I'm not quite sure how to interpret this. Unless you're single in a low COL area, 70k in 2026 IS poor. Or, more accurately, it does not give someone everything that defined the post war "middle class" leaving you working poor or just old fashioned poor. The decision in the 90s to tell a technical-truth-lie about inflation to underreport it by 1-2% per year did wonders for juicing the economy, but now it's time to pay the piper so to speak. Median personal income in 2024 was $45k, but after 30 years (Rule of 70) of underreported inflation it should be almost twice that.
TLDR version: In the 90s the owners realized that if you lie about inflation you could keep COLA down and pocket the difference. 1-2% a year seems like they're just skimming the top, but do that over decades and you've stolen HALF of incomes, which we are close to reaching. Poor numeracy skills, specifically not understanding exponential growth and the Rule of 69/70/72, has allowed this long con to be run on workers.
Further reading:
The BLS uses a host of 'sounds reasonable' tools to adjust inflation that were introduced or reworked in the 90s. Hedonic adjustments, OER, substitutions, outlet substitutions, and chained CPI all seem reasonable from a certain angle (which of course is the one BLS presents you), but each one breaks down when confronted with the real world, how human being experience the economy, and time. They're tools that measure utility in a vacuum, not lifestyle or ripple effect or material reality. Hedonic adjustments is an extra special lie, because it's a microcosm of the current big economic lie- "yeah, everything is worse now than a few years ago, but look how big your TV/LLM is!"
Also read up on Labor Force Participation Rate, a seemingly reasonable measure which is used to keep unemployment numbers looking better.
Also the BLS just isn't even using actual data for something like 1/3 of the components of the CPI.
Budget cuts, DOGE, no staff to do the actual price surveys.
So, those hedonic adjustments?
At least 1/3 of the data points that go into those hedonic adjustments... well they are just generated by models that say 'what they should be'.
Look into 'imputation' in the actual reports if you want.
It just keeps getting worse, the more onion layers you peel back.
The other one that to me is just laughably stupid is how housing prices are estimated for the purposes of the CPI.
They basically just survey homeowners and ask them 'how much do you think your home fetch on the rental market?'
This is completely fucking insane imo.
Why not just actually ask people what the monthly total cost of owning their home is?
Oh its because well housing is an investment.
Except that if the monthly total cost of 'owning' the home exceeds the amount you think you could rent it out for, well, then you're basically underwater on a cost flow basis, because, you know, the cost of homeownership is... higher than its equivalent rent.
And if that condition persists... you will likely not be a homeowner for too much longer.
Yep, totally an 'investment'.
And if you counted actual ongoing homeownership costs, well, then you'd, you know, actually track ongoing homeownership costs, in the price index, that is ostensibly meant to measure ... ongoing costs.
It makes no fucking sense, other than as a way of depressing the housing component of the CPI when a housing market implosion is occuring, it assumes things we know are not historically true about the home and rental markets, when a bubble is popping.
Yes! Someone who gets it. It's worth pointing out that my "1-2% a year" is a highly conservative estimate based on the aspects of CPI that are objectively questioned by respected economists. If we broaden it to more subjective analysis by a wider range of academics it's 3-4% per year. Finally, if we really step back and ask some big questions, 5% is not outside the realm of possible.
I am guessing that the both of us share in common something like a data anaylst or accountant background, degrees relevant to something like that...
You have to actually understand statistics, math, the relevant background concepts and terms.
Almost no 'normal' person bothers with all this, unless they're getting paid to.
But yeah... actual academic economists have been pulling their hair out over this kind of shit for decades, they have actually complex stances on this stuff and do novel research and such.
But the pop culture version of an economist is basically either A) some kind of corpo sell out who just justifies things for the company B) highly connected old money goober type that ends up at the Fed or a major bank C) fucking larry kudlow or jim cramer D) insane political ideologue who somehow happened to get an econ degree and then entirely use that to be a political ideologue.
Anyway, what I remember of game theory with imperfect information strongly suggests to me that we are all compketely fucked for the forseeable medium term, lol.
I make if I am lucky 35k this year. Fucker if I made double that then I could afford this. But fuck that asshole. Billionaires should never tell us how to live.
First if you want to spend $28 on lunch do it just to spite big Kev.
I'm single and make about twice that figure and there is zero chance I would spend $28 on lunch let alone on any kind of recurring basis. People just need to do the little things that make them happy, if thats eating out do it.
$28 is like two sushi rolls or two of anything really.... hell soda costs $3+ and a burger $15ish
It's not that hard to spend a lot eating out even for lunch, it's crazy. Prices have at least doubled in the last few years since covid. Companies are making up for their lost months of profits from shutdown and terrible republican admins fucking up everything and killing regulations and any safeguards or anything consumer friendly. 80% beef costs twice what 95% used to years ago and it's not stocked anymore
For me the issue is for a five day work week it's $540 a month, and that's say a downpipe for my car, for me thats more important.
We're all grown ups so spend your money where you think it will improve your life. When I was Gen Z's age I spent more than I should on car stuff because cars are my thing.
Obviously, if you're poor, you don't deserve any scrap of comfort because it's a moral failing on your part and definitely not a top down systemic problem that caused it /s
I personally think food inflation has rather exceeded the median rate so it’s probably even less than that; my lived experience says that in 2019 I could get a meal for $15-20 and now it’s $25-30, but the inflation calculator disagrees.
It's way less than that. In 2013, you could still get a $2 meal deal from Taco Bell that came with a burrito, bag of Doritos, and a drink. That's $2.80 in today's money. Then, I remember some dinner prices from places my parents took me when I was a kid. They're boomers so they love going to all you can eat buffets. Using that calculator, the adult price for an all you can eat pizza buffet at a CiCi's in 2000 would be $5.69 in today's money. In 2005, the adult dinner price for an all you can eat buffet at Furr's Cafeteria would be $8.39 in today's money. Even in 2013, there was an AYCE Chinese buffet that would be $7 in today's money. Those are dinner prices. And if you didn't want to eat like a boomer, there were plenty of cheaper options. But just to put things into perspective a lot of those same things don't cost $6-9 today. They cost $20+.
I wasn't for most of my life until I finally was and then I became disabled shortly thereafter, prompting the government to decide that I should live on sub-poverty wages which aren't enough to feed myself because it's easier and cheaper for them if I just die.
It's insulting that this guy says 70k like it's a low salary (for "kids" as he says). I make a quarter of that. I also know a lot more retired old people who never made close to that in their lifetime than ones who did make that much
And if I did make that much it would still feel insulting because I'm pretty sure most people making 70k can easily afford weekly $28 lunches...
Edit: Just saw that this motherfucker is wearing two expensive watches on the photo... absolutely repulsive person
Yeah the fact that the wages are stagnating is another thing, I'm just saying from where me and most of the people of all ages in my life are standing, 70k is a lot.
Depends on the city you live in and your situation. Single in a small town 70k good.
Family of 4 in the city and you wouldn't even qualify for a home loan and are probably in assistance.
70k is 3,5k/mo after taxes in my country. Doesnt really matter where you live with that you could be paying 2500 in rent and still be loaded for the month. Look all I'm saying is this O'Leary guy is a fucking prick and most people never see 70k in their lifetime
You say "loaded" but you wouldn't be able to pay for college without debt, wouldn't be able to buy a house, wouldn't be able to afford to retire, or save much, couldn't afford vacations, and couldn't even afford a new economy car.
This is exactly what is expected to happen. People complaining/arguing but not complaining/arguing about the correct issue.
70k by everyone's standards other than the top 1% is a lot of money, because we have always had to focus on surviving and can make that amount work. Life isnt going to be roses, but it will be life. It really does come down to buying power, but also priority. Back in the 70/80s buying tech (tvs, computers) was insanely expensive. Now you can pick up a 65in for like 200usd. Back in the 90s a new car was under 10k. Now a decent car bought new is 35/40k. Housing....I am not even going to touch it. I bought a 5 bedroom 2400sq ft for 89k in PA in the early 2000s, now that house on zillow is 350k. I only had it a year and I sold it for 85k after closing and everything. Prices for things have flipped for a lot of items that used to be luxury compared to necessity. That's how we can afford avocado toast because we can only afford eggs/bread/ and a single avocado.
I dont want to start a 2nd argument, and I am not confident I am getting my point across. I just feel all that are here arguing should not be arguing amongst ourselves since we are essentially in the same boat amd should be putting our efforts at the real issue.
It's wild that these elites are shitting on people spending $27 on a meal...
It's not 2017, that doesn't buy you much of a meal.
The cheapest food in my town I can think of is still a solid $8-9. And that is for a very unappetizing sandwich. A small upgrade to a chain "Jersey Mike's Sub" puts you back $11.15 before tax - no drink, no chips.
My work recently treated my group of coworkers to subs, but I don't eat meat and didn't have any. Instead, my manager said she'd reimburse me, and broke down the price of the sandwiches (which everyone else split) to calculate $7 per person. So I was given $7 Doordash credit.
$7. On Doordash. The fuck am I supposed to do with that?
I guess because you use the word 'town' that a shitty chain sub might actually be a true upgrade, but for anyone in even a smallish city, look around for little hole in the wall independent restaurants because I guarantee you can get much better food for much cheaper than the shit you'll get at chain restaurants. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 5 sub shops and delis in my area that will give you a much bigger better sandwich than subway, for a little over half the price. Then there's shawarma shops, Chinese take ours that will fill up the take out container so full that it's too much to eat in a sitting, burger places where you can sit down and have a burger and a beer for the price of a McDonald's meal and it'll be twice the size, pizza joints with walk in specials where you can get a small pizza for the price of a slice at pizza-pizza, Caribbean restaurants where there isn't even a fast food alternative, fucking lots of places. Don't settle for some bullshit just because it's familiar.
Bruh, I wish I made $70,000/yr. It was what I went to college for after all only for the entire world to change after 4 years, now I can't afford myself and in debt.
Regardless, this is ignoring the fact that inflation has increased the cost of groceries in general, not just lunch. Even though Trump ran on it, apparently inflation never actually happened now that he's in office. The collective amnesia from the right when it benefits them is just infuriating
I just got rejected after 8 rounds of interviews with 5 years and management experience in my field. It is not a good time to be job searching in tech.
(For example, I just got a position where the primary duty is to support an information system I designed and built for them and I still had to do 3 rounds of interview)
We've only done multiple rounds of interviews for very impressive candidates that are already a big yes, where they're being shown to progressively higher ranking staff as a "wow you gotta meet this person"
Trust me, I've tried since graduating in 2024 to get a job within the field I studied. There's a lot of CS jobs, but absolutely none for a entry level position. I've long given up for now, especially since a recession might finally hit the second I actually get a good job and then I'd be completely unemployed. Maybe I'll use what I studied in the future but it doesn't look like it for now.
Before your objection that I should've gotten an internship during college as well to get actual work experience rather than just doing really well in my classes, I tried. I used to spend just as much time trying to get an internship than actually studying only for me to never get any kind of response let alone a fucking interview. That's the depressing part, I saw this coming, tried my best to avoid it, only for my work learning additional skills outside of class to make me more appealing and constantly applying for jobs to have all been for nothing. I spent so much time I could have been doing to build an actual social life only to get smacked with reality
I don't know much about your situation and your specific skills, but one way to get experience in many CS jobs is doing work on a FOSS project or starting your own. At least it would help keeping your skills sharp and updated. But i know that this takes a lot of effort and it's unpaid work, which might not be possible if you actually have to do something to pay the rent.
I've considered developing my own FOSS application. If I were to ever do one, it would be focused on being something that Linux Mobile or Ubuntu Touch doesn't already have since they don't have much support yet. Thought about making some kind of Linux application in general, but any idea I came up with either has already been or definitely couldn't be maintained long term by just one person.
I do work full time already, but switching from Android to either Droidian or Ubuntu Touch after the great lockdown will probably make me want to make the experience on them better anyway. So yeah, definitely been throwing around the idea of getting involved in the FOSS community, but don't want to contribute to an already existing project since I'm not THAT confident in my programming skills just yet.
Like the other commenter said, do you have any projects you've been working on that could showcase your skills or add some weight to your resume? Are you applying for software engineering roles? Is the city you're applying in unfit for tech?
I haven't been actively applying as of recently, but I have done plenty in the past 2 years. The state I currently live in perhaps might no longer be fit for tech, not entirely sure anymore, but I was applying for jobs way outside of my home state as well since I'd be willing to move pretty far for an opportunity. I am considering working on a project in the future within the FOSS community
I've seen this argument from people before, with avocado toast and Starbucks and everything else, but no one seems to ask why lunch is $28 or blame the people charging $28 for lunch as part of the problem
Okay 🪄. Everyone who makes under 70k will never eat out again.
This eliminates more than half of the customer base of the restaurant industry, most of which promptly implodes. Millions lose their jobs. What's worse is that all that restaurant spending gets redirected towards grocery stores. Grocery stores move far more product with just a fraction of the workers and they will be damned before they hand out raises to share their new windfall profits. This drastically reduces the velocity of money in the economy and drags us into a sudden contraction.
The storefronts those restaurants occupied, the ones that used to be central meeting points for their communities, become urban blight. Those workers, too, stop being able to pay rent or buy much of anything else, which deals a collateral blow to residential real estate and every business that makes consumer goods. The collapse of the restaurant industry and the sudden blow to landlords of all varieties takes a large tax base with it, and state and local governments that rely on sales and property tax see an immediate budgetary shortfall.
These so-called titans of industry cannot see, will never see, that the "wasteful" and "unthrifty" spending they hate is utterly vital. Their distaste for the poors experiencing such luxuries as participating in simple consumption blinds them to the fact that that spending is the economy.
ETA: Instead of the rest of us tightening our belts even more, the wealthy need to spend a lot more. Fund a literacy program, hand a million dollars to a small electric car conversion company, drop a cool 10 million on urban infill, fuck, build a pyramid. Anything is better than sitting on your wealth doing nothing but chasing rent-seeking enterprises like stock buybacks and cloud infra.
Yes. A key contradiction in capitalist economics is that the wealthy have a much lower marginal propensity to consume than the working class. Therefore the more wealth the rentiers capture, the lower the velocity of money. One way to recirculate that money would be to levy steep taxes against them. Another would be if they would just spend more money on labor.
Government revenues aside, for a functional capitalist economy the money has to flow vertically one way or another. It's A or B, and they constantly bitch and moan about both. We cannot have a functional capitalist economy when these chucklefucks are dictating policy.
I'm sympathetic to communism myself, but that's not hard to do when we're living through the failure of late stage capitalism.
I went to Subway last night. You know, the 5-dollar footlong place.
A footlong sub was $12 (not the meal - just the sandwich).
McDonalds is charging 8 dollars for a breakfast muffin.
My rent has gone from 800 to 2000 since Covid.
I have to fill my tank 3 times a weeks, and right now that costs 50 bucks.
On top of that, I have to help my parents out because their pension didn't account for real-world inflation and their extremely comfy retirement turned out not to be nearly enough when the grocery bill doubled.
That 73k I make does less than the 30k I made back in 2016.
now imagine you still make 30k and also most of your friends cant get jobs to begin with and still with parents in their mid 20s and also half of them are having mental breakdowns and thats the gen z experience
I get it. I am barely past living paycheck-to-paycheck having changed nothing about my lifestyle since I made half as much (using the same same rental, car, laptop, and everything), so making 30k today would be worse than making minimum wage was just a few years ago, when it was already shamefully low.
I do have a new job that pays way more, but my commute is absolute dogshit because the place I work is SUPER expensive. I work for a city where literally 100% of the households are multi-millionaires, and we have a few 11 and 12-figure residents.
I get it but I highly doubt most people actually do these expensive lunches daily. This is also not strictly speaking what is the text of the OP, assuming the text is correct he's questioning people getting a 28 dollar lunch full stop.
Also, food is 1/3rd of the things that keep you alive and healthy.
Food taking up a large part of your money really isn't that wild.
Things like rent taxes and utilities taking up more than half, that is wild, and really the only reason why 28 dollar lunches could be considered questionable on that income.
The world is also just what it is, incomes have been trailing behind inflation for a long time now. Because of these same people.
I'm a cheapskate but I can't get my groceries under 150~200 a week for just myself and my wife.
Not without sacrificing health at least, the only way to get cheaper is taking a deep dive into canned and/or highly processed food, but that just isn't happening.
Fair retort. In hindsight I shouldn't have used the word inflation, because i'm actually just referring to the cost of living of Joe Average which I incorrectly assumed would be contextually obvious.
But I love that you want a source for that bit, and not the whole entire premise of this topic.
The average income is around $84,000, so if you are making less, your employer is fucking you over. The difference between your income and $84,000, is what your employer stole from you and called "Profit."
Yeah did he say this recently because this is just how much lunch costs now. I'm not happy about it and in the US the tipping culture is more out of hand than ever before but this is largely because employers aren't paying fair wages. We are all basically just helping each other out, but this is just shuffling money at the bottom of the pyramid while the top pays even less.
From about a year ago. Huh, me thinks he has been to his island and/or ranch:
“If any of you cared about the victims, you wouldn’t drag these women who are in childbearing years now, some of them now having children, back into the limelight, back into the same story, to expose them again to this hideous outcome,” O’Leary said Tuesday. “These guys, they don’t want you to help them anymore.”
Sounds like he's terrified someone is going to bring his name up, so he sent out a veiled threat to his victims - "Nice nuclear family unit ya got there, be a shame if everybody in the elementary school car loop found out what a gold-digging whore you are."
Ah yes, that famously cheap commodity of food, that has not jumped in price at all.
I mean good thing bread is cheap and there was no price fixing. I mean someone making $70,000 (above average) a year should not even think of eating more then gruel (not that that is cheap anymore) let alone at a restaurant. Not like the whole system is based on spending money, I am sure a business insider article will fix that though.
“…and I’m rich because I make these suckers pay $28 for lunch.” - Rich CEO.
E: the more I think about it the more ridiculous this is. A rich guy denigrating people for hypothetically spending so much money on an item while he simultaneously pushes for profits by raising prices and cutting or stagnating employee compensation.
If you're a hit man, you should be making more than that. Unless you're trying to be a working class hitman, righting wrongs for the little guy, like Luigi.
It's because people like him exist that we are poor.
Him and his generation took everything and talking high and mighty just because they had first dibs on everything before we got a chance to have any kind of decent life.
Nothing he says should be taken seriously and he should be another example of why the rich need to be removed from existence.
This. I'm paying nearly $500 a month for shitty insurance that I literally can't afford the co-pays to actually use. I would literally just go uninsured if my employer weren't reimbursing me for the premium. It's functionally the same thing.
I haven't seen a doctor in over 20 years. I didn't have insurance for most of that time. I've finally had insurance in the last five years or so, but now I can't find a doctor my insurance covers that is taking new patients.
I work at a hospital that provides hospital based insurance for their employees. I paid more in copays to use their Physical Therapy staffed by PT students than it was to go to a local out of network PT place.
They still couldn't determine exactly how I injured my knee not how to help. This, in addition to all the steps it took to get to the Rehab referral aspect wiped out 2 years of my FSA
McD used to be almost good value for money in my country when you wanted to grab something to eat real quick
Now the prices have doubled over the last few years. Prices have risen elsewhere too, but there are very few other places that have literally doubled their prices.
and b) He is absolutely desperate to be seen in the same circle as the likes of Musk, Zuck, Gates, Bezos, etc...
The reality is that his wealth pales incomparison to those guys, at roughly 150 million. To them, he's as much a pauper as you and i are. He's a nobody. And that fucking grinds at him that he's not a part of the cool kids club. It gnaws at his insides that, in reality, the people above him AND the people below him would literally not give a shit if he fucked off back to Canada and died in obscurity.
For all of their evil, the group that O'Leary desperately wants to be seen as equal to will at least leave some sort of Legacy. They'll at least be remembered in the history books, even if just a footnote about their shitty shenanigans.
O'Leary will be forgotten as soon as he's in the ground. Probably sooner.
That's why he's suddenly forcing himself into every fucking news program, and awards shows, and trying to strike deals for massive data centers that no one wants. Because he's a sad and pathetic old man afraid of being forgotten.
also, did I mention he has an incredibly tiny penis?
You know who else has tiny/no penis? Half the population. If you want to criticize this annoying cunt, use facts.
He misrepresented himself on Canadian Sharktank for three seasons as making his money off a $3B deal with Mattel. It was only in season 4 he was outed as having no equity in that deal. The deal eventually made Mattel -$3B.
He started the O'Leary fund off his Sharktank brand. It under performed every year and eventually got sold at a loss. Everyone lost. Every call he made was a loser.
In 2019, O'Leary and his wife were speeding on a boat across a lake at night, when they hit another boat and killed two people. Unclear who was driving the boat, police did not check sobriety. O'Leary settled in a secret settlement. O'Leary and wife got off in criminal court. After killing two people, O'Leary sued the victims for $3M but the case was not won.
Remember those guys that had to have a Bluetooth ear piece in each ear so they could have multiple conversations going at once, to demonstrate how important they were, or had business cards with a photo that showed the guy talking on the phone because he's just too damn busy to put down the phone for 5 seconds and look at the camera for the photo that's going on his BUSINESS card, also why are you putting a photograph on your business card, that's just stupid.
If you eat 28 lunch 3 times a day every day it will be $30660 per year. $30660 a year will not make you not poor in most of America, so might as well eat well.
$30k extra would make a huge difference, though. I get the point you're trying to make, but your example is flawed. People shouldn't have to choose between eating well and not having to work until they die. A more effective way to re-frame this would be "Why does lunch cost $28?"
would make jack fuck. If there is no inflation (lol) and you want to scrounge enough money to have something to just about survive, you can start saving 30k per year right now, and in 53 years you will meet your goal.
The realistic question is "will I be alive in 53 years" and realistic answer for most of us is "what the fuck of course no". But if you're a toddler and have some stupid ideas about the existance of the future still, then yeah, you could start asking why does lunch costs $28, or why do you need to not eat now to eat later, shouldn't be there some smarter system about it.
Sounds like you know fuck all about finance. "If there's no inflation." Uh, yeah. That 30k a year is beating inflation by a LOT in any sort of investment.
I didn't want to calculate compound interests and whatever the fuck else. It doesn't matter, if it's 53 years, 60 years or 40 years. If you stop eating now so you can start eating in 40 years, your life wasn't worth living anyway.
If you don't afford yourself good things, and don't spend any money, you can remove it from the economy so when you're old and can't work anymore, you can fight with billionaires to get a portion of that money back so you can afford one instance of medical help.
Who am I kidding, there will be no medical care by the time you retire.
I get drive through or take out for lunch every day, but it's not to waste money. It's so I have an airtight reason/excuse to get the FUCK out of this place for a period of time every day.
It's the one thing keeping me from being on the front page of the local paper.
At this point, many people should just game the system to get a decent living.
2 bedroom apartments cost what a mortgage can cost for a 4 bedroom new house in some places. Got a very trustworthy friend with good credit? Pay them for "housekeeping" while the only thing they're cleaning out is the beer in the fridge while playing vidyagames. Let them show extra income and get a house. Be roommates. Have other roommates join in. Everyone hoard money while having cheap living in a nice new place.
Is that fraud? Idk but I'm in a nice new house and hoarding money.
I mean.... if you spend $28 everyday on lunch, that's $7000 a year, or 10% of your gross income if you make $70k, which is actually a huge amount of money to spend on lunch.
My whole foods near me does take away warm chicken for super cheap. You get a bunch of wings for like 3.50, or a few chicken legs, or a leg and a thigh. It's a decent enough deal I eat it a few times a week.
Really. There needs to be fear engrained into these oligarchs. They need to fear the working man for good reason. All I takes is one person with a lighter to ruin his world.
The day is coming. More and more people are becoming desperate, and that desperation is going to increase.
Before Covid, I was already writing about the coming Robotics/ Automation boom, and that was before anyone really heard of AI, and everyone called me foolish for believing that automation would replace significant numbers of jobs.
Today we are reading article after article predicting a coming permanent unemployed underclass of people without the high level skills required to compete in the workforce. Nearly all lower level jobs down by middle- and working-class people will be replaced.
These people have fed at the trough of Trickle Down Economics long enough, and it's killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If they don't pivot to some form of Trickle UP Economics, we will spontaneously pivot to Robin Hood Economics, and the Sociopathic Oligarchs won't like that at all, because it usually comes accompanied by guillotines, firing squads, and nooses - if they're lucky.
Sure, if I go out to eat, I might splurge a little... but the 20 to 25 bucks once every two months or so really aren't making a difference.
I'm assuming this guy goes out for lunch every day, in which case, 28 bucks each would be a little over 10k, so I'd get his argument. Of course, he's almost certainly far removed from the realities of life for us. For instance, we don't supplement our income by being a mouthpiece for parasites.
Like I said, so far removed from our daily reality that his judgement is worth less than the time spent reading it at minimum wage. The only reason anyone cares what he has to say is the cunts amplifying it and broadcasting his drivel into public consciousness.
If I get the 2 for $6 breakfast sandwich deal at tim hortons, and an iced cap, it comes to about $11. How am I supposed to get an iced cap and sandwiches cheaper than that? And tim hortons isn't exactly the lap of luxury. I only do this maybe once a week as my TGIF treat. 28 dollars for lunch is a tad expensive given current prices but it's not gross excess in the current economy. It's just not what I'm able to afford. Why is this politician acting like it's some capital sin? It's just the economy he helped create. He's the problem here, not us.
"The Tim Hortons Original Iced Capp is a Canadian classic made with a blend of coffee, cream, and ice. It offers a smooth, creamy, and refreshing taste enjoyed throughout the year. Whether served in summer or any season, it remains one of Tim Hortons most popular beverages."
iced cappuccino. It's something tim hortons is known for. They have mid donuts and great iced caps. It's similar to the McDonald's frappe if you haven't been to one.
I've had to go to 100% home cooking, burning most of any recreational family time I have left.
Just a few years ago, we'd eat out a couple times a week, come home and play board games. Any time we were out for a hot second, we wouldn't think twice about grabbing dinner.
Fast food used to have lines to the street, mc donalds was so bad they installed second drive through speakers.
Not to say there's not a fuckton of greed driving this, but if subway is seeing 50% decline in patronage, $5->$12 is just a deathspiral heading for the drain.
I don't know how this all ever unwinds. Was that our golden age?
I don't know how this all ever unwinds. Was that our golden age?
Yes, it was. My mother was born in 1939, just before the war. She grew up in the prosperous post-war period, and was married by the end of the fifties, then her and my dad had a great life for the next 60+ years. Jobs were easy to get, prices were low, and we lived on one income until us boys were old enough to be on our own, and my mom got a job out of boredom, and to pay the college bills without a loan. My Dad passed in 2020, a diehard Republican who DESPISED Trump and MAGA, saw right through them instantly, and voted a straight Democratic ticket for the first time in his life, in his last election.
My Mom also hates Trump and MAGA, and worries about the lives of her grandchildren and great grandchildren on a way that NOBODY did even 10 years ago. I have told her that she is lucky to have lived when she did. It seems to have been the very best time for white, middle class Americans in American history, and the only reason it is going away is because the Sociopathic Oligarchs have deliberately taken it from us because they want it for themselves, and they don't care how bad it gets for the rest of us.
$70,000 is a lot more than the median individual income. You can probably afford to spend a bit on lunch if you're single and making that amount.
Yeah if he thinks 70k is poor... Woah buddy
I'm not quite sure how to interpret this. Unless you're single in a low COL area, 70k in 2026 IS poor. Or, more accurately, it does not give someone everything that defined the post war "middle class" leaving you working poor or just old fashioned poor. The decision in the 90s to tell a technical-truth-lie about inflation to underreport it by 1-2% per year did wonders for juicing the economy, but now it's time to pay the piper so to speak. Median personal income in 2024 was $45k, but after 30 years (Rule of 70) of underreported inflation it should be almost twice that.
I’m curious: what do you mean by under reported inflation, and do you have any resources to read further?
https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/boskinrpt.html
TLDR version: In the 90s the owners realized that if you lie about inflation you could keep COLA down and pocket the difference. 1-2% a year seems like they're just skimming the top, but do that over decades and you've stolen HALF of incomes, which we are close to reaching. Poor numeracy skills, specifically not understanding exponential growth and the Rule of 69/70/72, has allowed this long con to be run on workers.
Further reading: The BLS uses a host of 'sounds reasonable' tools to adjust inflation that were introduced or reworked in the 90s. Hedonic adjustments, OER, substitutions, outlet substitutions, and chained CPI all seem reasonable from a certain angle (which of course is the one BLS presents you), but each one breaks down when confronted with the real world, how human being experience the economy, and time. They're tools that measure utility in a vacuum, not lifestyle or ripple effect or material reality. Hedonic adjustments is an extra special lie, because it's a microcosm of the current big economic lie- "yeah, everything is worse now than a few years ago, but look how big your TV/LLM is!"
Also read up on Labor Force Participation Rate, a seemingly reasonable measure which is used to keep unemployment numbers looking better.
"Lies, damn lies, and statistics" - Twain
Also the BLS just isn't even using actual data for something like 1/3 of the components of the CPI.
Budget cuts, DOGE, no staff to do the actual price surveys.
So, those hedonic adjustments?
At least 1/3 of the data points that go into those hedonic adjustments... well they are just generated by models that say 'what they should be'.
Look into 'imputation' in the actual reports if you want.
It just keeps getting worse, the more onion layers you peel back.
The other one that to me is just laughably stupid is how housing prices are estimated for the purposes of the CPI.
They basically just survey homeowners and ask them 'how much do you think your home fetch on the rental market?'
This is completely fucking insane imo.
Why not just actually ask people what the monthly total cost of owning their home is?
Oh its because well housing is an investment.
Except that if the monthly total cost of 'owning' the home exceeds the amount you think you could rent it out for, well, then you're basically underwater on a cost flow basis, because, you know, the cost of homeownership is... higher than its equivalent rent.
And if that condition persists... you will likely not be a homeowner for too much longer.
Yep, totally an 'investment'.
And if you counted actual ongoing homeownership costs, well, then you'd, you know, actually track ongoing homeownership costs, in the price index, that is ostensibly meant to measure ... ongoing costs.
It makes no fucking sense, other than as a way of depressing the housing component of the CPI when a housing market implosion is occuring, it assumes things we know are not historically true about the home and rental markets, when a bubble is popping.
Yes! Someone who gets it. It's worth pointing out that my "1-2% a year" is a highly conservative estimate based on the aspects of CPI that are objectively questioned by respected economists. If we broaden it to more subjective analysis by a wider range of academics it's 3-4% per year. Finally, if we really step back and ask some big questions, 5% is not outside the realm of possible.
I am guessing that the both of us share in common something like a data anaylst or accountant background, degrees relevant to something like that...
You have to actually understand statistics, math, the relevant background concepts and terms.
Almost no 'normal' person bothers with all this, unless they're getting paid to.
But yeah... actual academic economists have been pulling their hair out over this kind of shit for decades, they have actually complex stances on this stuff and do novel research and such.
But the pop culture version of an economist is basically either A) some kind of corpo sell out who just justifies things for the company B) highly connected old money goober type that ends up at the Fed or a major bank C) fucking larry kudlow or jim cramer D) insane political ideologue who somehow happened to get an econ degree and then entirely use that to be a political ideologue.
Anyway, what I remember of game theory with imperfect information strongly suggests to me that we are all compketely fucked for the forseeable medium term, lol.
I make if I am lucky 35k this year. Fucker if I made double that then I could afford this. But fuck that asshole. Billionaires should never tell us how to live.
He's not a billionaire. He's a millionaire trying to suck up to billionaires.
It depends where you live. 70k in a big city area barely covers rent on a studio apartment.
First if you want to spend $28 on lunch do it just to spite big Kev.
I'm single and make about twice that figure and there is zero chance I would spend $28 on lunch let alone on any kind of recurring basis. People just need to do the little things that make them happy, if thats eating out do it.
$28 is like two sushi rolls or two of anything really.... hell soda costs $3+ and a burger $15ish
It's not that hard to spend a lot eating out even for lunch, it's crazy. Prices have at least doubled in the last few years since covid. Companies are making up for their lost months of profits from shutdown and terrible republican admins fucking up everything and killing regulations and any safeguards or anything consumer friendly. 80% beef costs twice what 95% used to years ago and it's not stocked anymore
For me the issue is for a five day work week it's $540 a month, and that's say a downpipe for my car, for me thats more important.
We're all grown ups so spend your money where you think it will improve your life. When I was Gen Z's age I spent more than I should on car stuff because cars are my thing.
Oh for sure and wouldn't eat like that daily. Just doing is very easy to spend that much eating out even for lunch or breakfast not even dinner
I also think paying over 300/ month on a car is crazy and people getting 8 year loans right now is insane
Obviously, if you're poor, you don't deserve any scrap of comfort because it's a moral failing on your part and definitely not a top down systemic problem that caused it /s
How can you suggest 2. If you believe 1.? It's twice as unreasonable if somebody makes $70,000 and even more for the majority who makes less.
Eating out once in a while is a little thing. Spending $28 on lunch every day is not a little thing anymore.
Because eating out isn't my thing especially lunch. For me the money spent on eating out is money I'd rather spend on a performance part for my car.
Per day, that'd be 1/7th of the annual pretax income.
Is it usual in america for people to eat seven meals per day? Explains much if true.
Stupid indeed.
Instead of paying $28 for lunch, they should just eat the rich.
when you toss 'em on the grill, watch out for flare-ups. lots of fat, not a lot of meat.
Mmmm CEO souffle or maybe Robber Barron Roast Beef
How about some nice Bourgeoisie Jambalaya or Technocrat Tacos?
When he was a junior asshole, that $28 meal would cost $9.
I personally think food inflation has rather exceeded the median rate so it’s probably even less than that; my lived experience says that in 2019 I could get a meal for $15-20 and now it’s $25-30, but the inflation calculator disagrees.
When he was in his twenties, $5 would have been an indulgent lunch, and you'd probably still receive some change
Probably subsidized by the company too
Was gonna say it’s more an indictment on rising food costs than individual choices.
Also the “poor people are poor because they buy slightly nice things” is such a shit argument.
It's way less than that. In 2013, you could still get a $2 meal deal from Taco Bell that came with a burrito, bag of Doritos, and a drink. That's $2.80 in today's money. Then, I remember some dinner prices from places my parents took me when I was a kid. They're boomers so they love going to all you can eat buffets. Using that calculator, the adult price for an all you can eat pizza buffet at a CiCi's in 2000 would be $5.69 in today's money. In 2005, the adult dinner price for an all you can eat buffet at Furr's Cafeteria would be $8.39 in today's money. Even in 2013, there was an AYCE Chinese buffet that would be $7 in today's money. Those are dinner prices. And if you didn't want to eat like a boomer, there were plenty of cheaper options. But just to put things into perspective a lot of those same things don't cost $6-9 today. They cost $20+.
Avocado toast all over again. They do this to every generation.
yep, same script - "it's your fault and you should feel ashamed."
Projection as always
You got two watches on homie
And each of them probably costs well into the 6-figure range.
We're not poor because of what we spend, and they fucking know it.
Its $28 because you rich assholes ruin everything
Hands up who isn't making anywhere near 70k.
✋
I wasn't for most of my life until I finally was and then I became disabled shortly thereafter, prompting the government to decide that I should live on sub-poverty wages which aren't enough to feed myself because it's easier and cheaper for them if I just die.
And whose fault is it that lunch costs $28????????
Detached from reality old dude strikes again. It's easy enough for a single meal at a fast food drive through to be $15 these days.
It's insulting that this guy says 70k like it's a low salary (for "kids" as he says). I make a quarter of that. I also know a lot more retired old people who never made close to that in their lifetime than ones who did make that much
And if I did make that much it would still feel insulting because I'm pretty sure most people making 70k can easily afford weekly $28 lunches...
Edit: Just saw that this motherfucker is wearing two expensive watches on the photo... absolutely repulsive person
Adjusted for inflation the average worker in the 80's and 90's made way more than 70k a yr. I made 60k in 2000, that's $120k today.
Yeah the fact that the wages are stagnating is another thing, I'm just saying from where me and most of the people of all ages in my life are standing, 70k is a lot.
Depends on the city you live in and your situation. Single in a small town 70k good. Family of 4 in the city and you wouldn't even qualify for a home loan and are probably in assistance.
70k is 3,5k/mo after taxes in my country. Doesnt really matter where you live with that you could be paying 2500 in rent and still be loaded for the month. Look all I'm saying is this O'Leary guy is a fucking prick and most people never see 70k in their lifetime
You say "loaded" but you wouldn't be able to pay for college without debt, wouldn't be able to buy a house, wouldn't be able to afford to retire, or save much, couldn't afford vacations, and couldn't even afford a new economy car.
That isn't loaded, that's being poor.
This is exactly what is expected to happen. People complaining/arguing but not complaining/arguing about the correct issue.
70k by everyone's standards other than the top 1% is a lot of money, because we have always had to focus on surviving and can make that amount work. Life isnt going to be roses, but it will be life. It really does come down to buying power, but also priority. Back in the 70/80s buying tech (tvs, computers) was insanely expensive. Now you can pick up a 65in for like 200usd. Back in the 90s a new car was under 10k. Now a decent car bought new is 35/40k. Housing....I am not even going to touch it. I bought a 5 bedroom 2400sq ft for 89k in PA in the early 2000s, now that house on zillow is 350k. I only had it a year and I sold it for 85k after closing and everything. Prices for things have flipped for a lot of items that used to be luxury compared to necessity. That's how we can afford avocado toast because we can only afford eggs/bread/ and a single avocado.
I dont want to start a 2nd argument, and I am not confident I am getting my point across. I just feel all that are here arguing should not be arguing amongst ourselves since we are essentially in the same boat amd should be putting our efforts at the real issue.
A lot of older folks made more than 70k by a fair margin when you account for buying power and quality of life.
You have to adjust numbers for more then just inflation if you want a remotely accurate comparison.
It's wild that these elites are shitting on people spending $27 on a meal...
It's not 2017, that doesn't buy you much of a meal.
The cheapest food in my town I can think of is still a solid $8-9. And that is for a very unappetizing sandwich. A small upgrade to a chain "Jersey Mike's Sub" puts you back $11.15 before tax - no drink, no chips.
Around me, the only meal you can get for under $10 is banh mi. I'm very grateful for those reasonable prices, but I'm also not exaggerating.
My work recently treated my group of coworkers to subs, but I don't eat meat and didn't have any. Instead, my manager said she'd reimburse me, and broke down the price of the sandwiches (which everyone else split) to calculate $7 per person. So I was given $7 Doordash credit.
$7. On Doordash. The fuck am I supposed to do with that?
I guess because you use the word 'town' that a shitty chain sub might actually be a true upgrade, but for anyone in even a smallish city, look around for little hole in the wall independent restaurants because I guarantee you can get much better food for much cheaper than the shit you'll get at chain restaurants. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 5 sub shops and delis in my area that will give you a much bigger better sandwich than subway, for a little over half the price. Then there's shawarma shops, Chinese take ours that will fill up the take out container so full that it's too much to eat in a sitting, burger places where you can sit down and have a burger and a beer for the price of a McDonald's meal and it'll be twice the size, pizza joints with walk in specials where you can get a small pizza for the price of a slice at pizza-pizza, Caribbean restaurants where there isn't even a fast food alternative, fucking lots of places. Don't settle for some bullshit just because it's familiar.
Just don’t eat takeout/restaurant food then. Here in canada you can easily make meals for less than 5$ per portion, much less if you don’t eat meat.
Hell just buying precooked food at the grocery store costs ~7$ for a high-quality meal. I can’t imagine anyone paying 27$ for a regular meal.
He's right, people should stop spending $28 on lunch and just eat the rich instead.
Well, these same assholes then turn around and blame people when they stop spending money on shit like this, as it starts to affect their profits.
"Millenials are killing the food industry!!!"
Look at all the judgement that gets cast in the media for gen Z for not drinking alcohol as much as every other generation.
All the more reason to eat the rich instead.
Oh no! Another asshole billionaire who is out of touch with reality. Whatever will we do?
Bruh, I wish I made $70,000/yr. It was what I went to college for after all only for the entire world to change after 4 years, now I can't afford myself and in debt.
Regardless, this is ignoring the fact that inflation has increased the cost of groceries in general, not just lunch. Even though Trump ran on it, apparently inflation never actually happened now that he's in office. The collective amnesia from the right when it benefits them is just infuriating
What did you study
Computer Science
What's the struggle finding a good job?
I just got rejected after 8 rounds of interviews with 5 years and management experience in my field. It is not a good time to be job searching in tech.
8 rounds????? In a row??
Welcome to tech. It's pretty fucking ridiculous.
(For example, I just got a position where the primary duty is to support an information system I designed and built for them and I still had to do 3 rounds of interview)
We've only done multiple rounds of interviews for very impressive candidates that are already a big yes, where they're being shown to progressively higher ranking staff as a "wow you gotta meet this person"
This is a big tech company
What were the three rounds for? Did the interviewers see it as a farce?
Trust me, I've tried since graduating in 2024 to get a job within the field I studied. There's a lot of CS jobs, but absolutely none for a entry level position. I've long given up for now, especially since a recession might finally hit the second I actually get a good job and then I'd be completely unemployed. Maybe I'll use what I studied in the future but it doesn't look like it for now.
Before your objection that I should've gotten an internship during college as well to get actual work experience rather than just doing really well in my classes, I tried. I used to spend just as much time trying to get an internship than actually studying only for me to never get any kind of response let alone a fucking interview. That's the depressing part, I saw this coming, tried my best to avoid it, only for my work learning additional skills outside of class to make me more appealing and constantly applying for jobs to have all been for nothing. I spent so much time I could have been doing to build an actual social life only to get smacked with reality
I don't know much about your situation and your specific skills, but one way to get experience in many CS jobs is doing work on a FOSS project or starting your own. At least it would help keeping your skills sharp and updated. But i know that this takes a lot of effort and it's unpaid work, which might not be possible if you actually have to do something to pay the rent.
I've considered developing my own FOSS application. If I were to ever do one, it would be focused on being something that Linux Mobile or Ubuntu Touch doesn't already have since they don't have much support yet. Thought about making some kind of Linux application in general, but any idea I came up with either has already been or definitely couldn't be maintained long term by just one person.
I do work full time already, but switching from Android to either Droidian or Ubuntu Touch after the great lockdown will probably make me want to make the experience on them better anyway. So yeah, definitely been throwing around the idea of getting involved in the FOSS community, but don't want to contribute to an already existing project since I'm not THAT confident in my programming skills just yet.
Like the other commenter said, do you have any projects you've been working on that could showcase your skills or add some weight to your resume? Are you applying for software engineering roles? Is the city you're applying in unfit for tech?
I haven't been actively applying as of recently, but I have done plenty in the past 2 years. The state I currently live in perhaps might no longer be fit for tech, not entirely sure anymore, but I was applying for jobs way outside of my home state as well since I'd be willing to move pretty far for an opportunity. I am considering working on a project in the future within the FOSS community
Said the Person with two watches
I've seen this argument from people before, with avocado toast and Starbucks and everything else, but no one seems to ask why lunch is $28 or blame the people charging $28 for lunch as part of the problem
Fuck, I wish I was making 70k a year how do I live in this fantasy world?
Do what I do: work multiple jobs and then lie about your income.
lets just fucking kill him
Why is he wearing 2 watches?
2 tell time
c/DadJokes is 👉 that way
Okay 🪄. Everyone who makes under 70k will never eat out again.
This eliminates more than half of the customer base of the restaurant industry, most of which promptly implodes. Millions lose their jobs. What's worse is that all that restaurant spending gets redirected towards grocery stores. Grocery stores move far more product with just a fraction of the workers and they will be damned before they hand out raises to share their new windfall profits. This drastically reduces the velocity of money in the economy and drags us into a sudden contraction.
The storefronts those restaurants occupied, the ones that used to be central meeting points for their communities, become urban blight. Those workers, too, stop being able to pay rent or buy much of anything else, which deals a collateral blow to residential real estate and every business that makes consumer goods. The collapse of the restaurant industry and the sudden blow to landlords of all varieties takes a large tax base with it, and state and local governments that rely on sales and property tax see an immediate budgetary shortfall.
These so-called titans of industry cannot see, will never see, that the "wasteful" and "unthrifty" spending they hate is utterly vital. Their distaste for the poors experiencing such luxuries as participating in simple consumption blinds them to the fact that that spending is the economy.
ETA: Instead of the rest of us tightening our belts even more, the wealthy need to spend a lot more. Fund a literacy program, hand a million dollars to a small electric car conversion company, drop a cool 10 million on urban infill, fuck, build a pyramid. Anything is better than sitting on your wealth doing nothing but chasing rent-seeking enterprises like stock buybacks and cloud infra.
Pay taxes.
Yes. A key contradiction in capitalist economics is that the wealthy have a much lower marginal propensity to consume than the working class. Therefore the more wealth the rentiers capture, the lower the velocity of money. One way to recirculate that money would be to levy steep taxes against them. Another would be if they would just spend more money on labor.
Government revenues aside, for a functional capitalist economy the money has to flow vertically one way or another. It's A or B, and they constantly bitch and moan about both. We cannot have a functional capitalist economy when these chucklefucks are dictating policy.
I'm sympathetic to communism myself, but that's not hard to do when we're living through the failure of late stage capitalism.
To be honest, I don't quite like how it ended the last time someone tried that
I went to Subway last night. You know, the 5-dollar footlong place.
A footlong sub was $12 (not the meal - just the sandwich).
McDonalds is charging 8 dollars for a breakfast muffin.
My rent has gone from 800 to 2000 since Covid.
I have to fill my tank 3 times a weeks, and right now that costs 50 bucks.
On top of that, I have to help my parents out because their pension didn't account for real-world inflation and their extremely comfy retirement turned out not to be nearly enough when the grocery bill doubled.
That 73k I make does less than the 30k I made back in 2016.
now imagine you still make 30k and also most of your friends cant get jobs to begin with and still with parents in their mid 20s and also half of them are having mental breakdowns and thats the gen z experience
I get it. I am barely past living paycheck-to-paycheck having changed nothing about my lifestyle since I made half as much (using the same same rental, car, laptop, and everything), so making 30k today would be worse than making minimum wage was just a few years ago, when it was already shamefully low.
I do have a new job that pays way more, but my commute is absolute dogshit because the place I work is SUPER expensive. I work for a city where literally 100% of the households are multi-millionaires, and we have a few 11 and 12-figure residents.
yeah, that sounds really shitty, hope things get better for you - and all of us - soon. solidarity <3
People that can impulse buy outragiously expensive watches and cars shouldn't be lecturing the plebs on what to splurge on.
Especially not food. Food is one of last big joys of life for the commoners. Any splurge here is entirely valid.
These people need to stop getting platformed. If you're in such a position, please just enjoy your privilege in silence and leave us the fuck alone.
I think the point here is a daily $28 lunch is 1/7th of their entire pretax income
I get it but I highly doubt most people actually do these expensive lunches daily. This is also not strictly speaking what is the text of the OP, assuming the text is correct he's questioning people getting a 28 dollar lunch full stop.
Also, food is 1/3rd of the things that keep you alive and healthy. Food taking up a large part of your money really isn't that wild. Things like rent taxes and utilities taking up more than half, that is wild, and really the only reason why 28 dollar lunches could be considered questionable on that income.
The world is also just what it is, incomes have been trailing behind inflation for a long time now. Because of these same people. I'm a cheapskate but I can't get my groceries under 150~200 a week for just myself and my wife. Not without sacrificing health at least, the only way to get cheaper is taking a deep dive into canned and/or highly processed food, but that just isn't happening.
Source please
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/measuring-what-matters/measuring-what-matters-themes-and-indicators/prosperous/wages
In Australia ~ 4 in 21 years of wage growth was negative compared to CPI
Fair retort. In hindsight I shouldn't have used the word inflation, because i'm actually just referring to the cost of living of Joe Average which I incorrectly assumed would be contextually obvious.
But I love that you want a source for that bit, and not the whole entire premise of this topic.
Wait is $70,000 a year a low amount of money? That's an insane amount of money to be considered poor.
70k is basically living in the streets in a chunk of America while a few places it's living like a king.
But those places are quickly going away.
What does a homeless person make? $100,000 a year?
The average income is around $84,000, so if you are making less, your employer is fucking you over. The difference between your income and $84,000, is what your employer stole from you and called "Profit."
Last time I went to a food truck by my office a very basic lunch was $22. And that was before the machine assumed you should tip 18%.
Yeah did he say this recently because this is just how much lunch costs now. I'm not happy about it and in the US the tipping culture is more out of hand than ever before but this is largely because employers aren't paying fair wages. We are all basically just helping each other out, but this is just shuffling money at the bottom of the pyramid while the top pays even less.
Bro, why aren't you even meal prepping rice and beans for lunch every day, bro? Eat your porridge peasant.
You can and should push 0℅ on those unless you were waited on or report them to a local, eager authority if they do an automatic tip.
we should eat him for lunch and see what that costs
He's pretty gross, but I think we could make it turn out well enough if we stew him with some herbs and veggies.
Last week I had some $15 curry to celebrate getting a new job. I think that's the most expensive meal I've had all year
From about a year ago. Huh, me thinks he has been to his island and/or ranch:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-shark-tank-star-kevin-oleary-sparks-fury-with-claim-about-childbearing-epstein-victims/
What an odd and weird thing for him to say about childbearing and what the victims want.
Sounds like he's terrified someone is going to bring his name up, so he sent out a veiled threat to his victims - "Nice nuclear family unit ya got there, be a shame if everybody in the elementary school car loop found out what a gold-digging whore you are."
It's giving $10 banana vibes
This is the new avocado toast slur that boomers are gonna use to describe the younger generations lack of not being able to afford anything.
Enemy.
i want to jam his face into a waffle iron
That's a business plan I can get behind
I will pay $30,000 for this plan for a 25% stake in his pain.
Ah yes, that famously cheap commodity of food, that has not jumped in price at all.
I mean good thing bread is cheap and there was no price fixing. I mean someone making $70,000 (above average) a year should not even think of eating more then gruel (not that that is cheap anymore) let alone at a restaurant. Not like the whole system is based on spending money, I am sure a business insider article will fix that though.
“…and I’m rich because I make these suckers pay $28 for lunch.” - Rich CEO.
E: the more I think about it the more ridiculous this is. A rich guy denigrating people for hypothetically spending so much money on an item while he simultaneously pushes for profits by raising prices and cutting or stagnating employee compensation.
I'd kill to make 70k a year LMFAO
If you're a hit man, you should be making more than that. Unless you're trying to be a working class hitman, righting wrongs for the little guy, like Luigi.
It's because people like him exist that we are poor.
Him and his generation took everything and talking high and mighty just because they had first dibs on everything before we got a chance to have any kind of decent life.
Nothing he says should be taken seriously and he should be another example of why the rich need to be removed from existence.
I hope someone kills Kevin O'Leary
Like he killed someone else? It's only fair.
If I've read all the past posts from people in the USA correctly, it's not lunch that's expensive but the healthcare to stay alive.
This. I'm paying nearly $500 a month for shitty insurance that I literally can't afford the co-pays to actually use. I would literally just go uninsured if my employer weren't reimbursing me for the premium. It's functionally the same thing.
I haven't seen a doctor in over 20 years. I didn't have insurance for most of that time. I've finally had insurance in the last five years or so, but now I can't find a doctor my insurance covers that is taking new patients.
I work at a hospital that provides hospital based insurance for their employees. I paid more in copays to use their Physical Therapy staffed by PT students than it was to go to a local out of network PT place.
They still couldn't determine exactly how I injured my knee not how to help. This, in addition to all the steps it took to get to the Rehab referral aspect wiped out 2 years of my FSA
A combo meal at McDonald's is almost $20 now... $28 isn't unreasonable these days.
Dude I got an empanada and a fancy coffee tomorrow morning for like five, maybe six bucks. McDs is highway robbery
McD used to be almost good value for money in my country when you wanted to grab something to eat real quick
Now the prices have doubled over the last few years. Prices have risen elsewhere too, but there are very few other places that have literally doubled their prices.
You should have got a lottery ticket as long as you were in tomorrow.
i still lost. does that make you feel better because it makes me feel better.
How do you know? Is it tomorrow yet?
It will be some time next yesterday
U mean yesterday morning?
no i mean in like, three hours. you're too tied to linear concepts of time.
Edit: the empanada will have been turned into a quiche via magic and it is being beened delicious.
Cocaine O’Leary w/ his cocaine ideas again
What we need to understand about O'Leary is that:
a) He likely has an incredibly tiny penis.
and b) He is absolutely desperate to be seen in the same circle as the likes of Musk, Zuck, Gates, Bezos, etc...
The reality is that his wealth pales incomparison to those guys, at roughly 150 million. To them, he's as much a pauper as you and i are. He's a nobody. And that fucking grinds at him that he's not a part of the cool kids club. It gnaws at his insides that, in reality, the people above him AND the people below him would literally not give a shit if he fucked off back to Canada and died in obscurity.
For all of their evil, the group that O'Leary desperately wants to be seen as equal to will at least leave some sort of Legacy. They'll at least be remembered in the history books, even if just a footnote about their shitty shenanigans.
O'Leary will be forgotten as soon as he's in the ground. Probably sooner.
That's why he's suddenly forcing himself into every fucking news program, and awards shows, and trying to strike deals for massive data centers that no one wants. Because he's a sad and pathetic old man afraid of being forgotten.
also, did I mention he has an incredibly tiny penis?
His penis has nothing to do with it. Stop obsessing over peoples genitals.
But if we don't obess over penises then how will people know how masculine we are compared to the people we don't like!!!!1!1!1!1!!1!!1one!1!
Just raccoons.
Lighten up.
You know who else has tiny/no penis? Half the population. If you want to criticize this annoying cunt, use facts.
He misrepresented himself on Canadian Sharktank for three seasons as making his money off a $3B deal with Mattel. It was only in season 4 he was outed as having no equity in that deal. The deal eventually made Mattel -$3B.
He started the O'Leary fund off his Sharktank brand. It under performed every year and eventually got sold at a loss. Everyone lost. Every call he made was a loser.
In 2019, O'Leary and his wife were speeding on a boat across a lake at night, when they hit another boat and killed two people. Unclear who was driving the boat, police did not check sobriety. O'Leary settled in a secret settlement. O'Leary and wife got off in criminal court. After killing two people, O'Leary sued the victims for $3M but the case was not won.
Thankfully, this piece of shit moved to Boston.
When you can't afford a vacation you may as well splurge on lunch now and then.
Is this an American thing, $28 for lunch doesn’t sound that outrageous today as a Canadian (it’s like $20 USD)
Until very recently, a typical lunch wasn't more than $15.
i had half a $1.00 burrito and leftover popcorn from the farm store (it was free. we were there buying some stuff for the garden).
So we are not talking about the fact, that he wears two watches???
The same POS who forces people to go back to the office in high rent areas where restaurants have hostage customers.
Mush brains with a watch on each wrist doesn't understand how inflation works... Shocker.
Remember those guys that had to have a Bluetooth ear piece in each ear so they could have multiple conversations going at once, to demonstrate how important they were, or had business cards with a photo that showed the guy talking on the phone because he's just too damn busy to put down the phone for 5 seconds and look at the camera for the photo that's going on his BUSINESS card, also why are you putting a photograph on your business card, that's just stupid.
He knows what he's talking about. He's an expert on Zoomers. He knows that generation intimately thanks to his connection with Epstein.
....maybe cause lunch costs that much now 🙃
Kevin O'Leary is a con artist, that's not like just my opinion
If you eat 28 lunch 3 times a day every day it will be $30660 per year. $30660 a year will not make you not poor in most of America, so might as well eat well.
$30k extra would make a huge difference, though. I get the point you're trying to make, but your example is flawed. People shouldn't have to choose between eating well and not having to work until they die. A more effective way to re-frame this would be "Why does lunch cost $28?"
would make jack fuck. If there is no inflation (lol) and you want to scrounge enough money to have something to just about survive, you can start saving 30k per year right now, and in 53 years you will meet your goal.
The realistic question is "will I be alive in 53 years" and realistic answer for most of us is "what the fuck of course no". But if you're a toddler and have some stupid ideas about the existance of the future still, then yeah, you could start asking why does lunch costs $28, or why do you need to not eat now to eat later, shouldn't be there some smarter system about it.
Sounds like you know fuck all about finance. "If there's no inflation." Uh, yeah. That 30k a year is beating inflation by a LOT in any sort of investment.
I didn't want to calculate compound interests and whatever the fuck else. It doesn't matter, if it's 53 years, 60 years or 40 years. If you stop eating now so you can start eating in 40 years, your life wasn't worth living anyway.
That is your retirement right there. Plug those numbers into a retirement calculator.
Was it worth it?
If you don't afford yourself good things, and don't spend any money, you can remove it from the economy so when you're old and can't work anymore, you can fight with billionaires to get a portion of that money back so you can afford one instance of medical help.
Who am I kidding, there will be no medical care by the time you retire.
JFC. Are people really this bad at home economics?
I get drive through or take out for lunch every day, but it's not to waste money. It's so I have an airtight reason/excuse to get the FUCK out of this place for a period of time every day.
It's the one thing keeping me from being on the front page of the local paper.
At this point, many people should just game the system to get a decent living.
2 bedroom apartments cost what a mortgage can cost for a 4 bedroom new house in some places. Got a very trustworthy friend with good credit? Pay them for "housekeeping" while the only thing they're cleaning out is the beer in the fridge while playing vidyagames. Let them show extra income and get a house. Be roommates. Have other roommates join in. Everyone hoard money while having cheap living in a nice new place.
Is that fraud? Idk but I'm in a nice new house and hoarding money.
… you’re sort of just describing a housing co-op.
Except that instead of it being a “particularly trustworthy friend” it’s a legal entity that everyone paying into has voting rights for.
30 dollars for a lunch?
I dont even spend 30 dollars, total, for a week of lunches and dinners. I aint one of them youthes, though.
Yeah most people agree $28 for lunch is insanely expensive.
But it doesn't stop quotes like this from being passed around as ragebait.
I mean.... if you spend $28 everyday on lunch, that's $7000 a year, or 10% of your gross income if you make $70k, which is actually a huge amount of money to spend on lunch.
I think the numbers here are rhetorical.
Isn't he the Boston Pizza dude?
How much is a BP lunch?
Oh, plus tip...
Don't do Jim Treliving dirty like that.
That’s just over 20 quid…my partner makes my lunch and it costs about a fiver a week. Who can afford over a 100 quid a week on lunch?
Yeah how much does lunch cost when you include the cost of a private jet flight to a pedo island?
Is there a place near where y'all work that lunch is still reasonably priced?
My whole foods near me does take away warm chicken for super cheap. You get a bunch of wings for like 3.50, or a few chicken legs, or a leg and a thigh. It's a decent enough deal I eat it a few times a week.
Oh shit nice
Check yours it's pretty clutch for a quick cheap meal!
Nearest whole foods is over an hour lol
Ahh nevermind then! 🤣
We didn’t have lunch today
kevin o learys, only purpose is to be the human shield for wall street when they do insider trading, or when shit hits the fan.
Really. There needs to be fear engrained into these oligarchs. They need to fear the working man for good reason. All I takes is one person with a lighter to ruin his world.
Do it then!
Oh now you understand why we're in a place we are in.
The day is coming. More and more people are becoming desperate, and that desperation is going to increase.
Before Covid, I was already writing about the coming Robotics/ Automation boom, and that was before anyone really heard of AI, and everyone called me foolish for believing that automation would replace significant numbers of jobs.
Today we are reading article after article predicting a coming permanent unemployed underclass of people without the high level skills required to compete in the workforce. Nearly all lower level jobs down by middle- and working-class people will be replaced.
These people have fed at the trough of Trickle Down Economics long enough, and it's killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. If they don't pivot to some form of Trickle UP Economics, we will spontaneously pivot to Robin Hood Economics, and the Sociopathic Oligarchs won't like that at all, because it usually comes accompanied by guillotines, firing squads, and nooses - if they're lucky.
Sure, if I go out to eat, I might splurge a little... but the 20 to 25 bucks once every two months or so really aren't making a difference.
I'm assuming this guy goes out for lunch every day, in which case, 28 bucks each would be a little over 10k, so I'd get his argument. Of course, he's almost certainly far removed from the realities of life for us. For instance, we don't supplement our income by being a mouthpiece for parasites.
And I don't make 70k either
This guy hasn't spent less that $200 for lunch in years. And none of that is tip.
Like I said, so far removed from our daily reality that his judgement is worth less than the time spent reading it at minimum wage. The only reason anyone cares what he has to say is the cunts amplifying it and broadcasting his drivel into public consciousness.
If I get the 2 for $6 breakfast sandwich deal at tim hortons, and an iced cap, it comes to about $11. How am I supposed to get an iced cap and sandwiches cheaper than that? And tim hortons isn't exactly the lap of luxury. I only do this maybe once a week as my TGIF treat. 28 dollars for lunch is a tad expensive given current prices but it's not gross excess in the current economy. It's just not what I'm able to afford. Why is this politician acting like it's some capital sin? It's just the economy he helped create. He's the problem here, not us.
what's an iced cap?
It's an iced cappuccino.
Tim Hortons describes it thusly;
"The Tim Hortons Original Iced Capp is a Canadian classic made with a blend of coffee, cream, and ice. It offers a smooth, creamy, and refreshing taste enjoyed throughout the year. Whether served in summer or any season, it remains one of Tim Hortons most popular beverages."
Source:
https://timhortons-menus.ca/original-iced-capp/
iced cappuccino. It's something tim hortons is known for. They have mid donuts and great iced caps. It's similar to the McDonald's frappe if you haven't been to one.
oh cool like a milkshake with coffee in it kinda? sounds good though! we dont have tim hortons where i'm from
It's basically a slushy Cappuccino.
https://timhortons.co.th/product/original-iced-capp/
Iced cappuccino, I assume.
gen z is poor because we havent seized the means of production yet. too busy vaping and playing roblox 😔😔😔
Y'know, it'd be really funny if Utah of all places went 2 - 0 with these fascist losers.
As stupid as speeding across the lake in a boat in the middle of the night?
The response is spot on!!! Kevin, the racist pedo loser, should be eating shit.
I've had to go to 100% home cooking, burning most of any recreational family time I have left.
Just a few years ago, we'd eat out a couple times a week, come home and play board games. Any time we were out for a hot second, we wouldn't think twice about grabbing dinner.
Fast food used to have lines to the street, mc donalds was so bad they installed second drive through speakers.
Not to say there's not a fuckton of greed driving this, but if subway is seeing 50% decline in patronage, $5->$12 is just a deathspiral heading for the drain.
I don't know how this all ever unwinds. Was that our golden age?
Yes, it was. My mother was born in 1939, just before the war. She grew up in the prosperous post-war period, and was married by the end of the fifties, then her and my dad had a great life for the next 60+ years. Jobs were easy to get, prices were low, and we lived on one income until us boys were old enough to be on our own, and my mom got a job out of boredom, and to pay the college bills without a loan. My Dad passed in 2020, a diehard Republican who DESPISED Trump and MAGA, saw right through them instantly, and voted a straight Democratic ticket for the first time in his life, in his last election.
My Mom also hates Trump and MAGA, and worries about the lives of her grandchildren and great grandchildren on a way that NOBODY did even 10 years ago. I have told her that she is lucky to have lived when she did. It seems to have been the very best time for white, middle class Americans in American history, and the only reason it is going away is because the Sociopathic Oligarchs have deliberately taken it from us because they want it for themselves, and they don't care how bad it gets for the rest of us.
How do we go about starting a political party whose main tenet is dining upon the wealthy?
People are having lunch?
Just world fallacy
These billionaires a poor because they use their jets to fly everywhere.
rotisserie chicken!
Gotta have a big lunch after skipping breakfast all the time.