I still think lots of this is just people assholing. Maybe I'm insulated because my housing costs are fixed, but if you don't count backpacking equipment and dining out, our costs aren't up by that much.
I think the obsession with gas prices anchors this, because they do sometimes fall back to levels from years ago. So people expect the price of milk to go back to pre-pandemic or something, instead of just leveling off. A widespread expectation of economy-wide deflation would actually be disastrous, of course, since everyone would stop discretionary spending until prices fell.
I'm sort of changing the subject here, but something I've been finding annoying about middle age is that the accumulation of even low rates of inflation over the decades of my adult life means that I don't have a good instinct for what anything should cost, particularly things I don't buy regularly. I keep on realizing I'm remembering what they cost in the early 2000s, or the 90s.
At which point I just give up on trying to be rationally thrifty entirely.
Although at Costco at least the price of milk actually did revert pretty significantly. Pre-pandemic it was maybe $2.20, was as high as $3.70, now is more like $2.80. The rotisserie chicken and hot dog/soda combo, of course, never changed.
I think economists dismissed out of hand companies raising prices because they could get away with it, when there are now several documented cases of companies doing just that (something with eggs last week is the most recent I heard.)
You can't compare the prices of tents to back then. The technology is so improved.
I never noticed the egg thing because we buy the kind where the hens have a park or something. They were never cheap.
Leave it to a jerk like Nixon to skew the discourse.
I don't have a good instinct for what anything should cost, particularly things I don't buy regularly.
I'm so paranoid about this in situations where I am paying a housekeeper, or babysitter, or pet-sitter or something. I am so worried that I'm going to think I'm so virtuous for handing someone a shiny quarter and saying, "You've earned this! Every bit! Great job!"
3- theoretically your purchasing power has increased over that time so you have the luxury of not needing to worry so much.
Posting while waiting for kid to have oral surgery, which I had no anchor for expected cost because our healthcare system is bullshit. It puts us over OOP max for the year but I still had to pay the full coinsurance and they promised to send me a refund for the excess, yet another mental stress to remember to check that I actually get that money back.
Surely Nixon's point is integral to understanding the economy.
Insist on written surgery. Also, hope it goes well and the recovery is quick.
Speaking of reference points, I genuinely try hard to remind myself that health care was genuinely worse in the 2000s, before Obamacare. But it's getting harder and harder to do so. The decrease in the number of uninsured people is real and lasting, but the experience of being insured has deteriorated back to where it was, I think.
I feel like wisdom tooth extraction is a big scam overall. Like maybe it causes problems for a small percentage of people but they encourage way more people than necessary to get it, saying that by the time your have symptoms it's much more dangerous and complicated to address. They've been telling me to get mine out for 20 years and I said no thanks and nothing bad has happened. Mentioned it to my dad last night and he said the same thing happened with his dentists. But we decided to go ahead with the recommendation of the kid's dentist.
I still have my wisdom teeth. Before they grew in, my dentist pulled out four other teeth to make room for them. This appears to be fairly unique and confusing to the dentists I have had later.
Do you feel smarter for having that configuration?
Anyway the theory is saw at Bsky that felt logical is that while prices are up so are wages enough that real income has increased, but people attribute high prices to bad government and wage increases to their own awesomeness so of course Biden sucks. That and the "I'm doing fine but everyone else is suffering" economy vibes.
I got mine out when I was in my early 20s. One had started to erupt through the skin but then seemed to stop, and I was getting food stuck in the crater, under the skin, every time I ate, and it got really annoying.
I remember gasoline costing 29 cents a gallon!
I have no idea what that would be in 2023 dollars. Oh, $2.72. I saw gas at $3.09 a couple of days ago: I blame Joe Biden.
That was back when pink air was coming in 1966.
Now we have spend more overall, separate expenses to make our cars go and to color the air when doing a gender reveal.
The pink air campaign is an interesting bit of anthropology, I think: https://swiped.co/file/fina-pink-air-howard-gossage/
I think the OP is on to something, in particular that the Tiktok generation never knew an age that had anything other than minimal inflation, so their backward-looking reference point is unusually far back. If you grew up with 5% or 10% inflation, then you know that prices rise and you know that of course it's stupid to use 'five years ago' as your reference point for price comparison. For the very young today, that's not very obvious; five years of sub-2% inflation is barely noticeable, when you think about the noise in prices due to changing tastes and preferences, etc. They've effectively grown up expecting inflation to be zero. Older generations too - they may have lived through 5% or 15% inflation, but they've forgotten the experience.
Any inflation is a horrible and unwelcome surprise.
Any inflation is a horrible and unwelcome surprise.
Unless it's in one's pay. But that's not inflation, that was earned, dammit.
Inflation was very low since around 1992? I don't think I had meaningful spending money until around then, so even if you're in your 40s you probably haven't really experienced significant inflation before.
7: This is totally wrong -- Nixon respected the intelligence of the American voters, and they rewarded him with the greatest landslide victory ever.
9: My personal financial history is weird in that I was stupidly overpaid until 2008, then cut my pay in half or so moving to the government, and am now quite reasonably well-paid by any decent standard but not on my pre-2008 trajectory. So my subjective experience of pricing lifetime is all out of whack.
They sent us home with a pint of Häagen Daaz. I wonder how much they billed the insurance for that.
Prices in November 1980 were 47% higher than in November 1976, and in 1984 were 23% higher than 1980, so how does this theory jive with that result? Were voters noticing that the rate of change was down to 4% vs 14%? Or did the economic boom outweigh inflation salience?
I think inflation was salient then.
Certainly it was more salient in 1980 than in 1984.
3: My middle-aged recentering has just been to repeat the phrase "divide by two" any time I get a bill for dinner or whatever else. It is very calming and all the prices make more sense. Eschew the third derivatives and divide by two.
My whole life I ignored dentists who said to remove my wisdom teeth but for some reason in my late 50s I finally succumbed. Can't remember why now. My quality of life is unchanged.
I was much influenced by a study maybe 25 years ago that said the major determinant of dental spending was not how bad your teeth were but how activist your dentist was. One study, but it led me to half a lifetime of feeling OK saying "no, let's wait and watch it" or "no X-rays this time, thanks, maybe next time." I still have stuff done as necessary, and my face finding the pavement in a teenage bike crash has made stuff necessary, but overall I have liked my strategy.
Everything for me is noticeably more expensive. According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, inflation over the past 2 years is a little under 20%. It's hard to think of anything that I regularly spend money on that's not at least 20% more expensive than it was 2 years ago, and a lot of things are quite a bit more than that. There's a load of skimpflation or shrinkflation, too, where a unit of "thing" isn't on paper much more expensive, but you actually get a lot less "thing" for your money.
I get paid OK, but I'm not getting 10% pay rise every year. In fact, the biggest pay rise I've ever had (while in the same job) was 10% and I've only had that once.
14: Same. Always resented not getting a chance to wear out the first set.
I don't have a good instinct for what anything should cost, particularly things I don't buy regularly. I keep on realizing I'm remembering what they cost in the early 2000s, or the 90s.
This reminds me it's time to recalculate my signpost-years for historical inflation! Very useful for quick mental calculations.
The 1995 dollar was worth about double the 2023 dollar.
4x: 1979
8x: 1970
10x: 1963
12x: 1951
I've been happy with it. The teeth he pulled were easier to remove than wisdom teeth.
Gas is really cheap where I am (under $3 a gallon)
Google Ngram for "inflation" in the US shows a massive spike in the 70s, peaking in 1978 and falling fast thereafter. ("Deflation" peaks in 1933).
the biggest pay rise I've ever had (while in the same job) was 10% and I've only had that once.
When I went from trooper to lance-jack, it involved a 43% pay rise - by far the largest I've ever received in percentage terms. And, I was told (and have told others since) this is because it is the single most important promotion you ever get, because you are making the jump from a private soldier, who only has to worry about his own personal situation, hence 'private', to an officer (albeit non-commissioned), one who has been entrusted with an office, a position of authority, and therefore has to start worrying about lots of other people before himself.
I notice it when eating out, in particular.
My local pub, which is pretty cheap by London standards, used to charge £10 for two pints. A friend and I have been doing a fortnightly meetup there for several years, so I know how much they usually charge. In the past year it went to £10.50, then £11 and it's currently £11.60. That's not wildly higher than base inflation over the past year, but it's noticeable.
Or, there's a "Japanese" restaurant chain that my son likes that we go to regularly. We tend to order the same thing every time. Meal for three used to be £48, within the last year, it's gone up by around £17-18 quid.
The biggest pay raises I ever got were leaving university employment. I've done it twice, if you count leaving a graduate assistantship.
wage increases to their own awesomeness
Unless it's in one's pay. But that's not inflation, that was earned, dammit.
Except for minimum wage. When talking about minimum wage, whatever you expected that to be when you were in your teens or twenties, no matter how old you are now, is the only fair wage and everyone who asks for more is greedy and ungrateful, probably lazy too. Also, a job-killer.
I also hadn't realized quite how low inflation before it got out of hand in the 70s - on par with the Greenspan-to-pandemic period, long-term averages around 2.5%.
I assume 41 is a version of the baby animal metaphors.
Right, but it's nice that the nickname makes for a good masturbation joke.
re: 48
My Dad got promoted to lance-corporal when he was in the Army (Signals) and them demoted back at some point for some infraction.
In 2023 gas averaged 3.49 a gallon. If gas prices followed inflation, it would be about $4.50 today. That the cost has not been allowed to rise in concert with everything else is a major policy failure.
Sorry, in 2013, gas averaged $3.49, not 2023. In 2023 its still about that.
Definitely having trouble posting today.
I'm pretty convinced that a fair amount of the inflation was price gouging and I wish there had been a big campaign about it.
My dentist fired me for refusing x-rays (I didn't feel like it after I had cancer) and haven't found a new one. I do need one though.
I agree that past set point/pricing mentality is really important. I recommend growing up with not much, that way anything above sustenance will feel like wealth. Doesn't really apply to providing for kids though.
One other change is that a price in the past was firmer. Now, if you identify yourself to a merchant, there's a discount, sometimes a huge one, also much more aggressive in-store sales, and the possibility of online search for inventory/discounts.
I picked up some groceries before thanksgiving, the store had discounted turkeys, I paid $4.10 for an 11lb turkey. Back when pharmacists had an extra minute 4 years ago, a helpful one on his personal phone generated a 50% discount for some medicine while at the register for me. That general experience leads me to just ignore listed prices mostly, thrift for me means going to one of the places that usually charges fairly/less with OK quality and just not looking at the exhausting tiered and conditional possibilities at new places.
My biggest optional expenditure, college tuition, turned out to be pretty inflexible to haggling. They charge less for grad enrollment it turns out.
One thing that has stayed practically flat in nominal prices over the years, as quality has (generally) increased: new cars.
CPI New Vehicles was 145 in Jan 1997, 147 in Jan 2020. Now it's up to 180; but by contrast, CPI All Items went from 159 to 259 to 308 over those three points. So in real terms, new cars cost 35% less than in 1997.
54.2 what an asshole! I won't speculate about his motivation, though I do massively suspect my own dentist of running the practice strictly to maximize what she can pull from insurance. I mean, to the point of looking at some bills (that don't increase my out of pocket because our coverage is good) and saying "isn't this just flat out fraud?"
But whether financial or because you refusing xrays made diagnosing cavities 5% harder for your dentist - an asshole.
"Now, if you identify yourself to a merchant, there's a discount, sometimes a huge one, also much more aggressive in-store sales, and the possibility of online search for inventory/discounts."
This is one of my worst nightmares. I hate negotiating prices. Just tell me the price and make it fair for everyone. Shopping in Marrakech raised my blood pressure the whole trip.
Related to the post because one of his hobbyhorses is "people aren't down on the economy, Republicans are down on the economy." always with the same charts: Even if he's wrong sometimes I value Kevin Drum and his periodic posts fact-checking headlines. It's so easy to fall for doom and gloom headlines and reading KD is the single best curative for me. Skyrocketing crime, today's young men being loser incels, the failure of our education systems, social media ruining people, all those things that we olds are prone to believe, refuted convincingly and as often as necessary. And you know, if the data does show a jump in crime he'll specify where and when and what time.
Oh, for loyalty discounts in the US: local prefix+9999999 or any big city prefix+ 8675309 are loyal customers with very high probability. I am genuinely conflicted about whether this is dishonest-- probably is, but it doesn't feel that way. Twice it's served as a useful disorienter in conversations that veer towards thieving kids today.
Yeah but every time he uses the scoldy "Knock it off" I quit reading him for another three years.
I had not heard of the Pink Air thing before. That's hilarious.
From the link in 21:
Lastly, because Fina was an asphalt company too, Gossage created a contest where you could win 15 yards of pink asphalt.
I wonder if this pre-dated the famous driver's ed film, Red Asphalt.
Reminds me of the "Blue Coal" advertisements on the 1940s radio dramas.
Day to day, inflation isn't a big deal for us, but housing went from affordable to impossible in my neck of the woods in about three years. We have a good enough house; but with our income, we probably probably would have moved up to a bigger house, and now we won't. We're fine but the 20-something looking for a starter home now doesn't have anything to buy and their rent is triple my mortgage.
Pointing out that wages are up for low skill workers is great, but doesn't address the fact that wages were stagnant for elder Milliennials, who definitely feel like when they finally got over the recession killing their careers, the pandemic whacked them again.
4: the eggs case is from 2004-2008. Not that they aren't bastards but not the reason for 2022.
The Depression engendered the metric of GNP/GDP, because people could see that business activity was cratering and none of the existing statistics captured that.
The past couple generations' experience should engender a new metric of net income after necessities - necessities being some weighted combo of food, housing, health care, maybe childcare, etc. It would be complex (especially since more abundant housing would often result in people buying more of it with the same dollars), but not impossible.
Restaurant meals are interesting, because I think there was a massive deflation. People got used to really cheap restaurant meals and regular takeout. Like the expectation is that a family will have some kind of meal out once a week. As a kid, restaurant meals were not an every week thing. Maybe, paying so little to labor had us over consuming restaurant meals relative to th8nsg which are less labor-intensive.
One Mobil gas station I go to had gas for $3.49 and $3.35. What I don't get is how the full-service Mobil station in crunchy rural high end suburb was as low as $3.10. The person pumping gas was a white, middle-class teenager. I seriously wonder if they are losing money on gas to get people to buy pizza, because I can't figure out the price difference otherwise.
I am still ticked off that Paul Campos made and never corrected an LGM post a few years ago about gas price increases being overblown, but his source was some auto-generated website that divided gas prices by the gas CPI, guaranteeing near-unity no matter what was happening.
69: Maybe the first station was the outlier? Sometimes specific stations jack up the price because of convenience.
I'm pretty convinced that a fair amount of the inflation was price gouging and I wish there had been a big campaign about it.
I am skeptical of this, in general, but surprisingly Nate Silver (I know) had a decent piece explaining what that looks like for fast food.
Finally, the company has a much more robust delivery program than it once did (remember, delivery is still relatively new for some of the major fast food brands) and tries to nudge customers toward delivery and takeout because these have higher profit margins. It may charge delivery customers higher prices for the same items, for instance. And even if it doesn't, there are also lots of service and delivery fees. How these get split between the restaurant, the delivery service and the driver is often opaque, but there's a lot of them to go around. When I tried just now to place an Uber Eats order from a McDonald's that's just two blocks from me, for instance, it wanted $5.99 in service fees plus a suggested $4.00 tip on top of a $14 value meal order.
The point is simply this: it's very easy to spend a lot more these days on fast food in ways that don't necessarily show up in inflation data. Three years ago, I might have walked down the block and ordered a Super Duper Double Cheeseburger, fries and a Diet Coke for $9.67 before tax. Now, because Uber Eats and the restaurant have correctly determined that I'm lazy and they can price-discriminate against me and I fell for their viral marketing campaign, I'll have them deliver me a Triple Super Duper Cheeseburger Deluxe with grilled onions, plus fries and a Diet Coke -- at a price of $24.25 before tax.
The other one is average for the area. The one in my town that is not by the highway is the highest and is known for that. I just looked up their website. It looks like the fancy suburb guy is also a mechanic and rents out school buses and has a very small rubbish removal business. They were a horse and buggy taxi service in 1905.
Adding to 73; here's how I would try to generalize that argument.
One reason for skepticism about price gouging as a theory is, "what changed? Why couldn't they gouge prices before?" The answer may be force of habit -- business just hadn't tried making sudden price increases -- but Nate Silver's example offers another response. That people may be sensative to sudden price changes if their behavior stays the same and they see the price for the exact same item go up, but that anytime people are changing their behavior it's a chance for business to push them towards decisions that provide better margins for the business, and the pandemic (and the end of general concern about the pandemic) both caused a lot of behavior changes and that provided an opportunity for business.
I don't have a good sense how much that explains? Does that generalize across the economy, or is it a special case?
I was talking to a relative who's owned the same house since the 90s and they were shocked at my rent for a 1-bedroom apartment. It's close to my parents' mortgage, which is based on costs circa 2006. If I tried to buy in my parents' neighborhood (not that I would) the mortgage would be 2-3 times what my parents pay.
Two houses sold in that neighborhood about a year ago and both are owned by people who can afford multiple homes, but who may eventually settle in the new one. I think that neighborhood is becoming a mix of older people on fixed incomes or near retirement who have been there for years, and people of a slightly wider age range with a lot more wealth than long-time residents.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1348&context=econ_workingpaper
The dominant view of inflation holds that it is macroeconomic in origin and must always be tackled
with macroeconomic tightening. In contrast, we argue that the US COVID-19 inflation is
predominantly a sellers' inflation that derives from microeconomic origins, namely the ability of
firms with market power to hike prices. Such firms are price makers, but they only engage in price
hikes if they expect their competitors to do the same. This requires an implicit agreement which
can be coordinated by sector-wide cost shocks and supply bottlenecks. We review the long-
standing literature on price-setting in concentrated markets and survey earnings calls and compile
firm-level data to derive a three-stage heuristic of the inflationary process: (1) Rising prices in
systemically significant upstream sectors due to commodity market dynamics or bottlenecks create
windfall profits and provide an impulse for further price hikes. (2) To protect profit margins from
rising costs, downstream sectors propagate, or in cases of temporary monopolies due to
bottlenecks, amplify price pressures. (3) Labor responds by trying to fend off real wage declines in
the conflict stage. We argue that such sellers' inflation generates a general price rise which may be
transitory, but can also lead to self-sustaining inflationary spirals under certain conditions. Policy
should aim to contain price hikes at the impulse stage to prevent inflation from the onset.
https://www.ft.com/content/837c3863-fc15-476c-841d-340c623565ae
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https://www.ft.com/content/837c3863-fc15-476c-841d-340c623565ae
From a UBS economist, Nov 2022:
The broadening of inflation beyond commodity prices is more profit margin expansion than wage cost pressures.
How is this happening? Two forces have combined. Despite negative real wages, consumers have carried on consuming. Strong post-pandemic household balance sheets have allowed lower savings and increased borrowing to offset the sorry state of real wages. The resulting resilience in demand has given companies the confidence to raise prices faster than costs.
The resulting resilience in demand has given companies the confidence to raise prices faster than costs.
I was under the impression that this has reversed and, over the last year, wages have increased faster than prices. For example
Wages have caught up for most, and the biggest gains have been at the bottom. That positive turn of events hinges on this year, in which inflation decreased and median wages grew steadily. Any analysis that excludes 2023 is misleading.
There's a chart that shows wages rising faster than inflation in 2020 & 2023, and slower in 2021-2. The total is
Bottom Quartile: +4.5%
Second Quartile: +1.9%
Third Quartile: -0.5%
Top Quartile: -2.4%
In aggregate that probably shows slight slippage of wages, relative to inflation, over the 4 year period but (a) it's good that the distributional effects are positive and (b) the current trend is positive for everyone.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w31790
We document how supply-chain pressures, household inflation expectations, and firm pricing power interacted to induce the pandemic-era surge in consumer price inflation in the euro area. Initially, supply-chain pressures increased inflation through a cost-push channel and raised inflation expectations. Subsequently, the cost-push channel intensified as firms with high pricing power increased product markups in sectors witnessing high demand. Eventually, even though supply-chain pressures eased, these firms were able to further increase markups due to the stickiness of inflation expectations. The resulting persistent impact on inflation suggests supply-side impulses can generalize into broad-based inflation via an interaction of household expectations and firm pricing power.It seems generally gouging is real but limited and uneven.
I think 76.1 is a lot of the problem. Which I would because it fits with what I said in 1. Anyway, 2003 house prices rule.
Yeah, housing is becoming more of a crunch in more and more of the country. Even when real wages are up, that creates a justified feeling of insecurity. People higher up the ladder are also pissed interest rates mean they can't buy nearly as much house, or trade up in the way they had been imagining.
I was interested to go through downloads from the Survey of Consumer Finances (learned about through this article) and find that families' balance sheets are also significantly better in 2022 than in 2019, with gains relatively higher at the bottom.
Bottom quartile family (ranked by net worth, thousands of constant dollars, averages within quartile): 2019 assets 38, debts 54, net worth -16; 2022 assets 32, debts 38, net worth -6.
Second quartile: 2019 assets 150, debts 82, net worth 64; 2022 assets 198, debts 100, net worth 99 (47% increase).
Third quartile: 2019 assets 402, debts 128, net worth 274; 2022 assets 498, debts 124, net worth 374 (36% increase).
75th-89th percentile: 2019 assets 980, debts 165, net worth 816; 2022 assets 1,277, debts 175, net worth 1,103 (35% increase).
Top 10%: 2019 assets 6,960, debts 340, net worth 6,620; 2022 assets 8,125, debts 354, net worth 7,771 (17% increase).
We're using nopkins because we forgot to buy enough napkins.
I just bought a Miele dishwasher. The price is higher than 2 years ago, but I'm getting a $150 rebate, because Bosch and Miele were totally unable to keep up with demand during the first 2 years of the pandemic and have now overproduced. They also added in a 5 year warranty; their standard is 1 year. It's still expensive, but I want one that will last more than 8 years.
I think our dishwasher is a dozen years old. It's certainly more than ten years old. It's a Kenmore.
I'm told they are built to last 8-10 years. We had crappy ones in our rental. I had bought a GE portable with the idea that we would eventually install it, because that's what Tim's parents did back in the day. And you used to be able to do that, but since October of 2019 they aren't convertible. I have never bought a regular dishwasher as an adult. I do remember getting some Kenmore products as a kid. I'm just glad these European things don't use heat to dry. I always had to remember to turn that feature off, because the electric bill would skyrocket when we had it on.
All of the Sears near me are closed, so Ali don't think I could get a Kenmore.
Wikipedia:
In 1966, when "Pink Air" finally arrived at every Fina station, Fina replaced that campaign with a new one regarding an ingredient in its gasoline called "Pflash." At a time when other US oil companies were promoting their gasoline products with campaigns such as Exxon/Esso's "Put A Tiger in Your Tank!", Shell's "Platformate" additive that they claimed to improve gas mileage, Texaco's invitation to "Trust Your Car to the Man Who Wears The Star" and Mobil's "Detergent gasoline"; "."PFLASH", was promoted as an ingredient in Fina gasoline that would improve driving pleasure by "turning red lights green," "smoothing out rough roads," "improving the food at roadside restaurants" and "making you feel less sorry you ever got a driver's license." Fina stations even offered free "Pflash" bumper stickers to motorists who pulled in for gasoline purchases.
I remember the jingle for Fina with Pflash, but none of the promises.
Also, since fall 2020 appliance prices are like 20% higher.
You can get a room at one of those hotels with kitchenettes and steal the dishwasher. Just say it wasn't there when you checked in.
||
An oily, finger-sized fish and highly valued trade item that can be eaten, rendered for its oil, or stood on end and lit like a candle.|>
94: We had a bunch of them in the freezer for a while and I thought about trying the candle thing but never did. Eventually we moved them outside, the dogs got into them and we had to throw out the remains.
This is why I don't want to get dogs. Too fragile.
The remains of the fish. Not the dogs. The dogs are aggressively resilient.
Even the one who got her ligaments all torn up after fighting with one of the others is now almost 100% back to normal after surgery and extensive recuperation.
Sure, they say they are, but next thing you find them hiding in the server room and it's all boo-hoo, back to rehab, emotional support human.
Well you live on the land of aggressively resilient dogs.
Unless there a Long Island there too
||
Model names were often an axe's only distinguishing characteristic, and many sound as if they were dreamed up by the same ad agencies that promote motorcycles and firearms today. Climax, Demon, Endurance, Cock of the Woods, Red Warrior, Hiawatha, Hottentot, Black Prince, Black Chief, Battle Axe, Invincible, XXX Chopper, Woodslasher, Razor Blade, Stiletto, Forest King, and Young American were just a few of the choices. One model, for sale in Vancouver, was called the Gorilla.|>
Good pub quiz question: what are all those trade names for?
The best question of that type is, of course, Superhero Or Potato: Sapphire, Sigma, Solara, Megachip, Kestrel, Home Guard and Hermes are all the latter.
105: Did we do "Tolkien character or antidepressant" here?
105. Do Greek gods count as superheroes? If not, why not?
My middle-aged recentering has just been to repeat the phrase "divide by two" any time I get a bill for dinner or whatever else. It is very calming and all the prices make more sense. Eschew the third derivatives and divide by two.
Haven't read the whole thread yet, sorry, but this reminds me of something that pops up roughly daily in the local subreddit: restaurants with "service fees". This might have grown out of a law changing the tipped minimum wage, and/or pandemic survival stuff, but it's clearly grown far beyond that into "recovery fees" and "wellness fees" and more. In enlightened topless Europe you can look at a menu and figure out in your head what you'll actually pay if you can do arithmetic, but here restaurants can just put random numbers on menus plus a footnote saying "actually you'll pay 5% more" or whatever. Plus "shrinkflation" - haven't noticed it myself but read about it a lot.
That kind of confusing chiseling deception about what I'm paying seems more salient to me than inflation.
No, because heroes are by definition mortal. (As are potatoes.) Gods are not.
A slight sidetrack leads me to the traditional Indian genre of mahakavya epic poetry, and its list of obligatory content:
"It must contain descriptions of cities, seas, mountains, moonrise and sunrise, and accounts of merrymaking in gardens, of bathing parties, drinking bouts, and love-making.
"It should tell the sorrow of separated lovers and should describe a wedding and the birth of a son.
"It should describe a king's council, an embassy, the marching forth of an army, a battle, and the victory of a hero."
I notice that, with its sequel, "Top Gun" therefore fulfils all the requirements of a mahakavya except two.
110: Prometheus? Isn't he immortal and also sometimes portrayed as the quintessential hero/martyr? I'm also curious if anyone has the expertise to determine if Marvel superhero, Thor, is mortal.
Prometheus was a Titan, not a hero.
Thor the Marvel Comic character is mortal, and therefore may well be a hero. (Thor the Norse god was also mortal - not all cultures have immortal gods.)
109: I'm down with a service fee - especially if some of it goes to back-of-the-house staff. Huge disparity there in higher-end restaurants. I don't like aggressive 25% tip suggestions when I pick up tacos from a street vendor or get a cup of coffee.
I've yet to see a service fee at a restaurant, except for the thing where they include the tip for large parties.
116: I've seen them in resort settings in small restaurants with reservations and a limited number of seatings.
One San Francisco restaurant before the pandemic. I also went to a no-tipping restaurant in San Francisco. It was such a liw-key vibe; I loved it.
68
Restaurant meals are interesting, because I think there was a massive deflation. People got used to really cheap restaurant meals and regular takeout. Like the expectation is that a family will have some kind of meal out once a week. As a kid, restaurant meals were not an every week thing. Maybe, paying so little to labor had us over consuming restaurant meals relative to th8nsg which are less labor-intensive.
I feel like eating out more is tied up with the general societal expectation that kids will have less free time and more scheduled extracurriculars. Atossa, for example, has something going on after school three days a week and during the day two weekends a month and if anything she's below average for her friends group. Trying to cook an average of 6+ days a week around that would be exhausting. Then again, in my personal case it's also tied up in the fact that I grew up in the country and now live in the city, where options are different.
77: I've heard the term "stochastic terrorism" applied to Trump's tweets and general discourse. This looks like a stochastic cartel. But I think that would be stretching the meaning of "stochastic".
115: Sure, I'd be happy to see back-of-the-house staff paid more. I'm not happy to have it in the form of a percentage hidden in a footnote on the menu or small-print sign next to the reception desk. Just put the actual prices on the menu to the right (or left, if it make more sense from a graphic design perspective, I'm not picky) of the food and drinks they correspond to, don't make me do research to figure out if I'll be paying $80 or $100 and what portion of that is officially optional.
n enlightened topless Europe you can look at a menu and figure out in your head what you'll actually pay if you can do arithmetic, but here restaurants can just put random numbers on menus plus a footnote saying "actually you'll pay 5% more" or whatever.
I thought service fees were more common in Europe. Not exactly hidden, but there.
112, etc
You mean you want me to pay a service fee for this liver? I thought it was free.
IMO the most relevant information about tipping is minimum untipped wage. That varies wildly by jurisdiction. If a server gets $3/hour, leaving extra regardless of service quality is minimum decency, same for delivery/ rideshare workers. If a server's making $20/hour and can't be bothered, then obligatory 25% makes me less likely to come back unless the food's really good.
There used to be a small trend in the Bay for restaurants to eliminate tipping and impose a service charge instead*. Often associated with rising local minimum wages (and there's no tipped minimum wage in CA). I think a lot of those restaurants died out, either via COVID or the normal shuffle, and the practice didn't spread.
*Which I believe was distributed more equitably including back-of-house staff--the law as I recall is that servers can share tips with them and often have a system for it but it has to be voluntary / enforced only socially.
104: Do I have to say it? A lot of those sound a lot more like condoms than guns or motorcycles.
123: Cue up "Anal" + [SUV name] discourse.
And I guess Anal Forester gets special i mention in the context of 104.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Ridgeline
When in fact, the journalists were the idiots all along! Nate Silver (I know)
A few thoughts on views of the economy and reporting on the same, most of it not directly addressing the issue you raise but certainly adjacent to it.
1) I think you are right, on this particular aspect, but I think many commentators are (generally clumsily) trying to reconcile the current massive divergence in views of the economy and the actual state of same. Some of it is the real effect of the stickiness of prices and differential benefits but a lot of it is the lockstep partisanship of Rs saying everything sucks when a D is in office (Ds do it as well, but to a lesser degree--this development has really increased over the last 20 years or so).
2) The "discourse" and "reporting" on inflation over the past 3 years has been utterly abysmal; one of those times when the press goes wild on some fucking thing usually to the detriment of Ds (see deficit reporting ~2010 or Afghan withdrawal). It is fine to report on inflation and its effects* but if the reporting is placed in a political context (as it almost always is) it is beyond malpractice to not include the global and broader context (how US is doing in comparison to peers) as well as the proposals and potential differences 9or not) the policies of political opponents would make. Admittedly those "nuances" would probably not move the needle much (but maybe ... look at the fucking '80s**) and yes the President owns everything. But when you get the otherwise pretty good and even-handed debate moderator in the Pennsylvania D Senatorial primary debate in 2022 immediately chiding Fetterman with " What? Do you like inflation" when he gave Biden a B on his track record things are fucked up.
*But does not include leaning in on the family who buys 8 zillion gallons of milk a week or Wolf Blitzer context-free tweeting of the $5.00+ gas from that one station on Capitol Hill.
**I do think there was somewhat better contextual reporting, but probably more due to Reagan himself, and general political climate.
Sorry for a generally whiny and somewhat incoherent rant. I think everyone's general doomerism generally contributes as well... but I can't seem to make myself avoiding falling into it.
But fuck, there was this big fucking bad thing that fucked the world in a number of ways and we came through it as well as anyone and yet...
I do think the current wave of the will to authoritarianism has not crested most places in the world and I am just struggling to find ways to cope with that. Blog comments are may or may not be an appropriate coping mechanism, but almost certainly not a helping mechanism.
121.last it's 25% now? I thought it was 20%. When did this happen?
belatedly and trivially:
many people have never seen a potato that wasn't propagated clonally; the seed tuber senesced, but not until after it was part of an entire living plant with the same DNA. So our potatoes by definition have escaped dying. OTOH, any particular potato can die, so they are mortal.
by ajay's taxonomy potatoes are either gods or heroes, which I am OK with.
20% is normal, but a) we're here in this fancy place so obvious;ly we're better than normal, just look at how I'm tipping or b) this is a mom-n-pop, grandma cooked my delicious cheap food and her daughter brought it to me, 20% is $3
* https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/14/is-25percent-the-new-20percent-how-much-to-tip-in-a-post-pandemic-world.html
seriously, I am pejoristically happy with the idea that heaps of inflation (and even some housing problems!) are caused by monopolies that slide under the inadequate and poorly enforced laws in the US. (Is there anywhere insulated from our corporations, and how are they doing?) Recently learned "roll-up" as a term for grabbing and ruining just under 80% of a market, that being the official non-monopoly size.
The remaining number of corporations are few enough to coordinate by exogenous signals, as above.
To my surprise it does seem like tipping got worse after the pandemic, maybe partly because there are more situations in which we're prompted to tip. In this 2018 commercial survey, the median self-reported tip dining out was 18%. In this mid-2023 Pew survey, specifically asking about a sit-down restaurant with average service, 57% said they would tip 15% or less, so the median was 15%.
24% said they would tip 20% or more. That rises to 37% of upper-income respondents, and 33% of people with postgraduate degrees.
potato
Peruvian purple potatoes show up occasionally at my local groceries. 100% recommend
the Russet Ranger is a potato...who is a superhero!
138: "well, looks like Doc Phytophthora is no longer a threat."
"You could say he's... had his chips!"
(Laughter, freeze frame, roll credits)
I started tipping 25% during the pandemic, including for takeout, since I figured servers were getting clobbered by lack of dine-in eating, and deserved a break for putting their health on the line for the rest of us. I've kept it up since, but have occasionally reconsidered, as dining patterns are now more or less back to normal.
140: If I order online for pick up, I always put some tip in - mainly because i worry they will deprioritize my food/spit in it if I don't.