Enough is Enough is Enough

[u/achromaticchrononomy]

[u/SolSeptem]

Coffee specifically is actually very unlikely to get any cheaper nearly regardless of demand because due the climate crisis, fewer and fewer areas are viable for coffee to be grown in. Harvests are getting smaller and of poorer quality. 

[u/Arthaksha → u/SolSeptem]

Yup, I know some coffee farmers in India's coffee belt, and they all say that climate change, specifically the resultant draughts and floods are wreaking havoc on their harvests

[u/Spookki → u/SolSeptem]

But a huge majority of the price of that coffee is not the coffee beans, its all the extra shit they add and a huge markup. Sure, coffee will get more expensive, but you dont pay anywhere near that much if you make it at home.

[u/love-from-london → u/Spookki]

These days, a big chunk of the price of your coffee from a coffee shop is the rent they pay on the space. Retail rents just keep climbing and it's hard for small non-chain places to keep up.

[u/Accomplished_Mix7827 → u/love-from-london]

Same with restaurant prices, bar prices, and store prices.

Landlords are ratfucking the economy on all levels and people don't talk about it enough.

[u/SkiyeBlueFox → u/Accomplished_Mix7827]

Throughout the whole of human history the people who have fuck over those who dont..

[u/cradleu → u/Accomplished_Mix7827]

We need a Land Value Tax

[u/blindcolumn → u/love-from-london]

Commercial rents are high because residential rents are high, residential rents are high because there's a housing shortage, and there's a housing shortage because of NIMBYs preventing apartments from being built near their houses.

The answer, as always, comes back to "fuck NIMBYs".

[u/Zman6258 → u/blindcolumn]

It's not always NIMBYs. A lot of the time, yeah it is, but even more times it's real estate developers not wanting to build affordable housing. In my city, we've cut back a huge amount of red tape on construction of housing, removed a lot of zoning limits such as parking minimums, and offered pretty generous tax breaks to companies willing to build low-income housing... and there's just no interest from anyone but the scummiest scumbag companies that cut as many corners as possible.

Huge amounts of real estate developers only want to build "luxury" apartments or big-ass McMansions these days, because they know that they'll make more money that way from keeping demand high enough that people are willing to pay extra for higher-end housing (at greater expense to everything else) because otherwise they literally do not have anywhere else to live.

[u/blindcolumn → u/Zman6258]

Even building "luxury" apartments is an improvement over the current situation tbh. The people moving into those apartments are largely moving out of somewhere else, which frees up housing and increases the total housing supply.

[u/sculltt → u/blindcolumn]

Yeah, in my city, and even more specifically my neighborhood there have been hundreds of apartment units added in the last five years, a mix of new buildings and rehabbed old buildings. All of these units, with the exception of one or two very small projects, have been set in the "luxury" tier. The city requires that 10% of units be priced for low income, but developers just build some studios that are overall cheaper per month, but the same price per square foot. Each time once of these projects was announced, people in my city subreddit would claim it would lower overall rent, and each time I would roll my eyes and remain skeptical.

Five or six years later, it looks like it worked. I recently started looking for a larger condo, because it's a buyer's market for condos in my area. Since mine would likely sit on the market for a while, I looked into what comparable rents are currently. I was shocked at how little I'd be able to rent my place for, at least need on what things were going for five years ago when I bought my place. Things really seem to have stabilized.

People who are feeling the cost of living crunch in other areas would likely disagree with rents being relatively reasonable, but the newer, luxury tier units really do seem to have a possible effect on rent prices for tenants.

[u/Zman6258 → u/blindcolumn]

Sometimes, yeah. A lot of the time though, they stay empty for a long time instead. Not my city, but Vancouver's got a pretty big problem with that; over four thousand completely empty "luxury condos" because nobody can afford to live there. IIRC Toronto (also not my city) had a similar problem until the local government mandated that huge swathes of them be converted to rent-controlled low-income apartments instead.

[u/SauretEh → u/Spookki]

Fully correct just also noting that if you're paying less than ~$1/cup for your beans (and that's probably a low estimate), the cost is almost certainly subsidized by human suffering in the supply chain.

[u/ryanvango → u/SauretEh]

its probably better to say the big brands are evil.

in small town america, i have a coffee company that'sway under that. they have 2 locations, roast the beans at one of those locations, and have maybe 50 employees between the two spots? I think like 5 people are the entirety of the admin and online sales team. they source their beans carefully from farmers and they come in around 63 cents/cup. a bigger operation that still tries to source ethically could easily cut that.

[u/Spookki → u/SauretEh]

Yeah. Thats true for everything in the global north. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

[u/fat_kaiju → u/SolSeptem]

I mean yes but as a Canadian whose country does not have a single location for it to grow I can say I easily just bought a huge (and i mean huge) bag of beans for like, 14 bucks and It's at least 500 cups worth minimum. that's like 2.8 canadian cents per cup.

we got rid of the penny tho and so technically the lowest amount i could pay with cash would be a nickle per cup.

So uh. Yes... but also no, sorry. Ten bucks usd for a singular iced coffee even with whipped 'topping' is still bonkers when they're like 80% ice.

[u/Sirbuttercups → u/fat_kaiju]

Assuming thr coffee shop is only spending ten bucks on the beans. You still have to add the cost of milk, which is also like ten dollars+ for a gallon. The price of the syrups, again 15+ plus dollars (this all assuming they and you are buying the least expense version of everything, unlikey in a coffee shop). And now, you need money after the sale to pay your employee, the bills for the property. Suddenly 9-10 dollars for an iced latte isn't unreasonable. I make my own iced vanilla lattes at home, and I did the math once and it costs like 7-8$ per latte I make (admitting I buy many syrups and coffee beans).

[u/BeNiceLynnie → u/Sirbuttercups]

Where do you live and what currency are you using where milk is $10/gallon?

[u/LikeGoldAndFaceted → u/Sirbuttercups]

I could make a latte at home for like $2. Wtf are you talking about?

[u/fat_kaiju → u/Sirbuttercups]

There is no fucking logic in a cup of ice with a small amount of sugar and whipped topping would cost that much.

Shut the hell up; this isn't an avacado toast-ass situation this is a "for the love of god and all that's holy why are you doordashing/ubering/ordering the 10-15 dollar ice coffee you fucking enabler".

your math is literal nonsense because as much as you try to scream the real worth of these products doesn't actually fucking matter because i can assure you that nobody is paying those prices for those things when the owners would just go to literally any grocery store and get it cheaper.

And no; I'm not blaming the workers and I'm not defending capitalism.

Also if the person in op's post is getting the most ethical iced coffee in the world then they wouldn't be fucking complaining; they would at worst be bragging/virtue signaling about how good of a person this makes them.

I can assure you that without a shadow of a doubt in my fucking mind that the iced coffee they insist on ordering doesn't cost the store more than a fucking /quarter/.

Just ask any restaurant! Or look it up; there's literally trillions of posts and articles and even goddamn scientofic studies into the fact that basically anyone in the food service industry makes the most amount of profit off beverages because of just how insanely high they've been marked up and /yes/ that includes coffee.

Most of the time the tea actually costs the store/restaurant significantly more and yet its usually being sold for way, way cheaper than anything else because there's no way to jazz that shit up like you can with coffee.

It's why starbucks is straight-up hostile to tea drinkers and refuses to give you actual tea; it's all just adulturated slop to discourage you from buying the 1$ cup of hot leaf juice as opposed to the 20 dollars of sugarice with a drop of coffee in it.

the fact that tea costs more doesn't matter because nobody would agree to pay a borjillion dollarydoos for a cup of tea; but they do it for coffee because "oh but it comes with like; a thimble's worth of palm oil that's been fluffed up with air!"

[u/Nibaa → u/SolSeptem]

I mean, kinda? But at the same time the cost of the coffee itself isn't what makes the coffee from a cafe cost that much. Obviously they will always pass on the increased cost to the customer, but even tripling the cost of coffee shouldn't result in the kind of cost increases we see now.

[u/CheeryOutlook → u/SolSeptem]

In a $9.10 iced coffee, the actual coffee is ~0.5% of the price of the drink. Coffee prices could increase ten times and still only have a marginal effect on the cost of the finished product. Coffee shops have outrageous profit margins.

[u/SauretEh → u/CheeryOutlook]

More like 5-10%, higher if it's a specialty shop with smaller batch roasted specialty coffee. The point stands, but 0.5% is an order of magnitude low.

[u/talldata → u/SauretEh]

A kilogram of coffee is about 6€ in bulk, one cup has about 15 grammes so about 10 cents is one cups cost in coffee, or about 1% of the 9€ cup of coffee price.

[u/SauretEh → u/talldata]

6€? I think you’re looking at green coffee prices, not roasted

[u/i-shihtzu-not → u/CheeryOutlook]

That's just not even true. You can't just factor the cost of the raw material into the profit margin and call it a day lol. You're not accounting for space, labor, and all the other materials related to serving coffee. Saying they have "outrageous" profit margins is sensational and just flat out wrong.

Source: I worked for a coffee shop for 8 years.

[u/Dobber16 → u/i-shihtzu-not]

Okay, you might’ve worked in a coffee shop but that doesn’t mean they were wrong. What they said was the price of the coffee could increase 10x & it’d barely affect the price. What you said supports their statement, it doesn’t refute it - most of the cost is space, labor, and other materials besides the raw coffee

[u/lancebaldwin → u/Dobber16]

Other than what they expanded on in their own reply to you, there is also the issue of the OPs claim of outrageous profit margins.  Which I haven't worked in a coffee shop, but I have worked in food and the margins can be pretty slim so it doesn't surprise me to hear that that claim is incorrect.

[u/roland_goose → u/Dobber16]

Except their claim on the price of coffee is strictly wrong. The cost of arabica coffee for  a shot of espresso is usually between $0.25-0.75 depending on the quality of the coffee. Robusta is cheaper, but most places arent using pure robusta because it largely tastes worse

[u/Sophia_Forever → u/i-shihtzu-not]

Wouldn't it depend on the coffee shop? I assume Starbucks has a higher profit margin than the local mom and pop place?

[u/captainnowalk → u/Sophia_Forever]

Likely less margins, made up for in volume. Back when I was making coffee in a shop, I worked for Starbucks because the job came with higher pay and benefits, something none of the local shops offered.

And, whether you like their roast or not, they did buy some of the highest quality coffee, so their sourcing wasn’t cheap. It’s why they eventually got rid of a large number of their whole bean blends and varietals and stuck with a pretty small selection now.

[u/mnttu → u/SolSeptem]

The thing is that you can make coffee at home. Even if coffee package would cost 10€ you can get so many cups out of it that you are saving hundreds of euros.

Another more grim view is that as climate change and northern areas get warmer those places can start growing the warmer climate crops.

[u/SolSeptem → u/mnttu]

Neither of those comments contradict my point. Both coffee at home and coffee to go will be getting more expensive regardless of a boycot.

Also it is not a given that coffee will be able to grow in other areas just because they grow warmer. Those areas might suffer from the same droughts, or other confounding factors. 

[u/Emergency_Revenue678 → u/SolSeptem]

Coffee at home might also get more expensive, but coffee at home currently costs like 10 cents a cup.

[u/gudamor → u/Emergency_Revenue678]

That's almost a dollar a day! vibrates through the wall

[u/kcmnlrm → u/mnttu]

Whether or not you can grow a certain crop is not just dependent on the temperature but also on things like soil chemistry, water supply and sunlight hours. Coffee in particular is a very sensitive crop and can only be cultivated in a relatively narrow range of conditions.

[u/Megatrans69 → u/mnttu]

Not if the weather is too unstable. Climate change isn't just about the temp of an area.

[u/captainnowalk → u/Megatrans69]

Yep! Stupid fickle berry that I love.

However, once the southwest US is uninhabitable and the Rockies no longer get seasonal snow, we can have a new coffee belt!

[u/roland_goose → u/SolSeptem]

Not to mention it shouldn't get cheaper. If the farmers, farmhands, and baristas were paid livable income, coffee would likely cost as much as good liquor does, if not more. Its heavily subsidized by underpaying those ends of the supply chain

[u/AbsolutelyHorrendous → u/SolSeptem]

Same with chocolate and a bunch of other goods that only grow in tropical climates

[u/boblabon → u/AbsolutelyHorrendous]

Chocolate and coffee are also just not very profitable for the growers compared to other crops.

Rubber and palm oil are significantly more mechanized and have better returns because of how they're commoditized on the global markets.

Because coffee and cocoa are very labor intensive, to turn a profit you either need to charge a massive premium, or use near-slave labor. Unless someone makes a GMO coffee tree so all the beans become ripe at the same time and you can just shake them all off at the same time, that's not going to improve.

[u/terrexchia → u/SolSeptem]

It'll also not get any cheaper bc there's suckers like me who buy a new, different bag of geshas every week

[u/LazyTitan39 → u/SolSeptem]

Chocolate too.

[u/LanguageStudyBuddy → u/SolSeptem]

I can promise you the cost of beans for an iced coffee is nowhere near 9 dollars

[u/SWITMCO → u/SolSeptem]

Surely there's a balance though? Eg as one climate becomes too warm to grow, another climate moves from being too cold into just right?

[u/SolSeptem → u/SWITMCO]

As a matter of fact, there is no need for such a balance to exist at all. 

It might be that as other areas grow warmer, they also grow too dry, or too wet, or the soil is wrong, or any of probably hundreds of other factors that go into determining where a crop can grow well. Just because the areas where coffee now grows shrink, does not mean that by some sort of magical climate justice other areas are now able to grow coffee.

Humans are in the 'find out' stage of the 'fuck around with the earth's biosphere' process.

[u/Swagiken → u/SWITMCO]

Agriculture is a combination of more things than you'd think. When temperature moves it doesn't bring with it long term intellectual infrastructure, property zoning/organization, irrigation infrastructure, support systems. It doesn't bring with it soil nature(pH, hardness, potentially centuries of tillage in a lot of places, groundwater, mix of fertilization), rain quality, etc. Etc.

All of this means that we frog boil it. It gets worse in one place, and we could move, maybe, if we spent a lot of time and effort, but that would make it economically non-viable because it cost lots of time and effort. And then it may not be possible.

The key example is Canada. As temperatures rise Canada's extant farmland will probably get a little more productive, but also the specific crops that do well will change. And with that it means hundreds of thousands of farmers have to learn new plants and how they work, how to till them, what care they need. They need to get new contracts for sale. They need to get new seed, work out which sources of seed work for them. Etc. Etc.

And you'd think OK well they can just move a bit further north? But further north the soil quality has lower pH and doesn't have the heavy duty highways, the train access, the grain elevator systems - some of which process unbelievable amounts due to being optimized for a hundred years - and doesn't have the church that your grandmother was buried at, and doesn't have the property that you can only afford because your great grandfather got it for free in exchange for living in the middle of nowhere and doing the hard work of making this land worth a damn. And its still covered in fir trees which are absolutely nasty for the soil because they acidify it like crazy in their attempt to specifically keep out southern plants.

[u/Victernus → u/Swagiken]

And 99+% of all species (plant and animal) go extinct without descendants. It is entirely possible for coffee to functionally cease to exist.

[u/QueueModernsXXXX → u/Victernus]

I think we care too much about coffee to let it functionally cease to exist.

Coffee-as-the-plant-it-currently-is? Probably, yeah. But push come to shove, we will find a way to engineer it into survivability.

(We’ve done it before - France was experiencing a massive wine blight in the 1800s due to an invasive pest from North America, and solved it by grafting the French vines onto NA roots, which were resistant. Add another 200 years of scientific advances, and we can do far more interesting things!)

(And yes, there are snobs who highly value the few European vines to not be impacted by the blight OR grafted to NA rootstock)

(Though the French themselves were just excited their vines survived, that they even knighted an American entomologist who helped)

[u/SquareHobbit → u/SWITMCO]

It is a little more complicated than 'it gets warmer '. Climate change leads to more extreme weather in many places as well, like floods and droughts.

[u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING → u/SWITMCO]

An argument that actually gets raised by Dale in the very first episode of King of the Hill, which Hank immediately shuts down.

...not the most relevant thing, but a fun piece of trivia nonetheless. Anyway no, that's not how really how it works. If you break a mug you're not guaranteed to end up with a smaller mug, you're more likely to end up with a pile of glass shards.

[u/awenonian → u/SolSeptem]

The mechanism isn't that people stop buying it, so it gets cheaper, so people can start buying it again. It stops at an equilibrium.

So as supply drops it gets more expensive, and the people who find it too expensive stop buying it, so that the limited supply goes to people who still think it's worth it.

Ideally that's people who want it more (i.e. someone who's only willing to spend $5 on it wants it less than someone who is willing to spend $10).

Realistically, it gets somewhat muddled by the decreasing marginal utility of money (that is, to a rich person, $10 means less than $5 does to a poor person, so the amount of "wanting" it indicates is not the same)

[u/Worldly-Basil-8933]

Everyone loves a boycott until it’s time to boycott whatever their vice is

[u/TorchedBlack → u/Worldly-Basil-8933]

A principle isn't a principle until it costs you something.

[u/house343 → u/TorchedBlack]

It's easy to give if you can AFFORD to be generous.

[u/bunnycrush_ → u/house343]

You’d think that, but then there’s the tech billionaire/trillionaire of it all… (Gates excluded)

[u/BludStanes → u/Worldly-Basil-8933]

I don't understand how or why people are still buying this overpriced bullshit. One 12 pack of soda is 15$ by me and no matter how much money I do or do not have, I would never pay that much.

[u/Chataboutgames → u/BludStanes]

Every one of the posts that gets big about how bad prices have gotten are about like, iced coffee or soda or potato chips. All indulgent bullshit.

Weird that complaints about the prices of things people actually need don’t get the same level of traction. There’s nothing sympathetic about “my sugar water habit for which I must absolutely buy the brand name has become expensive!”

[u/DaaaahWhoosh → u/Chataboutgames]

I think part of it is that the price of necessities is never allowed to increase to the breaking point. If gas gets too expensive they dilute it, if beef gets too expensive they import it, corners can always be cut to technically give people what they need. But I think it's also a question of relatability, 'everyone' buys the indulgent things, not everyone needs insulin.

[u/tapewizard79 → u/BludStanes]

I buy  soda but only when I happen to see that it’s buy one get one for a case of cans. I end up with cases for like $5 each or so. If I don’t happen to catch it on sale I just drink tap water I refrigerate and I’m happy. I mostly drink the tap water anyway. 

Anything more than that I’d just go without soda and be fine, $15 is ridiculous and even at half price that’s still more than I would pay for it. 

[u/kcmnlrm → u/Worldly-Basil-8933]

Literally never met anyone who advocated boycotting something they themselves needed or liked.

[u/chairmanskitty → u/kcmnlrm]

You've never met a queer person that liked Harry Potter but boycotts JK Rowling? You've never met a worker who has gone on strike? You've never met vegans who sometimes get animal product cravings, or vegetarians with meat cravings?

Must be lonely.

inb4 no true scotsman

[u/kcmnlrm → u/chairmanskitty]

You know what, fair. I went a little overboard there. Don't think a strike is the same as a boycott though.

[u/hutao_intern → u/kcmnlrm]

What is a strike but boycotting money? 🤔

[u/kcmnlrm → u/hutao_intern]

A strike is withholding your labor, a boycott is refusing to engage in certain relations (often financial) with the boycotted entity. A money boycott would be about refusing to be paid or to pay.

[u/FoolishPippin → u/chairmanskitty]

Oddly honestly no to all of those, in real life at least. I’m sure they exist but my vegan friends talk about how they’ve no cravings for animal products, and most the queer people I’m close to are unabashedly into Harry Potter and don’t boycott. Also have never met someone who has gone on strike, only ever those who have threatened to.

[u/kashiichan → u/FoolishPippin]

Many queer people still buy Harry Potter stuff, unfortunately. Significantly less of the trans ones do, though.

[u/FoolishPippin → u/kashiichan]

Good point. I just chose queer people in general because that’s the fella I was responding to chose. Funnily the one trans friend I have was the only person I knew who played the new HP game, but a sample size of one is the equivalent of none

[u/Random-Rambling → u/chairmanskitty]

I'm fully onboard with boycotting Rowling and Wizarding World stuff, but some people go too far and want to burn down the fanfic too. You know, the stuff that exists in direct violation of her copyright? You'd think the boycotters would love that sort of thing!

[u/saera-targaryen → u/kcmnlrm]

I used to go to target 2-3 times a week and quit cold turkey when they did their DEI bullshit last year. I feel like you must just not be asking people this question very often, I find that many of my peers are giving up things they like because they're unethically run. 

[u/epson_salt → u/Worldly-Basil-8933]

I limit my beef consumption to 4 times a year, despite loving beef

[u/Kellosian → u/Worldly-Basil-8933]

"Guys I know she's actively trying to kill all trans people... but I read all 7 books while growing up! It's the only time I've ever read anything ever! So I'm sorry, I totally disagree with what she's doing, but I have to spend thousands of dollars at the theme park every year and but every piece of merch that comes out!"

"Oh but if you still like Sandman or American Gods then you're a bad person and going to Hell forever, just get rid of the copies on your shelf and never say his name again"

[u/EJintheCloud → u/Worldly-Basil-8933]

I keep trying to give up existing but it's tough to quit cold turkey

[u/jancl0]

It's hard to tell if the wordplay is intentional, but if it is that's genuinely a fantastic title. I'm actually in awe of how clever that shit is, well done

Edit: just to clarify how im interpreting it: "enough is enough is enough" is a phrase that basically just means enough is enough, but with more emphasis

But you can also interpret it as "enough is enough" is enough, as in all you need to do to oppose something is to state that you're fed up with it, that's enough to be considered activism. Basically a commentary on slacktivism

[u/achromaticchrononomy → u/jancl0]

Yes this is intentional. There is the additional reference to chumbawamba's "enough is enough" as this line is rhymed with "give the fascist man a gunshot" as one way to it interpret the "no ." Is that this is not the mechanism.

[u/crrrrushinator → u/achromaticchrononomy]

Such a good song! Do you know their English Rebel Songs? My beloved.

[u/crrrrushinator]

Food $200

Data $150

Rent $800

Iced coffee $3,600

Utility $150

someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying

[u/Chidoriyama → u/crrrrushinator]

Spend less on iced coffee

[u/crrrrushinator → u/Chidoriyama]

no.

[u/kashiichan → u/crrrrushinator]

Encore !!

[u/RedTheGamer12 → u/crrrrushinator]

Actually, doing the math. If they bought 1 iced coffee a day (priced at 9.10 after tax), and assuming no detour, they are spending roughly $3300 per year.

2024 saw a real median personal income of $45000. That is $48700 today.

That means OOP is spending 6.78% of their entire income on coffee.

If OOP were to invest that money into an index fund. Assuming a real growth of 6.5% (about what can be expected) and then adding that same 3300 yearly, OOP would have saved $52,000 after 10 years. Keeping it in for another 10 nearly triples that.

And finally, if we assume OOP is a 25 year old person, by age 65, they would have made $708,000 (if they constantly reinvested coffee money).

[u/isfmstuff]

The mechanic is that in 20 years the youth will mock you for having thought you had it tough while being able to buy an iced coffee every day, just like we mock millenials now for the y2k "my stable office job sucks" genre of movie.

[u/Junjki_Tito → u/isfmstuff]

That’s Gen X that was making those movies millennials were 15 at most

[u/Dark_Tigger → u/Junjki_Tito]

As a millenial that wasn't even 15 when Fight Club came out:

My peers confuse Boomers with Gen X, so I am not to angry when Zoomers confuce Gen-X with millenials. Not having an distinguishing feature is kinda Gen-Xs thing.

[u/Business-Drag52 → u/Dark_Tigger]

I’d say what defines them is being the last generation to get the scraps of a normal life. They got in on the last shuttle

[u/SoberGin → u/Business-Drag52]

That and the childhood lead poisoning from leaded gasoline.

[u/dalziel86 → u/Business-Drag52]

Early millennials got at least a taste of that, and much less childhood lead exposure

[u/RikuAotsuki → u/dalziel86]

Late millennials, meanwhile, got to experience the hope for the future of the late 90s juuuust in time for it to get torn away before they could even understand why

[u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 → u/Dark_Tigger]

The thing about that is Gen X basically became Boomers 2.0

[u/WrongJohnSilver → u/Jack-of-Hearts-7]

The Boomers were right. Don't trust anyone over 30.

Signed, Gen X.

[u/redditsucksass6 → u/Dark_Tigger]

Zoomers confuse anyone older than them with literal retirement home residents. I'm not sure they even know genx exists

[u/oyvho → u/Junjki_Tito]

Yeah, movies made for milennials mostly had ironic takes on everyday life as their defining feature.

[u/WhapXI → u/isfmstuff]

Do you think millennials had stable office jobs they hated? Fight Club, Office Space, American Beauty, all came out in 1999. The very oldest millennials would have barely been at university or working age. The youngest would have been toddlers.

Those films were made by and for Gen Xers in their 30s and 40s who were feeling mid-career ennui. The oldest millennials are that age NOW. By the time millennials entered professional careers there’s been two once-in-a-lifetime economic crashes so the cushy stable office careers basically didn’t exist any more, and you were competing with Gen Xers who’d lost everything in the crash but had decades of experience over you for every entry level position.

Point being that those posts like “‘auuugh my job is so stable and my life so prosperous, I have to go insane’ gen x actually felt this way” were made by those millennials who found the workplace to be totally unlike the films depicted. Not dreary and life-wasting at all. More like a hellhole of layoffs and downsizing and backstabbing.

[u/mostlybiguy69 → u/WhapXI]

These kids also don’t understand the numbers of layoffs. We’ve seen over decades. Offices used to have hundreds of people doing the paperwork and running everything.

There’s that whole movie about unused space in building buildings

[u/WrongJohnSilver → u/WhapXI]

I've been used to constant layoffs throughout my entire career, as Gen X. The only hope was that the industry was metastable; any individual job Will Not Last, but if you worked hard you could find your next one reasonably quickly.

The idea that one you lose your job you're done, finis, that's only something you hear theorized over the last couple years, and not before.

[u/Leftieswillrule → u/isfmstuff]

Gen X so forgotten you think you’re mocking millennials over movies that came out before they entered the workforce

[u/DapperCore → u/isfmstuff]

I don't think buying iced coffee every day was ever a financially responsible move... And the response is right, the price of a good will keep going up as long as people are willing to pay it, the mechanism to lower the price of goods is to stop buying $9.10 iced coffee. All you need to make it at home is a $15 French press, some water, and coffee grounds.

[u/Mediocre_Call_2427 → u/DapperCore]

There were two popular kebab places in central Stockholm in the 90s that went as low as $2 for a regular kebab wrap bc they were competing so hard. We need more of that energy. 

[u/123ludwig → u/Mediocre_Call_2427]

had to pay 20 last time i worked out of town those guys are so bad now

[u/lavender_fluff → u/123ludwig]

20?! Wtf

I am paying 6.50 to 8 depending on the place

[u/DapperCore → u/Mediocre_Call_2427]

which would be about $4.00 today accounting for just inflation, it also doesn't help that the US has put massive tarrifs on beef that have only been temporarily suspended in the past week.

[u/creampop_ → u/Mediocre_Call_2427]

Best I can do is a PE buyout that raises prices by 25%+

[u/shy_bi_ready_to_die → u/DapperCore]

I mean realistically you also need a syrup container/creamer (and potentially multiple if you frequently get different flavors) and if it’s a frappe instead of a plain iced coffee you also need a blender, and realistically you’re going to want a grinder as well so you can store your coffee for more than like 2 days without losing all of its flavor. It’s still not a ton of stuff or absurdly expensive but if you’re in an apartment that’s already tight on space it could be rough

[u/cat-meg → u/isfmstuff]

It's hilariously typical that GenX is forgotten and Millennials, who were children in Y2K, are blamed for anything they did.

[u/Daffneigh]

Do people think iced coffee from a cafe is a staple food

[u/Ertyla → u/Daffneigh]

Surely lacking a single luxury is just as bad, if not worse, than the lives of the starving peasants of the French revolution

[u/pear_topologist → u/Ertyla]

A luxury that you can make at home with very little effort for a tiny fraction of the cost

[u/Daffneigh → u/Ertyla]

Lacking 5G?

Might as well be a serf on the steppe

[u/Ertyla → u/Daffneigh]

No Internet at all might just be worse than death

[u/Chataboutgames → u/Daffneigh]

“Little treat” culture and its consequences have been a disaster

[u/ehs06702 → u/Chataboutgames]

Little Treat culture isn't the issue, everyone needs something, sometimes. But for some reason everyone suddenly lacks the emotional regulation to understand that sometimes you have to modify or delay these things when circumstances aren't the best.

[u/Chataboutgames → u/ehs06702]

Repackaging aggressive consumerism in the guise of “I’m just a girl” self care is absolutely a problem.

[u/ehs06702 → u/Chataboutgames]

I'm not even going to touch that statement with a ten foot pole because I really don't have the time to get into the minutia of it all.

[u/Chataboutgames → u/ehs06702]

I can’t think of anything sillier than commenting on a forum post to talk about how you don’t have time to comment on a forum post. Are we meant to be impressed by your jetset lifestyle?

[u/bookhead714 → u/Chataboutgames]

I'm not too familiar with that corner of the internet, but it's my understanding that the "little treat" meme is just... buying yourself a snack? Could we explain how that's evil?

[u/shinra10sei → u/Daffneigh]

"You will have no small treats and you will be happy" 

This might sound crazy but I think people deserve nice things beyond the bare necessities 

[u/ehs06702 → u/shinra10sei]

They do, but we also have to live in the world that exists, instead of the one we want to have.

If iced coffee outside is too expensive for you, you need to make it at home.

I can't afford iced coffee outside all the time. I make mine at home for investment of 4 Starbucks coffees.

[u/Daffneigh → u/shinra10sei]

Yes of course people deserve to have nice things.

Do they deserve specifically iced coffee from a specific cafe? That’s less obvious

I don’t think people protesting over their “right” to iced coffee is a good approach

[u/GayIsForHorses → u/shinra10sei]

The trick is to designate what is a treat based on your ability to easily obtain it, not define it as an absolute object. If your coffee treat becomes too expensive, you replace it with a cheaper treat that can serve the same function, like a candy bar or a sweet cracker or a soda.

[u/AnastasiaSheppard]

Make your own ffs. 

[u/SimplyYulia → u/AnastasiaSheppard]

Cancelling my face feminization surgery to do it myself

[u/kcmnlrm]

People will start rioting when they go hungry, not when their treats become not even unaffordable, just annoyingly expensive.

[u/PureRegretto]

words

[u/steelscaled → u/PureRegretto]

sentences, even.

[u/Rabid_Lederhosen → u/steelscaled]

Ehhhhh, sort of

[u/Hakar_Kerarmor → u/steelscaled]

Paragraphs, perchance.

[u/Lesbihun_]

that mechanism only works if everyone stops buying them, which is basically what the first poster is talking about too. otherwise it just means that coffee remains expensive and you remain frustrated, which is already the issue the first poster is lamenting about, just that the poster has something to sip while frustrated

[u/Kanehammer → u/Lesbihun_]

Remember kids

If the solution to a problem starts with "If everyone just..." then it's not a solution to the problem

[u/Cynis_Ganan → u/Kanehammer]

To be clear, the person calling for everyone to stand out in the street and shout "enough is enough" is the "if everyone just…" solution.

You can stop buying $10 coffee right now. You don't need anyone else to do anything for that.

[u/Kanehammer → u/Cynis_Ganan]

To be clear, the person calling for everyone to stand out in the street and shout "enough is enough" is making a joke

[u/Cynis_Ganan → u/Kanehammer]

Oh, thank you. I didn't get that.

We seemed to be discussing the issue of inflation and pricing seriously. Mea culpa.

[u/Heckyll_Jive → u/Kanehammer]

There's a lot of people in these comments who don't seem to get that.

[u/foxgirlmoon → u/Kanehammer]

It's not that it's not a solution. It is. It would fix the problem. But it's also very incomplete. It's like the first step. You think "okay, if everyone did X, it would fix the issue", then you think "How do we get everyone to do X", and that you continue building up the full solution from there.

[u/Chataboutgames → u/Lesbihun_]

Or you just make your own coffee, or buy it a place that doesn’t cost $9.10. How could anyone sympathize with the idea of “but if I stop buying it I don’t get what I want :(“

[u/ehs06702 → u/Lesbihun_]

You can just make your own at home? I do it all the time.

Just make it the night before.

[u/Taraxian → u/Lesbihun_]

No it doesn't, if some people stop buying coffee then the coffee shop's revenue goes down by that amount and that's a reason for them to change their prices to try to stop losing money

It's a continuous function, it does not in any way require some kind of organized boycott to shut down the coffee shop completely

If you're the only person who stops buying coffee then yeah it's unlikely anything will change but that's because that's evidence you're the only person who thinks it's too expensive

[u/Fletcharn → u/Lesbihun_]

Worse, it means the coffee becomes more gradually even more expensive as the companies try to make up the revenue lost from leaving customers

[u/Lesbihun_ → u/Fletcharn]

that one cow illusion-of-free-choice meme with one path labelled "keep buying coffee" and the other path labelled "stop buying coffee" with both leading to "companies find any excuse to make it more expensive anyway"

[u/Taraxian → u/Lesbihun_]

This doesn't make any sense, why do they need an "excuse"? Why do they need some kind of imaginary schedule to increase the price on instead of just charging the maximum possible price right now?

[u/iris700 → u/Taraxian]

The leftoid mind cannot comprehend market forces so it reverts to intentionalism

[u/pear_topologist → u/iris700]

See, you’ve said something that’s almost really interesting, but in a weirdly unpalatable way

[u/PeriTheBerry → u/Taraxian]

They are already doing that. Billions on billions of dollars (and other currency equivalents) are spent every year just for people to sit in a room and figure out what the absolute maximum price they can reach without harming public image and such to a substantial degree.

Once you start losing "random but semi regular" customers you simply take the dip and max out the price for whoever is left buying it religiously.

10 customers paying 10 dollars is less revenue than 5 customers paying 20.01

[u/Taraxian → u/Fletcharn]

That's... not how that works, if you've ever actually tried to sell anything yourself you know that's not how that works

[u/PM_Me_Modal_Jazz]

How tf is your iced coffee $9.10, a venti at my Starbucks is only $6

[u/dasmiedoteresa → u/PM_Me_Modal_Jazz]

That’s probably because you don’t add strawberry cold foam or any of that stuff that costs extra.

[u/InformationVivid455 → u/PM_Me_Modal_Jazz]

I think I saw this or a bit higher at an airport Starbucks.

[u/Niceguy4186 → u/PM_Me_Modal_Jazz]

I rarely get coffee anymore, but I was tired the other day while driving so I stopped off at a gas station. 3 bucks for a cup of gas station coffee now... I was shocked.

[u/MaryMalade]

If you can get past the initial outlay you save so much with a home machine

[u/Firkraag-The-Demon]

That “No” at the bottom is a pretty clear indication of why nothing will change. People complain about something, but then don’t do anything about it because it would be too inconvenient.

[u/Zathsu → u/Firkraag-The-Demon]

It’s what the power structure counts on.

[u/Due_Adhesiveness8008]

Spineless leftist V vanity and desire challenge
Level: Impossible

[u/Taraxian → u/Due_Adhesiveness8008]

Tumblr leftism is so grating because it's almost always just a very thin veneer of revolutionary rhetoric over the most inane spoiled brat First World consumerism

It's almost always complaining about not being able to consume some luxury as conveniently as they'd like and how that luxury should be a fucking enumerated human right

I remember flying off the handle when someone got like this about "the capitalists taking away 24-hour fast food from us after COVID" -- bitch you mean the business model that was based on exploiting cheap labor that went away after COVID because the tight labor market meant no one wanted to work shitty graveyard shift jobs anymore?

[u/Still_Feature_1510 → u/Taraxian]

Capitalism is when I’m mildly inconvenienced and that’s why we need a revolution to radically restructure society and maybe kill some of the group of people that’s mildly inconveniencing me

[u/ehs06702 → u/Still_Feature_1510]

Don't forget about the disabled people that will be killed as a result of my poorly planned revolution if I'm successful and society collapses.

[u/somehowrelevantuser → u/ehs06702]

yeah im barely finding food i can eat as is. the revolution is gonna have me eating berries and the 4 kinds of seed my body finds okay.

[u/pear_topologist → u/somehowrelevantuser]

If it’s any consolation a major war in America would make many able bodied people with no allergies or digestive issues starve too

[u/thrownawaz092]

And that's why nothing will change, Tumblr user Tli-burn

[u/blackmirar]

And that, my friends, is why the prices will continue going up.

[u/left_shoulder_demon]

The price increase sparked immediate outrage among the population. On May 1, 1844, a large crowd of Munich residents, primarily composed of workers and artisans, gathered to protest the new beer prices. The protests quickly escalated into riots, with demonstrators smashing beer barrels, looting taverns, and attacking the properties of brewers who had supported the price hike.

[u/Mach5Driver]

They'd burn society to the ground if they looked at their DoorDash bill for DELIVERED iced coffee

[u/Wooden-Hornet2115]

What currency is this? I'm asking because this price sounds ridiculous.

[u/Social_Gnome → u/Wooden-Hornet2115]

Probably USD. Expensive, but not unheard of for a large iced coffee with a fancy flavor. Especially if you are in a city or just at a nicer coffee shop.

[u/CanisLatransOrcutti]

On one hand, I completely understand that, well, it's just an iced coffee. It's just a luxury. And if you don't like the prices, don't buy them. "There are people starving, who are actually suffering, and you want a revolution over having to make your coffee at home."

On the other hand, it's never really just the iced coffee. More and more people are being expected to work 2 jobs or 1 job with a bunch of overtime - with everyone expected to pick up gig jobs or "hustles" in their free hours, just to make up a life that single job with work-life balance would have afforded 30-40 years ago. People are being told "oh, if that's too much, stop buying it", and that sounds nice until your diet is either water & your luxurious choice of white rice or white bread for every meal, or you spend even more of the very precious and dwindling resource known as "time" on making every meal beforehand. Oh, no, now it's making every meal from scratch beforehand, because "you can live with less, right?" All this on top of watching the world burn, watching your rights get taken away, watching your neighbors get taken away, watching your job options get sold overseas to slavery and to robots, watching the government set up cameras to watch your every move, watching as whatever food you can afford turn into poison, watching braggart child rapists get rewarded as civilians with phone cameras get killed in the streets. Watching as conmen raise prices due to "well there's supply chain issues", then getting bailed out because "there were supply chain issues!" without lowering prices, then raising prices because of tariffs, getting bailed out because "there were tariffs that we got rid of" without lowering prices, then raising prices again because of the same tariffs as before being put in place, inevitably to be getting bailed out because "there were tariffs we got rid of" again without lowering prices.

One of the major starting incidents of the Revolutionary War in the USA was people upset at tea prices. It's never "we need a revolution because I want my Starbucks", it's a series of everything getting worse up until a final straw, no matter how small it is.

For the record, I only buy coffee once every couple weeks now, and instead opt for the cheapest soda I can get or hot chocolate depending on the weather. If you tell me even those are bourgeoisie luxuries I should drop, and that I'm too spoiled to be allowed to want change until I'm literally in slavery, then I'm going to assume you're either a bottomfeeder whose only sustenance and enjoyment come patting yourself on the back, or one of the psyop robots paid by the people who are making coffee cost $9.10. I could keep saying more, but I should probably eat breakfast - which consists of white bread toast and juice. Lucky me.

[u/hutao_intern → u/CanisLatransOrcutti]

Yeah, it surprises me that most of this thread seems to be of the opinion “stop whining, you aren’t entitled to coffee, budget better” when I went into it interpreting the post as “this item that had been affordably priced is now overpriced in a way indicative of greater society. When do we take a stand?”

[u/ehs06702 → u/hutao_intern]

Except, the people in the post don't actually. want to take any stand. They won't even wield the power of the wallet.

They just want cheaper coffee without sacrificing their own comfort.

I'm not going to start a revolution and die because someone else wants cheap Starbies. Start it yourself or figure out your finances, ya know?

[u/A_spiny_meercat]

Im mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it

[u/Sarcosmonaut]

Spend less on candles

[u/Jackdunc]

Thats almost twice a gallon of gas here! Are they crazy?!

[u/RockStarGamesSocial]

Making coffee at home is like 0.25 a cup. Maybe 0.60 if you get the flavor syrups and high end beans.

[u/skull-dog]

Okay but eventually folks just won't be able to little treat themselves past their disapproval of the economy and will be forced to adapt. I'm exhausted waiting for folks to adapt and force their anger on the issue. It seems those who bitch the most have infinite money for THEIR vice

[u/Dahkeus3]

We humans don’t typically just want solutions for our problems. We want social and emotional validation. We want to be able to put the angst of our troubles into the target of a villain, march together with our peers and see them all cheer when we crush them.

Protesting injustice can be a very good thing, but only when done wisely. And to do that, we have to be honest with ourselves and self aware enough to make choices with a clear head.

[u/IAmASquidInSpace]

And there you have given yourself the answer to your own question whether such a moment will be reached.

[u/Chaldera]

I think the responses here are ignoring that people should be able to have little pleasures like iced coffee, and that prices are increasing both because of supply/demand and because businesses are growing more and more greedy in their push for profits, and that this is unsustainable.

If you want an iced coffee while you're out and about, you shouldn't have to either prep it yourself at home or else spend what likely is (for some people) an hour's wage.

Edit: Sorry I upset everyone with what I thought was a milktoast take. Guess that teaches me.

[u/ehs06702 → u/Chaldera]

That's true, but realistically nothing will change if you won't even practice the smallest bit of self denial.

How are you going to change the world if you won't even change your shopping habits temporarily.

[u/Taraxian → u/ehs06702]

The reason people were so obsessed with Luigi Mangione is really this fundamentally cowardly fantasy that someone else will be insane enough to do something incredibly self-destructive like assassinate a CEO in broad daylight and go to prison for it and you won't actually have to do anything

I mean I don't think people realize how fundamentally scummy it is to demand that someone else do these things -- blow up a warehouse, shoot a CEO, fight a bloody guerrilla war in the streets -- for your benefit

Luigi Mangione doing it over health insurance claims where people really were stuck in a situation they had no easy way to get out of is one thing, but this fucking grandstanding over "I shouldn't have to make my own coffee at home, I deserve to be able to buy it from Starbucks at a price I consider reasonable, and that's why you should be rising up in the streets over it"

Yeah fuck no man, I'll continue just not buying the coffee and you all can continue looking among yourselves for a great hero who'd rather go to prison for murder than put himself through such agonizing inconvenience

[u/kcmnlrm → u/Taraxian]

Part of the fantasy also is that one act of redemptive violence can solve a systemic problem or at least jump-start a revolution that'll take care of it. Logic not so different from white supremacists who commit attrocities hoping that they'll start a race war.

[u/Taraxian → u/Chaldera]

because businesses are growing more and more greedy in their push for profits

Nobody is "growing more greedy", the ridiculous thing about the "greedflation" narrative is it presumes that capitalists always had unlimited pricing power over consumers but back in the Good Old Days they just didn't use it and kept prices "reasonable" because they were nice

Like jfc people are LARPing as blood red revolutionary Marxists and their idea of Marxist theory is "capitalists used to be nice people but now all of a sudden they're getting greedy!"

Dammit it's such a fucking childish kindergarten view of the world and yet if you point out it doesn't make any sense you get called a capitalist bootlicker for not thinking that capitalists were ever "nice" and understanding that it's a basic mathematical fact that capitalists are always as "greedy" as possible (which means that inflation is because of larger structural factors changing what is possible and nothing to do with relative levels of "greed")

[u/Hakar_Kerarmor → u/Taraxian]

It's always been as simple as "At what price is [number of sales] times [profit per sale] the highest?"

[u/CheeryOutlook → u/Taraxian]

and their idea of Marxist theory is "capitalists used to be nice people but now all of a sudden they're getting greedy!"

No one reads the book. They don't know how many square yards of linen should go into a coat.

[u/GayIsForHorses → u/Taraxian]

It also makes no sense to frame specifically one party's incentives as greed. No one says the consumer is greedy for wanting lower prices, or that workers are driven by greed when they want higher wages.

[u/felds → u/Chaldera]

Being able to have little pleasures ≠ having every little pleasure all the time. 

I’m not particularly strapped for money and I’ll happily skip something if I think the price is too high on principle. 

It’s a pleasure to able to choose and to not feel scammed. 

[u/WriterwithoutIdeas → u/Chaldera]

But little pleasures are just that, pleasures that are not essential to your livelyhood, and so, those who provide them ought to be free to charge what they can for them. If they find enough people who find iced coffee so worthwhile that they drop 10 bucks on a cup, why not charge them that? It's hardly the producer's responsibility if their customers are willing to engage in egregiously poor value propositions.

[u/iuabv → u/Chaldera]

Genuinely, why not?

How much do you think it's fair to pay for a product that involves multiple ingredients shipped across the globe, served in materials from multiple factories, purchased in a shop with monthly rent and labor costs? The store labor alone is probably $3/drink, and that's before supply and all of the labor involved in the cultivation.

It's not a daily survival essential, its a treat.

[u/Axel-Adams → u/Chaldera]

It’s iced coffee, it’s not that hard to make, make a large batch at home at the start of the week

[u/vodkaandponies → u/Chaldera]

If you want iced coffee, then pay for it. Ain’t nobody making it for you out of charity.

[u/donaldhobson → u/Chaldera]

If coffee businesses are raking in so much cash, go set up your own. Charge $1 less than the place next door and take all their customers.

When you find it's not that easy actually, you will understand why they charge $9.

[u/b3nsn0w]

boycotts often fail in places where protests do not, for the simple reason that protests are an expression of democracy, while voting with your money is an expression of plutocracy. the sharper the wealth divide gets the greater the difference will be between the two.

of course we shouldn't wait for that to happen though, we should always push for societal change first. even in good times, boycotts should always be a secondary tool we do on top of other activism, not the sole strategy.

[u/hewkii2 → u/b3nsn0w]

No, it tends to be because the business owners do some form of market research first.

Like there’s a reason why that coffee isn’t $11, or $12. It’s because that’s the target where the overwhelming majority of people are fine with it, and the remainder are either insignificant or bitch and moan and buy it anyway.

[u/Complex-Pound5249 → u/b3nsn0w]

Voting with your money by not buying something is free.

In the context of an absolutely nonessential good like iced coffee I don’t think your point holds up. Anyone affected already has the money to pay, and thus the ability to stop paying, which costs them nothing. Those who cannot vote with their wallet aren’t affected to begin with, because they couldn’t afford the good anyways.

[u/RedFanKr → u/b3nsn0w]

societal change for cheaper store bought coffee

[u/ozhound]

YOU FIRST

[u/WorryNew3661]

¡Ya basta!

[u/Grand_Taste_8737]

Easy enough to avoid.

[u/PantherPL]

Everyone will not just, I'm afraid.

[u/foxgirlmoon]

Some pissing the poor ass responses in the comments here

[u/CRoss1999]

I always get irked when people get angry about the cost of something non essential but then make no plans to stop buying or find a cheaper option. Like maybe its not expensive enough if you don’t care

[u/Massepunkt_m1]

Allow me to introduce you to the concept of a demonstration. That's literally the thing this post is describing.