Who knew?
Here, I offer you the dumbest story you will read today:
🍔 The Big (Mac) picture: McDonald’s did not respond to requests for comment, but data from the Big Mac Index — which has been measuring the price of a Big Mac since the year the Oprah Winfrey Show debuted — shows that the price of a Big Mac nationwide rose 7% from 2020 to 2021. Big Mac prices have risen by a whopping 40% in the past 10 years, according to the index.
Yes, inflation has hit the US over the past 10 years. Just as it has hit the US in the previous 10 years. Guess what? A Big Mac cost $2.45 in the 1990s, $1.60 in the 80s and only 65 cents in the 1970s. My God! What is this world coming to???
Axios seems to think that this has something to do with labor costs, although the story doesn’t really make the case:
Menu prices vary across the country, and even within cities.
So we decided to make our own Big Mac Index, showing the price of McD’s flagship burger in all of our Axios Local cities — the 14 current ones and our 11 coming-soon ones, including my own.
And we compared those prices to each town’s minimum wage.
Austin, Texas —where the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour — is home to the cheapest Big Mac in the Axios Local world at $3.75;
But 200 miles down the road, Dallas — with the same minimum wage — a Big Mac is selling for $5.69.
Seattle, Wash. — where the minimum wage is $17.27 an hour — has the priciest Big Mac we found, at $6.39.
A Big Mac in San Francisco, where the minimum wage is $16.32 an hour, is $5.79
In New York, where the minimum wage is $15 an hour, a Big Mac can be found on Broadway for $4.95
But in my town of Richmond, Va. — where the minimum wage is $11 an hour — I’m paying $4.89 for a Big Mac — just 10 cents less than folks in New. York. City. And I’m furious about it.
I’m not sure what the point of this story is except to show that Big Macs were rising in price a lot faster over the past decade than they have been recently.
Well, ok then.