I dunno how much it’d cost to hire someone to clean up my house, but ISTM that cooking my own dinner takes less time and much less stamina than earning the money to eat a similar dinner in a restaurant.
Buying frozen prepared food or whatever is also a form of paying someone to cook for you.
That tends to be either much more expensive than the ingredients or absolutely awful. (But it’s still what I usually do when I can’t be bothered to cook a meal from scratch.)
I think most people just haven’t considered it as a tradeoff. Then again, maybe there are some people for whom the effort/unpleasantness of buying ingredients, looking up a recipe, and cooking from scratch is less than the unpleasantness of working X extra hours (or losing the ability to buy Y other things) in order to pay for more expensive prepared foods. I also think that a lot of people do like prepared foods better-I cook everything I eat from scratch, and there’s always plenty in the fridge, but my roommate still buys frozen pizzas and TV dinners and eats out frequently, even though she’s financially worse off than me and could eat my food for free without even having to make the effort to cook it.
Economics! You can substitute those skills for the ability to earn money to pay people who have them.
I dunno how much it’d cost to hire someone to clean up my house, but ISTM that cooking my own dinner takes less time and much less stamina than earning the money to eat a similar dinner in a restaurant.
Buying frozen prepared food or whatever is also a form of paying someone to cook for you. Restaurants are just one option.
That tends to be either much more expensive than the ingredients or absolutely awful. (But it’s still what I usually do when I can’t be bothered to cook a meal from scratch.)
I’m with you—I cook most things I eat from scratch—but some people seem indifferent to the disadvantages of making the tradeoff here.
I think most people just haven’t considered it as a tradeoff. Then again, maybe there are some people for whom the effort/unpleasantness of buying ingredients, looking up a recipe, and cooking from scratch is less than the unpleasantness of working X extra hours (or losing the ability to buy Y other things) in order to pay for more expensive prepared foods. I also think that a lot of people do like prepared foods better-I cook everything I eat from scratch, and there’s always plenty in the fridge, but my roommate still buys frozen pizzas and TV dinners and eats out frequently, even though she’s financially worse off than me and could eat my food for free without even having to make the effort to cook it.