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.
This isn't going to be an option in the near future. With Amazon sidewalk and other projects setting up open networks, your TV is going to automatically connect to a network whether you like it or not.
No thanks, when companies are doing their hardest to reserve and implement innovations like this, I'll stick with my dumb 2012 TV til either it or I croak.
Inflation is underreported. They say it's 3% annually when it's actually 4% annually, so they can get away with it more easily if they only give you a nominal 3% pay increase.
They're doing this by throwing food in the basket together with TVs and consumer electronics.
Since consumer electronics get cheaper constantly, that lowers the amount of total inflation. But food costs increase more than the total inflation. And that's what we should actually consider as the "proper" inflation, since it defines our cost of living increase.
When I worked there in the late 90s, a Big Mac MEAL was 3.14 after tax.
I worked in Drivethrough checkout a lot and a lot of those prices are burned into my mind, half the time I was not near the register when taking orders and giving totals when it was slow.
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.
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
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.
It doesn't need to be equally. Some people wanna distribute based on need. And some people think if you work extra, you should get a little extra in return.
No, we have enough resources to provide for everyone. Money isn't a game to be won, it's a tool for human beings to extract what they need from human societies.
We have to break that capitalist conditioning.
There will never be a fair system as long as we keep creating different tiers of privlage.
This phrase is the basis for enforcing an equal society
This is the basis for having an equitable society. If someone needs insulin to stay alive, they have a greater need and receive greater resources so the quality of their life doesn't diminish. Some people have needs so great that with an equal share of resources they would just die as their equal share would be insufficient to their needs. Should dialysis patients just die or also have their needs seen to while maintaining a reasonable quality of life?
There is no situation where a caste system results in a more equal society
This is a weird tangent you went off on that's unrelated to my comment
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 far more efficient. The store has to move the thing there, put it on a shelf. Keep the lights on. Keep the store clean and staffed.
Amazon uses algorithms to distribute a few of those items to some mega wearhouse near you. It gets picked up by someone also picking up a dozen other things. And the cost of delivery is not the whole distance, your cost is just the last delivery location to yours, and those routes are plotted algorithmically to be as effecient as possible.
You driving to the store burning that much gas and wearing your tires the whole round trip, just for the one thing makes it further inefficient.
Stores literally only make sense if you want to try the thing out, for fresh local food, or for a bulk trip like Costco, where its more of a wearhouse than a store, and you pack you car so full you're basically acting as the Amazon delivery driver. That's why stores like CVS and Walgreens are closing all over, it simply makes no economic sense anymore.
Depends on how you think about it, if everything working like when you "borrow" stuff from a friend but quickly forget what is whose suits you, then free.
If you think an evaluation of one's effort should be quantified and rewarded fairly, think of a really low price. Now lower it. No, lower it mo-, no, even more. Okay, never mind, think of an unrealistically low number. Ye? Now half it, and you should be around there.
From either standpoint, too much (as a tldr)
You need to elaborate either on how money being controlled by states prevents it achieving the listed objectives, or how being uncontrolled by anyone would help it achieve those objectives.
Otherwise your comment that is just 3 non sequiters.
Crypto is at least three non sequiturs in a trenchcoat, so that tracks. Trench coats have large pockets in which they can place all of your fiat currency, which can be freely exchanged for goods and services.
Money is the way people are payed for their labour in order to transact for goods and services.
When a government or central bank possesses the hability to expand the money supply, it can dilute the currency's value.
This process, known as inflation, systematically diminishes the purchasing power of an individual's wages and savings.
However, the consequences extend beyond the erosion of personal wealth. Persistent inflation, even at a seemingly modest rate like 3% per year, creates a powerful incentive for perpetual economic growth.
For a company to simply preserve its value against rising costs and a devaluing currency, it must generate returns that outpace the rate of inflation. This fosters an environment where businesses are pressured to expand continuously.
If we accept that money is the primary channel for economic energy and that productive employment is essential for a healthy society, this framework raises a critical question.
A system that structurally requires constant growth for mere survival, rather than for meeting genuine demand, draws comparisons to pathological processes.
Some would argue it resembles a cancer: a system whose logic of endless expansion can threaten the stability of the larger organism it inhabits.
Money not controlled by anyone has historically been stores of value used in barter rather than money used for retail purchases as we understand it. Even precious metal coins.
No, the problem is that having money leads to having more money and having more money also leads to having more power so every system just gets slowly worse for everyone except the rich
118 Comments
balderdash9@lemmy.zip · 173 pts · 349d
Bonus:
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 68 pts · 349d
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.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz · 10 pts · 348d
Why should I give a shit about their economy anyway?
Evkob@lemmy.ca · 15 pts · 348d
When articles mention "The Economy" it just means rich people's money.
F_State@midwest.social · 5 pts · 348d
That's "the stock market".
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 347d
No that's rich people's feelings.
TheBat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 348d
SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d
Because that's how the rich like it. The poors feel the effects, while the rich maintain or grow what they have.
Obi@sopuli.xyz · 9 pts · 348d
And yet whenever you try to bring this up you get folks from all sides of the political spectrum losing their shit.
Ironfist79@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 347d
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.
Nikls94@lemmy.world · 54 pts · 348d
Big Mac used to be 3.19 back in 2012, now it’s 6.09 but I don’t make double of what I did back then
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 348d
Yeah but think of how cheap TVs that you don't need are.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 348d
But no matter how much ketchup I use, I can't cover up the bitter taste of the TVs lcd panel.
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 348d
That spy on you and sell your data and then get so slow with updates after a few years you need a new one. And have advertisements baked in
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 348d
Golly gee, if only there were a way to prevent that by, say, just choosing not to connect your TV to the wifi.
I've never seen so many complaints about a self-inflicted problem.
winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 348d
I never said I had that problem, I have never connected my TV to the internet. But those are issues with modern day TVs, you can't argue against that
d3lta19@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 348d
This isn't going to be an option in the near future. With Amazon sidewalk and other projects setting up open networks, your TV is going to automatically connect to a network whether you like it or not.
veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 348d
No thanks, when companies are doing their hardest to reserve and implement innovations like this, I'll stick with my dumb 2012 TV til either it or I croak.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 347d
Inflation is underreported. They say it's 3% annually when it's actually 4% annually, so they can get away with it more easily if they only give you a nominal 3% pay increase.
They're doing this by throwing food in the basket together with TVs and consumer electronics.
Since consumer electronics get cheaper constantly, that lowers the amount of total inflation. But food costs increase more than the total inflation. And that's what we should actually consider as the "proper" inflation, since it defines our cost of living increase.
RamenJunkie@midwest.social · 3 pts · 348d
When I worked there in the late 90s, a Big Mac MEAL was 3.14 after tax.
I worked in Drivethrough checkout a lot and a lot of those prices are burned into my mind, half the time I was not near the register when taking orders and giving totals when it was slow.
CubitOom@infosec.pub · 34 pts · 348d
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:
Making that thing that should only cost $20 actually cost $50
balderdash9@lemmy.zip · 38 pts · 348d
How does this formula account for the fact that I can't do math? Bet you didn't think of that.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 348d
In this case everything costs 50 unless it costs 100! Ez pz
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 348d
Meet Zoidberg, homeowner!
Oh…
Brickhead92@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 348d
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
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works · 31 pts · 348d
I shouldn't need to sound like a 90 year old at my age.
"When I was a kid this was a dollar!!!"
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 348d
They were saying that because it was weird to them. Inflation as we know it didn't really start until Nixon.
Quexotic@infosec.pub · 30 pts · 348d
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.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 348d
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
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 348d
Which school of economics did you learn?
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 348d
bullshit mostly. i was a micro guy not a macro guy.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 347d
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.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d
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.
dingus@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 348d
It's one banana, Michael! What could it possibly cost? $10???
Yes.
Obi@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 348d
Relevant XKCD.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world · 25 pts · 348d
Money isn't real, and humanity will keep enslaving itself until we equally distribute the products of our labor.
Food and housing didn't cost money until we decided it did.
We can decide to change things again.
Strider@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 348d
This is also why we could decide billionaires own nothing.
F_State@midwest.social · 1 pts · 348d
It doesn't need to be equally. Some people wanna distribute based on need. And some people think if you work extra, you should get a little extra in return.
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 348d
No, we have enough resources to provide for everyone. Money isn't a game to be won, it's a tool for human beings to extract what they need from human societies.
We have to break that capitalist conditioning.
There will never be a fair system as long as we keep creating different tiers of privlage.
F_State@midwest.social · 0 pts · 348d
You've never heard of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"?
You should look into Leftism my dude
SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d
This phrase is the basis for enforcing an equal society, not an excuse to establish a different type of economic caste system.
Doctors will still exist without our society disproportionately rewarding that behavor.
Engineers will still exist without our society disproportionately rewarding that behavor.
Sanitation workers will still exist without our society disproportionately rewarding that behavor.
There is no situation where a caste system results in a more equal society than just equal wealth distribution.
F_State@midwest.social · 1 pts · 347d
This is the basis for having an equitable society. If someone needs insulin to stay alive, they have a greater need and receive greater resources so the quality of their life doesn't diminish. Some people have needs so great that with an equal share of resources they would just die as their equal share would be insufficient to their needs. Should dialysis patients just die or also have their needs seen to while maintaining a reasonable quality of life?
This is a weird tangent you went off on that's unrelated to my comment
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 347d
"behavior".
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 348d
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.
https://youtube.com/shorts/PL1d0xiHRhg
AA5B@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 348d
Fooled them, I already don’t go into stores. I order everything online. ….. where. … they. …. Probably …. Already …. Do … that
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 348d
Aight time to stop careyng my phone around to stores.
Only paler lists anymore.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 348d
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.
RamenJunkie@midwest.social · 2 pts · 348d
Probably not video, just pinpoint geofencing on your phone.
titanicx@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 347d
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.
RamenJunkie@midwest.social · 2 pts · 343d
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.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 347d
or, the far more likely option, life is just a dream and that's why things appear when you think about them.
BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 348d
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?
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 347d
This is an article from 2012 that explains how they do this without needing your phone
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 348d
https://theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money-ju-1819571322/
Time to share this antiquated "news."
Doorbook@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 347d
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
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 347d
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
titanicx@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 347d
His whole argument ignores labor costs.
rumba@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 347d
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.
titanicx@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 347d
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.
saimen@feddit.org · 5 pts · 347d
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.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 347d
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?
titanicx@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 347d
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.
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 347d
Isn't that just a justification for more expensive labour? (Like it's totally justified but it's still a labour cost)
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 347d
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.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 347d
rumba@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 347d
Or less fancy commercial flour 25lbs for less than $10 from Costco.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 347d
Yeah, but where am I gonna keep that much flour in my tiny kitchen?
rumba@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 347d
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.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 347d
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.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 347d
Flour is worth an entire cabinet or shelf. One of the cheapest ways to eat possible
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -2 pts · 347d
Case in point. If you're buying a 2 pound flour bag you're scamming yourself lol
polle@feddit.org · 2 pts · 347d
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!
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 11 pts · 348d
My hair ties were only $0.96 for a 30 pack before summer. The fucking things are $6 now!
DudenessBoy@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 348d
Money is just pieces of paper and digital numbers. It's only worth anything because we say it is.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 347d
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.
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 348d
pyre@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 348d
alright i thought I wasn't racist but today i realized i don't like gray people. that's disturbing as fuck.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 347d
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
remon@ani.social · 7 pts · 348d
Yeah, at this point it just some random number you briefly see on the checkout screen.
mtpender@piefed.social · 7 pts · 349d
Tariffs?
theUwUhugger@lemmy.world · 30 pts · 349d
Minimal wage hasn’t been raised since 2009 in the US
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub · 16 pts · 348d
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
BanMe@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 348d
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.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 348d
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.
theUwUhugger@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 348d
If only those elections weren’t uncontrolled fund raisers…
Skullgrid@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 348d
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.
theUwUhugger@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 348d
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
Aedis@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 348d
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!
Sarcasmo220@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 348d
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
Aedis@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 348d
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.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 348d
And it was only raised by like 15 cents or some shit
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 348d
Well yeah, then we would have inflation! /s
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 349d
And also the kidnapping of farm workers
BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 348d
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.
curiousaur@reddthat.com · 7 pts · 347d
Amazon is far more efficient. The store has to move the thing there, put it on a shelf. Keep the lights on. Keep the store clean and staffed.
Amazon uses algorithms to distribute a few of those items to some mega wearhouse near you. It gets picked up by someone also picking up a dozen other things. And the cost of delivery is not the whole distance, your cost is just the last delivery location to yours, and those routes are plotted algorithmically to be as effecient as possible.
You driving to the store burning that much gas and wearing your tires the whole round trip, just for the one thing makes it further inefficient.
Stores literally only make sense if you want to try the thing out, for fresh local food, or for a bulk trip like Costco, where its more of a wearhouse than a store, and you pack you car so full you're basically acting as the Amazon delivery driver. That's why stores like CVS and Walgreens are closing all over, it simply makes no economic sense anymore.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 347d
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.
peoplebeproblems@midwest.social · 5 pts · 348d
I think I have sensory issues with both money and time.
Angelusz@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 347d
Welcome to who's line is it anyway! Where the rules are made up and the points don't matter. 😉
chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 349d
Oprah at the grocery store. That's all of us, now.
toynbee@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 348d
Man, I see you everywhere on lemmy.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 348d
toynbee@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 345d
Well, when thoroughly chastised, I make note of it - literally in this case!
I am curious of the origin of this image.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 345d
That's the cover of a book. It's a phrase I picked up somewhere and apparently this book exists which was just perfect.
But yeah, got the autism. I panic when people draw attention to me when I'm not prepared for it.
toynbee@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 345d
Thank you for the information about the picture!
I'm sorry for unexpectedly drawing attention to you. I didn't mean to upset you.
chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 345d
It's all good. Not a problem
LotrOrc@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 347d
I will absolutely stand by the idea that burgers should cost MAXIMUM 10 dollars ansd come with fries
Basic burgers with a single patty, a piece of lettuce, ring of onion and slice of tomato should be 5.
balderdash9@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 347d
Pepperidge Farm Remembers:
MrChewy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 347d
Depends on how you think about it, if everything working like when you "borrow" stuff from a friend but quickly forget what is whose suits you, then free. If you think an evaluation of one's effort should be quantified and rewarded fairly, think of a really low price. Now lower it. No, lower it mo-, no, even more. Okay, never mind, think of an unrealistically low number. Ye? Now half it, and you should be around there. From either standpoint, too much (as a tldr)
samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 347d
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · -1 pts · 348d
pipi1234@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 348d
Money should be a store of value and medium of exchange.
The issue with our current monetary system is it's controlled by states.
The only way out of this failed experiment is a money that cannot be controlled by anyone.
whoisearth@lemmy.ca · 24 pts · 348d
Found the shitcoin advocate
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 348d
Rugpull enjoyer.
CXORA@aussie.zone · 18 pts · 348d
You need to elaborate either on how money being controlled by states prevents it achieving the listed objectives, or how being uncontrolled by anyone would help it achieve those objectives.
Otherwise your comment that is just 3 non sequiters.
porksnort@slrpnk.net · 6 pts · 348d
Crypto is at least three non sequiturs in a trenchcoat, so that tracks. Trench coats have large pockets in which they can place all of your fiat currency, which can be freely exchanged for goods and services.
pipi1234@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 347d
Money is the way people are payed for their labour in order to transact for goods and services.
When a government or central bank possesses the hability to expand the money supply, it can dilute the currency's value. This process, known as inflation, systematically diminishes the purchasing power of an individual's wages and savings.
However, the consequences extend beyond the erosion of personal wealth. Persistent inflation, even at a seemingly modest rate like 3% per year, creates a powerful incentive for perpetual economic growth. For a company to simply preserve its value against rising costs and a devaluing currency, it must generate returns that outpace the rate of inflation. This fosters an environment where businesses are pressured to expand continuously.
If we accept that money is the primary channel for economic energy and that productive employment is essential for a healthy society, this framework raises a critical question. A system that structurally requires constant growth for mere survival, rather than for meeting genuine demand, draws comparisons to pathological processes. Some would argue it resembles a cancer: a system whose logic of endless expansion can threaten the stability of the larger organism it inhabits.
F_State@midwest.social · 7 pts · 348d
Money not controlled by anyone has historically been stores of value used in barter rather than money used for retail purchases as we understand it. Even precious metal coins.
LwL@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 348d
No, the problem is that having money leads to having more money and having more money also leads to having more power so every system just gets slowly worse for everyone except the rich
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 348d
Which makes it less stable and reliable and shady transaction are more difficult to track down.