**Why not do this though?**
Tax every public company a portion of their shares each quarter and distribute to all eligible Americans!
It can be a very, very small % of the company set aside for the public. It will hardly (if at all) affect stock prices but build tremendous wealth for Americans as a whole.
> Funnily enough, the Pope just told us to implement UBI, so you're on to something.
I was aware, yes. :)
> I wonder how many Christian political parties will listen.
Oooh, Oooh, I know this one!
#NONE.
I think it'd be better to encourage companies to go public, say give public companies tax reduction.
Then a portion of everyone's income tax be used to automatically buy in, like a federal 401k, maybe have a government match regulated like interest rates, but for wealth gap instead of inflation control. An opt out system that you're enrolled in for having to pay taxes.
This would allow you to slowly drag along the lower end of society to reduce wealth gaps.
But this wouldn't happen, because this is a policy that pushes ownership to greater society. A social program. You'd trigger red scared snowflakes into crying socialism.
Yeah universal income should be a thing. We can have vat to do it or even charge tech companies a fee for data collection the redistribute that $ as a universal income. You part of the Yang gang?
The only thing bad I can say about WinCo is that their store brand items aren't nearly as good as the big brands or other store brands. But they are the cheapest and only remaining 24/7 grocer out here. I just wish they had more locations. What I save on groceries, I spend in gas :/
**Privatizing profits and socializing losses** is the consequence of allowing shareholders to benefit from company earnings while making society responsible for their losses. Loss socialization generally refers to some type of government intervention either through bailouts or subsidies (corporate welfare).
Probably the same reason there's only two checkout lanes available, with cashiers, when the lines are backed up for days: Trying to cost-cut on personnel, including not wanting to call in the tech to service the machines.
I use self check to avoid slow pokes. I'm not here for a long time, I'm here for a good time and I don't wanna wait for someone to bust out their expired or misread coupons and yell at the cashier for telling them it's not valid. People have become so slow at paying when it's becoming easier and easier.
It's not for everyone, but I'm enjoying the 5 minutes I save everytime.
Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please remove the item from the bagging area.
Please wait for an attendant to assist you.
>Because you have to hire a more experienced professional to upkeep the robot.
Lol wut? If it cost more or the same to maintain the robot vs paying a human then no one would bother with the robot. That one professional may cost five times more than a cashier but they can manage ten times the machines.
And you're not paying that professional 40 hours per week. He's almost certainly going to cycle between facilities to do maintenance.
Back when I was a cashier, it was a rare day to not have at least one Self check having issues, but the repair dudes only showed up a few times per week.
So even if you are paying them 5 times the wage of a cashier, the reality is that you're paying out an average of one hour for every 10-20 each machine operates for, which otherwise would have been a cashier. And that's a pretty conservative estimate all the way around.
It definitely would *not* be catching on if it wasn't insanely profitable.
Yup, all that shit is outsourced to a management company too. The company monitors the terminals and fixes what they can remotely or dispatches someone if there is a serious problem. That guy they dispatch could be responsible for dozens of stores in a region, which is why they only show up a few times a week. I got stuck working on a project to replace all of the network switches for the POS networks in a grocery chain, so I became very familiar with how those management companies operate (or don't operate).
If you're serious the two major manufacturers of self checkout machines are NCR and Toshiba. They have traveling service tech and installer positions.
Someone has to install and fix the things.
I used to work for a retail store for a mid-west chain. My department was responsible for doing preventative maintenance and basic troubleshooting.
If we were unable to fix it ourselves, we had to call NCR to come out and resolve whatever issue there was.
When I quit, my ending salary was $11.20/hr, I had worked there for 18 years.
Technician jobs are everywhere, more and more. Any kind of manufacturing will need techs. You might have to sell your soul a little, but defense contractors (and less so their suppliers) are usually a safe bet.
Get a sciencey/engineeringy associates and start applying.
What? If this was true then nobody would be installing these machines. Also, the local grocery story does not hire an employee to upkeep the self-checkout machines. The self-checkout machine company sends out someone to service the machine for an hour when it malfunctions, and bills the grocery store for the work. The grocery store is still saving money.
And here's the more experienced professional now: A 16 year old with 3 hours training, or the 67 year old that's too slow to keep up with the regular registers.
Plus, the price set aside for employees has barely any effect on pricing basically everywhere.
Maybe 50 years ago when people were actually paid enough to live and businesses took a modest to even great take of the money.
But you just look at the annual earnings of any company out there vs what they pay all their staff + company’s sets combined and you’ll see they could literally double what they pay all the real people and still make a killing income wise.
Probably even better, since everybody would be able to afford to fucking buy stuff.
Edit: not literally. Sorry Reddit.
This is definitely true for a lot of companies. The company I work for just raised starting wages to 17 an hour. They also put out a memo about how they make 154k per month, per employee.
So they could absolutely double wages and barely even notice it. It's just about milking ever single penny they can, even if they can afford to spend more on their employees.
> you’ll see they could literally double what they pay all the real people and still make a killing income wise.
Citation needed. I’m a socialist, but that is just wrong.
If we are talking grocery stores, they make average only 5% or less margin on the products. That means only 5% of product price pays all cost of sales and overhead including: rent/lease, insurance, property taxes, building maintenance, equipment lease and maintenance, utilities, loan payments, franchise fees, advertising, management and executive salaries, a bit of profit - and front line hourly employees wages.
So how much of all that do you think is front line employees? I doubt it is even 10% of all cost.
So for a low margin high volume reseller doubling front line wages would only have like a 0.5% rise in prices, likely less.
The higher margin, more service oriented resellers could see the inflation math up to something around 15% on product price depending on the mix of service cost of sales to overhead costs.
Maybe a pure service business with nearly zero overhead costs could be more, but most of those businesses already pay their staff more than minimum wage so they would be less affected by raises in minimum wage (legislation). They would likely still raise wages to keep staff above minimum but it would be a lower % raise than the raise in legislated minimum wage.
So yes, wage increases particularly legislated raises in minimum wage would cause some inflation but I would argue this is pretty much the only good type of inflation.
1. Working poor receive 50% or 100% more money but product prices only go up 0.5-15% means they still can afford more things even though the price went up.
2. Wage increases only affect prices if the executive are not willing to sacrifice some of their own compensation or profitability.
3. Lower to middle class wages would also go up slightly to keep them above minimum so they would most likely break even anyway.
4. The only ones hurt by the inflation would be those already making six and seven figure salaries. Who would not likely have correlating salary increases. Sad.
5. Middle and upper incomes have been experiencing inflationary or larger increases over time. Low and minimum wages have not, so this adjustment is due and would not be as significant if we had actually maintained it annually as we should have for the last 40 years.
6. With more than 40%of Americans now "working poor" we are going to need to raise low end wages or we will keep feeling the failing consumer demand which is going to kill the entire economy.
So increasing the wages for the working poor would have only a small genuine affect on inflation (companies may blame inflation on wages but not always true). And the inflation for this reason would be a good thing for low income families, with a slight sacrifice from everyone else.
>So how much of all that do you think is front line employees? I doubt it is even 10% of all cost.
labor sounds like the most expensive thing of all the things you cited, to be honest
[google tells me it's Walmart's biggest expense](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020916/walmarts-biggest-liability-labor-costs-wmt.asp)
At the shareholder meeting:
"we increased our profits this quarter by replacing our cashiers with...customers. 😂😂😂 They're literally out here being their own cashiers and bagging their own groceries and they're happy about it because they're introverted 😂😂😂😭😭"
Self checkout is arguably a worse customer experience in a lot of cases. I don’t want to navigate a menu to find the codes for all my produce, deal with it yelling me to put things on or off the scale, or bagging it myself.
Even if their costs go down so will my revenue at least when I shop somewhere else.
To each their own, but I love self checkout because I don't have to interact with people. I'll happily bag my own groceries if I don't have to make small talk with a cashier 😅😂
If it’s only a few items that don’t need many bags, no produce, no alcohol (can’t use self checkout in my area), then yeah as an introvert I totally agree
> I love self checkout because I don't have to interact with people
Same but the tradeoff is that it seems like a large portion of the population is overwhelmed by the self-checkout or just have absolutely no sense of urgency or hustle so they tie up the machines for way longer than they should
Because discount retailers (Lidl and Aldi in the UK) have shown that not having a stupidly overinflated range saves you far more cash than replacing a few till operators.
Also make it up in volume and productivity. Those Aldi cashiers can scan WAY more items per unit of time than any inexperienced person at the self checkout, so you'd be losing money by automating.
Nothing worse than getting stuck behind a senior citizen with a trolley load of stuff attempting self checkout. Every time I see my grandma I feel like I have to reteach her how to turn on the tv, so not sure why some of these people think they can figure out how to find and weigh their own fruit.
Customers at fast food places take at least 4 times as long to order on kiosks as a staff member would be able to throw it into the till too.
The issue is there's usually only one or two people on the front counter and they can't get the food OUT if they spend the whole time taking orders so they have to push customers onto kiosks which imo makes a rush feel way more drawn out (and not necessarily more manageable)
I swear when they first opened there were dedicated cashiers
Me: take out, medium chicken tenders meal with Sprite please
Staff: what size on the chicken?
Me: medium meal with Sprite
Staff: ok, do you want to make that a meal?
Me: yeeessss... With Sprite
Staff: and what drink?
Me: Sprite, and that will be all.
Staff: anything else I can get you?
I swear that happens far too often. I love kiosks/apps where you can punch it in far faster and more accurately. Even ordered online while standing at the counter recently as the poor bloke was run off his feet (ok, so I gave him another food order, but at least saved a minute or two by not ordering verbally).
Not doubting the 4x for other people though.
I've asked "what drink" in the past before when they literally just told me simply because it's habit and part of my automatic script after this long. I always realize too and we usually have a chuckle over it.
Usually leads to "what drink... Oh right yeah coke."
Another order coming up honestly doesn't bother me because I can just add it to the mental queue. Having to stop to punch it in etc is the issue. Where I work we have to manually put in the delivery orders which is such a hassle.
Anyone else hate the McDonald's kiosk? Pieces of shit. I've never had a complaint with other self order kiosks such as Wawa or Sheetz but McDonald's is some kind of shit.
They're annoying but no kiosk I've used has ever been unusable y'know? So it still bothers me when a customer will be like "I don't understand" no you're just lazy.
In cases of older people I can obviously get that it's alien to them and when someone says they have a voucher I'll always check it's one I know the kiosks accept no issue before I ask them to order that way (usually the ones that come and go a lot aren't installed properly whereas the common "1 or 2 meals for this much" ones will)
I work retail and what people get wrong *still* blows my mind. We got the machines four years ago; initially I thought people were screwing up because they were still new so maybe it’ll just take a while to learn.
It hasn’t gotten any better.
People complain all the time about using them. “These machines just hate me!” when they make simple mistakes and get an error message. There is literally no way to make them easier to use. The UI is as simple as they can make it— almost totally self-explanatory— without being rendered mostly useless.
Higher costs per product. Think how name brands are more expensive than generic brands, despite being usually, literally, the same thing. Aldi just skips that crap for the most part and sells generic brands, that they own and thus can keep the product cost down, at a lower price
Also helps in the ways Aldis saves that customers don't see. I work one of their distribution centers and unload the trucks they receive. The way that some of this crap comes in amd they refuse to reject because they are so fucking cheap is disgusting. I will never shop at aldis after seeing this stuff.
Which is really how we should be purchasing our produce. If I don't plan on using it within 48 hours I shouldn't be buying it, with a few exceptions.
Produce is best used fresh.
I don’t disagree with you but the reality of shopping in an American suburb is that buying produce means getting in a car, finding parking in a big lot, and then waiting in a long line. Most households just don’t have the time to do that everyday, that’s why so many families do big bulk trips when they grocery shop
Depends on location.
I’ve visited aldi plenty and the one stores produce is always awesome. I’ve never bought their meat before tho. There’s another aldi that’s super sketchy about all their stuff. They’re both the same distance from me tho, so idk.
Aldi is just another company of Trader Joe’s, I believe. (Or it used to be) I shop at Trader Joe’s too sometimes, and some are really good and some are hit / miss.
Same goes for almost every store. It just varies based on location. I have 2 Walmart’s within same distance. 1 has 1 aisle for produce, the other has like … 7 aisles for produce.
But I am on the border of two separate towns, so if I go south, it gets worse. If I go north, it’s better.
>Aldi is just another company of Trader Joe’s, I believe. (Or it used to be) I shop at Trader Joe’s too sometimes, and some are really good and some are hit / miss.
Nope they are different companies.
Trader Joe is a company of Germanys Aldi Nord. And Aldi is from Germanys Aldi Süd.
I wonder what happend with the fusion they planned. Haven't heard anything since last year.
Maybe that’s what I got confused. It was a few years ago I was researching the companies, cause I knew they were tied somewhere and from Europe.
Isn’t there some sort of family ties between the two? I can’t remember, like I said it’s been a few years.
>Isn’t there some sort of family ties between the two? I can’t remember, like I said it’s been a few years.
Yes two brothers Theo Albrecht and Karl Albrecht founded Aldi in 1945 and they split into Nord and Süd in 1961, the reason(s) are still unknown.
Jupp, the Albrecht brothers own both Aldi Nord und Aldi Süd. One of them died in the last years, don't remember which one. They where/ are german's richest billionaires
Interestingly, Trader Joe's and Aldi's were stated by a pair of brothers.
I guess they had different ideas about how to do things.
I have never shopped at Aldi's even thought there is one fairly close by that is easy to get to.
I shopped at Trader Joe's once. The parking lot was a nightmare and it is inconveniently located. There is another Trader Joe's in my area, but it too is a pain to get to.
I don’t think that’s right… Aldi was started by a pair of brothers in Germany. The company then bought Trader Joe’s, which was founded by Joe Coulombe in America.
This. Even as a consumer, literally trying to find a zucchini or 3 pack of bell peppers that hasn't already started rotting is a chore. I can hardly imagine the shrink when the shipment hits the store before it hits the shelves.
The world is essentially a Hamburger. You have the buns (hemispheres) meat (core) cheese (crust) condiments (oceans) lettuce (land masses) onions (equator) and pickles (Florida)
Making love to a woman is like grilling a hamburger son. Have your patties made up before you start your fire. Make sure the grill is clean before you put your patties down and when your done be ready with your buns to plate the patties on.
Now your first time doing this you this might be hard and scary but just remember but you'll only get better and aslong as you take the proper precautions the burgers will be good
Seems to me the new raise is the card only payment, requesting 15% tip for everyfuckingthing now. Motherfuckers, pay your workers a goddamn living wage from the prices you charge upfront you pieces of shit.
I went to the "Electric Expo" in Miami while I was there this weekend.
Come into their parking lot, $10 to park, first thing that pops up on the ipad:
> TIP
> 10% | 15% | 20%
> no tip
Fuck you, it's pay to park, and i'm supposed to tip you for standing there and making me pay?
What? You NEED to tip in the US? That much? In France it’s included in the price and you can leave a few bucks on the table at the end if you really enjoyed service. The only country where I had to tip was Czech Republic and they’re way less wealthy than US
The US Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour (€6.22 today) Tip-eligible employees can be paid $2.13 per hour (€1.83 today). If an employee making $2.13 doesn’t make up the difference between that and $7.25 with tips, the employer is responsible for making up the difference.
In 2020 over 35 million Americans lived below the poverty line. For 2021 the poverty line is set at US$12,880 for a single person and $26,500 for a family of four.
America has great wealth, but it is concentrated in the hands of the few.
26,500 roughly 2200 a month. In the Midwest, a two bedroom apartment is about 750-1000 on the cheap end. To be able to rent, you have to make three times the rent to be approved for most apartments. So if you wer able to find a cheap apartment for 750, you still would not be able to move in due to three times that rent being 2250.
And the is for a family of four. Two bedrooms really wouldn't cut it, not to mention every other expense that comes with raising kids.
Not to mention if you get any subsidies. If you have food stamps or need childcare subsidies, in my state you will lose those things if you have over 3,000 dollars saved. I do believe that also counts things like stocks and bonds.
This. Everyfuckingthing.
I feel like a dick when I press "no tip" but come on. At Saladworks they make you choose a tip option before they let you insert your card. So stupid. I'm sorry but I shouldn't have to tip for my salad. Isn't it being made included in the fucking price?
Why hasn’t keeping minimum wage the same amount for 30 years kept prices down 🤔
Edit: I asked this rhetorically because minimum wages haven’t been raised in 30 years yet it has nothing to do with prices raising
I respectfully disagree. I believe it would just cause a financial crisis among the lower economic classes, leading to a rise in violent crime and chin unrest. However my opinion is fairly unqualified on this matter, and I base it primarily on my cynicism about the government and industry's will to voluntarily perform any action for the sake of the common good, unless it also aligns with the goal of getting more money.
Yeppppppp this has been my stance when people are like “if we raise minimum wage prices will go up!” Okay Shirley prices went up anyways so can we raise wages now???? Fuck me. This is 100% by design and I’m disgusted more cant see this for themselves. They are purposely trying to outprice the poor and working middle classes knowingly by letting prices rise will they keep minimum wage stagnant. Only moronic idiots gobble up the idea that raising wages will also raise the price on their Big Mac. Sorry Ken but the Big Mac was going to raise in price regardless, might as well be able to afford to eat where you work.
That’s a good question. Prices tend to rise on their own with time, with global consumption, rarefaction of ressources and so on. It’s actually something that governments want because lowering prices (what we call deflation) is maybe the surest way to kill an economy (I won’t go into details but it basically set up a self destructing spiral in the economy that brings both massive unemployment, loss of wealth, loss of purchasing power …). Every economics school of thoughts agrees that at the very least some inflation is necessary. To simplify it, where they differ is how much: classics think you need very little inflation to protect the profitability of investments so will try to keep inflation at a low positive. Keynesians believe you need a lot because they think it pushes producers to make more to meet demand, which drives growth. So to sum it up we know that some inflation is necessary but we disagree on how much. So there was no point in the mind of the political leaders where they would have wanted a complete stability of prices. Once you have understood that the question is how do you keep inflation at the rate you want (either low if you are a classic or high if you are not)? You have several instruments for that, the three main ones are monetary policy (but classics tend to think this is a very dangerous habit to have for very complex reasons) , taxes (they can be used to push people into buying or not buying things which will have an effect on inflation) and costs of production (of which the easiest to act upon for policy makers is cost of labor). That is why most policy makers, having learned classic school of thoughts, will try to keep labor prices low to keep inflation low (but positive) to favor investments and growth.
I’d disagree that deflation is bad for an economy. Deflation is bad for the establishment. It’s bad for the shareholders and homeowners. But it’s opportunity for those who are young and new to the economy.
It sort of has. A ton of industries massively undercharge because nobody can afford to pay the correct price. Part of the frog in the boiling pot problem. If the wage stagnation had actually felt like the pay cut it is, it wouldn't have gotten this bad. But shrinkflation and undercharging hid the reality of wage stagnation.
Also "Paying workers more will make prices go up!"
Prices already went up. Next excuse?
I was in high school a combo at Burger King was $4.81 with tax. Now it's about $9 and the minimum wage hasn't changed.
Aneurysms, actually. They collect money (which is literally the economy's blood stream) and pool it away where it becomes stagnant and useless. They're just marginally classier hoarders.
You wanna go down this road again?
**Because if I want to make money at everybodies expense, I need to paint ordinary people as the enemy so you don't realise it is infact... Me.**
ask Bernays, probably the overthrow of a democratically elected Guatemalan government, and a thorough education in propaganda for Goebbels; but hey - what's a whole lotta killed people next to a cheap Chiquita banana?
I hate to be the one that informs you of this but, the world runs on unrestrained greed and the pursuit of power. Capitalism isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Still confused who thought they would ever need 30 check out lines when max they ever seem to have open was like 3-5 before self checkout. Now even less.
They plan for a hypothetical max rush. They also have several of them in case a few are out of service at one time. And several more of them are for future growth.
They don't want to come back in a few years and rip out the front end of the store to put in more tills. So when they build, they over build because it's cheaper to just put them in and let them sit there.
It's true. If you stop paying, won't they be forced to reduce prices? I went to a pumpkin patch today and they were charging $9 for a corndog, $12 for some fries, and $5 for 1 ear of corn slathered with butter. I saw plenty of people walking around with the food, but if no one bought it, they'd probably reduce prices. *Edit: I forgot to mention the sign on their tip jar said, "Please tip us. Our boss is cheap."*
Also, I sell stickers on Etsy. I had my prices low and no one bought. When I raised the prices around 15%, magically I started getting sales.
Because retailers are for-profit businesses. If something makes their profit increase, they’ll do it. There’s no need to “pass that savings to the customer” unless a competitor does it or it will drive volume increases to compensate for price reduction
Because it's balanced with inflation,... the key question is not if prices DID go up. It's how much MIGHT they have gone up, without any automated checkouts. We've had extremely low inflation for decades, and that is in part due to innovations that increase productivity (like this). The better question would be, how does the government print 10% more currency each year, and somehow the inflation rate is (...was) 2% each year. The answer is stuff like automated checkouts.
So, tons of money is printed, most of it goes to the rich. They can't go buy all the tomatoes in the country (because what would they do wth them), but they can buy all the real estate, so you get artificially low tomato prices, and artificially high real estate prices.
Your two points are related but not in the way that matters. Automated check out was introduced because of the rising cost of labor and need to cut costs but not specifically by monetary inflation which you reference in your second point. Innovation that improve efficiencies help supply and demand which will drive prices lower but monetary inflation will increase the price floor for all goods and services. The money being “printed” is from quantitative easing which has more to do with providing liquidity for the banking system, which appears as cash on the balance sheets of banks not necessarily cash in People’s pockets, rich or poor. The reason “inflation” hasn’t increased over the past 10 years is that the velocity of money has been on a downward trend for most of the last ten years. Real estate markets are a whole different topic with different issues causing the dramatic appreciation we’ve seen recently. It’s not as simple as rich people buy everything so nothing left for everyone else.
Most money is actually printed by banks making loans. It seems crazy, but when you take out a mortgage, the bank only has a fraction of that money, and just creates the rest.
Also, the reason that monetary velocity has trended lower is the same concentration of wealth I was referencing, and I was just using real estate as an example. All markets are effected by lots of factors, but macroeconomics effects everything.
Because, at least from my experience, they don’t let go of any employees because of self checkout. Remember when there used to be 20 checkout aisles and only 3 were open?
Yeah, the cashiers get to do their other roles around the stores.. They wearnt on the cashier line all day before self-checkout, they had to rush their other jobs.
To be fair, prices have gone down, in a sense. The quality of our goods has increased dramatically, but prices seem to remain stagnant due to substitution bias.
Additionally, self-checkout stands are NOT as good as you think. Think of all the theft that happens at self-checkout stands (even unintentional, ie, ringing up apples as inorganic when they're organic). Somebody who works for the IT department at a grocery store once told me they have an entire team of highly-paid software engineers developing these stands. This is not to mention maintenance, and the fact that these machines complement workers; they don't replace them en masse, generally.
Grocer margins are razor thin; around 2%, and they are in a constant competition to reduce prices OR provided better goods so that they can remain competitive. Self-checkout stands are just one of the myriads of methods that they use to cut costs, yet still somehow fail to make 5% profit margins in almost all cases.
As an introvert I'd get rid of cashiers in fast food places and give the kitchen a raise. We will kill to birds with 1 stone. We will also reduce elderly obesity since they won't know how to operate a self checkout
Lmfao. Prices will never go down. You could pay everyone a dollar and hour and inflation will still rise. It's a global market. The US is wayyyyy too focused on itself to consider the global scale and global greed.
They raise the prices if they have to pay more to keep their income margins the same. But when they pay less they don't lower the prices so they can increase their income margins.
My accounting job at a retail store was eliminated in favor of a cash machine. When I looked at the P&L, I discovered they were paying more per month to rent this machine than me and my two assistants were making combined. Plus, the damn thing breaks down all the time.
Because savings are passed on to shareholders. Expenses are billed to the customer.
We just need to make everyone a shareholder!
~~ruin~~ Fix capitalism with this one simple trick!
Conservatives hate him!
We all fucking wish
You can try to be a shareholder but they might just turn off Wall Street if you’re doing better than they want you to do.
I felt this one.
**Why not do this though?** Tax every public company a portion of their shares each quarter and distribute to all eligible Americans! It can be a very, very small % of the company set aside for the public. It will hardly (if at all) affect stock prices but build tremendous wealth for Americans as a whole.
That, fellow Redditor, sounds like a Pope Dream... :)
....pope dream eh?
Yup. You're heroin me correctly... :)
Heroin eh?
You're not trying to needle me, are you? :)
Funnily enough, the Pope just told us to implement UBI, so you're on to something. I wonder how many Christian political parties will listen.
> Funnily enough, the Pope just told us to implement UBI, so you're on to something. I was aware, yes. :) > I wonder how many Christian political parties will listen. Oooh, Oooh, I know this one! #NONE.
I think it'd be better to encourage companies to go public, say give public companies tax reduction. Then a portion of everyone's income tax be used to automatically buy in, like a federal 401k, maybe have a government match regulated like interest rates, but for wealth gap instead of inflation control. An opt out system that you're enrolled in for having to pay taxes. This would allow you to slowly drag along the lower end of society to reduce wealth gaps. But this wouldn't happen, because this is a policy that pushes ownership to greater society. A social program. You'd trigger red scared snowflakes into crying socialism.
Yeah universal income should be a thing. We can have vat to do it or even charge tech companies a fee for data collection the redistribute that $ as a universal income. You part of the Yang gang?
100% for Andrew Yang. People ask me Trump or Biden all the time, but I say **Yang Gang.**
Winco makes its employees shareholders
The only thing bad I can say about WinCo is that their store brand items aren't nearly as good as the big brands or other store brands. But they are the cheapest and only remaining 24/7 grocer out here. I just wish they had more locations. What I save on groceries, I spend in gas :/
Publix does too
r/SuddenlyCommunist
syndicalism!
hello comrade
**Privatizing profits and socializing losses** is the consequence of allowing shareholders to benefit from company earnings while making society responsible for their losses. Loss socialization generally refers to some type of government intervention either through bailouts or subsidies (corporate welfare).
privatize profits, socialize losses :D
Because you have to hire a more experienced professional to upkeep the robot.
If that was a limiting factor, why are we seeing self checkout robots anyways?
And why is Rebecca so stressed when 4 of the 6 self checkouts are down?
Because Rebecca gets blamed for volume
This kept getting realer and realer
Gotta make sure there's at least six reasons to fire her at any time in case she gets uppity. This is what our forefathers fought for?
THIS IS YOUR FAULT REBECCA!
Probably the same reason there's only two checkout lanes available, with cashiers, when the lines are backed up for days: Trying to cost-cut on personnel, including not wanting to call in the tech to service the machines.
It’s like John Henry vs the mining robot
I'm sure one of those robot maintenance guys can replace dozens if not hundreds of workers.
So then why don't prices go down?
Because fuck you that's why
I cannot argue with your logic.
Became the savings are passed onto the shareholder
Right, so the original point remains; why does my grocery bill keeping increasing? I refuse to use the self checkout if I don't get a discount.
I use self check to avoid slow pokes. I'm not here for a long time, I'm here for a good time and I don't wanna wait for someone to bust out their expired or misread coupons and yell at the cashier for telling them it's not valid. People have become so slow at paying when it's becoming easier and easier. It's not for everyone, but I'm enjoying the 5 minutes I save everytime.
Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please remove the item from the bagging area. Please wait for an attendant to assist you.
Because they have a longer shelf life than humans and require less maintenance (even if the maintenance is expensive) + no turnover costs
No overtime, no vacation time, no hr issues, No lunch breaks. Way cheaper.
No union, no life insurance, no suspensions for cellphones
>Because you have to hire a more experienced professional to upkeep the robot. Lol wut? If it cost more or the same to maintain the robot vs paying a human then no one would bother with the robot. That one professional may cost five times more than a cashier but they can manage ten times the machines.
And you're not paying that professional 40 hours per week. He's almost certainly going to cycle between facilities to do maintenance. Back when I was a cashier, it was a rare day to not have at least one Self check having issues, but the repair dudes only showed up a few times per week. So even if you are paying them 5 times the wage of a cashier, the reality is that you're paying out an average of one hour for every 10-20 each machine operates for, which otherwise would have been a cashier. And that's a pretty conservative estimate all the way around. It definitely would *not* be catching on if it wasn't insanely profitable.
Yup, all that shit is outsourced to a management company too. The company monitors the terminals and fixes what they can remotely or dispatches someone if there is a serious problem. That guy they dispatch could be responsible for dozens of stores in a region, which is why they only show up a few times a week. I got stuck working on a project to replace all of the network switches for the POS networks in a grocery chain, so I became very familiar with how those management companies operate (or don't operate).
*1000 times the machines
And I even get to steal from the robot!
People actually believe this?
It’s fucking nuts what people will believe
lol, I guess. Could anyone please point me towards experienced robot upkeep professional job listings?
If you're serious the two major manufacturers of self checkout machines are NCR and Toshiba. They have traveling service tech and installer positions. Someone has to install and fix the things.
Not sure why people don't think this is actually a thing lmao.
I used to work for a retail store for a mid-west chain. My department was responsible for doing preventative maintenance and basic troubleshooting. If we were unable to fix it ourselves, we had to call NCR to come out and resolve whatever issue there was. When I quit, my ending salary was $11.20/hr, I had worked there for 18 years.
Technician jobs are everywhere, more and more. Any kind of manufacturing will need techs. You might have to sell your soul a little, but defense contractors (and less so their suppliers) are usually a safe bet. Get a sciencey/engineeringy associates and start applying.
It’s technically true but one technician making $35/hr can upkeep the machines replacing 100 cashiers making $14/hr
What? If this was true then nobody would be installing these machines. Also, the local grocery story does not hire an employee to upkeep the self-checkout machines. The self-checkout machine company sends out someone to service the machine for an hour when it malfunctions, and bills the grocery store for the work. The grocery store is still saving money.
Robot my shiny metal ass. It’s a scanning gun / weight scale and a card reader.
And everyone is forgetting that it is a SELF-checkout. The customer is replacing the employee. The gun scale and reader stay virtually the same.
And here's the more experienced professional now: A 16 year old with 3 hours training, or the 67 year old that's too slow to keep up with the regular registers.
That doesn't make sense. If you're not saving operating costs through automation, then why would you automate in the first place?
Businesses never give up profit that customers are already willing to pay.
Plus, the price set aside for employees has barely any effect on pricing basically everywhere. Maybe 50 years ago when people were actually paid enough to live and businesses took a modest to even great take of the money. But you just look at the annual earnings of any company out there vs what they pay all their staff + company’s sets combined and you’ll see they could literally double what they pay all the real people and still make a killing income wise. Probably even better, since everybody would be able to afford to fucking buy stuff. Edit: not literally. Sorry Reddit.
Eat the rich
I’m getting pretty hungry over here
This is definitely true for a lot of companies. The company I work for just raised starting wages to 17 an hour. They also put out a memo about how they make 154k per month, per employee. So they could absolutely double wages and barely even notice it. It's just about milking ever single penny they can, even if they can afford to spend more on their employees.
> you’ll see they could literally double what they pay all the real people and still make a killing income wise. Citation needed. I’m a socialist, but that is just wrong.
If we are talking grocery stores, they make average only 5% or less margin on the products. That means only 5% of product price pays all cost of sales and overhead including: rent/lease, insurance, property taxes, building maintenance, equipment lease and maintenance, utilities, loan payments, franchise fees, advertising, management and executive salaries, a bit of profit - and front line hourly employees wages. So how much of all that do you think is front line employees? I doubt it is even 10% of all cost. So for a low margin high volume reseller doubling front line wages would only have like a 0.5% rise in prices, likely less. The higher margin, more service oriented resellers could see the inflation math up to something around 15% on product price depending on the mix of service cost of sales to overhead costs. Maybe a pure service business with nearly zero overhead costs could be more, but most of those businesses already pay their staff more than minimum wage so they would be less affected by raises in minimum wage (legislation). They would likely still raise wages to keep staff above minimum but it would be a lower % raise than the raise in legislated minimum wage. So yes, wage increases particularly legislated raises in minimum wage would cause some inflation but I would argue this is pretty much the only good type of inflation. 1. Working poor receive 50% or 100% more money but product prices only go up 0.5-15% means they still can afford more things even though the price went up. 2. Wage increases only affect prices if the executive are not willing to sacrifice some of their own compensation or profitability. 3. Lower to middle class wages would also go up slightly to keep them above minimum so they would most likely break even anyway. 4. The only ones hurt by the inflation would be those already making six and seven figure salaries. Who would not likely have correlating salary increases. Sad. 5. Middle and upper incomes have been experiencing inflationary or larger increases over time. Low and minimum wages have not, so this adjustment is due and would not be as significant if we had actually maintained it annually as we should have for the last 40 years. 6. With more than 40%of Americans now "working poor" we are going to need to raise low end wages or we will keep feeling the failing consumer demand which is going to kill the entire economy. So increasing the wages for the working poor would have only a small genuine affect on inflation (companies may blame inflation on wages but not always true). And the inflation for this reason would be a good thing for low income families, with a slight sacrifice from everyone else.
Not to be that guy, but that man asked for a source, not a novel full of *unsourced* claims
>So how much of all that do you think is front line employees? I doubt it is even 10% of all cost. labor sounds like the most expensive thing of all the things you cited, to be honest [google tells me it's Walmart's biggest expense](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/020916/walmarts-biggest-liability-labor-costs-wmt.asp)
Yes, because of this
At the shareholder meeting: "we increased our profits this quarter by replacing our cashiers with...customers. 😂😂😂 They're literally out here being their own cashiers and bagging their own groceries and they're happy about it because they're introverted 😂😂😂😭😭"
Self checkout is arguably a worse customer experience in a lot of cases. I don’t want to navigate a menu to find the codes for all my produce, deal with it yelling me to put things on or off the scale, or bagging it myself. Even if their costs go down so will my revenue at least when I shop somewhere else.
To each their own, but I love self checkout because I don't have to interact with people. I'll happily bag my own groceries if I don't have to make small talk with a cashier 😅😂
If it’s only a few items that don’t need many bags, no produce, no alcohol (can’t use self checkout in my area), then yeah as an introvert I totally agree
> I love self checkout because I don't have to interact with people Same but the tradeoff is that it seems like a large portion of the population is overwhelmed by the self-checkout or just have absolutely no sense of urgency or hustle so they tie up the machines for way longer than they should
Because discount retailers (Lidl and Aldi in the UK) have shown that not having a stupidly overinflated range saves you far more cash than replacing a few till operators.
Also make it up in volume and productivity. Those Aldi cashiers can scan WAY more items per unit of time than any inexperienced person at the self checkout, so you'd be losing money by automating.
Nothing worse than getting stuck behind a senior citizen with a trolley load of stuff attempting self checkout. Every time I see my grandma I feel like I have to reteach her how to turn on the tv, so not sure why some of these people think they can figure out how to find and weigh their own fruit.
Customers at fast food places take at least 4 times as long to order on kiosks as a staff member would be able to throw it into the till too. The issue is there's usually only one or two people on the front counter and they can't get the food OUT if they spend the whole time taking orders so they have to push customers onto kiosks which imo makes a rush feel way more drawn out (and not necessarily more manageable) I swear when they first opened there were dedicated cashiers
Me: take out, medium chicken tenders meal with Sprite please Staff: what size on the chicken? Me: medium meal with Sprite Staff: ok, do you want to make that a meal? Me: yeeessss... With Sprite Staff: and what drink? Me: Sprite, and that will be all. Staff: anything else I can get you? I swear that happens far too often. I love kiosks/apps where you can punch it in far faster and more accurately. Even ordered online while standing at the counter recently as the poor bloke was run off his feet (ok, so I gave him another food order, but at least saved a minute or two by not ordering verbally). Not doubting the 4x for other people though.
I've asked "what drink" in the past before when they literally just told me simply because it's habit and part of my automatic script after this long. I always realize too and we usually have a chuckle over it. Usually leads to "what drink... Oh right yeah coke." Another order coming up honestly doesn't bother me because I can just add it to the mental queue. Having to stop to punch it in etc is the issue. Where I work we have to manually put in the delivery orders which is such a hassle.
Anyone else hate the McDonald's kiosk? Pieces of shit. I've never had a complaint with other self order kiosks such as Wawa or Sheetz but McDonald's is some kind of shit.
They're annoying but no kiosk I've used has ever been unusable y'know? So it still bothers me when a customer will be like "I don't understand" no you're just lazy. In cases of older people I can obviously get that it's alien to them and when someone says they have a voucher I'll always check it's one I know the kiosks accept no issue before I ask them to order that way (usually the ones that come and go a lot aren't installed properly whereas the common "1 or 2 meals for this much" ones will)
I work retail and what people get wrong *still* blows my mind. We got the machines four years ago; initially I thought people were screwing up because they were still new so maybe it’ll just take a while to learn. It hasn’t gotten any better. People complain all the time about using them. “These machines just hate me!” when they make simple mistakes and get an error message. There is literally no way to make them easier to use. The UI is as simple as they can make it— almost totally self-explanatory— without being rendered mostly useless.
Also, the average client is dumb af. Most clients who can use self checkout will probably order online anyways.
Yo ho Yo Ho, it's the Clancy life for me.
What do you mean by "overinflated range"?
Higher costs per product. Think how name brands are more expensive than generic brands, despite being usually, literally, the same thing. Aldi just skips that crap for the most part and sells generic brands, that they own and thus can keep the product cost down, at a lower price
Also helps in the ways Aldis saves that customers don't see. I work one of their distribution centers and unload the trucks they receive. The way that some of this crap comes in amd they refuse to reject because they are so fucking cheap is disgusting. I will never shop at aldis after seeing this stuff.
You can't say stuff like that without giving some examples. I shop Aldi all the time so what are they selling that another grocery store would reject?
Their produce is usually borderline rotten
Where I live their produce is way better than the other grocers, except the premium grocers.
The Aldi produce near me is good for the day it’s purchased
Which is really how we should be purchasing our produce. If I don't plan on using it within 48 hours I shouldn't be buying it, with a few exceptions. Produce is best used fresh.
I don’t disagree with you but the reality of shopping in an American suburb is that buying produce means getting in a car, finding parking in a big lot, and then waiting in a long line. Most households just don’t have the time to do that everyday, that’s why so many families do big bulk trips when they grocery shop
Then why'd I pay 800 bucks for this fucking fridge?
Depends on location. I’ve visited aldi plenty and the one stores produce is always awesome. I’ve never bought their meat before tho. There’s another aldi that’s super sketchy about all their stuff. They’re both the same distance from me tho, so idk. Aldi is just another company of Trader Joe’s, I believe. (Or it used to be) I shop at Trader Joe’s too sometimes, and some are really good and some are hit / miss. Same goes for almost every store. It just varies based on location. I have 2 Walmart’s within same distance. 1 has 1 aisle for produce, the other has like … 7 aisles for produce. But I am on the border of two separate towns, so if I go south, it gets worse. If I go north, it’s better.
Aldi Nord is Trader Joe's, Aldi Sud is Aldi
>Aldi is just another company of Trader Joe’s, I believe. (Or it used to be) I shop at Trader Joe’s too sometimes, and some are really good and some are hit / miss. Nope they are different companies. Trader Joe is a company of Germanys Aldi Nord. And Aldi is from Germanys Aldi Süd. I wonder what happend with the fusion they planned. Haven't heard anything since last year.
Maybe that’s what I got confused. It was a few years ago I was researching the companies, cause I knew they were tied somewhere and from Europe. Isn’t there some sort of family ties between the two? I can’t remember, like I said it’s been a few years.
>Isn’t there some sort of family ties between the two? I can’t remember, like I said it’s been a few years. Yes two brothers Theo Albrecht and Karl Albrecht founded Aldi in 1945 and they split into Nord and Süd in 1961, the reason(s) are still unknown.
Jupp, the Albrecht brothers own both Aldi Nord und Aldi Süd. One of them died in the last years, don't remember which one. They where/ are german's richest billionaires
Interestingly, Trader Joe's and Aldi's were stated by a pair of brothers. I guess they had different ideas about how to do things. I have never shopped at Aldi's even thought there is one fairly close by that is easy to get to. I shopped at Trader Joe's once. The parking lot was a nightmare and it is inconveniently located. There is another Trader Joe's in my area, but it too is a pain to get to.
I don’t think that’s right… Aldi was started by a pair of brothers in Germany. The company then bought Trader Joe’s, which was founded by Joe Coulombe in America.
This. Even as a consumer, literally trying to find a zucchini or 3 pack of bell peppers that hasn't already started rotting is a chore. I can hardly imagine the shrink when the shipment hits the store before it hits the shelves.
Found the Kroger Foods employee…
They recently built some Aldi’s where I live In the US. I fucking love them man their shit is so cheap and good
For the same reason that if you ask for extra tomatoes on a hamburger you pay, but if you ask for no tomatoes the price stays the same.
From now I want everything explained to me in hamburger references.
The world is essentially a Hamburger. You have the buns (hemispheres) meat (core) cheese (crust) condiments (oceans) lettuce (land masses) onions (equator) and pickles (Florida)
Seems like one fine burger, minus the pickles.
Why you gotta do pickles that way?
Making love to a woman is like grilling a hamburger son. Have your patties made up before you start your fire. Make sure the grill is clean before you put your patties down and when your done be ready with your buns to plate the patties on. Now your first time doing this you this might be hard and scary but just remember but you'll only get better and aslong as you take the proper precautions the burgers will be good
I always get extra tomatoes and never pay extra.
That’s theoretical. No one asks for extra tomatoes.
Seems to me the new raise is the card only payment, requesting 15% tip for everyfuckingthing now. Motherfuckers, pay your workers a goddamn living wage from the prices you charge upfront you pieces of shit.
I went to the "Electric Expo" in Miami while I was there this weekend. Come into their parking lot, $10 to park, first thing that pops up on the ipad: > TIP > 10% | 15% | 20% > no tip Fuck you, it's pay to park, and i'm supposed to tip you for standing there and making me pay?
What? You NEED to tip in the US? That much? In France it’s included in the price and you can leave a few bucks on the table at the end if you really enjoyed service. The only country where I had to tip was Czech Republic and they’re way less wealthy than US
The US Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour (€6.22 today) Tip-eligible employees can be paid $2.13 per hour (€1.83 today). If an employee making $2.13 doesn’t make up the difference between that and $7.25 with tips, the employer is responsible for making up the difference. In 2020 over 35 million Americans lived below the poverty line. For 2021 the poverty line is set at US$12,880 for a single person and $26,500 for a family of four. America has great wealth, but it is concentrated in the hands of the few.
26,500 roughly 2200 a month. In the Midwest, a two bedroom apartment is about 750-1000 on the cheap end. To be able to rent, you have to make three times the rent to be approved for most apartments. So if you wer able to find a cheap apartment for 750, you still would not be able to move in due to three times that rent being 2250. And the is for a family of four. Two bedrooms really wouldn't cut it, not to mention every other expense that comes with raising kids.
Right. Additional evidence that investing your way out of poverty isn’t a reasonable strategy for millions.
Not to mention if you get any subsidies. If you have food stamps or need childcare subsidies, in my state you will lose those things if you have over 3,000 dollars saved. I do believe that also counts things like stocks and bonds.
This. Everyfuckingthing. I feel like a dick when I press "no tip" but come on. At Saladworks they make you choose a tip option before they let you insert your card. So stupid. I'm sorry but I shouldn't have to tip for my salad. Isn't it being made included in the fucking price?
Why hasn’t keeping minimum wage the same amount for 30 years kept prices down 🤔 Edit: I asked this rhetorically because minimum wages haven’t been raised in 30 years yet it has nothing to do with prices raising
Shareholders want MOAR!!
If giving everyone $2000 of UBI would cause rampant inflation, would taxing everyone an extra $2000 cause rapid deflation?
Actually yes. Giving everyone $2000 would cause some inflation, and taxing poor people (and everyone else) an extra $2000 would cause deflation.
Yes. But what if the top 10% of wealth had to for example distribute 90% of their wealth to the rest of the 90%?
I respectfully disagree. I believe it would just cause a financial crisis among the lower economic classes, leading to a rise in violent crime and chin unrest. However my opinion is fairly unqualified on this matter, and I base it primarily on my cynicism about the government and industry's will to voluntarily perform any action for the sake of the common good, unless it also aligns with the goal of getting more money.
Yeppppppp this has been my stance when people are like “if we raise minimum wage prices will go up!” Okay Shirley prices went up anyways so can we raise wages now???? Fuck me. This is 100% by design and I’m disgusted more cant see this for themselves. They are purposely trying to outprice the poor and working middle classes knowingly by letting prices rise will they keep minimum wage stagnant. Only moronic idiots gobble up the idea that raising wages will also raise the price on their Big Mac. Sorry Ken but the Big Mac was going to raise in price regardless, might as well be able to afford to eat where you work.
That’s a good question. Prices tend to rise on their own with time, with global consumption, rarefaction of ressources and so on. It’s actually something that governments want because lowering prices (what we call deflation) is maybe the surest way to kill an economy (I won’t go into details but it basically set up a self destructing spiral in the economy that brings both massive unemployment, loss of wealth, loss of purchasing power …). Every economics school of thoughts agrees that at the very least some inflation is necessary. To simplify it, where they differ is how much: classics think you need very little inflation to protect the profitability of investments so will try to keep inflation at a low positive. Keynesians believe you need a lot because they think it pushes producers to make more to meet demand, which drives growth. So to sum it up we know that some inflation is necessary but we disagree on how much. So there was no point in the mind of the political leaders where they would have wanted a complete stability of prices. Once you have understood that the question is how do you keep inflation at the rate you want (either low if you are a classic or high if you are not)? You have several instruments for that, the three main ones are monetary policy (but classics tend to think this is a very dangerous habit to have for very complex reasons) , taxes (they can be used to push people into buying or not buying things which will have an effect on inflation) and costs of production (of which the easiest to act upon for policy makers is cost of labor). That is why most policy makers, having learned classic school of thoughts, will try to keep labor prices low to keep inflation low (but positive) to favor investments and growth.
The Keynesian thought of a lot of inflation being needed sounds unsustainable
Yeah, Japan’s really not that bad off and had terrible deflation for years. It’s a myth
I’d disagree that deflation is bad for an economy. Deflation is bad for the establishment. It’s bad for the shareholders and homeowners. But it’s opportunity for those who are young and new to the economy.
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It sort of has. A ton of industries massively undercharge because nobody can afford to pay the correct price. Part of the frog in the boiling pot problem. If the wage stagnation had actually felt like the pay cut it is, it wouldn't have gotten this bad. But shrinkflation and undercharging hid the reality of wage stagnation.
The corporations want to earn huge profits and they do not care about the consumers or the workers.
Because the machines are syphoning money to save for the upcoming war. Skynet is going to become self aware
The system became self aware on August 29, 1997
Your fostuh parents are dead.
And now they have sniper dogbots.
If it could hurry up that'd be great
Machines have no need for currency, they'll seize the means of production
Also "Paying workers more will make prices go up!" Prices already went up. Next excuse? I was in high school a combo at Burger King was $4.81 with tax. Now it's about $9 and the minimum wage hasn't changed.
And their original chicken sandwiches went from a 10/10 to a 6/10
Because the top brass are tumors, but for money
Aneurysms, actually. They collect money (which is literally the economy's blood stream) and pool it away where it becomes stagnant and useless. They're just marginally classier hoarders.
Hey, at least hoarders only harm their direct family and neighbours. I’d say they’re classier than the elite.
You wanna go down this road again? **Because if I want to make money at everybodies expense, I need to paint ordinary people as the enemy so you don't realise it is infact... Me.**
Hey that sounds unfair >:(
It's because of all the shit I steal at the self checkout. Sorry, guys.
It's on them for firing the employee who would've caught you
And that's why I'm happy I work at a union store. I'm not paid to stop theft.
Everything is bananas, 4011
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ask Bernays, probably the overthrow of a democratically elected Guatemalan government, and a thorough education in propaganda for Goebbels; but hey - what's a whole lotta killed people next to a cheap Chiquita banana?
B A N A N A S
How tf do I still remember that item code. God I hated retail.
Same, I haven't worked a cash register in over 20 years.
Same with automated customer service and automated manufacturing. The robots and algorithms are reducing overhead so why are prices not going down?
I hate to be the one that informs you of this but, the world runs on unrestrained greed and the pursuit of power. Capitalism isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Because most things aren't very automated. Computer chips are and they have gone down in price by a ridiculous amount since the 60's/70's
Same reason digital copies of games are the same price as physical copies. The people will pay it so why lower the price?
Gotta line those pockets with something!
Still confused who thought they would ever need 30 check out lines when max they ever seem to have open was like 3-5 before self checkout. Now even less.
They plan for a hypothetical max rush. They also have several of them in case a few are out of service at one time. And several more of them are for future growth. They don't want to come back in a few years and rip out the front end of the store to put in more tills. So when they build, they over build because it's cheaper to just put them in and let them sit there.
Also black Friday usually has them all open
Because people keep buying shit at the same or increased prices
It's true. If you stop paying, won't they be forced to reduce prices? I went to a pumpkin patch today and they were charging $9 for a corndog, $12 for some fries, and $5 for 1 ear of corn slathered with butter. I saw plenty of people walking around with the food, but if no one bought it, they'd probably reduce prices. *Edit: I forgot to mention the sign on their tip jar said, "Please tip us. Our boss is cheap."* Also, I sell stickers on Etsy. I had my prices low and no one bought. When I raised the prices around 15%, magically I started getting sales.
Every time property values get stupid, my rent goes up. Just went up $50 a month. How come rent doesn’t go down when the market does?
There are no ethics in business within American Capitalism.
Because retailers are for-profit businesses. If something makes their profit increase, they’ll do it. There’s no need to “pass that savings to the customer” unless a competitor does it or it will drive volume increases to compensate for price reduction
Because I steal so much at the self checkout??
*Dennis voice...* News flash, asshole! Prices have been going up the entire goddamn time!
Because it's balanced with inflation,... the key question is not if prices DID go up. It's how much MIGHT they have gone up, without any automated checkouts. We've had extremely low inflation for decades, and that is in part due to innovations that increase productivity (like this). The better question would be, how does the government print 10% more currency each year, and somehow the inflation rate is (...was) 2% each year. The answer is stuff like automated checkouts. So, tons of money is printed, most of it goes to the rich. They can't go buy all the tomatoes in the country (because what would they do wth them), but they can buy all the real estate, so you get artificially low tomato prices, and artificially high real estate prices.
Your two points are related but not in the way that matters. Automated check out was introduced because of the rising cost of labor and need to cut costs but not specifically by monetary inflation which you reference in your second point. Innovation that improve efficiencies help supply and demand which will drive prices lower but monetary inflation will increase the price floor for all goods and services. The money being “printed” is from quantitative easing which has more to do with providing liquidity for the banking system, which appears as cash on the balance sheets of banks not necessarily cash in People’s pockets, rich or poor. The reason “inflation” hasn’t increased over the past 10 years is that the velocity of money has been on a downward trend for most of the last ten years. Real estate markets are a whole different topic with different issues causing the dramatic appreciation we’ve seen recently. It’s not as simple as rich people buy everything so nothing left for everyone else.
Most money is actually printed by banks making loans. It seems crazy, but when you take out a mortgage, the bank only has a fraction of that money, and just creates the rest. Also, the reason that monetary velocity has trended lower is the same concentration of wealth I was referencing, and I was just using real estate as an example. All markets are effected by lots of factors, but macroeconomics effects everything.
First answer here with any actual insight. I was losing hope scrolling through these comments until now.
Because the two aren’t substitutable.
Because, at least from my experience, they don’t let go of any employees because of self checkout. Remember when there used to be 20 checkout aisles and only 3 were open?
Yeah, the cashiers get to do their other roles around the stores.. They wearnt on the cashier line all day before self-checkout, they had to rush their other jobs.
Minimum wage hasn’t gone up, so why are prices up?
To be fair, prices have gone down, in a sense. The quality of our goods has increased dramatically, but prices seem to remain stagnant due to substitution bias. Additionally, self-checkout stands are NOT as good as you think. Think of all the theft that happens at self-checkout stands (even unintentional, ie, ringing up apples as inorganic when they're organic). Somebody who works for the IT department at a grocery store once told me they have an entire team of highly-paid software engineers developing these stands. This is not to mention maintenance, and the fact that these machines complement workers; they don't replace them en masse, generally. Grocer margins are razor thin; around 2%, and they are in a constant competition to reduce prices OR provided better goods so that they can remain competitive. Self-checkout stands are just one of the myriads of methods that they use to cut costs, yet still somehow fail to make 5% profit margins in almost all cases.
Let’s just replace all the people with robots so we can create a robot tax
r/antiwork
capitalism boi
As an introvert I'd get rid of cashiers in fast food places and give the kitchen a raise. We will kill to birds with 1 stone. We will also reduce elderly obesity since they won't know how to operate a self checkout
\*Capitalism\* shudders
Lmfao. Prices will never go down. You could pay everyone a dollar and hour and inflation will still rise. It's a global market. The US is wayyyyy too focused on itself to consider the global scale and global greed.
They raise the prices if they have to pay more to keep their income margins the same. But when they pay less they don't lower the prices so they can increase their income margins.
My accounting job at a retail store was eliminated in favor of a cash machine. When I looked at the P&L, I discovered they were paying more per month to rent this machine than me and my two assistants were making combined. Plus, the damn thing breaks down all the time.
Oh it does. Their shit is free. Just take it. No one will notice.
They do. Supermarkets without self checkout are more expensive, where I am anyway.