I believe the common strawman is "if min wage goes up, prices go up" which..... You know just admits the system is there to abuse. "If you make more money then we'll take more money from you".

There's a LOT of people that don't understand inflation at all. They think something along the lines of, "I worked myself through college making $5/hr and it was hard and I didn't get to buy all the things I wanted but it was fine. These lazy entitled people want several times that much for the same work?!"

So it's not just basic math but basic economics and a basic understanding of reality that are sorely lacking.

Because minimum wage is defined by laws and has been purposefully kept below inflation. It hasn't substantially increased (or maybe not at all) in my lifetime.

Inflation is purposely misexplained as something specific to a time period. So people aren't aware that it's a measure of velocity, how fast prices are rising. Our political system also gives the illusion of a reset every four years.

They obfuscate the data from people and they don't try to find it. Obviously they know that 16 is bigger than 2..

Look at how much corporate profits have gone up though

multiple BMs per hour

This sounds drastic no matter what the number is.

I'm sorry, I had to.

I wasn't alive then but 50 cents seemed low for a big mac, even for the '80s

And a Big Mac isn't $8 around here and no one is paid federal min wage. It's $13 in Florida and $15 IRL. Using the app to save, it's probably 2.5 burgers.

And it's been used enough that Argentina artificially set the price of Big Macs for a few years to hide their rampant inflation.

Where do you get a 4,19€ Big Mac? From what I can tell, a Big Mac here is currently 6,29€, which would place the BM/hour score at 2.04.

If you exclude sales tax (which is usually included in Germany but excluded in the US) for a fairer comparison, the Big Mac would be 5,29€ and the BM/hour score 2.42.

But also, a single Big Mac in the US seems to cost around $5.99. The $8 is for a Menu (which would put the BM/h score at 1.24 instead of 0.91).

A BM Menu in Germany is currently 11,49€ (or 9,66€ without sales tax), which would put our BM/h score at 1.11 (or 1.33 respectively).

So, the chart oop posted might be a bit misleading, since I doubt the $0.50 in 1980 was a Big Mac menu but rather a single Big Mac (although I‘m to lazy to look that up now). And also, we’re not that substantially better off in here Germany rn and a single Big Mac seems to be a comparatively better value than a menu, when compared to the US.

I’d also find comparison numbers from Germany in 1980 quite interesting but I’m also too lazy to look that up. Maybe someone else is bored enough…

A big mac is sure to give you multiple BM's per hour

If you're having 6.20 BMs per hour, God help you.

I like that it implies landlords aren't people

The BigMac Index was actually a really good metric. It's sold nearly everywhere in the world, was a low margin product, and depends on a complex global supply chain that's a good stand-in for other supply chains. It was used as a way to cut-through governments reporting innacurate numbers.

Probably California but the minimum wage here for a McDonald's employee is $20 per hour. That's still more than 2 big Mac's per hour