EVERYTHING Too $$$ Now

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

Just be careful. Strong voodoo!

[llorona]

Theres a fancy burger joint near me... Five Gays .... it was rammed with people for 6 months ... now daily its got 1 - 2 people in it.

As a fruit fly, I would like to know, where is this amazing burger joint you speak of? And if this was a typo, you made my day.

[Jean]

I've been to five guys twice, one was okay but overpriced, the second time was disapointing and overpriced.

[Salathor]

In the old days (Victorian Era), being middle class meant having three servants: a cook, a driver, and a maid-of-all-work. With modern cars, we have replaced a driver's labor with a hyper powerful transportation machine. We have, admittedly, mostly done away with maids (certainly of the live-in variety). What we haven't done is eliminate the cook--we've just crowdsourced it.

Any time you go to a restaurant, you're just paying into the cloud-sourced version of the Victorian middle class, where someone else does your cooking for you. You're visiting your servant instead of vice-versa. Since labor is getting expensive, so is that servant.

EDIT: That said, an In-N-Out is still less that $5 for a double-double and it's still the best restaurant burger I've ever had.

[Viktor K]

5 guys = fancy only on ERE forums

[mathiverse]

In the old days (Victorian Era), being middle class meant having three servants: a cook, a driver, and a maid-of-all-work. With modern cars, we have replaced a driver's labor with a hyper powerful transportation machine. We have, admittedly, mostly done away with maids (certainly of the live-in variety). What we haven't done is eliminate the cook--we've just crowdsourced it.

If you move to some third world countries you can live that Victorian lifestyle with live in cooks, maids, and drivers.

[llorona]

In-N-Out is the absolute bomb!

@chenda: I have been involved with three soldiers. Two Iraq vets and one Afghanistan vet. The only similarity I can ascertain from this small sample size is that they were always on time for dates.

[Jean]

I need to disagree about in n out burger, it was not nearly as good as wattaburger.

[Seppia]

I need to disagree about in n out burger, it was not nearly as good as wattaburger.

200% agree

[Jean]

Wo would have thought that a texan burger chain would be the most able to please our european palates.

[7Wannabe5]

No love for Culver's?

[Jean]

I haven't seen any while visiting the midwest. I went to a few BK and MD for the wifi.

[Slevin]

@7Wannabe5 Culver’s is good (A tier), on the same level as In-n-out (also A tier). Five guys is solidly a S tier burger (so is Freddy’s) but at a C tier price. Wattaburger was controversial, some people putting it in A tier or S tier and others in B or C.

(Take all these notes with a grain of salt, I haven’t actually eaten from any of these places for 3.5 years so things could have changed, but in 2017 - 2019 my team at work made comprehensive burger tier lists as a kind of sport and continuous large scale arguments).

(Edited after talking with everyone who did the tier rankings).

[chenda]

@chenda: I have been involved with three soldiers. Two Iraq vets and one Afghanistan vet. The only similarity I can ascertain from this small sample size is that they were always on time for dates.

Actually I did once date a wren but aside from her punctuality she was a complete time waster.

[eudaimonia]

Getting back to the premise of whether things are getting more expensive relatively to history, the answer is yes. However, it wasn't always this way. We used to have a hard money standard and inflation was low/stable:



As our country moved from a hard money standard (pre 1913) to a partially backed standard (up to 1971) some inflation started to kick in but gains were evenly distributed in society. After we went off that standard entirely, the Cantillon effect has concentrated wealth into the hands of those closest to the money printer:



Since I don't hang out here in the ERE world as much as I used to, I can safely say this is affecting "normies". And the reality is that for most people this is not just a fancy hamburger out. This affects every level that isn't in the 0.01%, particularly the "middle" and what used to be the "upper middle" class. Ultimately, this is breaking down the American social contract and fueling populism on both sides. For now the bread and circuses are enough to entertain the masses but very likely after the next pending market crash (a.k.a everyone lose their job now), we may reach a tipping point. Places I used to go 10 years ago are now riddled with homelessness and crime. San Francisco looks like something out of a zombie movie or the streets of Calcutta 50 years ago.

[bos]

You should also remember that the US had a great advantage after World War II. If you were a young (white), hardworking men, there were plenty of opportunities available. I've seen more and more graphs comparing people's income today with what their grandparents had. Yes, their grandparents were in a much better position, but that mostly applies to the US. For example, if I look at my own european family and my friends' families, we are all doing better now. My grandparents simply didn't eat out at all. The American lifestyle of diners, milkshakes, and buying a car on a paperboy's salary had its reasons. Nowadays, the world's resources are more evenly shared, leading to a fairer distribution.

[eudaimonia]

Yes, the data above is U.S. centric. Although interestingly enough, it seems that broadly this inflation trend was similar in Europe during the past couple centuries:

Amazingly enough, the Nineteenth century was a period of deflation, rather than inflation. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until the start of World War II in 1914, there was no inflation in most countries, and in many cases, prices were lower in 1914 than they had been in 1815. Prices fluctuated up and down from one decade to the next, but overall, prices remained stable.

There were exceptions to this rule. The United States suffered inflation during the Civil War, though the United States also went through deflation after the war in order to bring the economy back onto a gold standard. The Confederate States suffered high inflation since they printed money to pay for the war. The eventual collapse of the Confederate States made their currency worthless.

Countries were able to minimize the amount of inflation they suffered during the Nineteenth century because currencies were tied to commodities (gold and silver) whose supply increased at rates similar to the increase in output. Price stability in gold and silver produced price stability for the world.

The Nineteenth century was a period of bimetallism. Countries chose to back their currency with either gold or silver. The United Kingdom was on the gold standard from the end of the Napoleonic Wars until 1914. Because the British economy grew faster than the supply of gold, prices fell in Britain during that hundred-year period.

Other countries such as France, Russia, Austria, most of Asia, and other countries tied their currency to silver. Since the supply of silver was growing faster than economic growth, countries on a silver standard had higher inflation rates than countries on the gold standard. Nevertheless, their inflation was modest by Twentieth century Standards.

Still, other countries such as the United States, primarily for political reasons, tried to balance themselves between gold and silver by tying their currency to both metals, but in the end, gold triumphed. By the beginning of the Twentieth century, every major country in the world had tied its currency to gold.

The result was a century of price and currency stability. The value of the US Dollar relative to the British Pound Sterling was the same in 1914 as it had been in 1830. Because currencies were tied to gold, fluctuations in exchange rates were minimal, rarely moving more than one percent above or below par.

Given this situation, nothing could have prepared the world for the hyperinflations and persistent inflation of the Twentieth century.

Bryan Taylor, Chief Economist, Global Financial Data

Looking at the graph of inflation for the UK, for example, appears to show a very similar inflationary bump to the U.S. starting in the 1920s and then a rapid acceleration in the 1970s:

[chenda]

In Thomas Piketty's Capital, he points out for nineteenth century novelists, it was self evident to their readers that capital and rent were interchangeable yardsticks of wealth, at an assumed yield of about 5%. This world ended in 1914.

In 1800, the average British income was about £30 a year, as it was in 1720. Jane Austen's early 19th century rich characters usually had incomes between £500-£1000 per annun. By 1900 average incomes had increased to £80-90 per annun. A significant but slow increase. A reader in 1900 would have found her quoted incomes a bit on the low side but not entirely unrelatable. For the 21st century reader they are utterly meaningless.

[thai_tong]

To adjust world PPP to u.s. PPP, multiply by around 1.4, so lifestyle adjusted top 10% globally is closer to median U.S. income spending of around $70/day per earner-household.

I read a study before that people who see themselves as earning more than those in their circle of friends are satisfied with their income, regardless of how much they earn.

Our social circle is the foundation of our comparisons.

In relation to being in the top 10% globally, I find that having friends in developing countries broadens my perspective and makes me happier about my income and position in life

[7Wannabe5]

In Thomas Piketty's Capital, he points out for nineteenth century novelists, it was self evident to their readers that capital and rent were interchangeable yardsticks of wealth, at an assumed yield of about 5%. This world ended in 1914.

And there is a good deal of overlap between the sort of lifestyle that might be adopted by a formerly wealthy character from a 19th century novel who found herself in "straightened circumstances" and the flavor of frugality found in the philosophy of Alcott, Thoreau, and ERE. When your husband dies with gambling debts, and the entitled estate is passed on to a mean-spirited, low IQ male second cousin, and you are living in the dower cottage with your five daughters on only 80/year, you may dine on beans, but the truly sad day is when you are forced to sell the piano. Then your oldest daughter must find work as a governess, and one evening when she believes herself to be alone in the manor house, she is tempted by the beautiful instrument of her employer, and becomes lost in the music of her own making, until she hears a slow clapping from the doorway, "Well done, Miss Holt. What other talents have you been keeping in hiding?" The Earl's smile was warm, but his eyes remained the hard gray-blue of a gale swept ocean...