re: #134 sagehen

All those people sitting at their desks earning a good living, can’t function without the minimum wage FOOD people.

Well, and I guess I’m in a minority here, I believe our lives will be better when we don’t fall into the fast food paradigm, an idea foisted upon the American public after WWII to encourage automobile ownership and the idea that a meal is something you eat in a car.

As I wrote yesterday, I was at the local shopping mall (a place I’ve avoided all during the pandemic save twice). Walking through the food courts there were few customers. The food vendors were much understaffed, some of the vendors only having one body working (or just standing around.)

I was a bit hungry and in days long gone past may have stopped to buy something. But now… no.

Over the past 10 years or so I’ve not eaten at a fast food place but a couple of times.

I had given up eating at fast food (or chain) restaurants probably 25 years ago.

In Japan (way back… 15 years ago) I bought food from stalls, as Japanese do. It’s a thing there.

In America we have long had street vendors in large cities, offering everything from hot dogs to tacos.

I think that was the genesis of the idea that national fast food chains were great, when corporatism decided that bringing that street-vendor convenience of big cities to suburbia and small town America was a way to cash in on people’s desires to be quick and fast and cheap.

My belief is that a worker is worth a decent wage.

This means “cheap” meals are really not a good thing. If a chef makes you a good meal that chef is worthy of a decent pay for that. If a server (note the root of that word: serve, as in servant) is waiting on you then that servant deserves a decent wage.

That all adds up to the realization that a meal ought not be cheap.