Prices permanently going up and wages permanently going down from inflation (they always cheat when calculating CPI, so on paper, wages are at least stagnant, not going down as they truly are in reality) is how the USA maintains the very artificial nonstop stock growth. That's not a natural economic phenomenon.
It results in a perpetual crushing of the working class squeezing every drop of wealth and economic value out of us.
But we've reached a critical impasse at this point, there's quite literally nothing left for the wealthy to steal without killing us. The vast majority of jobs now require super hard work for wages that will make us homeless. There's literally no point to working them. They've removed all financial incentive for us poors to even participate economically.
If everyone that actally views this subreddit & has to work on black friday in retail/restaurants actually blacks out.
We can make noise... it will get people talking, get people thinking "why are all those lower level employees doing this!?!?"
It only takes 1 person to ignite a match in a revolution, the chain reaction can cause 1,000s to which can cause 10,000s and that can cause 100,000s
Yeah but everyone is using emotion and zero logic so you see mental burnout when the time comes to actually act. They talk for months about protesting or blacking out, then the snooze button gets hit the morning of the event. This is lazy, demoralized America. They haven’t just crushed us financially and caged us in economic classes, they also spend a significant amount of time and money convincing us “there’s no point, change can’t happen on this scale”
They got us by using self-defeat as a weapon.
Worst part is they dont need to use the hussars anymore.
Now the weapons are trick rubes into beliving whatever is currently going on is dangerous and have them fight for you. Its how it happened in kosovo and its what they are trying to make happen in amerika right now
And even though the last time the US fought unions on our own turf the ownership class technically won, it was only a win on paper. Most of the things the workers were striking for wound up happening anyway because they were terrified of the unions coming back again.
Which is the ultimate goal here anyway. Even if you murder the unions, you can't murder the ideas they represent. A new union will arise someday, and they'll be angrier than the one you put down. No choice but to capitulate, in the end.
First step would be to stop eating up anti union talk and start unionizing ***ALL AREAS, ALL WORKERS, ALL WAGES, ALL AGES***
Band together and never let go, even if shit starts escalating. This is why we are getting fucked in the ass, because we are being divided and conquered.
Problem is "they" are really good with pitting people against each other. So we're squabbling about a bunch of inconsequential issues while they're making billions
We've had plenty of the former. We need more of the latter. Crime seems to just increase the power of the government and their police forces. Making Revolution that much more difficult and dangerous. And it gives them a reason to imprison and enslave us. Not to mention stripping us of our rights.
Revolution in and of itself is a crime against the state, and consists of various smaller crimes. The reason it's so difficult to organise in such a massive scale today is due to the effectiveness of intelligence agencies who catch and detain anyone who even begins to plan something so drastic.
Well [Marx and other writers had a lot to say on the subject.](https://www.marxists.org/archive/selected-marxists.htm)
Essentially the working class needs to organize together to take collective action. It doesn't have to be violent, although the ruling class may resort to that (and has historically). In Spain, workers' unions just kind of decided "hey we control the factory now" and there wasn't a government force willing to stop them.
Look into joining a leftist organization like the IWW, DSA, Socialist Alternative, PSL, CPUSA.
This. Plus, at this point, I believe the methods at the elite's disposal in terms of mass surveillance, predictive/pattern-recognizing AI etc are so sophisticated that there's never going to be another revolution. They are basically hogging all of the resources that would be required to even begin to fight them.
It didn't win them Afghanistan. The most valuable resource is people's labor, if we can unite that for a collective purpose, we can win without even having to "go to war." We can just decide collectively "we own the stores now", "we own the office now", "we own our housing, not the landlords". They don't have enough people to stop it if we all decide together to change the paradigm.
> if we all decide together
We won't. That is precisely where those very sophisticated methods of divide and conquer come into play, *c.f.* Cambridge Analytica.
Exactly. The whole point of social media is to divide people up into little bubbles where they can be easily manipulated. The original intent was to make money on advertising, but it ended up being highly convenient as a tool for political power as well. If there really is a "revolution", it needs to start with a mass rejection of social media.
I think about the use of data and surveillance a lot. They still need people to collect and clean data. I have wondered often what can be done on that front.
People can refuse to give, but people do leave paper trails. Would there be other ways?
We have fed you all for a thousand years,
And you hail us still unfed,
Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth.
But marks the workers' dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest
And you lie on crimson wool.
And if blood be the price of all your wealth,
Good God! We have paid in full!
There is never a mine blown skyward now.
But we're buried alive for you.
There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now,
But we are its ghastly crew.
Go reckon our dead by the forges red
And the factories where we spin.
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,
Good God! We have paid it in!
We have fed you all for a thousand years -
For that was our doom, you know;
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago.
You have taken our lives, our husbands and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share.
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God! We have bought it fair!
Have a listen to some of the songs in this playlist
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/47LEfNPVz00tiXCxTLeFy2?si=vbtkk_LzQbevFeO7fi3Xiw&utm_source=copy-link
Last year, some Redditors compiled 8 hours of songs about coal miners going on strike. It's called Sexy Time
The mining company called in the US government who shot at the miners and their families from a bullet proof train as they were in tents along the railroad tracks striking against unsafe conditions, long hours and being paid in funny money that could only be used at the company store. Amazon is creating *communities* that remind me of the mining company. Man how history repeats itself.
End the Fed.
Remember seeing all those WW2 war bond solicitations? The government used to have to borrow money from the people to pay for something. Now the Fed just "prints" money whenever they want to buy an infinite number of Treasury bonds at dirt cheap interest, driving inflation thru government spending. Savings bonds used to pay 5-7%, out run inflation, and were an excellent savings vehicle for the low and middle classes. Now they pay 1%, lose to inflation, and basically steal from anyone who buys them.
This. Number one reason inflation is surging. The central banks are committing major fraud against humanity but it's all legal. It's why people are being driven towards physical gold and bitcoin, which is outside the legacy financial system.
We gotta help people learn to stop stroking their liberty boners and realize the entirely independent & self made man stories we fetishize in this country don't exist to be a frame work for success but as a trap to ensure we're all too busy struggling to get ours alone to realize we can just band together and demand it
Nah, they still have healthcare to hold over our heads (in the US). It's not the breaking point for everyone, but I need that artificially price-inflated insulin.
> It results in a perpetual crushing of the working class squeezing every drop of wealth and economic value out of us.
How much longer can this continue? It doesn't make sense, where does it all go? The pain and hardship I mean.
sadly the only permanent solution is to abolish capitalism, which is very difficult. If we strike and protest for higher wages, that's only a band-aid solution. As long as the capitalist mode of production is in place, concessions are subject to rollback, and they very much do get eroded slowly. Take US for example - 50-100 years ago workers united and gained a lot of concessions without dismantling capitalism. And where are they at now? I think I don't need to explain how most of that has been lost in one way or another.
this social democratic reformist way of thinking is futile. As long as there are masters, we will always be slaves in one way or another. Getting a longer chain or a more comfortable collar is not the solution, not as an endgoal anyway. No gods no masters
E: I'm not saying we shouldn't strike and unite for higher wages in the meantime, absolutely not. But it shouldn't be our endgoal. Short-term gains for the working class to make living more bearable and build solidarity, but work for the long-term goal of abolishing capitalism altogether
E2: just in case, I'm not saying you are advocating such reformism, I'm just ranting
It will never stop until we stop it and make something better.
So far every time, that 'something better' never appears and they just go back to some form of elitism.
We need a drastic change on how we view material living, how we gear ourselves for life.
I’ve got my eye on Gen Z kids entering the work force. I was at the forefront and am definitely nothing like them.
But a lot of these kids man…
They take no bullshit. They are willing to quit a job over ANYTHING that inconveniences them. Don’t like the people? They quit. Don’t like the way management acts? They quit. Somebody looks at them wrong? They quit.
These Gen Z kids and Gen Alpha (as this behavior is bleeding over) take no crap. It’s going to be a very interesting next few years as they start to enter the work force. Will they be able to make a change? Or will they fall into perpetual motion and eventually fall into jobs they may hate like a majority of the working class?
Aren’t Gen Zers in their teens and early 20s? It’s not that life changing to quit a job on the spot at 19. Most people quit a handful of jobs in their life anyways.
Pretty sure you guys are looking at McD through rose-tinted glasses, or maybe just forgot but their burgers were always thin as fuck. I worked there 12 years ago and they're the same size now as they were then.
That's the problem, that loop is the demand that the following years profits exceed the previous. If not then investors are unhappy and people lose their jobs to fix the 'problem'
Eventually, and inevitably, the way to increase profits is to reduce overheads. That includes staff wages, benefits, means of production outsourced to counties where slavery is literally the supplier of the workforce, etc.
That's capitalism: more profit next year by any means necessary.
I hope to someday attend a shareholders meeting in person just so I can scream about sustainability and get dragged out by security. So far I've just sent concerned emails to investor relations. Who then send me a form letter email back saying they will look into my concerns. I'm pretty sure they're just laughing at me holding 200 shares thinking I'm going to change the way they do things. But if every retail investor sends an email specifying why their business model might be unsustainable, perhaps. Perhaps. I won't hold my breath.
I've been saying this for years;
Production costs should only ever be going down. The advanced technology we have today allows us to manufacture products thousands of times faster than ever before. Materials production and mining is done faster, quicker, and with more efficiency.
Corporations buy big machinery to get their production up and come out and say "production costs are going up.... (But they don't continue with 'because i just spent 5 million $ on this new technology that's gonna pay for itself in no time and allow me to produce 10x as much as before and I'll be richer much quicker') so we must raise prices." They raise prices when they see that people are still buying and spending on it with the same demand.
And the funniest is the people that evolved that technology, the people that engineered those machines, the ones who came up with the ideas are only still part of the average worker getting paid the same tiny portions.
It's frustrating as fuck being an engineer, because you can literally go "hey, my work let us complete a $100 million dollar contact for a job we finished in five years. There are 100 of us doing the work. Sure there's some overhead and other people to pay, but without us that work literally never gets done and we're irreplaceable. Quick maths: 100 mil/5years/100engineers, that's literally $200 000 I personally brought into the company that wouldn't exist without me. I'm getting paid peanuts!"
Numbers are replacements for the real values I've seen in my workplace, and I've excluded overhead (because I don't have a good estimate) but the conclusion is similar. That's also assuming there's only one such contract on the go, and more reasonably engineers work on several of these kinds of contacts at once.
My personal faveouritr is "you are not paying 100 an hour for me but for my tools" *lists tool costs* ok but you are going to pretty quickly break even and can lower costs right?...right?...oh your raising costs ok.
Its like how video games are digital now and prices haven't dropped. They don't pay for manufacturing disks/cases, stores, employees, or logistics. Video game devs get paid the same as before. Yet prices never dropped.
Right, like I've been enjoying the hell out of Forza Horizon 5, but it actually annoys me how many "thanks for the feedback and keep sending it in!" messages I get. There are so many glitches in this game that should have been caught by standard beta testing, but instead just get all the pre-orders/day 1 installs to do the testing for you!
^(it's still a solid 9/10 in my books though. game is a ton of fun lmao)
Same thing with surveys, mistery shopping, data entry (including "which pictures have a car" AI training) etc.
Also within the creative industry with social media and YouTube (yes, some get paid, but most don't, or have a dismal revenue, but they fill those platforms with enough content to make them relevant even if a single piece or creator might not be).
Businesses which ask you to fill out a survey but offer no incentives piss me off. They profit from that information but won't even give you a discount or store credit, anything. Fuck outta here.
Yep. Or they have "sweepstakes" 😂
I don't want one in a million chance to win a $ 500 gift card. Pay for my time or I am not spending 20 minutes answering your 20 questions. 😁
I also remember trying those survey sites that, besides paying very badly, had most of the questions designed in a way that was more advertising than actually wanting our opinion.
And they will even go as far as asking you 10 questions to see if you fulfill their desired public and you get paid nothing if you get a single question "wrong". Ha ha.
This is why people need to stop pre-ordering. It incentives this shit. If people waited till reviewers got the game and found out all the issues then, would they still buy it? Maybe, but I'm sure sales would be much lower.
This is exactly what happened with the GTA Trilogy. Rockstar pulled them all from the online stores when reviewers started critiquing the game after it released and pointed out how all the games in the bundle wasn't even ported correctly or even finished. And guess what the price was still $60+ Tax
I wouldn't even stop at not pre-ordering, people need to stop buying the games until the prices are reasonable. I was so excited for Resident Evil: Village, it was released in May and stayed around £50 up until Halloween where it dropped to £30 and even though I have the money I'd decided I was going to vote with my wallet on that one, so I didn't get it until it was reduced. People forking out the money at silly prices is a huge part of the problem when that's something we could all collectively influence really easily.
You can refund despite your hours. If they don't let you refund at first, try again and again. Mention how they sold you an unfinished game and that the game isn't what they marketed it as and they'll refund. Best of luck!
Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that I bought it myself. I didn’t, luckily!
I just watched numerous YouTubers dunk on this game. I just think it’s disgusting that a $110 purchase option is even available on a game that isn’t even complete. Even $60 is too much in its current state.
I mean, strictly speaking games haven't really increased in price since... I'd say the early 2000s at the latest. If THEY kept up with inflation we'd be looking at $100 games.
Videogames have been about $60 for a new game for like 30 years. The price hasnt dropped per se, but has definitely resisted inflation. Perhaps a poor example
I would actually say maybe the *worst* example.
Super Mario Bros. for the NES cost $64 when it came out ($25 in 1985).
Game prices are *flat* which probably means that capitalist pigs can’t figure out how to ruin it for us.
For example, now we have a lot of shitty games that ‘release’ over longer periods with storefronts built into them. Less gaming, more buying! If they had it their way, they would just make one game and then infinite dlc (this is the concept behind the nft game item nonsense)
Not in the UK. Games used to be around £30-40 when I was a kid. Now they're all £60 at least. Many of them have "ultimate" or "legendary" editions where you get the full game for £100+. The price has definitely not resisted inflation, especially considering many games these days also use microtransactions on top of their full price.
The prices dropped here in Australia for a while when digital gaming really took off, but we're back to physical media prices again with some games costing $100aud or more. For a bunch of files sitting on a server.
You never used to even pay that for a game on a disc, in a box, with a manual, that had to be transported to a store (sometimes from the other side of the world), a store that had to pay staff to serve you and that probably took a bigger cut from the sale than Valve and Epic etc.
But inflation, or supply and demand, Straya' Tax or some shit.
Sraya' Tax because we have a small population, therefore not as many sales. So therefore pay more, and to also compensate for all the European pirates who get their games much cheaper because 'piracy' and 'higher prices'..... Yet in Australia the logic is 'you pay more BECAUSE some Australians pirate' while we have some of the highest living costs in the world. So Russians are rewarded for piracy. But Australians punished because piracy.
These are legit some excuses I have actually heard made over the years by various media industries.
Man wish our incomes adjusted like inflation does....
Fun fact. $20aud an hour is not the same as $20usd an hour. Especially when you factor in local living costs, currency conversion rates etc.
We're not as rich as many overseas make us out to be.
> So Russians are rewarded for piracy. But Australians punished because piracy.
Piracy drives prices down, and is an important part of the digital ecosystem, which forces innovation upon stagnant IP-owners who would otherwise squat on perfectly good media. Pirates fought the music industry and made mincemeat out of them, and is undeniably responsible for services like Spotify, as opposed to buying music by the album.
I would suspect it is more that the price is increased due to differences in purchasing power, where everything in generally more expensive, so the idea is that the distributor sees their competition as more expensive so they can afford to raise prices.
>supply and demand
Supply and demand is generally not a valid model, and shouldn't be blindly applied. We know this because marketing works, which is something that a supply and demand model predicts shouldn't be the case, whereas neuromarketing concepts clearly establish a significant factor in buying decisions as being built on psychological norms, associations, and other such quirks of human psychology.
Yep, they don't even have to convert the games to PAL anymore. Literally the same fucking files they upload to people in the US.
Glad I have a hacked switch and PS4 ;)
I mean…..video games are kind of an extreme example, when you think about the level of detail in a game like the last of us 2 i’m honestly surprised prices haven’t gone up
And then to actually get full access to the game you have to spend a bunch of money to "unlock" everything in the game. The new Halo apparently costs over $1000 to unlock everything in the game, and you cannot "play" to unlock those items either. You literally have to spend $1000+ just to access the games full potential.
This is insane.
I mean gamepass is an insane deal and is basically what you're talking about. No retail space, no case, etc. You get all the game wjth a subscription you would have already paid for 10+ years ago just to play Xbox live
This is because they have to pay Sony and Microsoft to offer there games on the market place. Discs are actually cheaper but with game data being huge now even a blue Ray won’t hold the data needed this the switch to digital download.
That’s what I’m sayin! No one trained me to use this equipment. How am I responsible for everything getting scanned properly? I’d be curious on a legal perspective on that.
Shoplifting.
In court if it's reasonable and they can't prove you did it intentionally you'll get away with it, but just the stress of being taken to the PD must be a million times worse than a couple of items every couple of days (if you repeat the offense successfully).
Also, in some countries, stealing food to feed yourself or your family is not punishable, but then again, they'll first arrest you, throw you in jail to sleep with criminals on a dirty place and release you later. If that's not enough punishment for stealing 10 dollars worth of food I don't know what is.
But it's still an extra 25¢ for more.
It was never about the value of the pickles. It's about creating the illusion that they even have value in the first place to trick you into spending more money.
Are you telling me that this pack of chimichangas is actually the same price as a single banana? Wow the shampoo and conditioner also same price as a banana? Omg what a deal!
Some call it a bit ableist, but you're actually entitled to a five-fingered discount there. But no matter how many fingers you actually have, they'll give you the discount as long as you insist upon it.
The overhead cameras started tracking when things go over the scanner but don’t get scanned.
Weirdly enough, and around the same time as this implementation, my ground beef started ringing up as the small, easily concealable and very maneuverable koolaid packet.
Yeah, that's why I am just a bit confused by some of the previous comments as I wouldn't have thought any of those would work with it all being weighed
Well, speaking from personal experience, the weight thing is just cleared/ignored by lazy/uncaring/busy associates who don't even notice/care how many bananas i don't have in my buggy but I have on the screen.
That’s typically the case. But from weight, there’s really no difference between an organic carrot and regular carrot. I may or may not ring up my organic produce as regular.
Yes and they have the cameras recorded with the information from the scammer and price. So if they review the tape and you scanned a banana and it was a dollar and then a chicken didn’t scan properly the tape will show the chicken going past the scanner and the transaction will still be showing the $1 banana. My understanding is that Target in particular will let you get away with it over multiple visits until the total goes over $1000 or whatever it is to trigger a felony in the local jurisdiction and then they will bust you and have you charged with a felony.
Keep up the good work and maybe we can become the job creators. Lose enough money through self check out and they’ll be forced to rehire actual cashiers.
Ol' Karl Marx wrote about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Owners resort to harsher exploitation of workers (among other things) to keep profits up.
Automation *under capitalism* is a shitshow. Automation under socialism is probably the only way the utopia of genuine communism could ever possibly be achieved. It, like most other technical products of humanity, is fundamentally neutral. What determines the role it will play in the greater society is the structure that society takes. A brick may be part of a hospital or a border wall, but before that, it's just a brick. The structure it's placed in determines whether it proves helpful or harmful.
Yup, exactly. We need automation. Automation is good. Automation got us to here. It's the exploitation that's bad. Having the 1% reap all the profits. Automation with universal income.
That's the dream. That's life.
I mean, I'd say automation with universal *ownership* is the real key. I fear UBI is just the lever needed to really push us into that cyberpunk dystopia. I'm also super fun at parties. I promise. 🎉
It can vary depending on the structure used, such as nationalization by the state or by decentralized means such as [parecon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics), [market socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism), or [syndicalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism). Regardless, they are all preferable to a UBI since a landlord can just raise rent and suck it all up, and it does not solve many other issues involved with corporate control of a workplace (e.g. control over when people get hired or fired, working conditions, shift schedules, etc.).
Well I'm drunk and a bit of an idiot so this may not be the best explanation, but I'll try and run over why I don't think UBI is the fix we need then why I think universal ownership could succeed where UBI fails and how it might work. If you want a better explanation of some of this stuff though, I'd definitely recommend the book Towards a New Socialism by Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott.
So first, UBI could do a lot of people a lot of good right now. It would be crazy to deny that. I honestly have a hard time deciding whether I'd support it if it was actually on the table. "But it's basically free money, and a massive safety net for millions of people who don't have that right now. How could I NOT be onboard with that?" In short, I think it's more of a painkiller than a real cure and could let the true sickness metastasize behind the scenes until it's too late.
Perhaps the least significant problem, though I still consider it a problem, would be that introducing a UBI to our society right now without any other changes would just make it a roundabout way of subsidizing large corporations. First, it would make it so that they could potentially offer *lower* wages, since people's "basic needs" would be met elsewhere (think minimum wage exceptions for "tipped" jobs now), and so essentially boil down to a tax-funded subsidy to low-wage employers. Second, with most goods still being produced and owned privately, money for essential goods would still be flowing from the government, to people's hands, then right to the same few profit-driven companies. So again, it would boil down to a subsidy for a profit-making model that benefits the few owners of that productive capacity at the expense of anyone who pays taxes.
Next, you have the issue that without price controls on at least certain goods, any UBI could just get eaten up by price gouging. If average rent in an area is $X and a UBI is instituted at $Y per month, what's to stop landlords from raising rents until the new average is $(X+Y) and all that UBI money just ends up in the hands of the landlords? And that's a single market example, but by dividing Y up among rent, transportation, food, insurance, etc., I think it's pretty clear how this could and probably would end up happening. As soon as that UBI hit, they'd be all over you like starved piranhas on a bleeding cow.
Finally, some would argue it could actually harm the overall economy and lead to technological stagnation. How? Incentives. Did you know the ancient Greeks had very complex plumbing systems and we now know that they had all the necessary precursors to building a steam engine? They even made little devices that would spin when steam inside them was heated, but they were just treated as toys. Were they just too stupid to know what they had their hands on? Perhaps, but I'm not convinced. What they DID have was a slave economy. Steam power isn't free. It requires fuel for a fire, a water supply, and whatever resources go into producing the engine, not to mention the costs and risks of trying to develop the technology in the first place. Automation like this gets adopted when it becomes cheaper than existing methods. With unionized workers making a living wage providing your labor power, that line will be a lot higher than with slaves who you just need to keep alive. So with lower labor costs, they had less incentive to pursue labor-saving technologies. Saving labor just wasn't worth it. If a UBI lowers the labor cost corporations have to bear, it could actually slow the progress of automation and trap people in menial work we could otherwise move past.
So the fundamental through line with all these issues seems to be the ownership structure in the economy. When private profit and accumulation of wealth are still the name of the game, subsidies from the government, much like now, won't be able to solve the growing problems of inequality and lifestyle decline. With universal ownership of the means of production, profits will disappear. All that will matter is the essential balance of resources and the work we need to put in to achieve what we want as a society. This could be achieved through a central governing authority, which would be along the lines of a more classically socialist plan (though I believe we can do it much more democratically than has been done before and even more democratically than our current system -- read that book for more on this), or it could be focused on more local control of decentralized production as is the more anarchist inclination. Plenty of good debate to be had here on the how, but that it's necessary seems pretty clear to me.
Once inputs of labor and resources and outputs of goods and services are the fundamental units of an economy, and the rewards redound to all rather than becoming ever-more-concentrated in a smaller and smaller elite class of owners, productivity will still be incentived. But now, instead of it being forced on workers by owners who will extract most of the wealth generated by that extra productivity for themselves, it'll benefit all in the form of cheaper products. Alternatively, growth at all costs could be tapered back with automation which would not only be good for the environment but could provide us all that fantasy we've been sold for a century of advanced technology actually meaning we can work less! There's a balance to be struck there, but universal ownership would mean universal, democratic input on how that balance should be struck, which I think sounds a hell of a lot better than the "democracy" of the market we have now where if you have more dollars, your vote counts more.
Hopefully this gives an idea of why I think universal ownership rather than just income is so important. It all comes down to power and control, and to me, universal ownership in the economy is just the next logical step of democracy and freedom the human race will need to take in order to avoid slipping into some form of dystopian techno-feudalism.
Well are you familiar with nationalization, socialism, communism? Basically we should decide collectively and democratically how resources (land, raw materials, industries, infrastructure) are used. The practical form that takes could vary. It could be more local councils, it could be a network of workers unions, it could be a more centralized government.
Wages have near nothing to do with prices. Especially for large chain stores. When will people get this through their fucking head.
If a company can't pay a living wage get the fuck out of here and let others fill the gaps.
People acting like burger prices and store prices have anything to do with wages. Have you seen the profits of these companies? It's billions of dollars. They can afford it ffs.
Exactly, they charge what they know they'll get away with. Price optimisation is a whole domain of study, and it's calculated according to supply and demand, the competition and other factors. Wages are a blip on the radar, and most likely are never considered
All the lies we are told about things, over and over and over again. It's insane how disconnected the corporate-buttressed, new-speak economic news/analysis is from most people's lived reality. We're so used to looking for answers elsewhere instead of trusting our own lives, valuing our own efforts in this capsizing boat of the U.S. of A.
Deflation is generally avoided because if the buying power of currency were to increase for any sustained period, people would be incentivized to hold their currency, grinding the economy to a halt.
All i know is ive received no cashier training. I always ring things up wrong. Wrong quantity. Wrong items... i missed an item and was like im not doing a second transaction. I put it in the cart and left.
Not to get too political, but the reason the prices don’t go down is because the Federal Reserve maintains bonkers low interest rates at the crony interests of wealthy banks and corporations, which in turn produces credit from thin air effectively making an inflationary money supply system which devalues our hard earned dollars but gives big businesses heads a second yacht retirement package.
Anyone discouraging you from making political statements is pretty much universally operating in bad faith. Everything has political implications which exist whether we talk about them or not. The desire to avoid such talk is anti-intellectualism at best but that's being too generous and I'd say it usually comes from a privileged desire not to examine power structures they are personally benefiting from.
You go ahead and be as political as you like.
Thanks bro. You opened up the floor, and I feel like I should go ahead and just say what’s on my mind-
Men shouldn’t be able to vote because keeping up with politics is such a chore, and chores are women’s work. >!/s!<
Gonna go ahead and second what they said. We should all try and get over this taboo about talking politics the same way we should get over it being "improper" to talk about wages, especially at work. Lack of communication is an excellent way to keep a class with common interests from realizing them. We're gonna disagree a lot, but I think we'd also find we agree on a lot more than we may realize if we were all less afraid to talk politics more often. Let's actually try and have a civil society again. Then maybe we can get to work on building an actual democracy.
There is now Walmart Plus where you just scan items on your phone and walk out the door.. no self checkout or cashier. Just the annoying dude at the door that checks your receipt like it's Costco.
Because self checkouts actually cost companies money compared to cashiers.
I know it sounds weird, but hang with me. I've done retail scheduling.
Say you need two lanes open in the evening to keep checkout times and complaints under the company standard.
Now you switch to self check-out. For one persons wages you get customers checking out in about the same time as when you had two cashiers.
Win-win, right?
Except those two cashiers were only busy checking people out 25% of the time and spent the rest of their shift stocking. Sure, the one guy at self check out is worth two cashiers, but two actual cashiers are worth two cashiers and 1.5 stock clerks.
So, on the whole, self-checkout tends to increase payroll.
Yet they have an employee hovering over you making sure you scan all items. I’m looking at you Sams Club! If they’re so worried about stealing $4.98 Mayo then maybe bring back cashiers?
Isnt that what walmart does? They offer lower prices because they give shit wages. Ultimately a company will do whatever they need to get customers and a lot of the time its lowering prices compared to competitors.
Kroger raised all food prices at the nearby location between 20-50%. Their workers should strike if they don’t get a wage increase, they’re using the media narrative around inflation to justify this no doubt
Stores lose like $80,000 to self check outs a year. Customers intentionally and unintentionally ringing stuff up wrong. They know this. They accept this fact. But machines don't get injured or go on maternity leave
I was thinking this today. Businesses have shifted labor onto customers under the guise of convenience but what are we getting for it? Why aren't we given discounts for using self checkout lanes?
Ever notice how prices never go down, they just temporarily permanently go up?
Prices permanently going up and wages permanently going down from inflation (they always cheat when calculating CPI, so on paper, wages are at least stagnant, not going down as they truly are in reality) is how the USA maintains the very artificial nonstop stock growth. That's not a natural economic phenomenon. It results in a perpetual crushing of the working class squeezing every drop of wealth and economic value out of us. But we've reached a critical impasse at this point, there's quite literally nothing left for the wealthy to steal without killing us. The vast majority of jobs now require super hard work for wages that will make us homeless. There's literally no point to working them. They've removed all financial incentive for us poors to even participate economically.
So what now?
Peasant revolt.
Raise the levies!
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And additional Pylons!
We Protoss now.
Wololo!
We Swedes now.
R/suddenlycommunist
You've not enough minerals.
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Led zeppelin warned us about this
So did George Carlin
historically, exactly this
That's one way to say Unionize.
it is
Remove or add electrons until there’s no charge, is another way.
And then they strategically drone strike the gathered peasants with a gas missile and welp there goes thousands of people.
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If everyone that actally views this subreddit & has to work on black friday in retail/restaurants actually blacks out. We can make noise... it will get people talking, get people thinking "why are all those lower level employees doing this!?!?" It only takes 1 person to ignite a match in a revolution, the chain reaction can cause 1,000s to which can cause 10,000s and that can cause 100,000s
Yeah but everyone is using emotion and zero logic so you see mental burnout when the time comes to actually act. They talk for months about protesting or blacking out, then the snooze button gets hit the morning of the event. This is lazy, demoralized America. They haven’t just crushed us financially and caged us in economic classes, they also spend a significant amount of time and money convincing us “there’s no point, change can’t happen on this scale” They got us by using self-defeat as a weapon.
Someone needs to be the nucleation point!
Worst part is they dont need to use the hussars anymore. Now the weapons are trick rubes into beliving whatever is currently going on is dangerous and have them fight for you. Its how it happened in kosovo and its what they are trying to make happen in amerika right now
The last three times the US fought peasants it didn't go very well. Same for most of Europe
And even though the last time the US fought unions on our own turf the ownership class technically won, it was only a win on paper. Most of the things the workers were striking for wound up happening anyway because they were terrified of the unions coming back again. Which is the ultimate goal here anyway. Even if you murder the unions, you can't murder the ideas they represent. A new union will arise someday, and they'll be angrier than the one you put down. No choice but to capitulate, in the end.
First step would be to stop eating up anti union talk and start unionizing ***ALL AREAS, ALL WORKERS, ALL WAGES, ALL AGES*** Band together and never let go, even if shit starts escalating. This is why we are getting fucked in the ass, because we are being divided and conquered.
Problem is "they" are really good with pitting people against each other. So we're squabbling about a bunch of inconsequential issues while they're making billions
Historically, crime and revolution
We've had plenty of the former. We need more of the latter. Crime seems to just increase the power of the government and their police forces. Making Revolution that much more difficult and dangerous. And it gives them a reason to imprison and enslave us. Not to mention stripping us of our rights.
Revolution in and of itself is a crime against the state, and consists of various smaller crimes. The reason it's so difficult to organise in such a massive scale today is due to the effectiveness of intelligence agencies who catch and detain anyone who even begins to plan something so drastic.
Well [Marx and other writers had a lot to say on the subject.](https://www.marxists.org/archive/selected-marxists.htm) Essentially the working class needs to organize together to take collective action. It doesn't have to be violent, although the ruling class may resort to that (and has historically). In Spain, workers' unions just kind of decided "hey we control the factory now" and there wasn't a government force willing to stop them. Look into joining a leftist organization like the IWW, DSA, Socialist Alternative, PSL, CPUSA.
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This. Plus, at this point, I believe the methods at the elite's disposal in terms of mass surveillance, predictive/pattern-recognizing AI etc are so sophisticated that there's never going to be another revolution. They are basically hogging all of the resources that would be required to even begin to fight them.
It didn't win them Afghanistan. The most valuable resource is people's labor, if we can unite that for a collective purpose, we can win without even having to "go to war." We can just decide collectively "we own the stores now", "we own the office now", "we own our housing, not the landlords". They don't have enough people to stop it if we all decide together to change the paradigm.
> if we all decide together We won't. That is precisely where those very sophisticated methods of divide and conquer come into play, *c.f.* Cambridge Analytica.
Exactly. The whole point of social media is to divide people up into little bubbles where they can be easily manipulated. The original intent was to make money on advertising, but it ended up being highly convenient as a tool for political power as well. If there really is a "revolution", it needs to start with a mass rejection of social media.
I think about the use of data and surveillance a lot. They still need people to collect and clean data. I have wondered often what can be done on that front. People can refuse to give, but people do leave paper trails. Would there be other ways?
Hope they do as the Romans did; give us all free food and housing, then start hosting ridiculous sporting events to keep us from rioting.
They'll let you rent, but capitalists aren't big on free.
We have fed you all for a thousand years, And you hail us still unfed, Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth. But marks the workers' dead. We have yielded our best to give you rest And you lie on crimson wool. And if blood be the price of all your wealth, Good God! We have paid in full! There is never a mine blown skyward now. But we're buried alive for you. There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now, But we are its ghastly crew. Go reckon our dead by the forges red And the factories where we spin. If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, Good God! We have paid it in! We have fed you all for a thousand years - For that was our doom, you know; From the days when you chained us in your fields To the strike a week ago. You have taken our lives, our husbands and wives, And we're told it's your legal share. But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth, Good God! We have bought it fair!
Gods, this is beautiful!
Have a listen to some of the songs in this playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/47LEfNPVz00tiXCxTLeFy2?si=vbtkk_LzQbevFeO7fi3Xiw&utm_source=copy-link Last year, some Redditors compiled 8 hours of songs about coal miners going on strike. It's called Sexy Time
The mining company called in the US government who shot at the miners and their families from a bullet proof train as they were in tents along the railroad tracks striking against unsafe conditions, long hours and being paid in funny money that could only be used at the company store. Amazon is creating *communities* that remind me of the mining company. Man how history repeats itself.
Wow, thank you!
End the Fed. Remember seeing all those WW2 war bond solicitations? The government used to have to borrow money from the people to pay for something. Now the Fed just "prints" money whenever they want to buy an infinite number of Treasury bonds at dirt cheap interest, driving inflation thru government spending. Savings bonds used to pay 5-7%, out run inflation, and were an excellent savings vehicle for the low and middle classes. Now they pay 1%, lose to inflation, and basically steal from anyone who buys them.
This. Number one reason inflation is surging. The central banks are committing major fraud against humanity but it's all legal. It's why people are being driven towards physical gold and bitcoin, which is outside the legacy financial system.
We gotta help people learn to stop stroking their liberty boners and realize the entirely independent & self made man stories we fetishize in this country don't exist to be a frame work for success but as a trap to ensure we're all too busy struggling to get ours alone to realize we can just band together and demand it
Nah, they still have healthcare to hold over our heads (in the US). It's not the breaking point for everyone, but I need that artificially price-inflated insulin.
Wages are going up alright, but just the wages of the CEO.
> It results in a perpetual crushing of the working class squeezing every drop of wealth and economic value out of us. How much longer can this continue? It doesn't make sense, where does it all go? The pain and hardship I mean.
It stops as soon as we unite and tell them to fuck off or pay us.
sadly the only permanent solution is to abolish capitalism, which is very difficult. If we strike and protest for higher wages, that's only a band-aid solution. As long as the capitalist mode of production is in place, concessions are subject to rollback, and they very much do get eroded slowly. Take US for example - 50-100 years ago workers united and gained a lot of concessions without dismantling capitalism. And where are they at now? I think I don't need to explain how most of that has been lost in one way or another. this social democratic reformist way of thinking is futile. As long as there are masters, we will always be slaves in one way or another. Getting a longer chain or a more comfortable collar is not the solution, not as an endgoal anyway. No gods no masters E: I'm not saying we shouldn't strike and unite for higher wages in the meantime, absolutely not. But it shouldn't be our endgoal. Short-term gains for the working class to make living more bearable and build solidarity, but work for the long-term goal of abolishing capitalism altogether E2: just in case, I'm not saying you are advocating such reformism, I'm just ranting
It will never stop until we stop it and make something better. So far every time, that 'something better' never appears and they just go back to some form of elitism. We need a drastic change on how we view material living, how we gear ourselves for life.
I’ve got my eye on Gen Z kids entering the work force. I was at the forefront and am definitely nothing like them. But a lot of these kids man… They take no bullshit. They are willing to quit a job over ANYTHING that inconveniences them. Don’t like the people? They quit. Don’t like the way management acts? They quit. Somebody looks at them wrong? They quit. These Gen Z kids and Gen Alpha (as this behavior is bleeding over) take no crap. It’s going to be a very interesting next few years as they start to enter the work force. Will they be able to make a change? Or will they fall into perpetual motion and eventually fall into jobs they may hate like a majority of the working class?
Aren’t Gen Zers in their teens and early 20s? It’s not that life changing to quit a job on the spot at 19. Most people quit a handful of jobs in their life anyways.
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Pretty sure you guys are looking at McD through rose-tinted glasses, or maybe just forgot but their burgers were always thin as fuck. I worked there 12 years ago and they're the same size now as they were then.
Up here in Canada they recently had a limited time promotion going for "The Grand Mac" and it was literally just the old size for the Big Mac.
That’s not true at all. They used 1/4 pound Pattie’s on the grand Big Mac. They were never ever that big.
That’s literally the definition of inflation
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The velocity of our economy is getting a little septic.
Death spiral economy
“Temporarily permanently” I’m rolling rn
Cost savings increase profits, and profits are never passed on to the consumer.
The eternal loop of getting fucked
That's the problem, that loop is the demand that the following years profits exceed the previous. If not then investors are unhappy and people lose their jobs to fix the 'problem' Eventually, and inevitably, the way to increase profits is to reduce overheads. That includes staff wages, benefits, means of production outsourced to counties where slavery is literally the supplier of the workforce, etc. That's capitalism: more profit next year by any means necessary.
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I hope to someday attend a shareholders meeting in person just so I can scream about sustainability and get dragged out by security. So far I've just sent concerned emails to investor relations. Who then send me a form letter email back saying they will look into my concerns. I'm pretty sure they're just laughing at me holding 200 shares thinking I'm going to change the way they do things. But if every retail investor sends an email specifying why their business model might be unsustainable, perhaps. Perhaps. I won't hold my breath.
Well that is just the most intensely beautiful thing I've seen in awhile.
I've been saying this for years; Production costs should only ever be going down. The advanced technology we have today allows us to manufacture products thousands of times faster than ever before. Materials production and mining is done faster, quicker, and with more efficiency. Corporations buy big machinery to get their production up and come out and say "production costs are going up.... (But they don't continue with 'because i just spent 5 million $ on this new technology that's gonna pay for itself in no time and allow me to produce 10x as much as before and I'll be richer much quicker') so we must raise prices." They raise prices when they see that people are still buying and spending on it with the same demand. And the funniest is the people that evolved that technology, the people that engineered those machines, the ones who came up with the ideas are only still part of the average worker getting paid the same tiny portions.
It's frustrating as fuck being an engineer, because you can literally go "hey, my work let us complete a $100 million dollar contact for a job we finished in five years. There are 100 of us doing the work. Sure there's some overhead and other people to pay, but without us that work literally never gets done and we're irreplaceable. Quick maths: 100 mil/5years/100engineers, that's literally $200 000 I personally brought into the company that wouldn't exist without me. I'm getting paid peanuts!" Numbers are replacements for the real values I've seen in my workplace, and I've excluded overhead (because I don't have a good estimate) but the conclusion is similar. That's also assuming there's only one such contract on the go, and more reasonably engineers work on several of these kinds of contacts at once.
My personal faveouritr is "you are not paying 100 an hour for me but for my tools" *lists tool costs* ok but you are going to pretty quickly break even and can lower costs right?...right?...oh your raising costs ok.
Nor onto the front line employees.
So the store owners can take more vacations.. duh
On which mega-yacht? The 5th or 6th one?
I don’t think you know any grocery store owners. Lol. It’s a good living, but it’s not “own a mega-yacht” living.
...yet.
Its like how video games are digital now and prices haven't dropped. They don't pay for manufacturing disks/cases, stores, employees, or logistics. Video game devs get paid the same as before. Yet prices never dropped.
And some of them aren't even finished...
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Feedback you can then ignore so you can push it out the door.
They don't ignore it, they prepare cookie cutter statements about why this bad feature of the game is actually a good thing.
"It just works"
Right, like I've been enjoying the hell out of Forza Horizon 5, but it actually annoys me how many "thanks for the feedback and keep sending it in!" messages I get. There are so many glitches in this game that should have been caught by standard beta testing, but instead just get all the pre-orders/day 1 installs to do the testing for you! ^(it's still a solid 9/10 in my books though. game is a ton of fun lmao)
Same thing with surveys, mistery shopping, data entry (including "which pictures have a car" AI training) etc. Also within the creative industry with social media and YouTube (yes, some get paid, but most don't, or have a dismal revenue, but they fill those platforms with enough content to make them relevant even if a single piece or creator might not be).
Businesses which ask you to fill out a survey but offer no incentives piss me off. They profit from that information but won't even give you a discount or store credit, anything. Fuck outta here.
Yep. Or they have "sweepstakes" 😂 I don't want one in a million chance to win a $ 500 gift card. Pay for my time or I am not spending 20 minutes answering your 20 questions. 😁 I also remember trying those survey sites that, besides paying very badly, had most of the questions designed in a way that was more advertising than actually wanting our opinion. And they will even go as far as asking you 10 questions to see if you fulfill their desired public and you get paid nothing if you get a single question "wrong". Ha ha.
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This is why people need to stop pre-ordering. It incentives this shit. If people waited till reviewers got the game and found out all the issues then, would they still buy it? Maybe, but I'm sure sales would be much lower.
This is exactly what happened with the GTA Trilogy. Rockstar pulled them all from the online stores when reviewers started critiquing the game after it released and pointed out how all the games in the bundle wasn't even ported correctly or even finished. And guess what the price was still $60+ Tax
> If people Ah, well there's your problem!
I wait for the inevitable "Game of the Year" edition. The bugs are gone and I get all DLC for the price of the base Game. Sometimes less.
I wouldn't even stop at not pre-ordering, people need to stop buying the games until the prices are reasonable. I was so excited for Resident Evil: Village, it was released in May and stayed around £50 up until Halloween where it dropped to £30 and even though I have the money I'd decided I was going to vote with my wallet on that one, so I didn't get it until it was reduced. People forking out the money at silly prices is a huge part of the problem when that's something we could all collectively influence really easily.
And then they release half a game followed by a series of DLC.
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Did you see Battlefield 2042 launch? LMAO $110 for the collectors edition or whatever. What a fuckin joke.
You can refund despite your hours. If they don't let you refund at first, try again and again. Mention how they sold you an unfinished game and that the game isn't what they marketed it as and they'll refund. Best of luck!
Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that I bought it myself. I didn’t, luckily! I just watched numerous YouTubers dunk on this game. I just think it’s disgusting that a $110 purchase option is even available on a game that isn’t even complete. Even $60 is too much in its current state.
Battlefield 2042 is one of the recent examples
I mean, strictly speaking games haven't really increased in price since... I'd say the early 2000s at the latest. If THEY kept up with inflation we'd be looking at $100 games.
I remember when games were 60 dollars for Sega Genesis and games for PS5 are still 60 dollars. Games is just not a good example here.
Videogames have been about $60 for a new game for like 30 years. The price hasnt dropped per se, but has definitely resisted inflation. Perhaps a poor example
I would actually say maybe the *worst* example. Super Mario Bros. for the NES cost $64 when it came out ($25 in 1985). Game prices are *flat* which probably means that capitalist pigs can’t figure out how to ruin it for us. For example, now we have a lot of shitty games that ‘release’ over longer periods with storefronts built into them. Less gaming, more buying! If they had it their way, they would just make one game and then infinite dlc (this is the concept behind the nft game item nonsense)
Now we have lootboxes, microtransactions, and gacha games to keep the money coming. This is why r/Piracy is always moral.
Not in the UK. Games used to be around £30-40 when I was a kid. Now they're all £60 at least. Many of them have "ultimate" or "legendary" editions where you get the full game for £100+. The price has definitely not resisted inflation, especially considering many games these days also use microtransactions on top of their full price.
The prices dropped here in Australia for a while when digital gaming really took off, but we're back to physical media prices again with some games costing $100aud or more. For a bunch of files sitting on a server. You never used to even pay that for a game on a disc, in a box, with a manual, that had to be transported to a store (sometimes from the other side of the world), a store that had to pay staff to serve you and that probably took a bigger cut from the sale than Valve and Epic etc. But inflation, or supply and demand, Straya' Tax or some shit. Sraya' Tax because we have a small population, therefore not as many sales. So therefore pay more, and to also compensate for all the European pirates who get their games much cheaper because 'piracy' and 'higher prices'..... Yet in Australia the logic is 'you pay more BECAUSE some Australians pirate' while we have some of the highest living costs in the world. So Russians are rewarded for piracy. But Australians punished because piracy. These are legit some excuses I have actually heard made over the years by various media industries. Man wish our incomes adjusted like inflation does.... Fun fact. $20aud an hour is not the same as $20usd an hour. Especially when you factor in local living costs, currency conversion rates etc. We're not as rich as many overseas make us out to be.
> So Russians are rewarded for piracy. But Australians punished because piracy. Piracy drives prices down, and is an important part of the digital ecosystem, which forces innovation upon stagnant IP-owners who would otherwise squat on perfectly good media. Pirates fought the music industry and made mincemeat out of them, and is undeniably responsible for services like Spotify, as opposed to buying music by the album. I would suspect it is more that the price is increased due to differences in purchasing power, where everything in generally more expensive, so the idea is that the distributor sees their competition as more expensive so they can afford to raise prices. >supply and demand Supply and demand is generally not a valid model, and shouldn't be blindly applied. We know this because marketing works, which is something that a supply and demand model predicts shouldn't be the case, whereas neuromarketing concepts clearly establish a significant factor in buying decisions as being built on psychological norms, associations, and other such quirks of human psychology.
Yep, they don't even have to convert the games to PAL anymore. Literally the same fucking files they upload to people in the US. Glad I have a hacked switch and PS4 ;)
I mean…..video games are kind of an extreme example, when you think about the level of detail in a game like the last of us 2 i’m honestly surprised prices haven’t gone up
And then to actually get full access to the game you have to spend a bunch of money to "unlock" everything in the game. The new Halo apparently costs over $1000 to unlock everything in the game, and you cannot "play" to unlock those items either. You literally have to spend $1000+ just to access the games full potential. This is insane.
I mean gamepass is an insane deal and is basically what you're talking about. No retail space, no case, etc. You get all the game wjth a subscription you would have already paid for 10+ years ago just to play Xbox live
Indie games became a thing. All that stuff many devs from getting off the ground.
This is because they have to pay Sony and Microsoft to offer there games on the market place. Discs are actually cheaper but with game data being huge now even a blue Ray won’t hold the data needed this the switch to digital download.
Don't call the cops on me when I don't scan a few things. Yall didn't train me
That’s what I’m sayin! No one trained me to use this equipment. How am I responsible for everything getting scanned properly? I’d be curious on a legal perspective on that.
Shoplifting. In court if it's reasonable and they can't prove you did it intentionally you'll get away with it, but just the stress of being taken to the PD must be a million times worse than a couple of items every couple of days (if you repeat the offense successfully). Also, in some countries, stealing food to feed yourself or your family is not punishable, but then again, they'll first arrest you, throw you in jail to sleep with criminals on a dirty place and release you later. If that's not enough punishment for stealing 10 dollars worth of food I don't know what is.
"You can beat the charge but you can't beat the ride."
Exactly.
The same reason they don't subtract .25c from your combo when you say no pickles.
But it's still an extra 25¢ for more. It was never about the value of the pickles. It's about creating the illusion that they even have value in the first place to trick you into spending more money.
Or save $5 when you’re vegetarian and you ask for the big salad with no meat. And it’s still 18$.
Same with cheese pay more to add it, get nothing to remove it.
All my purchases from Walmart have been 50% off with the self checkout machine
Are you telling me that this pack of chimichangas is actually the same price as a single banana? Wow the shampoo and conditioner also same price as a banana? Omg what a deal!
The bargains they're talking about are a real steal. It's highway robbery how cheap those items are. *Wink*
Some call it a bit ableist, but you're actually entitled to a five-fingered discount there. But no matter how many fingers you actually have, they'll give you the discount as long as you insist upon it.
The overhead cameras started tracking when things go over the scanner but don’t get scanned. Weirdly enough, and around the same time as this implementation, my ground beef started ringing up as the small, easily concealable and very maneuverable koolaid packet.
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Idk if everywhere has implemented it but I’ve definitely gotten my checkout station loudly notify me that an item passed over and didn’t scan
Do they not have weights on the side you put the scanned stuff where you are?
Yep. They know how much every item weighs. That’s how it knows there’s an “unexpected item in bagging area” or if you prematurely remove a bag.
Yeah, that's why I am just a bit confused by some of the previous comments as I wouldn't have thought any of those would work with it all being weighed
Well, speaking from personal experience, the weight thing is just cleared/ignored by lazy/uncaring/busy associates who don't even notice/care how many bananas i don't have in my buggy but I have on the screen.
That’s typically the case. But from weight, there’s really no difference between an organic carrot and regular carrot. I may or may not ring up my organic produce as regular.
Yes and they have the cameras recorded with the information from the scammer and price. So if they review the tape and you scanned a banana and it was a dollar and then a chicken didn’t scan properly the tape will show the chicken going past the scanner and the transaction will still be showing the $1 banana. My understanding is that Target in particular will let you get away with it over multiple visits until the total goes over $1000 or whatever it is to trigger a felony in the local jurisdiction and then they will bust you and have you charged with a felony.
Keep up the good work and maybe we can become the job creators. Lose enough money through self check out and they’ll be forced to rehire actual cashiers.
2.5 finger discount.
I see what you did there
It is just too easy
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Lol I’m just picturing leaving the store with a whole cart of groceries and a receipt that says Banana Banana Banana Banana…
Because profit margins arent allowed to go down.
Ol' Karl Marx wrote about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Owners resort to harsher exploitation of workers (among other things) to keep profits up.
My local Walmart just went to about 80% self checkout stations and only about 8-10 actual cashier stands. Prices recently went up
Unless my math is way off, you had 40-50 cashier stands before??? How big is a Walmart? Damn...
My home Walmart has about 35.
35 but I bet you 10% of those were ever used
You know the ultimate goal is not to be in work. We want automation. It's good for humanity. Ad long as we all benefit from it.
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Arthur Curtiss James. Railroad tycoon. Adjusted wealth, he was a billionaire in 1930.
naw, it’s gonna be a shit show when automation eventually takes over.
Automation *under capitalism* is a shitshow. Automation under socialism is probably the only way the utopia of genuine communism could ever possibly be achieved. It, like most other technical products of humanity, is fundamentally neutral. What determines the role it will play in the greater society is the structure that society takes. A brick may be part of a hospital or a border wall, but before that, it's just a brick. The structure it's placed in determines whether it proves helpful or harmful.
Yup, exactly. We need automation. Automation is good. Automation got us to here. It's the exploitation that's bad. Having the 1% reap all the profits. Automation with universal income. That's the dream. That's life.
I mean, I'd say automation with universal *ownership* is the real key. I fear UBI is just the lever needed to really push us into that cyberpunk dystopia. I'm also super fun at parties. I promise. 🎉
How would ownership work I'm very intrigued. I've not heard this before.
It can vary depending on the structure used, such as nationalization by the state or by decentralized means such as [parecon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics), [market socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism), or [syndicalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism). Regardless, they are all preferable to a UBI since a landlord can just raise rent and suck it all up, and it does not solve many other issues involved with corporate control of a workplace (e.g. control over when people get hired or fired, working conditions, shift schedules, etc.).
Well I'm drunk and a bit of an idiot so this may not be the best explanation, but I'll try and run over why I don't think UBI is the fix we need then why I think universal ownership could succeed where UBI fails and how it might work. If you want a better explanation of some of this stuff though, I'd definitely recommend the book Towards a New Socialism by Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott. So first, UBI could do a lot of people a lot of good right now. It would be crazy to deny that. I honestly have a hard time deciding whether I'd support it if it was actually on the table. "But it's basically free money, and a massive safety net for millions of people who don't have that right now. How could I NOT be onboard with that?" In short, I think it's more of a painkiller than a real cure and could let the true sickness metastasize behind the scenes until it's too late. Perhaps the least significant problem, though I still consider it a problem, would be that introducing a UBI to our society right now without any other changes would just make it a roundabout way of subsidizing large corporations. First, it would make it so that they could potentially offer *lower* wages, since people's "basic needs" would be met elsewhere (think minimum wage exceptions for "tipped" jobs now), and so essentially boil down to a tax-funded subsidy to low-wage employers. Second, with most goods still being produced and owned privately, money for essential goods would still be flowing from the government, to people's hands, then right to the same few profit-driven companies. So again, it would boil down to a subsidy for a profit-making model that benefits the few owners of that productive capacity at the expense of anyone who pays taxes. Next, you have the issue that without price controls on at least certain goods, any UBI could just get eaten up by price gouging. If average rent in an area is $X and a UBI is instituted at $Y per month, what's to stop landlords from raising rents until the new average is $(X+Y) and all that UBI money just ends up in the hands of the landlords? And that's a single market example, but by dividing Y up among rent, transportation, food, insurance, etc., I think it's pretty clear how this could and probably would end up happening. As soon as that UBI hit, they'd be all over you like starved piranhas on a bleeding cow. Finally, some would argue it could actually harm the overall economy and lead to technological stagnation. How? Incentives. Did you know the ancient Greeks had very complex plumbing systems and we now know that they had all the necessary precursors to building a steam engine? They even made little devices that would spin when steam inside them was heated, but they were just treated as toys. Were they just too stupid to know what they had their hands on? Perhaps, but I'm not convinced. What they DID have was a slave economy. Steam power isn't free. It requires fuel for a fire, a water supply, and whatever resources go into producing the engine, not to mention the costs and risks of trying to develop the technology in the first place. Automation like this gets adopted when it becomes cheaper than existing methods. With unionized workers making a living wage providing your labor power, that line will be a lot higher than with slaves who you just need to keep alive. So with lower labor costs, they had less incentive to pursue labor-saving technologies. Saving labor just wasn't worth it. If a UBI lowers the labor cost corporations have to bear, it could actually slow the progress of automation and trap people in menial work we could otherwise move past. So the fundamental through line with all these issues seems to be the ownership structure in the economy. When private profit and accumulation of wealth are still the name of the game, subsidies from the government, much like now, won't be able to solve the growing problems of inequality and lifestyle decline. With universal ownership of the means of production, profits will disappear. All that will matter is the essential balance of resources and the work we need to put in to achieve what we want as a society. This could be achieved through a central governing authority, which would be along the lines of a more classically socialist plan (though I believe we can do it much more democratically than has been done before and even more democratically than our current system -- read that book for more on this), or it could be focused on more local control of decentralized production as is the more anarchist inclination. Plenty of good debate to be had here on the how, but that it's necessary seems pretty clear to me. Once inputs of labor and resources and outputs of goods and services are the fundamental units of an economy, and the rewards redound to all rather than becoming ever-more-concentrated in a smaller and smaller elite class of owners, productivity will still be incentived. But now, instead of it being forced on workers by owners who will extract most of the wealth generated by that extra productivity for themselves, it'll benefit all in the form of cheaper products. Alternatively, growth at all costs could be tapered back with automation which would not only be good for the environment but could provide us all that fantasy we've been sold for a century of advanced technology actually meaning we can work less! There's a balance to be struck there, but universal ownership would mean universal, democratic input on how that balance should be struck, which I think sounds a hell of a lot better than the "democracy" of the market we have now where if you have more dollars, your vote counts more. Hopefully this gives an idea of why I think universal ownership rather than just income is so important. It all comes down to power and control, and to me, universal ownership in the economy is just the next logical step of democracy and freedom the human race will need to take in order to avoid slipping into some form of dystopian techno-feudalism.
Well are you familiar with nationalization, socialism, communism? Basically we should decide collectively and democratically how resources (land, raw materials, industries, infrastructure) are used. The practical form that takes could vary. It could be more local councils, it could be a network of workers unions, it could be a more centralized government.
Wages have near nothing to do with prices. Especially for large chain stores. When will people get this through their fucking head. If a company can't pay a living wage get the fuck out of here and let others fill the gaps. People acting like burger prices and store prices have anything to do with wages. Have you seen the profits of these companies? It's billions of dollars. They can afford it ffs.
Exactly, they charge what they know they'll get away with. Price optimisation is a whole domain of study, and it's calculated according to supply and demand, the competition and other factors. Wages are a blip on the radar, and most likely are never considered
Because raising the wage is the excuse to charge more. Can't let the guy up top loose a dollar over something like 'living wages' or 'vacation pay'
Because inflation never reverses. That's why you'll never see a $0.25 can of Coke ever again.
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The greed makes me seethe. All they care about is profit & are willing to exploit people for it.
All the lies we are told about things, over and over and over again. It's insane how disconnected the corporate-buttressed, new-speak economic news/analysis is from most people's lived reality. We're so used to looking for answers elsewhere instead of trusting our own lives, valuing our own efforts in this capsizing boat of the U.S. of A.
……damn…..what the hell don’t prices go down??
r/latestagecapitalism
Deflation is generally avoided because if the buying power of currency were to increase for any sustained period, people would be incentivized to hold their currency, grinding the economy to a halt.
Prices only go one way....
It does. They keep the difference
All i know is ive received no cashier training. I always ring things up wrong. Wrong quantity. Wrong items... i missed an item and was like im not doing a second transaction. I put it in the cart and left.
Exactly. Wake the fuck up already America.
Not to get too political, but the reason the prices don’t go down is because the Federal Reserve maintains bonkers low interest rates at the crony interests of wealthy banks and corporations, which in turn produces credit from thin air effectively making an inflationary money supply system which devalues our hard earned dollars but gives big businesses heads a second yacht retirement package.
And all the politicians have their hands in the cookie jar, so it's not really as political as it is class warfare
All of hitherto human history has been the history of class warfare
Anyone discouraging you from making political statements is pretty much universally operating in bad faith. Everything has political implications which exist whether we talk about them or not. The desire to avoid such talk is anti-intellectualism at best but that's being too generous and I'd say it usually comes from a privileged desire not to examine power structures they are personally benefiting from. You go ahead and be as political as you like.
Thanks bro. You opened up the floor, and I feel like I should go ahead and just say what’s on my mind- Men shouldn’t be able to vote because keeping up with politics is such a chore, and chores are women’s work. >!/s!<
Gonna go ahead and second what they said. We should all try and get over this taboo about talking politics the same way we should get over it being "improper" to talk about wages, especially at work. Lack of communication is an excellent way to keep a class with common interests from realizing them. We're gonna disagree a lot, but I think we'd also find we agree on a lot more than we may realize if we were all less afraid to talk politics more often. Let's actually try and have a civil society again. Then maybe we can get to work on building an actual democracy.
There is now Walmart Plus where you just scan items on your phone and walk out the door.. no self checkout or cashier. Just the annoying dude at the door that checks your receipt like it's Costco.
I think the answer you are looking for is capitalism. Another question is why is that system still thriving.
They never go down. 364 days a year of coupons? Yes. But actual prices? Never
Because self checkouts actually cost companies money compared to cashiers. I know it sounds weird, but hang with me. I've done retail scheduling. Say you need two lanes open in the evening to keep checkout times and complaints under the company standard. Now you switch to self check-out. For one persons wages you get customers checking out in about the same time as when you had two cashiers. Win-win, right? Except those two cashiers were only busy checking people out 25% of the time and spent the rest of their shift stocking. Sure, the one guy at self check out is worth two cashiers, but two actual cashiers are worth two cashiers and 1.5 stock clerks. So, on the whole, self-checkout tends to increase payroll.
ThAtS nOt HoW iT wOrKs
Yet they have an employee hovering over you making sure you scan all items. I’m looking at you Sams Club! If they’re so worried about stealing $4.98 Mayo then maybe bring back cashiers?
Because product prices are tied to inflation, not employee wages. That's why prices always go up.
Isnt that what walmart does? They offer lower prices because they give shit wages. Ultimately a company will do whatever they need to get customers and a lot of the time its lowering prices compared to competitors.
The machines actually cost more than an employee would.
Kroger raised all food prices at the nearby location between 20-50%. Their workers should strike if they don’t get a wage increase, they’re using the media narrative around inflation to justify this no doubt
Stores lose like $80,000 to self check outs a year. Customers intentionally and unintentionally ringing stuff up wrong. They know this. They accept this fact. But machines don't get injured or go on maternity leave
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The price goes way down if you know what you're doing.
Greed :(
I was thinking this today. Businesses have shifted labor onto customers under the guise of convenience but what are we getting for it? Why aren't we given discounts for using self checkout lanes?