Cheap Pizza Story

At some point two years ago in Finland.....the cops (no one suggests how they arrived at this topic)....came to discuss pizza prices in Finland.

What they said was.....you CAN'T make a normal pizza for less than six Euro.  It's simply not possible unless you are cheating the government out of taxes or have employees who are not getting full wages.

This was based on the fact that roughly 35-percent of the normal price of a pizza is labor costs.  Roughly one-third of the cost is related to the materials of the pizza.  And the rest?  Well....that's related to rent, tax, heat (you need that in a typical Finn winter), and advertising.

After the cops arrived at this analysis, they then informed the public that they needed to report such cheap pizza sales to them,, and they would conduct an investigation.  Yes, you'd just call your local city cops in Finland and they'd take down the report.....stating what you paid, and they'd go and check this out.

An economic crime? Yes.  Cheating the government out of taxes?  More than likely.

You can imagine the two-man cop team arriving and citing some report that they'd received about 'cheap' pizza. They'd have a talk with you and you'd show the pricing list....likely to be 6.25 or such.  They would respond that you seem to have done a special on Friday night....offering three pizzas for the price of 17.50 Euro (beating the six-Euro per pizza situation).  You'd respond that there was a special but you had to buy at least three to get that deal.  In fact, you would probably state if a customer would buy 100 pizzas at a whack....you'd offer them at 5.25 Euro each....thus violating the law in some way (yet to be proven).

I sat and surveyed the story....it's from 2015 and got a fair amount of traction.  Number of arrests?  Well....that's the thing.  No one can cite from 2015 or 2016....a single arrest related to cheap pizzas.  There might have been some reports turned in and some cop visits.....but no one suggests a single pizza owner was arrested or charged with 'cheap' pizza.

Why pizza?  No one really says reason to this.

Having been to Helsinki, I can vouch that there just aren't that many burger-joints around town.  There are a couple of McDonalds and Burger Kings.....but most fast-food shops don't do much other than Asian-food and pizzas.

How did the cops ever arrive at the right-price idea for pizzas?  No one says much.  It had to be some PhD guy out of Helsinki....likely some economist who was sitting there one day at a local pizza shop and looking at a 5.75 pizza price and realizing it just didn't make sense.  He probably put 300 man-hours into an analysis review, with statistical data and economic graphs....coming to the realization that you can do the complete job for less than six-Euro.  He probably ran straight over to the Mayor's office and showed them the charts, and they realized there was a massive cheating scandal going on.

The sad thing.....is that people like the PhD guy....don't go and waste their time examining incompetence in government,  corruption, or wasted revenue spending by the government.  Instead, they center their project on pizza.

What happened to the PhD guy?  One can only imagine that he got himself a reputation, and eventually some foundation hired him for future Nobel-Economic-Prize work.  Somewhere down the line in a decade....he'll write some massive theory up and be talked about with his report on comparing pizza prices, GDP, tax revenue, employment statistics, and overweight people.

Note: I should hint here, that I did have a pizza while in Helsinki....paying 18 Euro for a standard regular pizza....which I felt was not exactly top-of-the-line pizza.  I would have liked to have reported crappy pizza to the cops.