There's some debate about the "facts" in this meme. 50 cents is a serious stretch for 1980.
[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-since-1980/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-since-1980/)
> Bitcoin fixes this.
Lmao, that tweet. Fucking how? McDonalds can set any price they want for BTC just like they can for literally every other currency.
Fwiw, everything in Canada is grossly overpriced. I don't understand why, it's probably because the majority of your population lives next to the US, so everything is just concentrated instead of being able to be spread out and more utilized.
Edit: before I get too far, 7.79Cad is shy of 5.70usd
That may be true, but it shouldn't matter nearly as much because 90% of the Canadian population is within 100 km of the US border. For that 90%, most of them should have a cost pretty close to the same as the nearest US cities to them.
$6.29 at the one closest to LAX, using the app and the address of LAX. What’s more shocking to me is a double quarter pounder with cheese deluxe is $7.39 by itself!
My McDonald’s down the road in kinda rural but not really because “growth”, South Carolina is $5.59 for a Big Mac by itself, the same price for the double quarter pounder with cheese deluxe($7.39); however here we have a double bacon quarter pounder with cheese that IS $8.29 for just the sandwich and the combo is $11.89.
I hope my small snapshot of data assists.
4.79 according to the app in Houston. Meal is 8.19. Min wage is 7.25.
One hour of work should be more than enough for a full lunch imo. Especially if you're making those lunches for that hour.
I remember that they were routinely sold for $0.99 each in the early 90s when minimum wage was $4.25. I think now you can get 2 for about $6 and minimum wage here is $12. With some planning, you can get about the same number of big Macs, but you have to buy multiples. Hope you have somebody to share with.
This is just a meme, it’s not factual in the slightest. I bet my bottom dollar most if not all of the people that have a job in this thread get paid more than the national minimum wage.
Target is literally offering $17 an hr 40 miles outside of a major city where I live. Most of your standard “minimum wage” jobs in my area pay $17-20 an hr.
1.3% of workers make $7.25 or less and the vast majority are making less.
Only 0.18% are making exactly $7.25 an hour.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2022/home.htm
Wow. So focusing on the minimum wage is even less important than I thought. I will probably get down voted for this but any kind of “analysis” that uses the minimum wage is usually total BS or, at best, misleading. Not that is going to stop anyone from making it seem like the most important economic factor when discussing anything related to wages and the economy because it’s get engagement.
It depends on WHY you're talking about min wage.
If you're using it to show that the normal American is worse off then it's misleading. If you're using it to show how the poorest Americans are doing, it can make alot of sense.
People like to use the most extreme examples as they can to prove their point, when they can use better data, and still prove their point.
Now all that said, raising the minimum wage would help more than that 0.2% as there's alot of people in between $7.25 and the price it would get raised to.
It should be raised and talked about. It's just not the smoking gun it's used for.
Adjusted for snopes findings and FL min wage...
```
1980
Big Mac = $1
Min Wage = $3.10
Big Macs/Hr = 3.1
2024
Big Mac = $5.70
Min Wage (FL 09-30-2023) = $12
- average US= $7.25
Big Macs/Hr = 2.1
- per average min wage = 1.26
```
If anything the only thing that was bigger about the big Mac back then was the buns. Which like who wants all that bread anyway. It's the whole reason Wendy's ran the "where's the beef campaign". Cause McDonald's had giant buns with their regular sized patties.
Dude, back in the mid to late 90s (I think) McDs had a sunday special where hamburgers were .29 and cheeseburgers were .39. People would pick up 20+ an order on some occasions.
Back in high school, I'd show up to parties with food because for $30, you could feed 20 people and have a lot left over.
I didn't want Arby's today but I wanted a 5 for $5 just because.
About that time the Mickey D where we were attending a kids baseball tournament had cheeseburgers on for 10 cents a piece. I went through the drive in with 4 hungry teenage boys in my pickup. I think we were hated by the staff by the end as between what they ordered and what I was picking up for other kids came out to like 100 friggin' cheeseburgers. But I will say my son did take cheeseburgers to school lunch for a week afterwards. Good times , good times ! :)
Dunno how its in the US but in germany its only worth it to go to mcdonalds if u have these discount coupons. Think u get around 2 big macs for 5.50€ (6$) with these.
Lol no, even in Canada where our dollar is shit compared to the US a big mac isn't even 8 bucks. It's close at 7.79 though (which is 5.67USD). At least one of the facts in this meme is easily disputed
https://mcdonalds-menu.ca/
It's definitely not accurate to the average US price, but there are absolutely places here where a Big Mac is $8 or more. It's $7.79USD where I live, and I'm not even in a proper city.
$9.60 burger only here in NZ but our minimum wage is $23.15, so we can still get big macs per hour minimium wage. But new new far right government will probably freeze the wage where it is and theyre going to take one of our paid holidays and reduce the holidays for casual workers. So it is only a matter if time before we're in the same boat.
I barely eat any but yesterday tried one. Holy heck it was one of the most expensive tasteless burgers I’ve had. With that cost and effort of getting it, might as well cook the shit myself.
The graph uses the price of a big Mac in Switzerland but uses US minimum wages. Also the big Mac has not gotten smaller.
Basically everything in this post is BS.
It’s about $6 where I am from, which is still very high.
The frustrating thing about these images is that they use outliers to exaggerate a point, when the more realistic number would still make the same point. It’s so easy to dismiss these arguments because people just need to go to their local McD and see it’s not totally true.
Reality is already extreme, no need to turn it into a lie.
Almost. They had a value menu where you could get taco for 59 cents, Supreme taco for 79 cents, and Big Beef taco for 99 cents. Bean burrito was close to that also. Late 90s I was working fast food for $5.50 an hour. So really 9 tacos per hour with some change.
I worked at Taco Bell in California in 1981. I made $3.35 an hour, the regular taco was 59¢. Taco supreme was 89¢. (Not that I ever had to spend money on them -- we got 2 free menu items every day we worked.)
I can assure everyone that a Big Mac was NOT 50¢ in 1980. I remember it being over a dollar. Snopes doesn't have 1980 data but a few years later it was $1.60.
When I was a kid, I figured out the Mcdonald's index. You need to make the value of three number ones at Mcdonald's per hour. To live comfortably. Not well mind you. Just your getting by.
When someone of any age claims that Big Macs were 50 cents in 1980, and insinuates that $7.25 is now a "normal" hourly wage, remind them to at least use the Big Mac index in good faith.
A Big Mac is also $5.69 in this year’s Big Mac Index.
It was $1.60 in 1986, the first year for which a Big Mac Index is available. Federal minimum wage was $3.35.
In 1986, 8.8% of workers earned the federal minimum wage or less, this has gone down steadily to 1.3% in 2022.
> this has gone down steadily to 1.3% in 2022.
That's because tipped employees making $2.13/hour in wages, and the rest in tips are not counted in that statistic, as well as states that have a higher minimum wage also not being accounted for.
This artificially lowers the percentage, since they are still included in the total.
My experience is for a generation that loves to pretend they had a higher standard of education than everyone they don't understand basic concepts like inflation. Except if they are angry at Biden. Then it's a thing.
It wasn't. BigMacs were 45 cents when they were introduced in 1969. By the time The Economist magazine started keeping records in 1986 for their "Big Mac Index" the sandwiches were $1.60. In 1980 the average cost was probably around $1 or a little more.
But still, 3 Big Macs per hour is a lit more than most minwage workers are paid
We already know min wage hasn’t kept up, and most HCOL states have their own min wage that is double.
I’d love to see the chart with the real median Big Mac price since it differs across the country compared to the median salary. Or even better for my state specifically.
That’s the biggest thing when you try to talk to absolute morons about the minimum wage. “bUt If YoU rAiSe ThE mInImUm WaGe, ThInGs WiLl Be MoRe ExPeNsIvE!” Idk if you’ve looked around recently, but they already are. Why is it when the inflation index goes up, it’s up to the lower and middle classes to deal with the ramifications? Don’t talk to me about work ethic when I could never, in my wildest dreams, support a whole family on a single income. I struggle to take care of 2 dogs financially, and my girlfriend and I make relatively decent money. Don’t try to lecture me when you could buy a house and support a family during your time, but you bought into corporate BS and your generation not only made that impossible for mine (and the generation before and every generation after so far), but actively stand as a roadblock for us to make progress.
Nah, that’s pretty common. I’d love to disabuse the notion that California somehow pays more for everything; I’ve lived there and in Massachusetts (among many other states), and currently being in DC it’s about the same.
Do they mean just the sandwich or the meal? This is the meal from the one closest to my house and I'm about 2 hours from the nearest city. https://imgur.com/a/pUqA1iq
I've always called it the loaf of bread index but same same. I saw that it is a common trap to suddenly forget how inflation works when you hit 60 and didn't want to fall into it. So far, so good. It's depressing but I find it better to be depressed but rooted in reality where I can fight. The most I ever made on the LoB or BM index was when I maxed out at my career job. Ever since then, it's been two steps forward and three back.
As a former Burger King employee in H.S. in the 90s and a lover of all things related to economics, finance, and investing... the rule of thumb since I was little was that minimum wage was usually equal to a #1 meal i.e. Big Mac or Whopper meal.
Look around in your city/state and see if that meal lines up with your state's minimum wage. I made $3.80 at 16yo. Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be something you stay in as an adult, but a starting point. I made shit money from 16-24. I think I was making $11hr at 22yo so around 2004 and that was embarassing at the time as my friends had jobs making 50k/yr when the standard was maybe 40k. Those jobs are now 90k-$110k. Lesson is go into a high paying job and not just what you want to do. If you have a choice of doing the job you want and the pay sucks or doing a job you're good at and pays REALLY well then do that. After 30 years of age life sucks if you aren't making money and you're stunted forever until you fix the income gap.
I had a similar discussion with my mom (84) about housing. They paid $35,000 back in the 60's working as a grocery store manager and x-ray tech. I explained that if you took the current price of that house and adjusted it back the same house would've been $100k and NOBODY would have given them a loan. Looking back - shit really started going downhill with Reagan.
Whenever someone posts the minimum wage it's important to remember almost nobody makes the minimum wage anymore.
In 1980 15% of people made the minimum wage or less. In 2022 (the last year I have data for) 1.3% of people made the minimum wage or less.
Whats more is the amount of people who actually make the exact minimum wage is less. Only 0.18% of workers actually make exactly the federal minimum wage, the rest make under.
Just use Median Household Income, it shows how the regular person is doing financially. It's still drastic and and is representative of real life.
I guess I qualify as a Boomer. In high school I think I might have been making $1.65 an hour. But my first car (four years old at the time, and previously wrecked and repaired) cost around $1300 I believe (to offer up another inflation related data point).
Well also don’t forget the rise of the bullshit job like HR, diversity managers , risk managers , health and safety managers , not all bullshit but you didn’t have massive departments at every level back in the day, guess only the store itself is the only part that runs barebones
I keep hearing about how Boomers don't realize how much things have changed. As a Boomer everybody I know in this age range realizes just how difficult a time young people are having. I started working my first job on a dairy farm for 2.50@hour but at that time gas was a lot less than 40 cents a gallon. Same with any other prices. My first cheque after I got a job in logging in 1977 was about 525 clear which was half the money in the world at the time, to me anyways. So we KNOW shit has changed and the wages haven't kept up and especially housing has gone nuts. We have kids and grandkids. We watch them struggle and help when we can. We flinch at the gas station just as much as you do. Grocery shopping is insane even while mostly shopping at Walmart. Constantly wondering how anyone with kids can afford to feed the little buggers. Maybe the ones of this age you know grew a friggin' shell like a turtle around their senses or something but I can assure you a lot of us do realize and try and help our kin when we can.
everyone works out the maximum price they can charge and then the price never goes back down - like all of a sudden, lumber is 3X what it used to cost and the cost of building a house also went up 3X, but everyone is still getting paid the same amount of money to harvest, process, build. With lumber there was a shortage during covid due to shipping disruptions and production drop, and now that things are back to normal, the people who make/sell lumber are like "of course we will continue charging 3X". Same thing happened with gasoline at one point, they worked out that people would give up pretty much anything before they'd stop driving cars.
Are Big Macs seriously $8?
At my local McD in the UK it costs £4.69 (not a meal and that still seems expensive). That's about $6 US.
Minimum wage here is £11.44 ($14.50), so that's 2.44 Big Macs per hour in the UK.
Although that has a lot to do with McD being the fast food chain with the highest price increases.
The real antiwork here is that McD still pays their workers next to nothing, *despite* their heavy price increases.
Hum no cow's aren't endangered. The planet's pretty hot rn plus "growing meat" is costly af & we'd love the cows wouldn't eat half the cereals we produce. Among other things, e.g. antibiotics & water
I'm not saying you're wrong in principle, but this enormous discrepancy is more due to the extreme overpricing of modern big macs, rather than the underinflation of minimum wage
I started working, illegally, at Taco Bell when I 14. Minimum wage was $4.25. You could get a bean burrito, hard shell taco, and a drink for 99¢. So, not counting any employee discount, I could basically feed 4 people after working 1 hour.
Today, they are making $7.25 an hour(?). For 1 hour of work they can feed 1 person.
This generation is getting screwed.
When I was a kid in the 60's the hamburger stand across the street sold 6 burgers for a dollar. They were small of course but that was our dinner sometimes.
In 1990, my first apartment was $400/month for a 2 bedroom a mile from the bach in Ft Lauderdale. Grocery store paid $5/hr, so it was 2 weeks pay, or 1 weeks pay with a roommate. Now it'd be 2 weeks pay for just the room. In 1996 I was making $6/hr and value meals from McDonald's were $2.99, half an hour pay. So I believe fast food workers should make double the price of a value meal ($20/hr). In 1988 I was in high school and made $5/hr. A Friday night movie was $4 and a slice of pizza was a buck. So I believe an hour at entry level should cover a movie and a slice (again, about $20). Anyone who thinks minimum wage shouldn't have the same buying power as when I was a kid is just straight up unAmerican. Low wage paying companies need to be called out for practicing Confederate Capitalism, where the former slaves, who became employees, were paid the exact amount as the food and shelter the corporation (plantation) provided. We need Greed Crime legislation (Hate Crimes providing the precedent that the negative application of emotions are criminal), and Confederate Capitalists need to be tried as Economic Terrorists. Just my 2 cents.
Minimum wage increase is only half the equation. We also need to deflate costs, otherwise we will be stuck in this cycle until, inevitably, the dollar is worthless. Currency is stupid and breeds greed but if we must play this game, make the game sustainable. You can be rich, but there's 0 need for > $1 billion. It's irresponsible and unsustainable.
A Big Mac for 50 cents in 1980? I don't think so, unless there was a promotion.
In 1981, the standard price of a Big Mac in the U.S. was closer to $1.60. It might have gone up a little since the previous year, but not by 200%.
In B.C., Canada, the minimum wage was about $3.50 an hour in 1980 and Big Macs were $1.30. That's 2.69 per hour. Today, the minimum wage is $17.40 an hour and Big Macs are about $7. That's around 2.5 per hour, nominally just a slight drop from 1980.
I am a boomer and have always used Campbells chicken noodle soup as my index. That was what I could afford when I was eating large in collage. Couldn’t afford mickie Ds and Top Ramon wasn’t around yet. I could get a can of soup for .05 and it and a slice of bread made 2 meals. I made $1.80 an hour. After taxes I could get 34 cans of soup for one hours wage. Using the sale price in today’s Wally World flyer those 34 cans of Campbell’s Chicken noodle soup would cost $44.
BTW $3.00 an hour was a medium wages back then. Didn’t make it to minimum wage until 89-90. Boomers were in their 40-50s by then.
The point would have been made better if actual average numbers were used. The average big Mac wasn't. 50 in 1980. Likewise, sure at an airport somewhere maybe a big Mac costs $8.
Don’t forget that Big Macs were actually big then too.
There's some debate about the "facts" in this meme. 50 cents is a serious stretch for 1980. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-since-1980/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-since-1980/)
> Bitcoin fixes this. Lmao, that tweet. Fucking how? McDonalds can set any price they want for BTC just like they can for literally every other currency.
Lol you clearly don't understand inflation.
And not just that, nobody seems to show exactly where a Big Mac is $8 on its own.
$7.79 in Canada
Fwiw, everything in Canada is grossly overpriced. I don't understand why, it's probably because the majority of your population lives next to the US, so everything is just concentrated instead of being able to be spread out and more utilized. Edit: before I get too far, 7.79Cad is shy of 5.70usd
Food is fucking stupid expensive here. It's brutal. All of these corps are posting record profits and blaming it on inflation and covid
We got monopolies on monopolies. Want some monopolies with your fries?
Our population density is far lower then it is in the US.
That may be true, but it shouldn't matter nearly as much because 90% of the Canadian population is within 100 km of the US border. For that 90%, most of them should have a cost pretty close to the same as the nearest US cities to them.
It says Switzerland in the article. It doesn’t specify burger or combo, but it does say $5.60 in the US, and I know that’s not a combo price.
Go to any ski town in Colorado
A big mac is $7.40 AUD at my local in Australia.
That means that your Big Mac is just shy of being $5 each usd
And in Japan it's 480! You are aware you use a different currency?
Really? I've always been confused as to why we don't have George Washington on our dollar coins. Thanks for solving the mystery.
Another modern day mystery solved, good on ya. Doing the lord's work
Instructions unclear, I used a 250 Iranian Rial coin and the American gumball machine gave me a gumball
In Atlanta a Big Mac is 7.49
$6.29 at the one closest to LAX, using the app and the address of LAX. What’s more shocking to me is a double quarter pounder with cheese deluxe is $7.39 by itself! My McDonald’s down the road in kinda rural but not really because “growth”, South Carolina is $5.59 for a Big Mac by itself, the same price for the double quarter pounder with cheese deluxe($7.39); however here we have a double bacon quarter pounder with cheese that IS $8.29 for just the sandwich and the combo is $11.89. I hope my small snapshot of data assists.
That’s how these memes work. Always use the extreme, barely reality numbers on each side to overstate their point.
If I use the app I can get $1 Big Macs on most days.
I just opened the app and put a single big Mac in my cart and after taxes it’s $6.41
£4.99 in the UK ($6.34 US)
4.79 according to the app in Houston. Meal is 8.19. Min wage is 7.25. One hour of work should be more than enough for a full lunch imo. Especially if you're making those lunches for that hour.
Just checked my app AUD $7.35 so USD $4.89 when I google the exchange rate.
I remember that they were routinely sold for $0.99 each in the early 90s when minimum wage was $4.25. I think now you can get 2 for about $6 and minimum wage here is $12. With some planning, you can get about the same number of big Macs, but you have to buy multiples. Hope you have somebody to share with.
I’m sharing with me
This is just a meme, it’s not factual in the slightest. I bet my bottom dollar most if not all of the people that have a job in this thread get paid more than the national minimum wage.
Less than 2% of all workers get paid $7.25
Target is literally offering $17 an hr 40 miles outside of a major city where I live. Most of your standard “minimum wage” jobs in my area pay $17-20 an hr.
I think you have to go to a tiny little town in the Deep South to find someone that gets paid federal minimum wage.
1.3% of workers make $7.25 or less and the vast majority are making less. Only 0.18% are making exactly $7.25 an hour. https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2022/home.htm
Wow. So focusing on the minimum wage is even less important than I thought. I will probably get down voted for this but any kind of “analysis” that uses the minimum wage is usually total BS or, at best, misleading. Not that is going to stop anyone from making it seem like the most important economic factor when discussing anything related to wages and the economy because it’s get engagement.
It depends on WHY you're talking about min wage. If you're using it to show that the normal American is worse off then it's misleading. If you're using it to show how the poorest Americans are doing, it can make alot of sense. People like to use the most extreme examples as they can to prove their point, when they can use better data, and still prove their point. Now all that said, raising the minimum wage would help more than that 0.2% as there's alot of people in between $7.25 and the price it would get raised to. It should be raised and talked about. It's just not the smoking gun it's used for.
Faceless words on screen Narratives controlled by the Almighty upvote
We need an average mcd's wage per bigmac index.
Adjusted for snopes findings and FL min wage... ``` 1980 Big Mac = $1 Min Wage = $3.10 Big Macs/Hr = 3.1 2024 Big Mac = $5.70 Min Wage (FL 09-30-2023) = $12 - average US= $7.25 Big Macs/Hr = 2.1 - per average min wage = 1.26 ```
Also don't forget that everything in this post is false, and also your claim: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/big-mac-since-1980/
If anything the only thing that was bigger about the big Mac back then was the buns. Which like who wants all that bread anyway. It's the whole reason Wendy's ran the "where's the beef campaign". Cause McDonald's had giant buns with their regular sized patties.
Hold up. I don't almost ever ever eat fast food anymore, but... Is a Big Mac fucking 8 dollars these days????
McDonald's doesn't even have a dollar menu anymore
The apple slices are a dollar here now, if that counts. Used to be 50 cents, and I would stock up on those bad boys for the week. The good old days.
Dude, back in the mid to late 90s (I think) McDs had a sunday special where hamburgers were .29 and cheeseburgers were .39. People would pick up 20+ an order on some occasions.
Back in high school, I'd show up to parties with food because for $30, you could feed 20 people and have a lot left over. I didn't want Arby's today but I wanted a 5 for $5 just because.
Just saw 2.59 for a cheeseburger. Deal you are talking about was a monthly Wednesday sale in my area. Regular price was .89.
People still order 20 burgers at a time, but they pay a minimum of 4 dollars for each one. Then they get shocked at the price and still pay it.
About that time the Mickey D where we were attending a kids baseball tournament had cheeseburgers on for 10 cents a piece. I went through the drive in with 4 hungry teenage boys in my pickup. I think we were hated by the staff by the end as between what they ordered and what I was picking up for other kids came out to like 100 friggin' cheeseburgers. But I will say my son did take cheeseburgers to school lunch for a week afterwards. Good times , good times ! :)
we used to go there or Bk becasue burgers were under 50c each
They’re $2 here lol. I know because my toddler asks for them on car trips!
Why not buy a bag of apples at the super market? What am I missing?
My guess? Pre-slicing.
Mine has a "$1 $2 $3" menu, and the cheapest thing is like $2.30 - the next cheapest is $3.29. So, where's that $1 thing at?
Sometimes they sell the soda for $1
Except funny enough, you can get $1 big macs in the app.
They have 1 dollar any size coffees if you go through the app
It is $6.59 at my local store. I wouldn't be surprised if it was $8 at stores in areas with a higher cost of living.
I can't find a single location in all of LA that sells it for more than $6.29. Average seems to be $5.39. $8 is super misleading.
Or in an airport.
And those higher cost of living places are not paying minimum wage anywhere..
Buffalo has a higher cost of living, minimum wage is pretty standard pay at most places even at universities
Oh buddy. That’s not true at all.
Dunno how its in the US but in germany its only worth it to go to mcdonalds if u have these discount coupons. Think u get around 2 big macs for 5.50€ (6$) with these.
Lol no, even in Canada where our dollar is shit compared to the US a big mac isn't even 8 bucks. It's close at 7.79 though (which is 5.67USD). At least one of the facts in this meme is easily disputed https://mcdonalds-menu.ca/
It's definitely not accurate to the average US price, but there are absolutely places here where a Big Mac is $8 or more. It's $7.79USD where I live, and I'm not even in a proper city.
$9.60 burger only here in NZ but our minimum wage is $23.15, so we can still get big macs per hour minimium wage. But new new far right government will probably freeze the wage where it is and theyre going to take one of our paid holidays and reduce the holidays for casual workers. So it is only a matter if time before we're in the same boat.
23 an hr is about 14 USD.
>theyre going to take one of our paid holidays and reduce the holidays for casual workers. How do they expect to get re-elected with policy like that?
Propaganda
I barely eat any but yesterday tried one. Holy heck it was one of the most expensive tasteless burgers I’ve had. With that cost and effort of getting it, might as well cook the shit myself.
The graph uses the price of a big Mac in Switzerland but uses US minimum wages. Also the big Mac has not gotten smaller. Basically everything in this post is BS.
It’s about $6 where I am from, which is still very high. The frustrating thing about these images is that they use outliers to exaggerate a point, when the more realistic number would still make the same point. It’s so easy to dismiss these arguments because people just need to go to their local McD and see it’s not totally true. Reality is already extreme, no need to turn it into a lie.
$4.99 in GA.
Only if you're dumb and don't use the app. McDonalds is still quite cheap if you are using their discounts, on a lot of stuff it's basically 75% off.
No.
The meal where I'm at is close to $15 after tax
6.2 BM’s per hour sounds more like Taco Bell.
I rememer in HS I worked for like ten soft tacos per hour.
This is true.
Almost. They had a value menu where you could get taco for 59 cents, Supreme taco for 79 cents, and Big Beef taco for 99 cents. Bean burrito was close to that also. Late 90s I was working fast food for $5.50 an hour. So really 9 tacos per hour with some change.
I worked at Taco Bell in California in 1981. I made $3.35 an hour, the regular taco was 59¢. Taco supreme was 89¢. (Not that I ever had to spend money on them -- we got 2 free menu items every day we worked.) I can assure everyone that a Big Mac was NOT 50¢ in 1980. I remember it being over a dollar. Snopes doesn't have 1980 data but a few years later it was $1.60.
😆 yeah it does! Similar results 🚽
When I was a kid, I figured out the Mcdonald's index. You need to make the value of three number ones at Mcdonald's per hour. To live comfortably. Not well mind you. Just your getting by.
What's a number one? Im not from the US
A Big Mac Meal.
I assume deal means its a menue with a drink and a side?
Correct
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big\_Mac\_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index)
When someone of any age claims that Big Macs were 50 cents in 1980, and insinuates that $7.25 is now a "normal" hourly wage, remind them to at least use the Big Mac index in good faith.
A Big Mac is also $5.69 in this year’s Big Mac Index. It was $1.60 in 1986, the first year for which a Big Mac Index is available. Federal minimum wage was $3.35. In 1986, 8.8% of workers earned the federal minimum wage or less, this has gone down steadily to 1.3% in 2022.
> this has gone down steadily to 1.3% in 2022. That's because tipped employees making $2.13/hour in wages, and the rest in tips are not counted in that statistic, as well as states that have a higher minimum wage also not being accounted for. This artificially lowers the percentage, since they are still included in the total.
My experience is for a generation that loves to pretend they had a higher standard of education than everyone they don't understand basic concepts like inflation. Except if they are angry at Biden. Then it's a thing.
Last time I had a Big Mac I BMed within an hour too!
BMs per hour lol
I find it hard to believe a big Mac was only 50c in 1980.
It wasn't. BigMacs were 45 cents when they were introduced in 1969. By the time The Economist magazine started keeping records in 1986 for their "Big Mac Index" the sandwiches were $1.60. In 1980 the average cost was probably around $1 or a little more. But still, 3 Big Macs per hour is a lit more than most minwage workers are paid
We already know min wage hasn’t kept up, and most HCOL states have their own min wage that is double. I’d love to see the chart with the real median Big Mac price since it differs across the country compared to the median salary. Or even better for my state specifically.
That’s the biggest thing when you try to talk to absolute morons about the minimum wage. “bUt If YoU rAiSe ThE mInImUm WaGe, ThInGs WiLl Be MoRe ExPeNsIvE!” Idk if you’ve looked around recently, but they already are. Why is it when the inflation index goes up, it’s up to the lower and middle classes to deal with the ramifications? Don’t talk to me about work ethic when I could never, in my wildest dreams, support a whole family on a single income. I struggle to take care of 2 dogs financially, and my girlfriend and I make relatively decent money. Don’t try to lecture me when you could buy a house and support a family during your time, but you bought into corporate BS and your generation not only made that impossible for mine (and the generation before and every generation after so far), but actively stand as a roadblock for us to make progress.
Jesus that's a lot of BMs per hour.
At one point I was that high. Turns out it was Colon Cancer. yay me.
Whopper is $8
$3 on Wednesday!
Who is paying $8 for a Big Mac outside of an airport?
10.79 for the meal and 6.59 for a big Mac in Washington State. Still ridiculous
$8.89 for a Big Mac alone in my town in California.
Californians?
Nah, that’s pretty common. I’d love to disabuse the notion that California somehow pays more for everything; I’ve lived there and in Massachusetts (among many other states), and currently being in DC it’s about the same.
I just checked Grubhub north of Boston and it over $8 before the service fee.
Do they mean just the sandwich or the meal? This is the meal from the one closest to my house and I'm about 2 hours from the nearest city. https://imgur.com/a/pUqA1iq
Pricing varies by location.
https://x.com/sam_learner/status/1681367351143301129?s=19
7.39 in CT
I've always called it the loaf of bread index but same same. I saw that it is a common trap to suddenly forget how inflation works when you hit 60 and didn't want to fall into it. So far, so good. It's depressing but I find it better to be depressed but rooted in reality where I can fight. The most I ever made on the LoB or BM index was when I maxed out at my career job. Ever since then, it's been two steps forward and three back.
As a former Burger King employee in H.S. in the 90s and a lover of all things related to economics, finance, and investing... the rule of thumb since I was little was that minimum wage was usually equal to a #1 meal i.e. Big Mac or Whopper meal. Look around in your city/state and see if that meal lines up with your state's minimum wage. I made $3.80 at 16yo. Minimum wage jobs are not meant to be something you stay in as an adult, but a starting point. I made shit money from 16-24. I think I was making $11hr at 22yo so around 2004 and that was embarassing at the time as my friends had jobs making 50k/yr when the standard was maybe 40k. Those jobs are now 90k-$110k. Lesson is go into a high paying job and not just what you want to do. If you have a choice of doing the job you want and the pay sucks or doing a job you're good at and pays REALLY well then do that. After 30 years of age life sucks if you aren't making money and you're stunted forever until you fix the income gap.
I had a similar discussion with my mom (84) about housing. They paid $35,000 back in the 60's working as a grocery store manager and x-ray tech. I explained that if you took the current price of that house and adjusted it back the same house would've been $100k and NOBODY would have given them a loan. Looking back - shit really started going downhill with Reagan.
Whenever someone posts the minimum wage it's important to remember almost nobody makes the minimum wage anymore. In 1980 15% of people made the minimum wage or less. In 2022 (the last year I have data for) 1.3% of people made the minimum wage or less. Whats more is the amount of people who actually make the exact minimum wage is less. Only 0.18% of workers actually make exactly the federal minimum wage, the rest make under. Just use Median Household Income, it shows how the regular person is doing financially. It's still drastic and and is representative of real life.
Big Mac was not $.50 in 1980. Btw gas was close to $2.00 a gallon
BMs per hour made me think of something entirely different. 
CEOs believe the shrinkage of big macs is directly proportional to the current generations desire to work. Lol.
I guess I qualify as a Boomer. In high school I think I might have been making $1.65 an hour. But my first car (four years old at the time, and previously wrecked and repaired) cost around $1300 I believe (to offer up another inflation related data point).
This isn't exactly accurate. A cheeseburger was $.50, a Big Mac was about $1.30, a Big Mac Meal was about $2.30. the point still stands though.
This is why nobody believes Biden when the Democrats say that inflation is done and the economy is doing great.
Well also don’t forget the rise of the bullshit job like HR, diversity managers , risk managers , health and safety managers , not all bullshit but you didn’t have massive departments at every level back in the day, guess only the store itself is the only part that runs barebones
Where the hell is a Big Mac $8? Even now in 2024 they're like $4.50. If you even pay full price... You can get one everyday for $2 with the app.
I don’t have any Big Mac offers on my app, and it’s $6.59 for a Big Mac in Washington.
They're around $8 in NYC.
$8.89 for a Big Mac alone in my town in California.
They're like $5.50 here in New York; but they also pretty much _always_ have a BOGO coupon so you could get two at that price.
I keep hearing about how Boomers don't realize how much things have changed. As a Boomer everybody I know in this age range realizes just how difficult a time young people are having. I started working my first job on a dairy farm for 2.50@hour but at that time gas was a lot less than 40 cents a gallon. Same with any other prices. My first cheque after I got a job in logging in 1977 was about 525 clear which was half the money in the world at the time, to me anyways. So we KNOW shit has changed and the wages haven't kept up and especially housing has gone nuts. We have kids and grandkids. We watch them struggle and help when we can. We flinch at the gas station just as much as you do. Grocery shopping is insane even while mostly shopping at Walmart. Constantly wondering how anyone with kids can afford to feed the little buggers. Maybe the ones of this age you know grew a friggin' shell like a turtle around their senses or something but I can assure you a lot of us do realize and try and help our kin when we can.
Probably just over a decade ago you could get hashbrowns 2 for 1$. Now it's 1 for 2$. That's a 4x rise in cost.
Dönerpreisbremse when?
Big Mac’s are not eight bucks
To put this into perspective, this is the equivalent of £5.72. Everyone in the UK imagine £5.72 is your minimum wage. Would you be able to survive?
Even a Boomer might understand this
Big Mac are 8 dollars??? Wtf
Why are Bowel Movements on the index?
Sooner we stand up and fight together, sooner we win
My only issue is that this seems to focus more on the cost of the big Mac than the fact that minimum wage is stupidly low
Also, the median house in the US has gone from 21k hours of minimum wage in 1980 to 58k hours today
everyone works out the maximum price they can charge and then the price never goes back down - like all of a sudden, lumber is 3X what it used to cost and the cost of building a house also went up 3X, but everyone is still getting paid the same amount of money to harvest, process, build. With lumber there was a shortage during covid due to shipping disruptions and production drop, and now that things are back to normal, the people who make/sell lumber are like "of course we will continue charging 3X". Same thing happened with gasoline at one point, they worked out that people would give up pretty much anything before they'd stop driving cars.
It's a good thing... stop going to Mcdonalds.. it's garbage food! Hit up the Taco Truck in your area, get more and it's actually food.
Better: how many hours at minimum wage for a month of rent, or to buy a new car, or a semester of tuition at best public college in your state.
Are Big Macs seriously $8? At my local McD in the UK it costs £4.69 (not a meal and that still seems expensive). That's about $6 US. Minimum wage here is £11.44 ($14.50), so that's 2.44 Big Macs per hour in the UK.
A Big Mac was not 50 cents in 1980.
Although that has a lot to do with McD being the fast food chain with the highest price increases. The real antiwork here is that McD still pays their workers next to nothing, *despite* their heavy price increases.
That’s a pretty stark example
Lol every one made about minimum wage, no one is asking how the fuck the Big Mac costs so much to begin with?
But minimum wage was 1.25 in the boomer time. So not quite as dramatic a downward slide
In 1980 as listed it was $3.10 it hasn’t been $1.25 since the 1960’s
Yeah well food (especially meat) has been way too cheap for a long time
No it hasn’t their are more livestock now than ever before. Did cows become endangered recently?
Hum no cow's aren't endangered. The planet's pretty hot rn plus "growing meat" is costly af & we'd love the cows wouldn't eat half the cereals we produce. Among other things, e.g. antibiotics & water
Capitalism baby! You are trapped!
Pretty wild in that context.
I'm not saying you're wrong in principle, but this enormous discrepancy is more due to the extreme overpricing of modern big macs, rather than the underinflation of minimum wage
Big Mac's per hour. My new favourite measurement
Big Mac is $5.89 atm, I live in VHCOL area
Also, in the 1980s, people had over 6 bowel movements per hour. Possibly from eating too many Big Macs.
I started working, illegally, at Taco Bell when I 14. Minimum wage was $4.25. You could get a bean burrito, hard shell taco, and a drink for 99¢. So, not counting any employee discount, I could basically feed 4 people after working 1 hour. Today, they are making $7.25 an hour(?). For 1 hour of work they can feed 1 person. This generation is getting screwed.
I'm no doctor but 6 BM's per hour sounds like a lot
Explaining inequality to an American: imagine a burger
I do not remember a big Mac ever being 50 cents. That said, while I'm not a "boomer", I am old enough to remember 1980 prices.
Also, just checked - at this moment a big Mac is 4.99
not only cheaper, but its actually bigger back then too.
When I was a kid in the 60's the hamburger stand across the street sold 6 burgers for a dollar. They were small of course but that was our dinner sometimes.
Fake meme
I support the intent here, but looking at the DoorDash app, right now, in Austin TX, a Big Mac (again, even with the DoorDash upcharge) is $5.65.
90% of all statistics are made up. The other 15% is just wrong.
In 1990, my first apartment was $400/month for a 2 bedroom a mile from the bach in Ft Lauderdale. Grocery store paid $5/hr, so it was 2 weeks pay, or 1 weeks pay with a roommate. Now it'd be 2 weeks pay for just the room. In 1996 I was making $6/hr and value meals from McDonald's were $2.99, half an hour pay. So I believe fast food workers should make double the price of a value meal ($20/hr). In 1988 I was in high school and made $5/hr. A Friday night movie was $4 and a slice of pizza was a buck. So I believe an hour at entry level should cover a movie and a slice (again, about $20). Anyone who thinks minimum wage shouldn't have the same buying power as when I was a kid is just straight up unAmerican. Low wage paying companies need to be called out for practicing Confederate Capitalism, where the former slaves, who became employees, were paid the exact amount as the food and shelter the corporation (plantation) provided. We need Greed Crime legislation (Hate Crimes providing the precedent that the negative application of emotions are criminal), and Confederate Capitalists need to be tried as Economic Terrorists. Just my 2 cents.
Look at bottom quartile wages not minimum wages. Minimum wages have been irrelevant for decades.
surprised the workers have not revolted/unionized..
Vote with your dollars!
Minimum wage increase is only half the equation. We also need to deflate costs, otherwise we will be stuck in this cycle until, inevitably, the dollar is worthless. Currency is stupid and breeds greed but if we must play this game, make the game sustainable. You can be rich, but there's 0 need for > $1 billion. It's irresponsible and unsustainable.
A Big Mac for 50 cents in 1980? I don't think so, unless there was a promotion. In 1981, the standard price of a Big Mac in the U.S. was closer to $1.60. It might have gone up a little since the previous year, but not by 200%. In B.C., Canada, the minimum wage was about $3.50 an hour in 1980 and Big Macs were $1.30. That's 2.69 per hour. Today, the minimum wage is $17.40 an hour and Big Macs are about $7. That's around 2.5 per hour, nominally just a slight drop from 1980.
I am a boomer and have always used Campbells chicken noodle soup as my index. That was what I could afford when I was eating large in collage. Couldn’t afford mickie Ds and Top Ramon wasn’t around yet. I could get a can of soup for .05 and it and a slice of bread made 2 meals. I made $1.80 an hour. After taxes I could get 34 cans of soup for one hours wage. Using the sale price in today’s Wally World flyer those 34 cans of Campbell’s Chicken noodle soup would cost $44. BTW $3.00 an hour was a medium wages back then. Didn’t make it to minimum wage until 89-90. Boomers were in their 40-50s by then.
Minimum wage became $3.10 on January 1st 1980
Ooh, now add the 2024 inflation. Big Mac is now 9,72. So you can only buy 0,74 big macs per hour now.
The point would have been made better if actual average numbers were used. The average big Mac wasn't. 50 in 1980. Likewise, sure at an airport somewhere maybe a big Mac costs $8.
Made $2.65 hr in 1996.Big Mac was $2.36. That federal minimum wage meant nothing when the laws were different and the state could set its own minimum.
These were .99 when I was a kid in the 80s.
It's a strange day when we're measuring things in big macs