Bonus:
Thank you. Every time someone says “The Economy™” as something that should drive policy instead of being an effect of it, I get a little twitch.
Why should I give a shit about their economy anyway?
When articles mention “The Economy” it just means rich people’s money.
That’s “the stock market”.
No that’s rich people’s feelings.
And yet whenever you try to bring this up you get folks from all sides of the political spectrum losing their shit.
There’s a million questions involved in this statement. Who does the work required to grow and raise food? How do they survive? Is housing provided? What about the people working at the processing plants and truck drivers? Store clerks and security guards, etc. etc.
Perhaps socialism really is the solution.
I use this simple formula:
Fisrt count the number of years Trump is in office, then multiply that by 0.5. Now multiply that by the price you would normally guess the cost to be.
So if Trump is in office for 5 years, and you think something should cost $20 it turns out to be:
(5*0.5)(20)=50Making that thing that should only cost $20 actually cost $50
How does this formula account for the fact that I can’t do math? Bet you didn’t think of that.
In this case everything costs 50 unless it costs 100! Ez pz
100
Meet Zoidberg, homeowner!
100!
Oh…
You could be lucky and that the $50 thing in a 2 for the price of one sale, then it’s only gonna be $79.95
I shouldn’t need to sound like a 90 year old at my age.
“When I was a kid this was a dollar!!!”
They were saying that because it was weird to them. Inflation as we know it didn’t really start until Nixon.
so many things are going on that seem to violate the bullshit i learned in economics school that i am having trouble processing this reality as real, even though i know it is. it’s unsettling
Which school of economics did you learn?
bullshit mostly. i was a micro guy not a macro guy.
the thing is that a lot of economics that you probably learned actually was true in the 20th century. just that the laws of physics - which we always thought were constant, unchanging, unyielding - are suddenly changing; and that’s hard to deal with.
it’s like, we always assumed that energy is always conserved. we can move it, burn it, consume it, but then it’s gone. it doesn’t come back. now we have renewable energy, and it’s breaking people’s brain. conservatives in the US still think that renewable energy cannot possibly work and must be a scam because energy is always conserved, it cannot be generated anew.
even back then the best macro model we had (that was anything quantifiable) was only 40% accurate so what i learned was only a bit true.
I get this is just a shit post but this really gets at the unreality that has been manufactured for us. a lack of stability that makes everything just a little bit more unbelievable.
It’s one banana, Michael! What could it possibly cost? $10???
Yes.
Big name stores will all move to personalized surveillance pricing. They will track your phone when you go into a store. Cross reference the fingerprint of your device to a database full of data on you that they’ve bought from a databroker. And then use that to jack up the price on the e-price tag if they know you really need that product. Plus they even will change the price on their website when you double check the price.
Fooled them, I already don’t go into stores. I order everything online. …… where. … they. …. Probably …. Already …. Do … that
Aight time to stop careyng my phone around to stores.
Only paler lists anymore.
I went to Lowe’s the other day and bought a couple of drill bits. While there, I looked at some cabinet pulls – didn’t buy any or even picked any up, just walked past them and looked at them. That night on Amazon I got ads for drill bits and cabinet pulls. I assume it was something linking store footage with my phone data, but who knows. Maybe I got the neural implant already and the implant makes you forget you got the implant.
Probably not video, just pinpoint geofencing on your phone.
Or it could be recency bias. He was there he saw something he then saw an ad pop up and subconsciously linked his visit there to visit there. At best Amazon or any other advertiser tracking your phone could only see the general area they’re at they don’t know that he’s by a cabinet and they definitely don’t know and they definitely aren’t accessing surveillance systems to provide personalized ads.
Thats likely too. I will say, as someone who works in telcom, the whole Geofenced ads and cpupons idea was something being pitched like, 10+ years ago. I don’t know if it ever panned out, but it was pushed. The other part was getting say, your Lowes app to ping you with a 5% off coupon for that thing you have been standing in front of pondering for ten minutes.
Maybe I got the neural implant already and the implant makes you forget you got the implant.
or, the far more likely option, life is just a dream and that’s why things appear when you think about them.
Bought a brand of iced tea I never had before in the drugstore one day with cash, no points card or anything, got an ad on Instagram half an hour later. I had microphone and location turned off on Instagram, and location turned off on my phone altogether as I only turn it on when using the maps app.
Once glanced at a carton of soup broth in the store, just like you, got an ad on Facebook for it that night. Again location and microphone off, and I didn’t even touch it. I don’t use face recognition or biometrics or voice assistant stuff at all ever.
Once was cleaning up my desk and found a business card for my old manager. I tapped it against the keyboard for some reason of my desktop computer. This was a paper business card, and I only worked for her for a bit, and she popped up as a suggested friend on Facebook that day. I had never looked her up and hadn’t thought of her in years.
So what’s all that about?
This is an article from 2012 that explains how they do this without needing your phone
https://theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money-ju-1819571322/
Time to share this antiquated “news.”
Everything can be compared to the basic ( water - flour - milk - eggs - chicken )
If a chicken is 10$ and full roasted chicken is 12$ and a burger is 15$ you know it is a scam.
If 1 kg of flour is 2$ but a small piece of bread is 7$ you know it’s a scam…
Coffee is a good example, single origin roasted coffee beans with 300gm is 17$ you can get 15 cup of it. That’s rounds up to 1$ per coffee cup. If you the coffee in a store cost more than 2$ you know it’s a scam. But you can take into account other expenses ( staff - settings - experience) and decide based on that
If 1 kg of flour is 2$ but a small piece of bread is 7$ you know it’s a scam…
This is ignoring labor costs and possible artisan experience, depending on where you buy bread. Also funny because paying $2 for a kg of flour would be a crazy scam; that’s more expensive than even the some of the fancier flour brands, which already 3x base price
His whole argument ignores labor costs.
Yes and no. Labor costs are being ignored, but they’re not all that significant. If you add in even a relatively high minimum wage, the cost blurs out with any volume. Whether you cost them $7 for an hour or $14 is just the difference of a single wasted meal at current prices.
Profit and Loss sheets are messy. They’re paying back of house, front of house, a manager, power, maintenance and rent, but then they’re making dozens of meals an hour. They’re paying 1/10 of the cost for raw ingredients.
Herein lies the rub:
In 2018, a fast food meal at a number of places for 4 ran about $30-$40; currently, it’s closer to $60.
Tacobell still sells a meal for less than $7 with a drink and enough food to satiate an obese II adult. It’s gone up maybe $1.50 since 2018.
Selection and quality have gone down. Most places have been understaffed since covid, they’re paying less in wages, value menus are disappearing.
It would seem that a bunch of places took opportunities to raise their prices until the lines dissapeared. I remember a time, not long ago, if you went to a drive-through around dinner, you were going to be there for a while. McDonalds put in second lanes in most stores to handle the load.
I don’t think I’ve been in a fast food line with more than 2 cars in a few years.
Wow there is so much wrong with your statement I don’t even know where to begin. I’m just going to stay at the obvious that you can still obviously feed a family of four for $40 or less. I know that because I have a family of four and weed out a lot and I’m very aware of pretty much all of the fast food costs. Well yes there are some that can definitely be $50 $60 or more I can definitely buy meals for everybody to be satiated for $40 or less even. Hell when I’m trying to save money I can’t even go a little as low as 20 bucks at a number of different places. And also I’m a business owner and so there are a ton of cost involved besides labor as you mentioned there and the cost of raw materials for food is definitely higher than 1/10 of the cost of what the food is itself. Usually you’re dealing with maybe 20 to 30% and that is being spread over the cost of everything else included there.
Every cost is labour cost in the end. It’s a bit off topic but was a interesting realisation for me. Every time you pay something you pay for another human’s labour in the end.
Every cost is labour cost in the end. It’s a bit off topic but was a interesting realisation for me. Every time you pay something you pay for another human’s labour in the end.
nope. you also pay for the right to extract materials out of the ground (mining rights). that is typically a tax, paid to the state or local community.
and then there’s company profits. where do these go?
Not only that, but you have to pay for their knowledge and expertise. Can my son do my job? Sure, because I trained him. Can he do it as good as I? Not even close, nor can he do it near as fast. When we go someplace that has a higher cost, but, let’s just talk food, the quality of cooking, technique, etc is better, it’s worth the extra cost, to a point. There is definitely the pay me more mentality in many places, but there is also definitely value in much of it.
Let’s talk chicken. If you offer me a butchered chicken done by someone that was hired last week and it’s being paid as such, compared to one that was prepared by a person that has been doing it for 10 years, but there was a 10 or 20% cost difference, it would be well worth it to pay more to make sure the job was done correctly.
Isn’t that just a justification for more expensive labour? (Like it’s totally justified but it’s still a labour cost)
When you pay rent. When you pay the bank. Most of paying is for labor, yes, a crazy amount more than most people realize. But the wealthy skim some off the top, and that portion isn’t paying for labor.
Or less fancy commercial flour 25lbs for less than $10 from Costco.
Yeah, but where am I gonna keep that much flour in my tiny kitchen?
If you have no storage space anywhere, it obv won’t work for you.
I buy a bag, split it into gallon ziplock bags, and store it in a Behren’s can (galvonized metal, pest proof) in my basement, refilling my small pantry containers. I also have 40 lbs of pizza flour and a 25 lb bag of rice.
I make my own pancakes, waffles, rice-a-roni, pizza, calzones, there are zero mixes in the house.
Yeah, I’ve got 800 sqft in my place and 7ft ceilings to deal with. It’s a galley kitchen that’s just barely wide enough to open the oven door.
Poverty is expensive. I’d love a bigger house.
Flour is worth an entire cabinet or shelf. One of the cheapest ways to eat possible
Case in point. If you’re buying a 2 pound flour bag you’re scamming yourself lol
Finally somone who understands how to approximate how cheap stuff actually is. My recent rage was about starbucks, my girlfriend likes the chai latte there and we went for a cappuccino and chai latte. It was my first time there. The prices are INSANE and the place was stuffed with people. My cappuccino cost something about 6€ the chailatte even more.
Some week later i realized that the chailatte there is probably not even a real brewed tea. We found chai latte sirup of the company monin that tastes exactly like the McDonalds version of chai latte. So Starbucks is selling hot milk with a shot of sirup for >6€. Its crazy!
Tariffs?
Minimal wage hasn’t been raised since 2009 in the US
Also systematic monopolization of everything by like five companies. With no realistic possibility of price competition, prices will go up until people decide to stop buying things altogether
People keep making the point that in the worst of the depression, they were giving away tableware to just get people in the stores.
The CEO of McDonalds is currently lobbying the White House to raise the minimum wage. Saying there’s a “two track economy” and point out stratification. Curious.
They’re noticing they squeezed us too hard, not just as consumers but as a class. To the point where it’s eating their sales now. So they’ll adjust it just high enough that we keep bleeding for them.
Breadcrumbs.
I’ll do my part to reject consumerism. Just don’t buy non essentials unless it helps me spend even less money later. Like the £40 on canning stuff, for a couple gallons of chutney now that cost less than £5 to make and would have been like £50 or so to buy.
Still got more jars to fill, jam next I think.
If only those elections weren’t uncontrolled fund raisers…
What’s worse is that the guy that was meant to be in horrid poverty in the christmas carol, earned more, adjusted for inflation, than bernie sander’s proposed 15 bucks an hour…
let alone the current minimum US wage.
The consumerist haven in which people no longer can afford to consume…
No wonder that the first greasy monkey that offers change is put in
And the poverty line hasn’t been adjusted since the 60’s iirc. No president wants to be the one that tells everyone we have so much more poverty now!
From what I read at the link below that doesn’t seem to be the case. They took a baseline of the poverty threshold in 1978 and adjusted for inflation every year. However that line seems to have been set suspiciously low to begin with.
https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/poverty-guidelines
Those are some ridiculously low numbers… So to be considered in poverty, you have to earn less than 26k jointly for a household of 3. I don’t think you’d have a house for a household at all at that amount. Barely. Making ends meet with just food, actually you’re probably going hungry every other day at that amount.
Well yeah, then we would have inflation! /s
And it was only raised by like 15 cents or some shit
And also the kidnapping of farm workers
Money is just pieces of paper and digital numbers. It’s only worth anything because we say it is.
it’s worth noting that the usdollar is worth something because the military says it is. if you don’t pay your taxes in dollar, you go to prison where you get anally raped.
however, the military gets its strength through the legitimation by the people (democracy), so in the end, yes, the will of the people causes the political will, which causes military strength, which causes the value of the dollar. it’s a longer chain.
Yeah, at this point it just some random number you briefly see on the checkout screen.
alright i thought I wasn’t racist but today i realized i don’t like gray people. that’s disturbing as fuck.
Exactly how I felt after buying four mozzarella sticks at QuikTrip earlier. This shit cost me over a dollar per stick. They’re not even big mozz sticks, they’re like 80 calories each
A strange thing to me, and maybe I’m thinking about it incorrectly, is that things on Amazon sometimes cost significantly less than in the store. My hair products are easily 5 dollars cheaper than the store. I hate Amazon and I realize I am paying for delivery, but I just don’t get the economics of that.
Also, I live close to the US border and I will clothing shop there,it’s WAY cheaper, and let’s face it, it’s all made in sweat shops regardless so might as well save a buck. Honestly department store pricing is just rigged, like if you go with the coupons and app offers and long weekend sales, etc, I can get a ton of clothes for under 400 dollars, which would not get me far at all in Canada, easily I quadruple the amount of clothes I can buy, even factoring for the exchange rate. When I read the receipt, everything is knocked off and under 25 dollars at the end of the sale. I don’t get it.
Amazon is running lean until they can put all the brick and mortars out of business. Then they’ll raise their prices an order of magnitude.
