From a Vox piece about food delivery companies:
Last month, a New York judge ruled against the delivery companies as they tried to fight against a $19.96-per-hour minimum wage for delivery workers.... Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Workers Justice Project, the advocacy organization behind Los Deliveristas Unidos, a union for delivery workers, told me the workers were getting paid about $1,500 a week now, up from about $800.
A DoorDash delivery guy in New York City makes $75,000 a year? The median individual income in NYC for full-time workers is roughly $60,000, which puts delivery drivers about 25% above average. Can that really be true?
In any case, the gist of the story is that once you clear away the underbrush it turns out that delivery prices are really high, to which I can only say: Duh. I mean, restaurants can hide it in the price of food or they can charge for it outright, but one way or another you're going to pay someone for taking the time to drive out to your place and back. Plus a tip. That's going to double the price of something cheap, like pizza or pad thai.
And then you're probably going to complain about how life is so much more expensive than it was for boomers. But there's an easy answer: make your own meals. If boomers could do it, so can you.
Don't blindly trust other people's math.
$20/hr * 40 hrs (per week) = $800, not $1500
$800 * 52 weeks = $41,600, not $75,000
Sorry about rounding $19.96 to $20.
Presumably, wages don't include tips and tips are close to half of compensation.
Even assuming you’re right about “half of compensation,” $41,600*1.5 is $62,400 not $75,000. There’s still a good $12,000 missing there in your math…
Delivering pizza out here in Phoenix and my tips roughly equal my wages. I assume the same for NY.
Kevin, you’re really really starting to have the get off my lawn vibe. Take a deep breath, dude.
Yesterday at Christmas, I brought up a story that GenZ poll respondents don't think $75K is a "middle class income." I think that number came up because it was the median household income in 2022.
So we had a family discussion. I said this is ridiculous. Two family members, one 34 and another who is 52, disagreed. They brought up student debt, housing, food costs. So I found an inflation calculator and figured out what my income, when I had just graduated with a BS in chemistry in 1974 (yes, I'm that old), would be equivalent to. It was $56K. And when I got that job, I thought I had it made.
Now, I had no student loan debt because I went to a commuter college with a very low tuition and played in a bar band to pay for most of it. And I had just bought an old fixer-upper house with a $16K mortgage (my mom put up the $5K down payment, which she said was "my inheritance)."
As I said, I felt like I had it made. I had a roof over my head, I had a car, my wife had an office job so we could make ends meet.
The thought that this was inadequate would have seemed bizarre to me. What the heck do you want out of life?
But then again, no one was polling 21-year-olds to ask them if their income was "middle class." This was not considered a matter of opinion -- the median income is, by definition, "middle class."
This makes me wonder if a lot of the angst that people seem to be experiencing today is a consequence of deliberate doom-promotion by the media, in order to maximize clicks and likes. Forget about actual data, it's all about "how do you feel?" That's why we're hearing about polls where people "feel" we're in a recession (we're not), or "feel" like inflation is increasing (it's not), or even "feel" like unemployment is high (not!).
Maybe this explains why some of the same young people who tsk-tsk about how us old geezers just don't understand "white entitlement" can turn around and whine about how their $75K income is not enough to live the "American Dream."
Can't have it both ways! Get a grip, Zoomers.
Wait, you're saying that you graduated college and immediately bought a house with family money? Plus you had no student loans and a dual-income household? How many modern 22-year-olds do you think that's true for?
it wasn't true for most 22-year-olds back than either.
For students at Public 4-year institutions, 42% have no student debt. No idea how that compared to 50 years ago.
https://educationdata.org/average-debt-for-a-bachelors-degree#:~:text=58%25%20of%20students%20seeking%20a,owe%20over%20%2460%2C000%20in%20debt.
The rise of for-profit colleges has really juiced debt levels in the last 20 years. There are also a lot of people going to grad school without assistantships these days, which really raises the total student debt load. We focus on tuition costs, but a lot of the increases are in student housing costs, where the dorms are often nicer today, but come with a high cost.
What we spend money on now is just so different, it's hard to compare between the past and now. Decades ago people had fewer belongings, because anything manufactured was more expensive than it is today (with the exception of cars). Today housing is expensive for young people, but also typically nicer than it was for the young 50 years ago. And we now have a food culture that is based on convenience foods and eating out. It's a different world.
The “house” part of that story is basically the entire story, what’s left is the concept of
a college existing that you can “work your way through “ in the first place. Those two things account for almost all of what Americans think of as being in the middle class.
And in both cases you have to adjust, like Kevin adjusts for inflation, for “stupid decision making” as in - can you just bail after high school and get a $20k house with the earnings from GM, which was hiring.
Chemistry? Please.
“ my wife had an office job”
We’re suppose to be counting “household income”. How much was your wife making? For what it’s worth my job in 1976 paid $777.91. That works out to just a bit less than you and I could afford an apartment and a used car. Another income in the “household” would have been pretty sweet, that’s for sure.
I always find it fascinating that boomers know exactly what they were getting paid in the 1970s or earlier. My first job was in the late 90s and I don’t recall at all what I made at it.
lol
So basically, you graduated with no debt and bought a house with family money, so you don't understand why people who graduated with mountains of debt and whose odds of homeownership are low are complaining.
This logic seems flawed.
Oh, "logic." Okay, University Elitist. What about the BORDER, huh ?!??!
I think a 75K salary is middle class in America (though realistically it's probably "lower" middle class in blue metros). However, if that's the entire income (ie, one wage-earner) it's on the low side even in Red America. But a couple each making 75 is a different story (150k total).
The $21K you paid for your house in 1974 translates into, what, maybe eighty grand these days? Pretty much nowhere in the US can one purchase adequate shelter at such a price, even if it needs major repairs. And in blue metros? Please. In Boston 80 grand doesn't even buy a parking space. In the Bay Area it doesn't even buy a mailbox. As usual, housing is the big equalizer (or, de-equalizer).
Everything in NYC is expensive, so that food delivery is also expensive doesn't surprise. I am always astonished, though, that having takeout delivered has become a norm among younger folks. Even when this (late-arriving) boomer used to get takeout, I never had it delivered. Never. I still don't.
Americans eat way too much food that someone else has prepared, most of it unhealthy, crappy fast food. This goes for both old and young, but I was shocked to find out when I first started out eaching in the late 90s that 1)my students almost never ate home-cooked food, and 2) they never sat around a table to eat except at holidays. Now that food delivery seems to have become common, I 'm sure that's even worse.
Amen to that. We get take-out once in a while but go get it ourselves. Most of the time we cook at home. It is much cheaper and you get exactly what you want.
You can live in NYC without a car, which saves a pile of money. And if you don't have a car and don't like to walk, or you get tired of the closest places, you can get delivery with the money that would have gone to a car.
This is the Alice Trillin approach to personal finance:
"Alice’s Law of Compensatory Cash Flow holds that any money not spent on a luxury you can’t afford is the equivalent of windfall income.
—“Words, No Music.” Calvin Trillin
Americans eat way too much food that someone else has prepared, most of it unhealthy, crappy fast food.
This is nothing new. A century ago, NYC and other cities had millions of people living in tenements, boarding houses, etc, very few of which had full kitchens. Eating food other people prepared has always been a habit in North American urban life.
A DoorDash delivery guy in New York City makes $75,000 a year? The median individual income in NYC for full-time workers is roughly $60,000, which puts delivery drivers about 25% above average. Can that really be true?
What's total compensation look like? A full-time worker in a non-gig-economy job receives a benefits package that is worth money, which must be factored into any and all comparisons.
You can't compare W2 and 1099 workers right across just using raw incomes. It doesn't work like that.
+1
The doordash worker has to pay for fuel and car maintenance out of that $20/hour. An hour of driving is going to consume on the order of $5 of that compensation. (Well, the doordash driver could be subsidized by per parents.)
Not to mention that the DoorDash guy is a 1099 employee and responsible for the full payroll tax and not just half of it. That's 7.65% right off the top, right there.
Cook your own meals?
A Domino's deep dish pizza contains Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin Folic Acid), Water, Malt, Sugar, Whey, Malted Barley Flour, Yeast, Soybean Oil. Zzesty Blend: Butter Flavored Oil (Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Soy Lecithin, Artificial And Natural Butter Flavoring, Vitamin A Palmitate And BetaCarotene for Color), Imitation Parmesan Cheese (Water, Modified Food Starch, Casein And Or Caseinate, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Cellulose Powder, Salt, Sodium Phosphates, Stabilizers [Mono And Diglycerides, Guar Gum, Carrageenan], Natural Flavor, Lactic Acid, Sorbic Acid [As A Preservative]), Onion And Garlic, Spices, Salt, Lactic Acid, Butter Flavor, Tomato Powder, Bell Pepper. Dextrose, Citric Acid, Extractive Of Paprika And Lemon And Orange Oil With No Greater Than 2% Calcium Silicate And/Or Soybean OilAdded to Prevent Caking.
And that's just the crust! How are ordinary folk supposed to have all that stuff in the pantry?
A normal pizza crust needs only flour, water, yeast and salt. Probably a little oil, too. You can substitute whole wheat flour for white flour to make it healthier.
I think he was joking.
There should be some method of delivering food to local people that doesn't involve the dedicated use of a human brain for the duration of the delivery, and doesn't require the transport of a human body and its accompanying transportation machinery.
Why move 140 or 4200 lbs to and from the delivery destination, when all that is actually required is to move 2 to 10 lbs one way?
There is. If you go to some college campuses, you’ll see little shoebox sized automated delivery robots zipping slowly along the sidewalk, taking food to customers. These don’t scale up well though, as in big urban areas, they tend to get run over by cars or stolen by passerbys. You really need the human there to guard the food between restaurant and customer.
Do people in NYC get a lot of their meals delivered? Why is that? My family will get take out from restaurants a few times a month. We go pick it up and never have it delivered. What is it about NYC that makes people not able to prepare their own meals or at least go pick them up?
Haven't you heard? The parts of the city left standing after BLM torched the place are over-run with violent illegal immigrant gangs.
I’m guessing you have a car to go pick up that food. NYC is unique in North America for half of households not having a car. When you don’t have a car, picking up food becomes a bit more challenging. (You can still do it on foot of course, but that limits you to just what’s in a half mile radius or so before the food gets cold.)
Yeah, good point. I should have thought of that. But still, I’d find ways to buy groceries and make some meals at home. Such a huge cost difference between making your own meals and getting delivery from restaurants.
Anyway, didn’t mean to make a big deal of this. Just a passing comment. Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.
There are lots of restaurants in NYC that prepare tasty food at reasonable prices. Whereas, there are not a lot of large grocery stores, groceries are expensive, kitchens are minuscule, and storage is at an extreme premium. You may have three roommates and only half a shelf in the refrigerator and no freezer space. You’re not likely to have room for a large spice rack and a dozen bottles of different condiments and sauces.
Living in NYC can resemble a dorm room. Also, a lot of people who order for delivery are younger singles who work long hours. They want to go out with friends at night, and having friends over for a home cooked meal is not all that common.
Obviously, these are generalizations.
OTOH, NYC is famously a city where you can get all kinds of food within a half mile of wherever you happen to be for almost all parts of the city.
I think Skepto hit the nail on the head, delivery is slightly less of a financial burden for many New Yorkers because they may be saving several hundred a month on not having to make car payments, and that combined with many folks in New York living in multi-floor walk ups w/no elevator, that would incentivise me to just have food delivered to my door.
Sure, you get a good workout going up and down stairs, but I would want to give myself a break rather often and just let the delivery person have to schlep their way up several flights of stairs to get me some food to eat. Also, you can have "healthyish" food delivered instead of just fried Chinese food all the time, or burgers and fries.
And I say this as someone who eats way too many burgers in his diet, but when I was feeling really crappy due to a really bad cold a month or so back, I had chicken soup delivered. Fortunately, I do not have to deal with going up an down more than one flight of stairs at my apartment in the East Bay, CA, so if I am in the mood for bad for me fast food, I do tend to get in the car to pick it up myself.
I would be too embarrassed to have something like McDonalds delivered, but I should not judge...I just noted that I went through a nasty cold, and if I was in the mood for comfort fast food leaving my apartment was not really something I had the energy to do at that time.
It isn't the restaurant charging for it. They have to pay the delivery company too. DoorDash is a pure rent-seeking middleman. And they have taken a tip from cable and mobile phone companies, hiding what they are doing in fees that you don't know what they are until you go to pay. Adding all the fees changed a $50 food order to a $90 order. I abandoned that cart immediately.
I made prime rib for my family on Christmas and the total cost of that meal, including baked potato, creamed spinach and pie for dessert was less than if we had gotten Taco Bell from Door Dash.
Pizza Hut is firing all its delivery drivers because of CA minimum wage hikes.