What even is money at this point
What even is money at this point
Comments
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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
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Yeah but think of how cheap TVs that you don't need are.
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But no matter how much ketchup I use, I can't cover up the bitter taste of the TVs lcd panel.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I use this simple formula:
Fisrt count the number of years Trump is in office, then multiply that by 0.5. Now multiply that by the price you would normally guess the cost to be.
So if Trump is in office for 5 years, and you think something should cost $20 it turns out to be:
(5*0.5)(20)=50Making that thing that should only cost $20 actually cost $50
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I shouldn't need to sound like a 90 year old at my age.
"When I was a kid this was a dollar!!!"
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They were saying that because it was weird to them. Inflation as we know it didn't really start until Nixon.
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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.
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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
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Which school of economics did you learn?
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bullshit mostly. i was a micro guy not a macro guy.
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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.
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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.
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It's one banana, Michael! What could it possibly cost? $10???
Yes.
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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.
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This is also why we could decide billionaires own nothing.
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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.
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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.
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Fooled them, I already don’t go into stores. I order everything online. ….. where. … they. …. Probably …. Already …. Do … that
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Aight time to stop careyng my phone around to stores.
Only paler lists anymore.
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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.
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Probably not video, just pinpoint geofencing on your phone.
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Maybe I got the neural implant already and the implant makes you forget you got the implant.
or, the far more likely option, life is just a dream and that's why things appear when you think about them.
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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?
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https://theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money-ju-1819571322/
Time to share this antiquated "news."
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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
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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
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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!
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My hair ties were only $0.96 for a 30 pack before summer. The fucking things are $6 now!
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Money is just pieces of paper and digital numbers. It's only worth anything because we say it is.
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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.
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alright i thought I wasn't racist but today i realized i don't like gray people. that's disturbing as fuck.
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Yeah, at this point it might just be some random number you see on the checkout screen.
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Tariffs?
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Minimal wage hasn’t been raised since 2009 in the US
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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
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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.
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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!
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Well yeah, then we would have inflation! /s
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And it was only raised by like 15 cents or some shit
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And also the kidnapping of farm workers
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think I have sensory issues with both money and time.
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Welcome to who's line is it anyway! Where the rules are made up and the points don't matter. 😉
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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.
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Pepperidge Farm Remembers:
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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)
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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.
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Found the shitcoin advocate
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Rugpull enjoyer.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Which makes it less stable and reliable and shady transaction are more difficult to track down.
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Bonus:
Thank you. Every time someone says "The Economy™" as something that should drive policy instead of being an effect of it, I get a little twitch.
Why should I give a shit about their economy anyway?
And yet whenever you try to bring this up you get folks from all sides of the political spectrum losing their shit.
There's a million questions involved in this statement. Who does the work required to grow and raise food? How do they survive? Is housing provided? What about the people working at the processing plants and truck drivers? Store clerks and security guards, etc. etc.
Perhaps socialism really is the solution.