Unanticipated "roll for initiative."
336 karma · joined May 16, 2012
> everyday needs
The cost of a lot of things, dining out in particular, were kept in check for decades because wages for labor were suppressed. The true costs of "everyday needs" were borne by labor to the benefit of the consumer (and arguably, the business owner).
Now that we can't cheaply exploit labor post pandemic, costs for the consumer are going up. The rising incomes at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, alongside rapidly (and long-running) spiking costs of real estate, are squeezing consumers as they buy groceries, gas, and yes, fast food.
Putting the brakes on the costs of those is probably going to look like squeezing wages on low income workers once more.
I can't tell if this is sincere or PhD-level trolling. Bravo.
Not to mention the fact that they're now outright _creating_ gambling addicts that wouldn't have been addicts before the legalization of online betting.
Seriously, though, let's stop trying to legalize and market any more addictive products in order to make a few a-holes rich while the risks are externalized onto society.
I moved out of tech a few years back. I'm responding to ads that claim to be desperate to hire people, yet I'm not getting replies.
In my country, they dropped interest rates to near 0 in the wake of 9/11 in order to prevent the economy from crashing, and held them there until the Covid pandemic. It seems like that free money was used to buy _anything_ that could be invested in, driving up prices for assets like stocks, houses, and cryptocurrencies. I remember reading articles around 2018 that said that economists didn't know how the economy worked anymore.
The crazy low, long term interest rates are what _I_ feel has been freaky about the economy since at least 2005 when I looked at a dark, unremarkable 4 bedroom condominium priced at $400k, which was at least 6x my annual income.
It's felt like a huge house of cards has been built for over 20 years now, the whole economy outside of the service sector has been hollowed out, and I'm still waiting for it to all come crashing down.
Why not? Trump's 2016 election alone seems to have caused subscriptions to places like the Washington Post and New York Times to increase, and led to a small but fervent industry in creating Trump- and MAGA-related merchandise outside the news industry.
It seems like there should be potential for a company or cartel to market elections more like WWE or boxing matches, pitting a hero against a heel, selecting hype men and women to be VP picks, and selling merchandise along the way.
There are only so many Wordle's that the NYT can buy, but you can fly at least five Trump flags from the back of a pickup. I think the industry could easily adapt (or at least, new media companies could form) by making a greater spectacle of elections and bankrolling the campaigns of those they think could drive views and subscriptions should they be elected.
I've seen what Fox News has done to the political discourse in this country, and I think we could go WAY darker as these legacy media companies continue to fight the dying light.
citation needed
+1. I saw a couple of ads this morning where they clearly state that they're only soliciting resumes to grow their "talent pool."
This was something we were talking about in college in the late 90s as the dot coms were getting huge: do you stay in college and get the degree, or do you take the first job that comes along, save up your money, and head back to school when the economy turns south?
> it's clearly not a threat
No, it's not a threat, it just _references_ a famous death threat, one that Tan regrets that we didn't get when he initially tweeted it.
You can't say those words here without half of the country screeching about the evils of Communism. This country is horribly propagandized and programmed to resist anything to the left of uninhibited free market capitalism.
> led by leaders with specific, actionable demands
I'm surprised anyone would seriously suggest collective action in the US after watching the absolute popcorn fart that was Occupy Wall Street. The first thing anyone who attempted organizing anything was to compile an enormous list of grievances, and then failed to rank them or clearly and consistently articulate, as you said, "specific, actionable demands." I'm not sure most of the organizers even got around to attempting to do a second thing.
I wish I knew how important is was for me to avoid having managers who use Adderall. My most toxic work situations involved managers on that drug. I still struggle to identify them in interviews. If I go back into W2 work, I'm thinking of straight out asking prospective managers if they're on it or another similar stimulant.
I went to college with the goal of getting a job and a career, not a BS. I was in college in the 1994-1998 timeframe, and could do web development. I wish I'd gotten on the dot-com money train rather than staying in college.
Y'all mind if I use this as the name of my next album? It's got some long lost Judas Priest vibes about it.
Former long time renter here. I had the same problem with neighbors in an adjacent apartment complex, and police couldn't do a damned thing except come out at 4 am and tell me, yep, we can hear that from the street.
I mentioned the problem to the landlord. The landlord told me to report it to the public health department. I did.
I never heard back from the health department, but the noise stopped within a few days, and the stereo blasting tenant and their onsite manager glared at me ever time I saw them afterwards.