Discount retailer says low-income households feel more ‘financially constrained’ than six months ago
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/SLMtR
PW;DR.
I’m sure Dollar General’s predatory pricing and aggressive business tactics to kill off local competition have nothing to do with it, too.
Here’s the real kicker: so are less poorer US consumers.
the depletion of savings built up during the pandemic
Built up savings? Is this a thing?
I did but that’s because I’d already been saving aggressively, had just lost my job, and the little entertainment budget I had left was no longer able to be used, then suddenly my unemployment benefits went up and I got stimulus money. It turned a guaranteed financial disaster into a little extra time.
A lot of people used pandemic relief funds to invest, notably in real estate. As the market returns to reality, those people are finding they’re massively overextended.
Don’t you remember? They gave us all like $2500 or something one time. That’s enough to live on for at least a decade for the poors.
I got “unemployed” during Covid and saw everyone bragging about how awesome it was that the federal government was providing extra money and it was like working a good job…
My state let me know they had run out of unemployment insurance several decades ago and I would get just the federal money, reduced down to the state amount, minus the state and federal tax from each check.
Yeah I got so fucked over it’s still a shock that people say they legitimately came out better with more money.
bragging about how awesome it was that the federal government was providing extra money and it was like working a good job…
Revolt hush money. I’m sure this was ran through a simulation at some prior time, “how can we pacify a domestic population that might reject what we’re about to do to them?” Money, of course.
Yeah, the pandemic was definitely not a “savings time” for me or anyone I know…
Much like 2008, the pandemic never actually ended. When schools reopened, every classroom in the nation was full of children on their 4th, 5th, 6th infection in a month. Thousands of people still drop dead from it every month and the US is, to this day, still experiencing 30% more per capita deaths than pre-pandemic.
Long COVID is proven to cause permanent organ damage, including brain function. We won’t know what it does to child development until decades from now but it’s already proven to increase risk-taking and reduce higher level function in adults.
The accumulation of capital continues.
This might be some confirmation bias, but it feels like everything has gotten a bit dumber since the pandemic and I wonder if covid effects on the brain are a part of it. Like I feel “normal” now, but I don’t think this current “normal” is the same as what “normal” used to be for me. And for like 6 months after my first infection, it literally felt like my brain wasn’t working as clearly as it normally did.
Brb, restocking guillotines in my Etsy store.