> One is that $15/hr is a dramatic underestimate of the opportunity cost for many of the people who would otherwise be eating out. Minimum wage in Mountain View & Sunnyvale is $16.05/hour. My wife & my salaries, if converted to hourly, would be several hundred / hour. We cook at home because we're salaried and so don't actually reap that opportunity cost in cash,
You can’t say that your opportunity cost is $x and then also state you did not have a choice to earn $x. They are contradictory statements. Unless you are a robot capable of working as much as you want with no downtime, this type of calculation make no sense.
Not to mention the costs of eating out include unhealthy meals, among others.
Sure I can, because this post is not about me. I'm an example to illustrate a point. The point is actually about the economic rationality of centralized food production - whether it is more efficient for one person to cook for many, or for each person to cook for themselves, in aggregate. Economics doesn't care about individual people; it cares about incentives, efficiency, and the behavior of abstract firms in response to those.
The rest of my post was about specific ways that the behavior of individual firms (using myself as an example) may diverge from what the economic model predicts, specifically because of transaction costs. That and a counterfactual (Taiwan) where these transaction costs don't exist, to illustrate how behavior then converges on what economics would predict.
taken to the extreme, I would wonder wether kitchenless apartments would become popular in SF, NYC, or LA given the opportunity. In a studio or 1-bedroom, you could offer 20-30% more space for living rooms or other activities.
You can’t say that your opportunity cost is $x and then also state you did not have a choice to earn $x. They are contradictory statements. Unless you are a robot capable of working as much as you want with no downtime, this type of calculation make no sense.
Not to mention the costs of eating out include unhealthy meals, among others.