Literally what russians were doing while being loud on internet about how sanctions don’t work. You can look foward to anti theft tags on bread soon.
Odd to think if you can’t afford food now you could afford it later plus interest.
Also odd to think people can put off eating until they have the proper funds.
I am talking more about the people lending the money, not sure why they think this would be sound lending. People will do far worse then default on a loan to keep eating.
Oh, I guess I was assuming the vast majority of these folks (I’m one of them actually) are using credit cards, so the loaners don’t really know ahead of time.
Money is like stamina - you usually have much more than you think, but accessing it is not without a serious toll. Extreme example - you can probably sell an organ to cover your debt. And there is a wide spectrum of things you can do before reaching that point, many of them crossing the legal, ethical, and humane border.
The original BNPL creditors are not going to make you do them. They need to be legitimate, customer-facing businesses. But they can sell your debt to collection agencies, which will be more willing to put pressure on you. And if that doesn’t work - there are always gray market collectors to sell it to.
First off, I fully agree with you. But how people are lured in is that there is no interest if you pay on time, so it’s advertised as interest-free. But obviously the business model is built upon people not paying on time, and as such one should calculate that cost into it…
never understood this. If you can’t buy it now will you be able to.pay later?! You need groceries every month
If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, it takes one unexpected expense and suddenly you’re hustling to get food on the table. The cycle then repeats itself.
I’ve been there. It’s expensive to be poor with little to no way out.
You need a car to work. Cars are expensive. You get a old clunker.
You work and live check to check. Maybe $50 or $100 left over after taxes and expenses. Not really possible to have an emergency fund.
A single injury or car breaking down and you need to borrow money. From family, friends or some shitty company.
Oh and then your yearly raise comes around at $1/hr that barely covers your rent increasing let alone inflation.
Whoops some bill auto-drafted unexpectedly
Your account is negative now, oh and throw a $25 fee on top.
Looks like you’re scrounging for dinner tonight. And the rest of the week. Maybe skip some meals because you have no choice.
Shit sucks ass.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
Cost of living is too high, put it on credit.
Your alternative is starve now.
Either way, this is about to get a lot more bonkers in roughly the next 30 to 60 days as Just In Time delivery… kinda just, stops working, and grocery stores will have to both raise prices and ration items per customer per week to deal with shortages and try to minimize in-store injuries and deaths.
Go look up a compilations of black friday shopping stampedes.
Imagine that, but for groceries, every time a grocery store restocks… for the forseeable future.
That’s probably part of why the capital class want fascism. Because if that happens in a democracy, they would have their capital expropriated.
Historically speaking, basically, yes, the capitalist class essentially always sides with a nascent fascist movement as it is opposed to making any truly meaningful concessions to workers.
But it is important to note that fascism is, or arises from… an ostensible capitalist democracy … in decay.
It arises as a reaction to the over exploitation of the capitalists.
The fascists are always incompetent idiots at actually running anything, actual policy… beyond being brutally indimidating and violent bullies.
But! They promise growth and stability.
Morons believe them. Many of these morons… are the capitalists.
This works well for a while, but eventually, fascist mismanagement leads to the capitalists actually having a whole bunch of their businesses collapse, as the economy broadly suffers, or maybe its war time babyyyy and oh well turns out that its also bad to fund endless foreign invasions and/or be invaded yourself.
But, by then, its too late.
The capitalists sided with the fascists initially, to avoid structural concessions to workers… but now that everything is fucked, and/or dear leader / the party has some incomprehensible zany nonsense plan… well now the capitalists mostly get either outright or functionally nationalized, and lose even more than if they had just gone with the comparatively more minor concessions to workers.
Poison chalice.
Prisoner’s Dilemma, game theoretic suboptimal outcome, that humanity just keeps replicating with minor variations and new flavors.
Can you elaborate on this? Just In Time delivery? Is this a US thing?
Edit: okay, I looked it up and I understand it now. The ripple effect already happened though when big box stores told Trump to fuck off with the tariffs, because their shelves are empty.
Yeah, put super simply:
Minimize needed actual storage space and time a thing spends in storage… by relying on very frequent and consistent logistics.
Its very efficient in the sense of minimizing operating costs…
But it is also extremely fragile, a minor perturbation can fuck shit up for weeks or months.
… And we are getting… well basically the most major disruption in the history of JIT as a logistics paradigm.
Then you’ve never been poor and living paycheck to paycheck.
There are times when it’s either find a loan from someone or not eat for two weeks because something in your house broke and that’s unfortunately a reality for many Americans including myself at one time.
I understnd financing. The problem is financing groceries. So you cover the unexpected and finance groceries. what about next month?! Unless you get a way to make more money to cover the difference you going ro have to finance again plus interests
edit: I’m sorry, I’m not american and I was trying to understand some decision. I get it
Capitalism isn’t paying enough for workers to live off of and they system is papering over it with debt. Problem is debt isn’t a sustainable way to do it since it has to get paid back. We’ve been seeing sketchier and sketchier things happening in finance and when these loans don’t get repaid (and this article is a sign we’re getting close) the whole house or cards comes tumbling down
I keep on wondering who the fuck has the money to be using things like grubhub. I realize its a non sequitor for this article but I really don’t see how these businesses stay in business.
My neighbor gets everything delivered, but I have no clue what he or his wife do. If my spouse made the same as I do, we could afford to do all that delivery stuff. But it still makes no sense
I have friends that talk about getting food delivered nearly daily, plus groceries and whatnot. I am so frugal it makes my asshole pucker to think about delivery fees PLUS them getting your order wrong so often PLUS the food is cold and takes way longer than simply driving there. And then in addition, we actually need the human contact. But I’m not gonna criticize my friends to their faces. Just here.
For me the best part of doing groceries yourself are the food expiring markdowns. I get so many meats and interesting things I could usually never afford by getting stuff that is going to expire that day.
Case in point, scored this 5 minutes ago, add some cheap sides and dinner sorted
People who don’t really understand credit cards or have a cognitive disconnect between cost and value when fulfilling their sustenance need.
When people get hangry they don’t make good choices.
I have used it a bunch over the years because I hate talking to people, but I never use delivery so I think it’s only a few extra dollars over calling it in in average, plus some places do offer “discounts” and Amazon prime allows grubhub premium for no charge which removes more fees and gives you credit for pickup orders. The discounts aren’t much but can bring it down to what it costs by phone and sometimes a little more. I used to throw a few bucks for tip, but i have decided not to do that anymore because I pickup and it’s mostly from pizza places which I wouldn’t tip if I call it in so why should I this way.
Of course, these days, I barely get takeout or go out anymore because, like the article talks about, money is too tight to reward yourself anymore…
My experience is that there’s always a hidden surcharge with DD or Uber eats. Like fries are $3 if you call it in yourself, but are $3.30 or something in an app. A couple years ago I had a $10 off $40 coupon and dash pass from my credit card. Total after fees for pickup was like $55 and just calling it in myself was $45.
Not saying it’s impossible to save using them, but good luck.
Yeah the place specific delivery is usually not to bad I mean in particular the internet ones like grubhub. Im sorta aware of the discounts but im fed up with that model. I do wonder if it will work for them long term as im not sure how many folks will do it without the discount whereas uber and airbnb that can sorta compete because they are a tax dodge there is no real tax advantage gurbhub and ilk can lean on to compete with folks just picking it up themselves. I think they are hoping to decimate the pizza and chinese places drivers.
I used to have lunch delivered where I worked through another local company, but the delivery was “free” because of a deal my workplace made with the company (it was actually not free, because everything was marked-up). It was more convenient than driving some place in traffic and being worried about time while out. Usually, I’d just take meals I preprepared to work though.
The people in power will soon come to realise we are all just 3 warm meals a day away from anarchy.
What kind of psychopath has three warm meals a day? You cook three times a day? Or do you eat out three times a day? I believe the latter to be more crazy.
I do share the intended sentiment however.
I cook 3 times a day. It’s fucking exhausting and I’ve come to hate my kitchen. But it keeps everyone fed and happy for a fair price.
I also work from home though and mostly cook on company time.
Have u tried doing like a week of meal prep at a time? I cook a weeks worth of meals every Sunday then don’t do anything during the week. U can avoid eating the same thing for a week strait if u have multiple sets of meals ready then u can mix and match to get variety. I do generic protein then generic carbs and generic sides then can mix and match those in all sorts of combination to also increase variety.
