I love me some take out, but ever since I bought a massive jug of soy sauce from an Asian grocery store, I've been content with making my own stir fry at home. Simple, delicious, and far more affordable.
That was me and spring rolls. I got a good bottle of soy sauce and chili sauce at the Asian market they don’t sell anywhere else in town. I know they aren’t perfect but it saves a lot of money.
Sorry, but I have a hard time buying a salad for $10 when I can grab the ingredients for 10 salads for about $5. And they'll be higher quality. Not browning lettuce with mayo sauce.
Not at grocery stores, convenience stores, or places like gas stations. Literally anywhere else that deals with food you'll get a automatic prompt at the register when you pay asking if you want to tip.
Sysco also is the food supplier monopoly. When you sign a contract with them you select what products they regularly stock for you to buy, and they heavily discount certain products they want to incentivize you to buy.
It's why everything tastes the same now and a lot of restaurants do sysco slop bowls.
It’s weird too because there is a burger place down the street from me that literally gets all of their ingredients locally. Buns from a local bakery, beef and potatoes from local farms, etc… A single patty combo with fries/tots and a drink is $13.79. Meanwhile down the street McDonald’s (I know McDonald’s doesn’t use Sysco but it’s the easiest burger comparison) is charging like $12.99 for a Big Mac combo that almost certainly has less beef in it and is nowhere near the same quality on any level in any capacity.
We are reaching a point where corporate overhead is so huge that it might actually bring back small businesses.
Except it won't. Restaurant prices are rising rapidly, they are failing at an unprecedented rate, and we have more remote workers than ever who aren't going to go anyways. It's all f'ed.
I mean why are birth rates always the highest in the poorest regions? Makes you think that money likely has little to do with reproductive rates, and more along the lines of women gaining education and having access to family planning methods.
A lot of what people miss is the importance of safety and security. People don't have kids when they reach a certain income level. They have kids when they are reasonably confident they can give their children a decent living.
A subsistence farmer in Subsaharan Africa can have a much more secure existence than the working poor of countries like the US. People are poor, but they live on land they own or at least have assured access to through shared community rights. They may not have much money, but they have security. They can have kids, and at the very least, the kids can always take over the farm from their parents. The parents probably want the kids to go get an education and be more successful than themselves, but at the very least, the kids will have no worse a life than the parents do.
Compare that to developed countries. You pay monthly for rent that can skyrocket at any time, paid for with a job that can disappear at any time. And I would say raising kids in a rural African village is probably feels a lot more reasonable than trying to raise kids in a studio apartment built in a car-dependent American suburb.
Might be less that the subsistence farmer is so secure and more that they need the kids as a retirement plan. Most of the countries with falling birthrates have some sort of national pension for old people.
American? Would explain why you haven't heard of national pensions. Though I thought even Americans had Social Security.
Or you mean the other thing? Dude that's exactly what we did here 150+ years ago. If you have a bunch of kids, they'll provide your upkeep in old age. Some will tend to the farm, others may help in other ways (get a job in a city or even abroad, send money back home).
People have kids when they can reasonably assume that their kids will have the same level of lifestyle they do. People judge wealth relatively. They feel ready to have children when they can provide their children with a similar level of resources and opportunities they had. What barometer do people have other than their own childhood?
That's not hard to guarantee as a subsistence farmer, as long as they own or otherwise have secure rights to the land. It's a secure but impoverished existence. Sure you're not immune from the weather, but that's true for both parents and children. "Let's have kids. Sure we don't live in a big fancy city, but if it's good enough for us, at worst it can be good enough for them."
Compare that to wealthy people in developed countries. If you're a middle class person now and want your kids to have the same lifestyle you do, better be prepared to help them with the down payment on a house.
Farmers in developing countries have a lot less security. Why would anyone in their situation too want to bring a child into the world? If you look at the data, you'd see the lack of education of women is the best indicator for high fertility rate (and high mortality too). I honestly think those who are having more kids have it out of societal habit, and not based on feeling of security.
To illustrate how insecure farming is, here's a story -
The morning sky offers no promises. Kwesi rubs his calloused hands together, staring at the dry, cracked earth of his small plot in rural Ghana.
For a smallholder farmer here, peace of mind does not exist. Every season is a high-stakes gamble against forces completely outside his control.If the rains arrive late, his maize seeds rot. If they come as a torrent, the topsoil washes away.
There is no irrigation, no safety net, and no insurance. Even a successful harvest brings anxiety. Without cold storage, Kwesi's crops quickly spoil in the heat. He must sell immediately to aggressive middlemen who offer pennies, knowing he cannot afford to wait.But nature is not his only threat.
The distant rumble of a motorbike makes Kwesi’s heart drop. To buy fertilizer, he had to bypass formal banks and borrow from a ruthless local lender. Now, with the harvest ruined by fall armyworms, the debt is due. The motorbike stops, and two men step off carrying heavy wooden clubs. They do not care about droughts or pests.
"Next week," the taller man barks, kicking over Kwesi’s tools. "No money, and we take your land or your livestock. Or that pretty daughter of yours. You choose."
They leave in a cloud of dust, but the terror remains. As his youngest daughter coughs in her sleep, a suffocating dread tightens in Kwesi's chest. He has no money for her medicine, and the enforcers are coming for his last remaining goats.
The poorest may reproduce the most because they are going to be poor either way, and they might also not have as much means to avoid it. But it is definitely a consideration for middle class people in developed nations who may have reasonably comfortable lives if they don't reproduce but will put themselves into hardship if they do.
I think there's actually a bath tub curve with reproduction.
Also, poorer nations tend to have less protections for children/youth in the labor sector, so having more children can be beneficial in that you can send all of them out to earn money.
Which means that women are more likely to stay at home taking care of the kids. And if they do work, they do so part time. Which still leaves time to take care of the kids.
The regions with low birthrates usually have women working full time. And full time means 8h+.
I bet people would be having more kids if people that can work from home, worked from home. And if full time meant 6h instead of 8h+.
That way, instead of working husband + stay at home mom, we could have commuting parent and WFH parent.
With the added benefit of commuting parent having a shorter commute since there would be a lot less people commuting.
Nordic countries have lower overall working hours, and don't see increased birthrates. And make higher salaries. It's almost like when women become educated and have access to family planning methods, they don't have as many children.
This perception is largely overblown though, there is some difference but the poor in western civilisation still do not produce enough children on average to get to a sustainable population number.
What might be a part of it is that globally the poorest region there is a lot of internal solidarity and community building.
Helping each other out becomes second nature if it means that the neighbourhood will have your back during worst times. Forming the village to raise a child.
Add other factors like normalised child labor and indeed no access to contraception or general healthcare (including normalised child death, my European great grand parents have also mentioned the concept of basically “backup” children and normalised loss of siblings)
Some people migrating from such cultures may take some of it with them. People who raised around big families may want to replicate their image of a family but this seems to rapidly decline with each following generation.
The west has a long history of living from exploitation. we build a culture around “civilized /s” families having wealth and became financially competitive. When things go bad there is rarely ever someone to help because either “i don’t have this problem so it must be your own fault” or “no one helped me when i was in that position”
I don’t remember my latest source on this and i spend to long typing this to go look but the statistics i saw that showed that immigration is not the answer to declining population because they don’t produce enough kids either for sustainability was recent data from this year.
And then get all "muh replacement theory" when parents from cultures where multi generational households are the norm are the only people that can afford to have kids.
I’m not paying $22 for a burger. I can spend $6 on the meat, $4 on buns, $3 on blue cheese, and I have all the other seasoning and condiments at home already. That’s 4 blue cheese 1/4 pounders for $13. Or trade out the blue cheese for a handful of mushrooms and some Swiss for about $15 total. $15 vs $88 plus tip.
They did this to consumers/the economy and now they’re complaining about the fallout.
At this point I only go out for sushi. For obvious reasons.
I went to a popular breakfast spot yesterday. While looking over the menu I saw a single pancake listed at $8... Honestly the only thing on the menu that stood out as over priced. Maybe it was a really big pancake.
Strawberries multiply if you put them directly in the ground. Recommend Hoods, they’re amazing. Small, but punchy with flavor. Everbearing taste like Driscolls, even freshly picked. Again, not finicky to grow, and they’re perennial. Granted our temps don’t go below the 20s. Fahrenheit.
No, it’s not the same. And I don’t trust me to prep or source raw fish for that, so it’s limited to veggies and cooked or smoked salmon at home. I finally have the rice how we like it after 6 yrs though. Also. If you know of an uncanned source of freshwater eel in the US, do tell. I’d like to buy it like any other fish, it’s delicious, but here we are.
My point is, it only feels worth the money to eat our, as a very occasional treat, if it’s something not easily sourced or prepped at home. Like eel sushi.
If I could get a lunch for 7-8$ I'd go to restaurants every day. Instead even the fucking fastfood places all want 10-15$ for a fucking meal. I paid almost $10 for 2 burritos that used to be ,75 at tacobell a few weeks ago. The assholes are doing it to themselves.
Remember when fast food was fast food? Now you have to wait 10 minutes for your number and the things you overpaid for are barely describable as food (i.e. McDonalds CEO refusing to eat his own burger).
There is a market for trash food at trash food prices. Sucks we don't have any sort of mechanism in our communist shit hole country to fill unexploited market niches. Capitalism, real capitalism, would have fixed this. Its priests told me so.
When a proper sandwich is 2,50 I don't mind paying at a restaurant. But when I have to pay 12,50 for a slice of bread with a single piece of cheese and some lettuce on it, I prefer to bring my own, thank you.
I live in a country where hospitality staff makes fair wages. Although it could be better. But at least the responsibility for them making enough money isn't put on customers but on the employers, as it should be.
At the place I worked at for a while we didn't do tips. There was no system for it. If people insisted on giving a cash tip, we (the employees) would use the money to buy food for homeless people. Everyone was happy with that.
When a meal that doesn't even fill your stomach starts at $20 and there's a mandatory minimum tip of 30% at the kiosk it's not awfully enticing. After tax and a drink it's now $30 for something you could have just made yourself in most circumstances for $5.
The level of entitlement that just most American business owners / capital holders in general have is actually delusional, insane.
Now of course... not all of them. There are a few that are not delusional, that are not totally full of thrmselves... that are, ironically, conservative, in the sense of low ongoing risk apetite and actually performing due diligence.
... But so many of them act like it is just your responsibility, your social expectation, you disgusting pleb, to buy their product or service, whatever quality it is, whatever price it is.
No, motherfucker.
Literally, that's not even capitalism, capitalism at least very much acts like / believes that a fundamental element of it is that consumers vote with their dollars, they compare and contrast the idea of 'would i rather have thing, or the money that thing costs?'
Whats going on is that a whole bunch of people, across many different sectors of business, are actually terrible business people, who did not well predict future demand or input costs, who financed their businesses based off of loans they couldn't actually afford.
Oh you can't afford a property tax hike or insurance rate hike for your business location?
Not my fucking problem, maybe you should have considered that that is a thing that could happen.
Oh you can't afford shipping and input cost increseases?
Again, not my fucking problem, maybe you should have structured a business with less thin margins, maybe you shouldn't have voted for tariffs and blowing up 1/4 of the world's oil supply.
You can just keep going with this, farmers with no more immigrant labor to exploit, casinos and tourism businesses baffled that the state doing pogroms with a gestapo is bad for business, landlords in denial over how they're not actually geniuses and are in fact underwater and overleveraged.
So much of the American sense of cultural hierarchy is based on the idea of 'i am a business owner' or 'i make good investments'.
No, you fucking idiots, you're mostly all stupid and bad at all of this, and deserve 0 cultural accolades awarded to the 'successful entrepenuer' ... because you are an incompetent entrepenuer, a failure.
Turns out, no, no this country isn't actually a meritocratic land of opportunity that rewards something like 'just giving it the good ole college try'. Turns out its massively full of itself, fake, lying to itself, and broadly systemically corrupt.
None of that can be fixed with individualistic entrepenuership.
It can only be fixed with a collective hang over / come down, realizing we need an intervention, and then realizing we are all more or less wallowing in the same field of pigshit, and will need to cooperate in mutually beneficial ways to get to anywhere better than that.
I got carry out from a local Mexican restaurant. Really nice food and good atmosphere I enjoyed while paying for my food. which prompted a tip for 18/20/22/0%
Yeah no. I've even seen it start at 20 and go up to 28.
More people should be like you. Of course I want restaurants to pay their workers more than $2.13/hour, but because that's what they get away with paying, and rely on tips to subsidize their labor, this is the way it's gonna be until laws change. Because of that, we need to budget the tip into our decision of whether to go out or not. If you can't afford to leave a good tip for good service, stay the fuck home. If I owned a restaurant and had a repeat customer tip like shit to a known good worker, I'd loudly berate that customer in front of everybody and then ban them. The only thing worse than shitty, entitled customers shitting on retail workers is spineless managers bending over for whatever the shitty customers demand.
Most people hate tipping. But I go out infrequently and only go to good places, so I am happy to leave a good tip for an excellent meal with excellent service, and when I come back I know I'll be welcome because I treated the staff well and left a reasonable tip.
If I owned a restaurant and had a repeat customer tip like shit to a known good worker, I’d loudly berate that customer in front of everybody and then ban them.
Or -- and this is just a thought -- you could save the self-entitled screeching and just fucking PAY YOUR SERVERS A LIVING WAGE.
I know this is mind-blowing, but if you own a restaurant, you don't have to wait for any law to change. You could just do what's right today.
If you need a law to force you into paying workers a living wage, the non-tipping customer isn't the wrongdoer you should be screaming at.
The only thing worse than shitty, entitled customers shitting on retail workers is spineless managers bending over for whatever the shitty customers demand.
They're just embittered and fighting over the scraps you left them, not realizing they are both victims of you not paying your servers a living wage in a society that routinely authorizes the same behaviors.
I averaged $35 an hour at my restaurant in tips alone (they paid me $13 an hour to run the whole place including serving back in 2001). They could not afford me. A good server will never work that job again if they got your deal. Then you’d bitch moan and complain about bad service.
Your comment is an argument for all other servers everywhere to work at subsistence levels because you personally are in a situation where you can do well on $2.13 an hour plus tips. You'd keep everyone else at less than half that so you personally prosper, and you applaud the tipping system, born of racism and slavery, that supports it.
This is so "Fuck you I got mine" energy when someone else making a living wage doesn't need to hurt you at all. Just because someone else makes a living wage doing the same job does not, in itself, outlaw tipping. Nor does it bind your employer to paying the lowest living wage: your employer can still pay you above the lowest level. They don't need a law for that.
And I would remind you, it's NOT my deal. It's the owner's deal. If they can't afford you, work somewhere else, just as you said.
For myself, I do not ever moan about bad service, nor have I ever left a shitty tip: if service is that bad I assume it's because bad or absent management doesn't know how to run a restaurant. I don't complain, I just don't return.
It's not realistic to be able to compete in an already ruthless, tight margin industry like that while also handicapping yourself in that way if nobody else is. How can you get customers to choose your business when your prices are so much higher on the menu to account for paying 10x higher wages? How do you attract good staff to work for you if their pay is capped like that? How do you stop people from calling out on busy nights like Fridays and Saturdays because they'd be making a Tuesday wage for the extra work or double that if they work somewhere else? People are generally speaking pretty dumb, so they'll see that my burger is $18 across the street from an identical $15 burger, not understand that tipping 20% raises that $15 cost to $18, and call me a cheap bastard for charging so much more for nothing.
New small business restaurants are already notorious for shutting down within a year or two of opening. The only ways to achieve this are with a massive starting capital to be able to withstand operating at a loss for years while proving reputation to both customers and workers, or bigger established brands doing it first to normalize it, or by raising tipped minimum wages higher legally so that every company is moving in that direction together. Or (my preference) by banning the tipped minimum wage from being separate from minimum wage in the first place.
The whole function of a business in this system is to make money. It's not sensible to intentionally choose to make less money. So long as we latch onto capitalism as a system, companies will largely only do the bare minimum as required by regulations in order to keep costs as low as possible while maintaining competitive pricing. The only companies that can afford to do things differently are privately owned companies that have already established themselves as major successes and can afford to buy some extra good will at the cost of growth or even a little financial loss. I don't like it any more than you do, but this is what we've got until the people demand more or a different system entirely. Maybe when the boomers all fuck off and die. Who knows.
Says cave dweller who can’t comprehend that human psychology drives the herd and that means: yes non tipping sit down restaurants will fail and yes, i have to raise prices just to run a sale to make money because people are fucking dumb as shit.
Hey dipshit, don't yell at people because they refuse to do YOUR (hypothetical) JOB. You don't want to pay employees, fine, then don't hire them?? I agree with not going to restaurants with tipped employees, though, until the laws surrounding wages changes.
Late-stage capitalism ready to collapse on itself.
When your production lines are perfectly efficient, no one make money but the top.
Then at some point, consumption will come to a halt. Robots will produce goods that nearly no one can afford, small service business will be bankrupted. And government will be powerless as billionaires don't pay taxes but they're the last class on Earth actually making money.
This is just an early sign. The whole system is ready to crash.
It's insane to write about "spending habits" when people have trouble just getting by.
Any article about such topics should blame those who are really responsible: the increasing gap between the rich and the middle class/poor, as well as the politicians who push this even further.
Reporters who blame the people who rely on debt just to get by are lacking empathy and decency.
I live alone and don't eat out. I spend about $30-$40 a week on groceries. These restaurants can all burn to the ground. It's just overpriced slop. I make better food for less money and don't care about the "social experience" they seem to bank on. We all need to find other ways than stuffing greasy garbage into our face holes to have a social interaction.
It's also nice to know how your meals were cooked. Is the restaurant using cheap quality spices that might have heavy metals in them? Are they heating up sauces in plastic liners and leeching an insane amount of microplastics? How about their Teflon pans, are they all scratched up?
Not to mention employee hygiene and unsanitary conditions.
That one has been top of mind for me this week, because my kid's pediatrician mentioned that they had found dangerously high lead levels in another patient recently, but the source wasn't the local water, it was heavy spices used in middle-eastern foods.
The timing on this (last year after months of very sudden cuts to federal funding and tariffs tariffs tariffs killing private industry jobs) makes me think that all those hundreds of thousands of layoffs and lost jobs across the country every single month might've played a factor in this as well. But, you know, that's just me and my opinion.
I just can't stand boomers. I will generalize because you are all complicit. Fuck you so fucking hard, as in get fucked to fucking everfuck and and never back.
The Boomers were victims of the Military-Industrial Complex just like the rest of us. After WWII, the Industrialists didn't want to give up that sweet war profit, so they institutionalized it.
The Boomers grew up in that post-war boom, living lives of abundance before the hammer dropped. It was a great time for white nuclear families. Who can blame them for wanting that to continue?
Unfortunately, they actively tried to prevent others from accessing that same great life, and that's where the problems really begin.
I do understand what are you saying.
My fucks come from the fact that they, not all but the absolute majority of them, actively pulled that fucking ladder up and made every generation after them bear the horrible fruits of their decisions. They can fuck off. If I don't have to speak to them ever again (because they can never be wrong, either way), I am very content with such outcome.
What has a younger generation done that is different?
Generalizing any group built on arbitrary things is stupid(blaming all conservatives on the other hand makes more sense given their ideology brought us here). I’m sure there are plenty of boomers that have done more for equality, the environment, etc than you or I.
152 Comments
Beth@piefed.social · 140 pts · 58d
My lunch from home tastes the way I want it, and it cost less, and it’s better for me…sooo yeah.
666dollarfootlong@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 58d
And most storebought "meals" are either way too small or made for multiple people
red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 65 pts · 58d
I was born a man and identify as a man, but according to Stouffer's Lasagna, I'm a family of 4.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz · 20 pts · 58d
Similar weight too.
fartographer@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 58d
Hey! You're gonna be in so much trouble once I catch my breath!
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 58d
Those are ozempic portion sizes
SillyMe@piefed.social · 17 pts · 58d
it also doesn't try to shame me into tipping.
Ceruleum@lemmy.wtf · 5 pts · 58d
That's only cause the economy isn't that bad yet.
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 57d
I love me some take out, but ever since I bought a massive jug of soy sauce from an Asian grocery store, I've been content with making my own stir fry at home. Simple, delicious, and far more affordable.
Beth@piefed.social · 3 pts · 57d
That was me and spring rolls. I got a good bottle of soy sauce and chili sauce at the Asian market they don’t sell anywhere else in town. I know they aren’t perfect but it saves a lot of money.
cogman@lemmy.world · 114 pts · 58d
Prices have skyrocketed, quality has tanked.
Sorry, but I have a hard time buying a salad for $10 when I can grab the ingredients for 10 salads for about $5. And they'll be higher quality. Not browning lettuce with mayo sauce.
Rentlar@lemmy.ca · 85 pts · 58d
87Six@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 58d
You guys don't ACTUALLY get asked for tips at stores... Right?
Rato@sh.itjust.works · 32 pts · 58d
Nowhere that I've been, no, but the little POS tablets that small shops and vendors have all ask for a tip by default.
Ephera@lemmy.ml · 27 pts · 58d
I choose to believe you abbreviated "piece of shit" there.
Rato@sh.itjust.works · 23 pts · 58d
Both abbreviations are correct, yeah
87Six@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 58d
Jesus christ. To me thats a "yes"
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 10 pts · 58d
Oh honey, you have no idea the capitalistic depravity we have here
87Six@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 57d
Apparently I really don't
Landless2029@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 57d
Not at grocery stores, convenience stores, or places like gas stations. Literally anywhere else that deals with food you'll get a automatic prompt at the register when you pay asking if you want to tip.
architect@thelemmy.club · 4 pts · 57d
The merch booth at concerts will literally tell you they don’t get paid at all without tips as you’re buying a $50 shirt.
87Six@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 57d
If that ever comes here I am never eating out again.
Though I haven't eaten out in like 6 months so they wouldn't care lol
iocase@lemmy.zip · 45 pts · 58d
Sysco also is the food supplier monopoly. When you sign a contract with them you select what products they regularly stock for you to buy, and they heavily discount certain products they want to incentivize you to buy.
It's why everything tastes the same now and a lot of restaurants do sysco slop bowls.
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 33 pts · 58d
It’s weird too because there is a burger place down the street from me that literally gets all of their ingredients locally. Buns from a local bakery, beef and potatoes from local farms, etc… A single patty combo with fries/tots and a drink is $13.79. Meanwhile down the street McDonald’s (I know McDonald’s doesn’t use Sysco but it’s the easiest burger comparison) is charging like $12.99 for a Big Mac combo that almost certainly has less beef in it and is nowhere near the same quality on any level in any capacity.
We are reaching a point where corporate overhead is so huge that it might actually bring back small businesses.
GalacticRobot@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 58d
Except it won't. Restaurant prices are rising rapidly, they are failing at an unprecedented rate, and we have more remote workers than ever who aren't going to go anyways. It's all f'ed.
architect@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 57d
Corporate owns everything so, unfortunately no.
lemmyng@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 58d
At this point, with grocery prices rising, you'd just be paying to have the assured quality from making it yourself.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 58d
Seriously, why the fuck does a salad cost as much as a full meal? That's not an entree, it's an oversized side dish.
AbsolutelyClawless@piefed.social · 5 pts · 57d
Always takes me a second to remember you Americans use entrée to refer to the main dish, lol.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 57d
What's it mean elsewhere?
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 57d
The word entrée sorta sounds like entry, doesn't it?
It's more or less the same as appetizer or starter.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 57d
Oh, that's funny because it's completely different from what it means here.
I always wondered why it was called an entrée. I guess it's just an ignorant american bastardization, like half the language is...
cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 57d
Can be. Rarely is.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 98 pts · 58d
This is also happening with reproduction
"Don't reproduce if you can't afford it"
But also
"Why are fertility rates falling into the abyss?"
GalacticRobot@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 58d
I mean why are birth rates always the highest in the poorest regions? Makes you think that money likely has little to do with reproductive rates, and more along the lines of women gaining education and having access to family planning methods.
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 33 pts · 57d
A lot of what people miss is the importance of safety and security. People don't have kids when they reach a certain income level. They have kids when they are reasonably confident they can give their children a decent living.
A subsistence farmer in Subsaharan Africa can have a much more secure existence than the working poor of countries like the US. People are poor, but they live on land they own or at least have assured access to through shared community rights. They may not have much money, but they have security. They can have kids, and at the very least, the kids can always take over the farm from their parents. The parents probably want the kids to go get an education and be more successful than themselves, but at the very least, the kids will have no worse a life than the parents do.
Compare that to developed countries. You pay monthly for rent that can skyrocket at any time, paid for with a job that can disappear at any time. And I would say raising kids in a rural African village is probably feels a lot more reasonable than trying to raise kids in a studio apartment built in a car-dependent American suburb.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 12 pts · 57d
Might be less that the subsistence farmer is so secure and more that they need the kids as a retirement plan. Most of the countries with falling birthrates have some sort of national pension for old people.
cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -3 pts · 57d
Sure, you could just make some shit up. That also works.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 57d
American? Would explain why you haven't heard of national pensions. Though I thought even Americans had Social Security.
Or you mean the other thing? Dude that's exactly what we did here 150+ years ago. If you have a bunch of kids, they'll provide your upkeep in old age. Some will tend to the farm, others may help in other ways (get a job in a city or even abroad, send money back home).
cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -1 pts · 57d
The periphery is of course the past.
16mhz@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 57d
Nice analysis. Thank you for posting.
VAK@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 57d
Dude, that's a very dumb take..
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 57d
Only if you confuse security with income.
People have kids when they can reasonably assume that their kids will have the same level of lifestyle they do. People judge wealth relatively. They feel ready to have children when they can provide their children with a similar level of resources and opportunities they had. What barometer do people have other than their own childhood?
That's not hard to guarantee as a subsistence farmer, as long as they own or otherwise have secure rights to the land. It's a secure but impoverished existence. Sure you're not immune from the weather, but that's true for both parents and children. "Let's have kids. Sure we don't live in a big fancy city, but if it's good enough for us, at worst it can be good enough for them."
Compare that to wealthy people in developed countries. If you're a middle class person now and want your kids to have the same lifestyle you do, better be prepared to help them with the down payment on a house.
VAK@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 56d
It's obvious you're not a "subsistence" farmer
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 56d
Perhaps you would like to contribute to the conversation.
VAK@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 51d
Shouldn't have bothered, eh?
VAK@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 56d
Fair.
Farmers in developing countries have a lot less security. Why would anyone in their situation too want to bring a child into the world? If you look at the data, you'd see the lack of education of women is the best indicator for high fertility rate (and high mortality too). I honestly think those who are having more kids have it out of societal habit, and not based on feeling of security.
To illustrate how insecure farming is, here's a story -
The morning sky offers no promises. Kwesi rubs his calloused hands together, staring at the dry, cracked earth of his small plot in rural Ghana.
For a smallholder farmer here, peace of mind does not exist. Every season is a high-stakes gamble against forces completely outside his control.If the rains arrive late, his maize seeds rot. If they come as a torrent, the topsoil washes away.
There is no irrigation, no safety net, and no insurance. Even a successful harvest brings anxiety. Without cold storage, Kwesi's crops quickly spoil in the heat. He must sell immediately to aggressive middlemen who offer pennies, knowing he cannot afford to wait.But nature is not his only threat.
The distant rumble of a motorbike makes Kwesi’s heart drop. To buy fertilizer, he had to bypass formal banks and borrow from a ruthless local lender. Now, with the harvest ruined by fall armyworms, the debt is due. The motorbike stops, and two men step off carrying heavy wooden clubs. They do not care about droughts or pests.
"Next week," the taller man barks, kicking over Kwesi’s tools. "No money, and we take your land or your livestock. Or that pretty daughter of yours. You choose."
They leave in a cloud of dust, but the terror remains. As his youngest daughter coughs in her sleep, a suffocating dread tightens in Kwesi's chest. He has no money for her medicine, and the enforcers are coming for his last remaining goats.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 16 pts · 58d
The poorest may reproduce the most because they are going to be poor either way, and they might also not have as much means to avoid it. But it is definitely a consideration for middle class people in developed nations who may have reasonably comfortable lives if they don't reproduce but will put themselves into hardship if they do.
I think there's actually a bath tub curve with reproduction.
TheOakTree@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 57d
Also, poorer nations tend to have less protections for children/youth in the labor sector, so having more children can be beneficial in that you can send all of them out to earn money.
cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 57d
Send? Don't they yearn for the mines?
Fedizen@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 56d
I have bad news about what society does with child laborers who graduate into adult laborers but without fingers.
cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 56d
Why would 'society' need laborers without fingers? Sounds like they've outlived their usefulness. What's the issue?
calcopiritus@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 57d
Poorer regions usually are more conservative too.
Which means that women are more likely to stay at home taking care of the kids. And if they do work, they do so part time. Which still leaves time to take care of the kids.
The regions with low birthrates usually have women working full time. And full time means 8h+.
I bet people would be having more kids if people that can work from home, worked from home. And if full time meant 6h instead of 8h+.
That way, instead of working husband + stay at home mom, we could have commuting parent and WFH parent.
With the added benefit of commuting parent having a shorter commute since there would be a lot less people commuting.
GalacticRobot@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 57d
Nordic countries have lower overall working hours, and don't see increased birthrates. And make higher salaries. It's almost like when women become educated and have access to family planning methods, they don't have as many children.
architect@thelemmy.club · 3 pts · 57d
Turns out it was the men that wanted the children the whole time. Which definitely tracks with my experience. Men want women to sacrifice for them.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 57d
Usually they have lots of kids so they have kids to help with the farm plus most of these countries are very conservative
Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 57d
This perception is largely overblown though, there is some difference but the poor in western civilisation still do not produce enough children on average to get to a sustainable population number.
What might be a part of it is that globally the poorest region there is a lot of internal solidarity and community building.
Helping each other out becomes second nature if it means that the neighbourhood will have your back during worst times. Forming the village to raise a child.
Add other factors like normalised child labor and indeed no access to contraception or general healthcare (including normalised child death, my European great grand parents have also mentioned the concept of basically “backup” children and normalised loss of siblings)
Some people migrating from such cultures may take some of it with them. People who raised around big families may want to replicate their image of a family but this seems to rapidly decline with each following generation.
The west has a long history of living from exploitation. we build a culture around “civilized /s” families having wealth and became financially competitive. When things go bad there is rarely ever someone to help because either “i don’t have this problem so it must be your own fault” or “no one helped me when i was in that position”
I don’t remember my latest source on this and i spend to long typing this to go look but the statistics i saw that showed that immigration is not the answer to declining population because they don’t produce enough kids either for sustainability was recent data from this year.
565746521@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 57d
Fedizen@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 57d
Or its causal and having kids makes you poor.
Blackmist@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 56d
And then get all "muh replacement theory" when parents from cultures where multi generational households are the norm are the only people that can afford to have kids.
crunchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 73 pts · 58d
Shit happens. If restaurants were more fiscally responsible and lives below their means, they would have been prepared for something like this.
Zephorah@discuss.online · 49 pts · 58d
I’m not paying $22 for a burger. I can spend $6 on the meat, $4 on buns, $3 on blue cheese, and I have all the other seasoning and condiments at home already. That’s 4 blue cheese 1/4 pounders for $13. Or trade out the blue cheese for a handful of mushrooms and some Swiss for about $15 total. $15 vs $88 plus tip.
They did this to consumers/the economy and now they’re complaining about the fallout.
At this point I only go out for sushi. For obvious reasons.
ccunning@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 58d
“So what you’re saying is we need to raise the price of beef?”
Zephorah@discuss.online · 30 pts · 58d
Already done, thanks to Elon unleashing the screwworm on the American cattle industry.
Fluke@feddit.uk · 8 pts · 58d
Needs an "I did that!" sticker.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com · 6 pts · 58d
Sticker should feature him doing his salute
Zephorah@discuss.online · 1 pts · 57d
What would we do with those? Stick them on cows? Yes. They can be placid doofuses. Also yes, they can kill you.
GalacticRobot@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 58d
Yeah, the chart of beef prices in the US isn't pretty:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000703112
Zephorah@discuss.online · 1 pts · 57d
It’s delicious but not great for your health so we do beef maybe 1-2x a year. A good reason just to cut it.
I feel bad for the cows. The worst part is Elon can afford to fix this problem but he won’t.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 9 pts · 58d
Holy shit and I feel weird paying more than 3-4 USD for a burger here in asia.
Zephorah@discuss.online · 10 pts · 58d
If you have an IN&OUT, its appeal/line is due to the fact that you can buy a plain burger for $2.50. If you like fast food. Was $2 in 2020.
Sit down in a real restaurant, and it’s $19-$23. With fries.
Granted, that’s still not as bad as paying the markup on pancakes.
johnyreeferseed@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 58d
I went to a popular breakfast spot yesterday. While looking over the menu I saw a single pancake listed at $8... Honestly the only thing on the menu that stood out as over priced. Maybe it was a really big pancake.
Zephorah@discuss.online · 1 pts · 57d
King Arthur Flour has a solid buttermilk pancake recipe.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 58d
And In-N-Out's burgers are fresh and actually taste good, unlike basically any other fast food joint.
lobut@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 58d
I've had a habit of going to fast food places on the weekend for a treat for having a rough week.
I just decided to buy burgers, buns and I grow lettuce in my back yard ... I'm like, oh ... yeah, not sure why I didn't do this earlier.
nomy@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 58d
And it actually tastes good, not just salty and/or sweet.
Zephorah@discuss.online · 1 pts · 57d
Tomatoes pay out, and they’re not difficult.
Strawberries multiply if you put them directly in the ground. Recommend Hoods, they’re amazing. Small, but punchy with flavor. Everbearing taste like Driscolls, even freshly picked. Again, not finicky to grow, and they’re perennial. Granted our temps don’t go below the 20s. Fahrenheit.
sqw@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 58d
you can cook rice and slice fish at home.
Zephorah@discuss.online · 2 pts · 57d
No, it’s not the same. And I don’t trust me to prep or source raw fish for that, so it’s limited to veggies and cooked or smoked salmon at home. I finally have the rice how we like it after 6 yrs though. Also. If you know of an uncanned source of freshwater eel in the US, do tell. I’d like to buy it like any other fish, it’s delicious, but here we are.
My point is, it only feels worth the money to eat our, as a very occasional treat, if it’s something not easily sourced or prepped at home. Like eel sushi.
sqw@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -1 pts · 57d
cook the fish
DupaCycki@lemmy.world · 47 pts · 58d
Even if you donated all your money to billionaires and worked unpaid, they'd still demand more. The concept of 'enough' doesn't exist in capitalism.
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub · 8 pts · 58d
I mean, how could it? Can you give me the highest number?
daddycool@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 57d
Yes, it's ထ + 1.
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub · 1 pts · 57d
And this will be definitely enogh
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 43 pts · 58d
Note the pattern of how the people at the top of the economy continually blame the people at the bottom of the economy for everything going wrong.
AniZaeger@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 57d
They're pissed that the have nots aren't gleefully throwing more money at the haves.
MeatPilot@sh.itjust.works · 31 pts · 58d
biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 58d
Lmao what is this from
MeatPilot@sh.itjust.works · 19 pts · 58d
This is from the "The IT Crowd"
If you haven't seen it, you really should give it a look.
Beacon@fedia.io · 9 pts · 58d
For real one of the funniest shows ever made
lightnsfw@reddthat.com · 31 pts · 58d
If I could get a lunch for 7-8$ I'd go to restaurants every day. Instead even the fucking fastfood places all want 10-15$ for a fucking meal. I paid almost $10 for 2 burritos that used to be ,75 at tacobell a few weeks ago. The assholes are doing it to themselves.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 57d
Well this is inflation, and it'd be fine if wages had gone up to match, but, you know...
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 57d
But inflation good for economy grow GDP haha go brrrr!
lightnsfw@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 57d
Yeah.....
Corn@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 57d
Here in asia, I almost never cook because food is 1-6USD
tatterdemalion@programming.dev · 31 pts · 58d
LouNeko@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 58d
Remember when fast food was fast food? Now you have to wait 10 minutes for your number and the things you overpaid for are barely describable as food (i.e. McDonalds CEO refusing to eat his own burger).
GalacticRobot@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 58d
No, because McDonalds has been trash for decades, now they just raised their prices enough that people are finally noticing.
cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 57d
There is a market for trash food at trash food prices. Sucks we don't have any sort of mechanism in our communist shit hole country to fill unexploited market niches. Capitalism, real capitalism, would have fixed this. Its priests told me so.
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 29 pts · 57d
When a proper sandwich is 2,50 I don't mind paying at a restaurant. But when I have to pay 12,50 for a slice of bread with a single piece of cheese and some lettuce on it, I prefer to bring my own, thank you.
bless@lemmy.ml · 17 pts · 57d
Don't forget the tip, otherwise the server will starve
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 56d
I live in a country where hospitality staff makes fair wages. Although it could be better. But at least the responsibility for them making enough money isn't put on customers but on the employers, as it should be.
At the place I worked at for a while we didn't do tips. There was no system for it. If people insisted on giving a cash tip, we (the employees) would use the money to buy food for homeless people. Everyone was happy with that.
const_void@lemmy.ml · 29 pts · 58d
When everything was shut down and people were working from home? Wtf?
sqw@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 58d
maybe "february 2020" is the sense here
horn_e4_beaver@discuss.tchncs.de · 28 pts · 58d
Poor people should not be allowed to hoard wealth. Only wealthy people should be allowed to hoard wealth.
Zephyr@sh.itjust.works · 25 pts · 57d
When a meal that doesn't even fill your stomach starts at $20 and there's a mandatory minimum tip of 30% at the kiosk it's not awfully enticing. After tax and a drink it's now $30 for something you could have just made yourself in most circumstances for $5.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 56d
And it will probably taste better, too.
kunaltyagi@programming.dev · 1 pts · 57d
How's your tax (on 20 bucks of food) + drink just 4$?
Zephyr@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 57d
Depends on the location. Some areas have no sales tax.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 56d
Usually tax is just on carbonated drinks.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 25 pts · 58d
The level of entitlement that just most American business owners / capital holders in general have is actually delusional, insane.
Now of course... not all of them. There are a few that are not delusional, that are not totally full of thrmselves... that are, ironically, conservative, in the sense of low ongoing risk apetite and actually performing due diligence.
... But so many of them act like it is just your responsibility, your social expectation, you disgusting pleb, to buy their product or service, whatever quality it is, whatever price it is.
No, motherfucker.
Literally, that's not even capitalism, capitalism at least very much acts like / believes that a fundamental element of it is that consumers vote with their dollars, they compare and contrast the idea of 'would i rather have thing, or the money that thing costs?'
Whats going on is that a whole bunch of people, across many different sectors of business, are actually terrible business people, who did not well predict future demand or input costs, who financed their businesses based off of loans they couldn't actually afford.
Oh you can't afford a property tax hike or insurance rate hike for your business location?
Not my fucking problem, maybe you should have considered that that is a thing that could happen.
Oh you can't afford shipping and input cost increseases?
Again, not my fucking problem, maybe you should have structured a business with less thin margins, maybe you shouldn't have voted for tariffs and blowing up 1/4 of the world's oil supply.
You can just keep going with this, farmers with no more immigrant labor to exploit, casinos and tourism businesses baffled that the state doing pogroms with a gestapo is bad for business, landlords in denial over how they're not actually geniuses and are in fact underwater and overleveraged.
So much of the American sense of cultural hierarchy is based on the idea of 'i am a business owner' or 'i make good investments'.
No, you fucking idiots, you're mostly all stupid and bad at all of this, and deserve 0 cultural accolades awarded to the 'successful entrepenuer' ... because you are an incompetent entrepenuer, a failure.
Turns out, no, no this country isn't actually a meritocratic land of opportunity that rewards something like 'just giving it the good ole college try'. Turns out its massively full of itself, fake, lying to itself, and broadly systemically corrupt.
None of that can be fixed with individualistic entrepenuership.
It can only be fixed with a collective hang over / come down, realizing we need an intervention, and then realizing we are all more or less wallowing in the same field of pigshit, and will need to cooperate in mutually beneficial ways to get to anywhere better than that.
lemmyng@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 58d
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
mysticpickle@lemmy.ca · 24 pts · 58d
80% of the reason I don't go out to eat more is because I fucking hate tipping.
Landless2029@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 57d
I got carry out from a local Mexican restaurant. Really nice food and good atmosphere I enjoyed while paying for my food. which prompted a tip for 18/20/22/0%
Yeah no. I've even seen it start at 20 and go up to 28.
architect@thelemmy.club · -2 pts · 57d
Person comes out of their cave to see tipping servers at restaurants for takeout is a thing.
When I worked restaurants I had to do more work as a server for takeout than in house. Way way more work. You’re damn right they get tipped for that.
Learn to cook.
MrVilliam@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 58d
More people should be like you. Of course I want restaurants to pay their workers more than $2.13/hour, but because that's what they get away with paying, and rely on tips to subsidize their labor, this is the way it's gonna be until laws change. Because of that, we need to budget the tip into our decision of whether to go out or not. If you can't afford to leave a good tip for good service, stay the fuck home. If I owned a restaurant and had a repeat customer tip like shit to a known good worker, I'd loudly berate that customer in front of everybody and then ban them. The only thing worse than shitty, entitled customers shitting on retail workers is spineless managers bending over for whatever the shitty customers demand.
Most people hate tipping. But I go out infrequently and only go to good places, so I am happy to leave a good tip for an excellent meal with excellent service, and when I come back I know I'll be welcome because I treated the staff well and left a reasonable tip.
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 57d
Or -- and this is just a thought -- you could save the self-entitled screeching and just fucking PAY YOUR SERVERS A LIVING WAGE.
I know this is mind-blowing, but if you own a restaurant, you don't have to wait for any law to change. You could just do what's right today.
If you need a law to force you into paying workers a living wage, the non-tipping customer isn't the wrongdoer you should be screaming at.
They're just embittered and fighting over the scraps you left them, not realizing they are both victims of you not paying your servers a living wage in a society that routinely authorizes the same behaviors.
architect@thelemmy.club · 1 pts · 57d
I averaged $35 an hour at my restaurant in tips alone (they paid me $13 an hour to run the whole place including serving back in 2001). They could not afford me. A good server will never work that job again if they got your deal. Then you’d bitch moan and complain about bad service.
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 56d
So fuck everyone who serves at a Denny's or a Waffle House. You can only say that because you personally were working at an establishment where you could average $35 an hour.
Your comment is an argument for all other servers everywhere to work at subsistence levels because you personally are in a situation where you can do well on $2.13 an hour plus tips. You'd keep everyone else at less than half that so you personally prosper, and you applaud the tipping system, born of racism and slavery, that supports it.
This is so "Fuck you I got mine" energy when someone else making a living wage doesn't need to hurt you at all. Just because someone else makes a living wage doing the same job does not, in itself, outlaw tipping. Nor does it bind your employer to paying the lowest living wage: your employer can still pay you above the lowest level. They don't need a law for that.
And I would remind you, it's NOT my deal. It's the owner's deal. If they can't afford you, work somewhere else, just as you said.
For myself, I do not ever moan about bad service, nor have I ever left a shitty tip: if service is that bad I assume it's because bad or absent management doesn't know how to run a restaurant. I don't complain, I just don't return.
MrVilliam@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 57d
It's not realistic to be able to compete in an already ruthless, tight margin industry like that while also handicapping yourself in that way if nobody else is. How can you get customers to choose your business when your prices are so much higher on the menu to account for paying 10x higher wages? How do you attract good staff to work for you if their pay is capped like that? How do you stop people from calling out on busy nights like Fridays and Saturdays because they'd be making a Tuesday wage for the extra work or double that if they work somewhere else? People are generally speaking pretty dumb, so they'll see that my burger is $18 across the street from an identical $15 burger, not understand that tipping 20% raises that $15 cost to $18, and call me a cheap bastard for charging so much more for nothing.
New small business restaurants are already notorious for shutting down within a year or two of opening. The only ways to achieve this are with a massive starting capital to be able to withstand operating at a loss for years while proving reputation to both customers and workers, or bigger established brands doing it first to normalize it, or by raising tipped minimum wages higher legally so that every company is moving in that direction together. Or (my preference) by banning the tipped minimum wage from being separate from minimum wage in the first place.
The whole function of a business in this system is to make money. It's not sensible to intentionally choose to make less money. So long as we latch onto capitalism as a system, companies will largely only do the bare minimum as required by regulations in order to keep costs as low as possible while maintaining competitive pricing. The only companies that can afford to do things differently are privately owned companies that have already established themselves as major successes and can afford to buy some extra good will at the cost of growth or even a little financial loss. I don't like it any more than you do, but this is what we've got until the people demand more or a different system entirely. Maybe when the boomers all fuck off and die. Who knows.
architect@thelemmy.club · -1 pts · 57d
WhY dOnT yOu JuSt ChArGe ThE cOrReCt PrIcE?!
Says cave dweller who can’t comprehend that human psychology drives the herd and that means: yes non tipping sit down restaurants will fail and yes, i have to raise prices just to run a sale to make money because people are fucking dumb as shit.
Sidhean@piefed.social · 1 pts · 57d
Hey dipshit, don't yell at people because they refuse to do YOUR (hypothetical) JOB. You don't want to pay employees, fine, then don't hire them?? I agree with not going to restaurants with tipped employees, though, until the laws surrounding wages changes.
huey_m@reddthat.com · 23 pts · 57d
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 18 pts · 58d
Return to office.
Return to Applebees.
AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml · 18 pts · 57d
The current kleptocrats in charge are murdering the global economy and the neoliberals before them fucked it.
The headline is clearly framed to put the blame on something else, even in a joking manner. That makes the journalist or editor a collaborator.
The article itself is written in that disgusting cutesy style: Your New Lunch Habit Is Hurting the Economy - WSJ https://archive.ph/iwYHZ
matlag@sh.itjust.works · 17 pts · 56d
Late-stage capitalism ready to collapse on itself. When your production lines are perfectly efficient, no one make money but the top.
Then at some point, consumption will come to a halt. Robots will produce goods that nearly no one can afford, small service business will be bankrupted. And government will be powerless as billionaires don't pay taxes but they're the last class on Earth actually making money.
This is just an early sign. The whole system is ready to crash.
Xerxos@lemmy.ml · 16 pts · 57d
It's insane to write about "spending habits" when people have trouble just getting by.
Any article about such topics should blame those who are really responsible: the increasing gap between the rich and the middle class/poor, as well as the politicians who push this even further.
Reporters who blame the people who rely on debt just to get by are lacking empathy and decency.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org · 16 pts · 57d
I am too poor to eat out. But I would also not eat out if it helps destroy capitalism.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 56d
You're not poor, you're an ACTIVIST!
Now you're eligible to be a paid protester. That's what I'm working on, if I can only find George Soros' address. I hear he's the guy that's paying.
brap@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 58d
Who the fuck can afford to go out for lunch every day?
Mac@mander.xyz · 2 pts · 58d
Lots of people. lol
Not everyone, no, but lots.
betanumerus@lemmy.ca · 14 pts · 57d
I'd sure like to see a list of all those industries frugal people are "killing".
GideonD@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 58d
I live alone and don't eat out. I spend about $30-$40 a week on groceries. These restaurants can all burn to the ground. It's just overpriced slop. I make better food for less money and don't care about the "social experience" they seem to bank on. We all need to find other ways than stuffing greasy garbage into our face holes to have a social interaction.
The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 58d
It's also nice to know how your meals were cooked. Is the restaurant using cheap quality spices that might have heavy metals in them? Are they heating up sauces in plastic liners and leeching an insane amount of microplastics? How about their Teflon pans, are they all scratched up?
Not to mention employee hygiene and unsanitary conditions.
lemmyng@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 58d
Oh great, more food-related horrors I have to consider: https://deeprootsathome.com/heavy-metals-in-popular-spice-brands-see-which-ones/
The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 58d
That one has been top of mind for me this week, because my kid's pediatrician mentioned that they had found dangerously high lead levels in another patient recently, but the source wasn't the local water, it was heavy spices used in middle-eastern foods.
InvalidName2@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 58d
The timing on this (last year after months of very sudden cuts to federal funding and tariffs tariffs tariffs killing private industry jobs) makes me think that all those hundreds of thousands of layoffs and lost jobs across the country every single month might've played a factor in this as well. But, you know, that's just me and my opinion.
sobchak@programming.dev · 9 pts · 57d
What does this have to do with age? It's class war.
straussbelial@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 58d
At which point we normalized listening to opinions of companies' owners?
Waterpumpee@lemmus.org · 7 pts · 58d
big company here mandated office days because no one was using their inhouse cantina
YtA4QCam2A9j7EfTgHrH@infosec.pub · 7 pts · 58d
Scapegoating a whole age bracket instead of people who actually have money is cool
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 57d
As an antagonist to full time RTO, I delight in bringing my own lunch and eating it in the food court.
stringere@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 56d
Microwave more fish
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 55d
You know what? I actually love kippers. I think I shall bring cans of the stuff for my 1000 snack.
stringere@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 55d
That's the spirit!
Gammelfisch@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 57d
The piss poor US income distribution is a massive factor.
Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 58d
I've always brought my lunch, I have better things to spend that money on
theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 58d
They want obedient workers who still manage to benefit their soaring profits.
comeonitsnotlike@feddit.nu · -1 pts · 57d
I just can't stand boomers. I will generalize because you are all complicit. Fuck you so fucking hard, as in get fucked to fucking everfuck and and never back.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 56d
The Boomers were victims of the Military-Industrial Complex just like the rest of us. After WWII, the Industrialists didn't want to give up that sweet war profit, so they institutionalized it.
The Boomers grew up in that post-war boom, living lives of abundance before the hammer dropped. It was a great time for white nuclear families. Who can blame them for wanting that to continue?
Unfortunately, they actively tried to prevent others from accessing that same great life, and that's where the problems really begin.
comeonitsnotlike@feddit.nu · 0 pts · 56d
I do understand what are you saying. My fucks come from the fact that they, not all but the absolute majority of them, actively pulled that fucking ladder up and made every generation after them bear the horrible fruits of their decisions. They can fuck off. If I don't have to speak to them ever again (because they can never be wrong, either way), I am very content with such outcome.
YtA4QCam2A9j7EfTgHrH@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 57d
What has a younger generation done that is different?
Generalizing any group built on arbitrary things is stupid(blaming all conservatives on the other hand makes more sense given their ideology brought us here). I’m sure there are plenty of boomers that have done more for equality, the environment, etc than you or I.
kevinsky@feddit.nl · 0 pts · 56d
Nobody that has or had to work any kind of regular job for a living is your enemy. Don't allow yourself to be mobilized against the wrong people.
The boombers didn't sell their own well paying jobs/our economy to the likes of China. Their employers did.