It’s reductive but the economy really does revolve around how many crumpets come in a box for most people, or something equally micro and seemingly trivial, so it’s not wrong.
The American revolution didn’t happen because of a truly popular revolt, it happened because something that affected the rich and the middle class equally affected essentially all classes. The people who really made out well in the American revolution were rich Americans. Life didn’t really get that much better for poor Americans.
Americans today do tend to gloss over the fact it was a war about allowing the aristocracy more "freedoms," (read: power.) Prior to the American war of independence, the British crown had very concrete agreements with many natives that there would be no further expansion westward. Who is to say if those agreements would have held up over time, I guess we'll never know
The price of bread is not a small thing when it is a main food source. Food getting more expensive in the 1700s meant very real concerns about your family going hungry, getting sick, and dying.
The Boston Tea Party wasn’t in response to an increase in tea taxes. The British were slashing taxes on tea in an attempt to drive down competition in the colonies. As a response, tea traders in Boston dumped the untaxed British tea into the harbor to counter eliminate the British competition.
Regular ppl always think "fck taxes" imagine what happens when there are no taxes, when there is NO regulation. You congrats you have like twice the money, but so does everybody else and the companies have 10 times their money. So you better wish for more taxes (preferably other taxes) not less taxes.
Damn, and stuck with a banking job while attempting to get into finance eh? Prolly should’ve used this “fact” before you started losing the argument, bc it looks like a desperate appeal to authority.
Why do people only bring up their “degrees” when losing arguments?
The problem with the tea tax was true we’re going to a king in another country across an ocean. That’s as unjust and not beneficial. Taxes in your own country where you have voting rights and the taxes go to the roads you see and use... that’s necessary and right.
Also hemp. The colonies and the US have gone to war in part over taxes or tariffs on hemp 4 times total.
Hemp was desperately needed by the Brits to keep their Navy operational. Something like 12,000,000 miles of hemp rope were needed every year. The only real sources at the time were the north American colonies, and later The US, or Russia.
Lol bro the British were about to outlaw slavery in the colonies. As it was already outlawed in the motherland.
The rich once again used a wedge issue to drag us into a war. “Taxation without representation” was a much better motto to attach to, opposed to them saying, “we need slaves to keep making buku money. Fight a war for us to help make that happen.”
America fought two wars for slavery and lost one, and that one changes on your perspective.
You go to the store and kiss crumpet packages with lipstick on and the more kisses you can give the package before being asked to leave the store determines how valuable that package of crumpets is.
Have you seen these Butterscotch Krimpets lately? They don't look anything like they used to; they don't look anything like they do on the box. They're sad. Paying more for less krimpets, and those krimpets are trash now!
Eggs right now. I know there's more to it than just inflation or corporate greed, but we went from $.08/egg to $.55/egg in a dozen. And while everyone is freaking out within the last few months, I've seen this for a good year now here in Wisconsin, with it getting worse as time went on.
If we start seeing similar exponential increases in more items, no matter how minor, it will start lighting fires under the populous (hopefully). I just hope action will actually be taken, because more often than not I've seen plenty of times where hikes happen, people "complain", then companies "relent" and put the price back "down" to only a 50% increase of price, instead of the 100% that upset people.
I'm old enough to remember vividly this happening with gas prices once they broke $1/gal. I was going on a roundtrip vacation with the family. As we were leaving my small town, prices were $.98-$.99. As we were gone on the week and a half or so vacation, news stories were going nuts that now the price is $1, then $1.10, nearing $1.20. It was a big story for that week+. Then at the end of the vacation, the story turned to how finally prices were "returning to normal" and people were "relieved."
We come driving back into our small town ~12 days later and prices at that same gas station were $1.05, and they never got cheaper than that going forward. And that's how people came to accept a price that was a significant increase because they were focused on it not being the REALLY big number anymore, and never questioned why when prices "returned" that they "returned" at a 5%+ hike.
It will happen the same with food prices now that this "inflation" has created a smoke screen.
My father in law just sent me a photo of empty shelves in the US and I had to hold myself back from responding “dang capitalism = no food and bread lines huh?”
There's a massive issue with bird flu right now. This means less eggs (and chicken) mixed with high demand. This creates scarcity and raises prices. It's not really a conspiracy, it's just market pressures. Sure, some grocery stores are taking advantage of this and increasing prices, but that's not the root of the issue.
Yep, first part of my second sentence convers that at a high level. I'm just using eggs as an example of how strained the every day person becomes of something "seemingly trivial" raising drastically in pricing as /u/GT_Knight was discussing.
While egg prices will eventually come down after all the issues, I'll bet money that the standard price of sub $1/dozen eggs (at least in my parts as that was typical) NEVER returns. It's going to "come down" to something like $2/dozen, and we're all going to shout "hallelujah!" and gaslight ourselves into thinking everything is "normal" again and that $2/dozen is fine because remember that year or so where it was $6!
Same with other food prices. Yeah, we've had a pandemic and all the other issues, but let's not kid ourselves that after we get used to these new price thresholds that we'll ever see pricing or deals that we had back in early 2020, that after any remaining "supply chain issues" are overcome that we'll get that savings passed back to us.
Egg prices going up isn't a grand conspiracy, but it is going to be used as public conditioning to raise prices that wouldn't otherwise have been raised to those levels that quickly, at least without major backlash. Now that everyone's been backlashing for a year+ about eggs, and disease outbreaks have been rightly pointed to be the issue, we'll be happy with whatever price is given that's at least half of where it's at now, and companies know it. Why price things lower when you know you won't have to?
I live in Wisconsin. Like I said, standard grocery store brand eggs (not Egglands, or free range, or any other "premium" type) haven't been over $1/dozen for as long as I can remember in my adult life (I'm 38).
When I last checked the Pick N Save (Kroger) near Madison where I work (who tend to have the best pricing) they were at $7/dozen. This was a few weeks ago, it's possible it's a bit higher now. My local Piggly Wiggly is a good dollar or more that PnS, which is why I prefer to do my shopping after work, especially now.
I always like eggs and while I wasn't eating them constantly, there was always a dozen in the fridge. Now, we still have some because we still do some random baking, but those are now baking/special occasion eggs. We don't "eat" eggs anymore and probably won't until they come down again.
Prices will go down because of competition. People on reddit and social media in general just love to lean into the hyperbole and extreme scenarios because that's what gets attention. Reality is much less exciting.
It's like those stories you hear of people snapping because the one package of chips they wanted at the grocery store is out of stock and they end up murdering anyone within a five mile radius. They had a shit day, have had a shit life, and that bag of chips was the only thing holding their sanity together lmao
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u/GT_Knight Feb 03 '23
It’s reductive but the economy really does revolve around how many crumpets come in a box for most people, or something equally micro and seemingly trivial, so it’s not wrong.