This part gripes me when they travel to “less fortunate” or “poor” countries where eating out is $0.50-2.00 but the same or similar thing is $30-500 in the US, however: people earn different levels of income. Like in that “third world” country, people may only live with $10 a day while Americans live with either $7.25 / $15 per hour in minimum wage, so it’s not comparable as to why the prices are seen as “cheap” by Americans.
Now, put it this way: if an average joe were to earn the FEDERAL mandated minimum wage of $7.25, is buying a whole weeks worth of groceries affordable with that alone (excluding rent, utilities, insurance, etc)? Do you consider a $200 semi-fancy dinner at a restaurant (not over the top luxurious, but formal & fine dining) with family or friends “cheap” in the US whilst earning $15 (or even $30) per hour in minimum wage?
What is reasonable middle class to you? If you have something like $1000 in disposable income/mo a $200 is 1/5 of that, and you could easily do that once a more or once every other week.
$200 also isn’t a lot of money for a dinner. I spend $80 last night for a hamburger, fries, a appetizer, and two beers.
Not sure about a formal definition, but a point at which my standard costs, housing, transport, utils, are covered easily enough where I don’t feel a need to set some sort of specific number for things like grocery shopping. It would still be silly to go buying lobster and caviar though because it’d just be wasteful and could be better used elsewhere.
Regardless though, as to the original question of if someone making minimum wage would see that as easy, not a chance.
right, but all of that is extremely variable. one person’s ‘standard costs’ are going to be twice another persons.
Like, my car costs me about $100 a month, many people are spending $1000+ on their car per month. One person’s food budget might be rice and beans, another’s might be 500/week.
people’s definitions of these things dont’ mean much until you drill it the specifics of their income and costs, and then you see wildly different behaviors due to how emotional folks are about their perceptions of life’s necessities, and a lot of folks are willing to go into debt for things other folks don’t spend a dime on.