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I'm at a reasonable middle class now and $200 would very much be a rare special event thing for dinner.
People can get creative with food to make something interesting out of basic wares. Back when money was so tight that milk was a luxury sacrificed for transportation, I learned to mess about with spices and techniques to change up flavors with the most basic nickle and dime foods around.
What is reasonable middle class to you? If you have something like $1000 in disposable income/mo a $200 is 1/5 of that, and you could easily do that once a more or once every other week.
$200 also isn't a lot of money for a dinner. I spend $80 last night for a hamburger, fries, a appetizer, and two beers.
Not sure about a formal definition, but a point at which my standard costs, housing, transport, utils, are covered easily enough where I don't feel a need to set some sort of specific number for things like grocery shopping. It would still be silly to go buying lobster and caviar though because it'd just be wasteful and could be better used elsewhere.
Regardless though, as to the original question of if someone making minimum wage would see that as easy, not a chance.
right, but all of that is extremely variable. one person's 'standard costs' are going to be twice another persons.
Like, my car costs me about $100 a month, many people are spending $1000+ on their car per month. One person's food budget might be rice and beans, another's might be 500/week.
people's definitions of these things dont' mean much until you drill it the specifics of their income and costs, and then you see wildly different behaviors due to how emotional folks are about their perceptions of life's necessities, and a lot of folks are willing to go into debt for things other folks don't spend a dime on.