> Labor in the US is too expensive for sufficient number of people in the US to afford it
How does that work? Naively, I'd expect that the more expensive labour is, the more disposable income labourers should have available to spend paying other labourers to deliver food, so it all balances out. It's at least not obvious that food delivery would be less viable in the US than, say, China or India, where labour is cheaper but customers also have less buying power.
It depends on the level of income/wealth disparity in the societies. China/India can have 200M rich people and 800M+ extremely poor people and still have 200M in the middle classes.
The extremely poor live in huts/have no expectations of moving up/have no education with which they can do things other than manual labor.
Although, even in India, the cost for cooks/maids/drivers/farm workers has exploded since the 90s. Many families that used to be able to afford them, cannot anymore. But that does not mean the cook/maid/driver can afford their own maid. It just means they now have the ability to eat at a restaurant once a month or buy a smartphone.
This would suggest that delivery would be even more impractical in countries with very low wealth inequality, like Japan, but my experience is that's not the case. If anything, the service quality is better there.
Japan is a different case due to a very outlier culture and extreme density that people live in.
But mostly, people are living so close to each other than delivery is much cheaper. It costs a minimum $0.60 plus labor costs per minute of driving in the US. Cost to run a 15 min errand is $7+, and that is excluding the person’s time and effort.
These kind of conundrums easily disappear when you factor in housing(or healthcare). Labour is expensive, but housing is even more expensive. The delivery guy needs to pay their landlord before they can pay other delivery guys.
How does that work? Naively, I'd expect that the more expensive labour is, the more disposable income labourers should have available to spend paying other labourers to deliver food, so it all balances out. It's at least not obvious that food delivery would be less viable in the US than, say, China or India, where labour is cheaper but customers also have less buying power.