Kevin Roberts remembers when he could get a bacon cheeseburger, fries and a drink from Five Guys for $10. But that was years ago. When the Virginia high school teacher recently visited the fast-food chain, the food alone without a beverage cost double that amount.
Roberts, 38, now only gets fast food “as a rare treat,” he told CBS MoneyWatch. “Nothing has made me cook at home more than fast-food prices.”
Roberts is hardly alone. Many consumers are expressing frustration at the surge in fast-food prices, which are starting to scare off budget-conscious customers.
A January poll by consulting firm Revenue Management Solutions found that about 25% of people who make under $50,000 were cutting back on fast food, pointing to cost as a concern.
It’s a valid point that the bargain according to people’s mentality back then was that.
It’s also interesting to consider that in this domain the change in the mindset of first women and eventually men is a result of, in a couple both people having to work because one salary was not enough for a whole family and yet many men still had the expectation that it was the woman who would do most house chores and take care of the kids (I’ve actually saw a lot this kind of mindset even amongst well educated people of my generation - I’m in my early 50s - though in a different country which might be a little ahead or behind the US in this trend).
Also a single earner family is absolutelly compatible with gender equality - already 20 years ago I lived in The Netherlands and 18% of families there had a stay at home dad (literally in Dutch a huisman).
Unlike the self-serving bullshit that Neoliberal Capitalists have pushed to try to make people accept exploitation by making it seem like it is or promotes Gender Equality, it’s the expectation that a stay at home person is a woman that’s the Sexism, not the idea that it should be possible and acceptable for one member of a couple to stay at home.
Also you can throw the nuclear family in the dumpster and go for a more communal setup which would be better anyways but would be a social change