Originally Posted by
Snoopy
In dollar terms, $US3.31 (or $US3.44 including a 4% sales tax) for a 'Double Taco Supreme' in Hawaii and $NZ8.50 for what looks like the same thing in NZ is hardly egalitarian. Yet in wage terms, the minimum wages in Hawaii is currently $US10.10 per hour vs $NZ17.70 per hour in New Zealand. So if we calculate the number of 'Double Taco Supremes' that can be bought with the gross earnings of a minimum wage worker in an hour I get:
Hawaii: $US10.10 / $US3.44 = 2.94
New Zealand: $NZ17.70 / $US8.50 = 2.08
So as a rich country with high minimum wages, we aren't as badly off as just looking at those dollar prices alone might make you think. If Taco Bell has chosen not to aim for the 'low end' of the takeaway food market in NZ offering really cut prices it might be a smart move. There may not be enough poor people in Auckland to support a genuine US style Taco Bell?
My reasons for quoting Hawaiian prices were two fold:
1/ Both Hawaii and New Zealand are prime tourism destinations.
2/ Taco Bell is run in both countries by 'Restaurant Brands New Zealand'
I have never spent any time in Hawaii myself. However, on talking to someone who has I was told there is very much a two tier tourist market. You are either:
1/ a hotel customer or
2/ a tenter who gets up to decamp at the crack of dawn to avoid the state ranger coming around to collect state camping ground fee.
There isn't much in between. So maybe your picture of Taco Bell in Hawaii as a 'crime scene in waiting' frequented by the desperate is not so far from the truth Raz?
SNOOPY