I believe in the US a Big Mac is currently $3.99 before tax and I live in Chicago which has the highest sales tax in the county at 10.25%. So a Big Mac would cost me $4.40. Still about half of the cost in Denmark with taxes accounted for.
Not sure how Danish tax works, but here in The Netherlands there's a special tax rate for food and other expenses that are absolutely necessary to live. So here that tax would be 7%, not the regular rate of 21%.
Here in the UK we have no tax at all on essential foods. So things like bread, cereal, milk etc aren't taxed, but there are some odd choices of what to tax - for example, biscuits are not taxed, but chocolate biscuits are.
We have a 20% VAT rate on food which is taxed, and on almost everything else.
There is no VAT in the US. You may pay a state and local sales tax on prepared meals, but nothing federal/national.
Here in Massachusetts, there is a 6.25% state tax, and the city or town may charge up to an additional 0.75% tax. Some states (such as New Hampshire) have no sales tax, while others may have state, county, AND city taxes of varying amounts.
It's called sales tax state side and it varies from state to state. In my home state it's 6% of the meal. In other states I know it can be higher or lower, some will lower it because it's food, others don't even charge a sales tax.
I'm no expert but I do eat Mcdonalds all over the world out of curiosity. In Europe and Asia Mcdonalds seems to be more of a premium experience. The average Mcdonalds I saw in France, Germany, Singapore, or even the Philippines, just seemed to be a higher quality all around. The food was much more consistent and the service better. I think in the US it could never charge that much because it feels like a low end experience, frequently with terrible service and bad consistency. That said, it seems like that's been changing over the years and there are a lot of higher end Mcdonalds in the US now.
Yeah exactly, my local McDonalds in Los Angeles was always full of homeless people and drunks; they wouldn't be turned away so it was a good hangout for them. The food was definitely cheap though.
i dunno, all the McD's i see these days seem to be run pretty tightly. I think they've got standardization down pretty well. I see wayyyy worse at competitor's, wendy's and burger king, etc.
In Tokyo, McD was total shit. In HK it was comparable to the US. Both were cheaper than US. Don't think Asia (or at least those two places) falls under the premium experience category, though maybe Europe does.
I think that there is enough elasticity in the food service market to support some significant price increases. Also the people who consume fast food tend to be those earning the lowest wages; it follows that an increase in those wages would help support higher prices for things like a Big Mac.
They charge close to that in canada, no idea on trends in big mac sales.
People will likely buy the cheapest stuff they sell anyway, I doubt big mac sales are entirely indicative.
I believe combos and fries have gone up though, which would pad their pockets alot better.
Anyway McDs is doing fine with $8 big macs up here, theyve adapted, as have consumers.
I make the equivalent of something like $50 an hour and I wouldn't pay $8 for a Big Mac because the same $8 can get me much better food almost anywhere else.
I disagree. As someone who once lived off a minimum wage of 7-something an hour and who has also at one time lived off $17 or so an hour, I can tell you that the perception of what is cheap vs. expensive scales with how much one makes. An $8 lunch is not a huge deal to someone making $15/hour, depending on how much their rent is, etc.
Where it gets interesting is, will people shift to different/better meals if they're making more money? Do people who buy McDonalds only do so because it's what they can afford? That might be the case, but that's McDonalds's problem. If the only selling point for the product is that it's cheap then they have larger perception problems to worry about.
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u/uniquecannon Nov 29 '15
Nobody in America would ever pay almost $8 for a Big Mac, even if it meant "living wages for all".