger that fills the customer up.
Wonder what they price will be.
Less, definitely less...
This is what our founding fathers fought for.
they fought for slavery and not to have to pay their taxes. i get that you're joking, but it's crazy to me that people still use this argument to defend... anything. Our founding fathers had some decent ideas about democracy and the separation of church and state, but when it came to their vaunted "all men are created equal" concept, they clearly didn't mean what they said. What they really meant was, "Down with the aristocracy, down with nobility! We want all rich, white, Christian men on the same top echelon of society, regardless of bloodline!" Also, "Can i purchase that human?"
1 - Property-owning white men, no women, no poors
It really needs to be stressed that the founding fathers were not in any way a single group with cohesive ideas. There's a reason that 90% of early American history is these guys arguing about essentially everything.
Some were genuine true believers in Enlightenment philosophy. Some agreed with it in principle but were willing to make sacrifices for the sake of pragmatism. Some didn't give a shit but saw which way the wind was blowing and realized it would be more profitable to go along. And some were simply virulent pieces of shit.
enough that slavery, racism, sex/gender inequality, the inherent exploitation of a capitalist system, and many other terrible things were enshrined into our constitution from the start.
as for their cohorts whose noble and enlightened ideas fell to the wayside? well, when they could stand up to a king but wither at the idea of standing up to their peers - especially in the name of profitability - there could hardly be argued to have been any honor in it. This just sounds like the "it's a few bad apples" bs we hear whenever there's some news story about police bruality/corruption.
Well... Yes. That's how politics work. You need to live with and agree with those people about how we're going to govern society. What do you expect to happen?
That, in retrospect, we would see them for who they really were, not for who we wished they were. 
Please. This is the MAGA philosophy. Kick and scream until you get what you want and burn everything down if you don't. 🙄
Uh… I’m not following you. Reading what I’ve said, how could you connect me with their philosophy? How could you say that the simple act of protest equals MAGA philosophy?
Look, I don’t really think you believe that. And I’m not trying to shut anyone down. What I’m trying to say is that the founding fathers were a lot more flawed than most people realize, and we should stop worshipping them. It’s time we moved on and started forging a new republic founded on modern concepts of equality and equity rather than the compromised, elitist, and extremely bigoted attitudes of 300 years ago.
OK?
oh boy can't wait for another 10$ burger with my 5$ fries
Oh sure, just what they needed... More bread and sauce. Fucking gross
Big Mac's do need more sauce.
Big Mac sucks. They're mostly buns and they use tiny patties from cheeseburger. It's basically double cheeseburger but with 3 thick ass buns with sauce. Why the fuck do people like those?
McDouble is where it's at.
McDouble like a Mac. I discovered it when I had no money, but even now that they have closed the gap (they charge for the sauce and lettuce and probably an assembly fee because why not) I order a McDouble like a Mac over a Mac everytime. What's this garbage middle bun for?
I used to get big Mac's with the QP patties, it costs more but McDonald's hasn't been a budget meal since I was a child anyway. Honestly though ever since that chef on tiktok posted his version of the Mac sauce, I've been making them at home. Haven't been to McDonald's all year because of that
Let me guess, they’re patriotic Americans so intentionally coming out with a 1/3 pound burger to disprove that apocryphal internet story once and for all. When it takes off, it proves Americans really can do basic math
I need quality over quantity. It's one of the reasons I rarely go to Olive garden nowadays. If I want fast food Italian, I'll go pickup on olive garden.
If I want a nice dining experience. I go to a local Italian restaurant I know of. (same price, half the food, 10x better quality)
Most of the time I find myself having to season anything I pick up from olive garden.
That's great but a lot of people are doing calorie per dollar calculations.
Implying they would be giving up their famous “quality” now? You need a certain quantity for quality. The burgers now are so small, with such paper thin meat, that the proportions and texture are all wrong. The value proposition is terrible either on quality or quantity.
I was going to make a crack about them inventing a time machine to get Big Macs from like 20 years ago, but I actually kind of wish they'd bring back the angus 1/3rd pounder, those burgers were great.
You wouldn't want the bigger 1/4 pounder?
Rather I want an 1/8 pounder
And it'll be $9 a burger, you watch.
I believe they currently use CPU tech to make molecular thin beef patties
the value and the experience of fast food is just not there anymore. some startup is going to disrupt all of this with something so deliciously reasonable soon i hope.
Food is a much harder industry for new tech to disrupt, because no new startup can ever compete with the beef supply chains that McDonalds etc. have established.
It's easy to launch a website to a some online thing. It's much harder to an absurd amount of agricultural products all over the country for cheap.
i agree, and am convinced it wont be beef. or fried potatoes.
If it was that easy, we'd be flooded with reasonably priced sources of food and other things.
The ability for the "free market" to fix all our problems has always been vastly overstated.
The ability for the "free market" to fix stuff is antiproportional to the stupidity of customers being manipulated by obvious advertising lies.
The solution is education and teaching critical thinking skills.
Thats one aspect, yes, but capitalists aren't just going to stop being capitalists because people are a little less likely to succumb to advertising. People still need food, still need housing, still need fun and leisure to stay sane. And there will still be people there eager and willing to exploit that need to the best of their ability... and more than willing to ignore them if its not worth their time.
it was never easy. if it were i would have done it myself.
Guess some executives finally saw WALL-e and saw a goal they should shoot for lol
I don't think they needed to see WALL-E to decide that if they can sell even more meat for Americans to stuff into their fat faces, they will do so.
So are they returning to the original sizes of burgers before shrinkflation?
Well, since the original patties have always been 0.1lb precooked weight and the quarter pounder has always been (checks notes) 0.25lb precooked weight, I'd say shrinkflation is one thing that hasn't come to McDs. Actual inflation? Oh, yes - $4 for a double cheese burger (with 0.2lb of beef) is straight up insane. That's $10 for a half pound burger - nearly the same cost per ounce of burger as a Five Guys standard burger, which isn't even in the same league.
more fat in them nowadays than there used to be, and the buns have less 'substance', too.. oh, and the cheese is wafer thin now. so yea. 'shrinkflation' has definitely hit even mcdonalds
Still waiting for them to bring back their good chicken. Nuggets are thinner and more dried out since Covid, and snack wraps still AWOL.
Remember: McDonalds gave free food to the IDF. You might not want to buy one of their bigger burgers.
https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-donating-thousands-meals-idf-israeli-citizens-hamas-attacks-2023
Would you rather they gave free food to the terrorists?
I'm not sure which terrorists you mean in this instance, but how about McDonalds not give free food to anyone involved?
It's their business and the IDF is protecting their rights to operate. The terrorists in Gaza want to remove that right.
It's their business and it's my money. Or do you think I should be forced to eat at McDonalds?
I don't believe anyone is suggesting it.
Okay? Then what is your objection to my post?
None, McDonald's can do whatever they prefer as can you.
Okay, then I have no idea why you replied to me in the first place.
The fact that the big mac - their 'iconic' burger - patty only covers 2/3 of the bun it's paired with.... the fuck took so long to realize their shit is small af?
I just want some veggie options in my country. I'd settle for a single burger on the menu!
The French fries aren’t even vegetarian in the US… they contain beef extract.
Hey you guys seem to love greasy garbage. How about bigger sized greasy garbage, Huh?
A mcdouble isn't that big, but somehow I feel like I am going to explode after eating just 1 of them motherfuckers. I can't imagine them being more filling. Other burger joints don't get me feeling like I over ate with just 1 burger and a small fry the way McDonald's does.
Mondoburger?
Bet it will be the size of a whataburger.
Here in EU their biggest in diameter is the Big Tasty. Do you also get that in the US?
I have never heard of the Big Tasty, but I looked into it and apparently it's also called the Big 'N Tasty in some markets, and is in the lineage of some older burgers such as the McDLT and the Arch Deluxe. They tried it in the US from 2000-2011, but discontinued it. Not sure if there's a current equivalent.
I’d laugh if all they did was make the bun bigger to make a “bigger” burger