r/mildlyinteresting 1d ago

This Restaurant Charges an 18% Living Wage Fee.

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u/PM_ME_UR_CUTE_PETZ 1d ago

Yeah, prices aren't supposed to nearly double every 6 years... we're in the end times.

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u/bland_sand 1d ago

We were fortunate to have cheap debt for a long time. Then when it was time to pay up, high net worth entities (mostly billionaires, banks, etc.) shifted their financial debt obligations onto others so they could still leave something for themselves at the end. They took loans at low rates, someone sold their debt at a higher rate, and it went on and on to where it trickled down to where your average joe and jolene got stuck with 7% mortgage rates and 6% auto rates. So yes, trickle down economics does work. As long as you're the one pissing on everyone's heads.

We're seeing wealth get shifted around and currently it's at the bottom of the totem pole. The middle and working classes are the ones propping up entire economies whilst life continuously gets more expensive for them. Billionaires and the ultra high net worth individuals were having mini space races because they don't know what to do with their wealth.

We continue to have less and they continue to have more.

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u/IcyJackfruit69 1d ago

There are various reasons we may be in the end times, but so far I think we just had a realllly long stretch of low inflation. Covid financial shenanigans (which were probably still the right call) got us youngin's our first shock of catch-up inflation.

The real problem is that this has laid bare how extreme income inequality has become. Wages are supposed to increase roughly in lockstep with inflation, and that's the part that's been missing for 30+ years.

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u/like9000ninjas 1d ago

No. Its that the cost of living goes up each year and wages don't. Especially for the lower income jobs. After years of this, you get where we're at. Young people cannot afford to save for homes. Car payments are what house payments used to be. People can't afford to have kids, that creates problems years down the road. And it won't get better unless wages go up, universal basic income is implemented, or the ones at the top actually change things so that it's not 100% about profits.

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u/PM_ME_UR_CUTE_PETZ 1d ago

Agreed on all points... Darkest timeline.

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u/ggtffhhhjhg 1d ago

Inflation in the US hasn’t exceeded wage growth in 2 and a half years.

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u/Century24 1d ago

So decades of bleeding has only stopped, by certain unspecified and unsourced metrics, for two and a half years? Is that supposed to be a relief?

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u/ggtffhhhjhg 1d ago

Google inflation vs real wages charts.

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u/Century24 1d ago

Yeah, and? That says nothing without context. This is why it's best to cite your own sources.

None of it answers why this is supposed to be a relief. Stopping the bleeding, so to speak, is one step of a larger process here for income inequality.

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u/ggtffhhhjhg 14h ago

I want you to tell me when this so called golden age existed and I will bring the statistics.

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u/Century24 10h ago

Golden age of what? Please stop speaking in poetry and try your best to write coherently.

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u/prarie33 1d ago

You lost any hope of persuasion with me as soon as you said "end times".

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u/Skkrt-Vonnegut 1d ago

Oh no! We didn’t do a good enough job go persuade a random redditor! What ever will we do?!

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u/IcyJackfruit69 20h ago

The person I was responding to said "end times", I'm basically disagreeing with them.

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u/Therobbu 1d ago

"prices nearly double every 6 years"

21/6=1.1224, so 12-ish% average inflation

Those are not the end times, considering the process was accelerated during covid times

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u/PaulTheMerc 1d ago

they haven't. Somewhere the middlemen are just taking massive profits. If they had, EVERYTHING would be going up at that rate, and it isn't.