How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

Not in dollar terms, especially when dollars are being deliverately managed so that the dollar cost of a labor hour increases over time.

In terms of labor-hours, sure.

> Lower consumer prices would help make up for the reduced demand for labor.

No, lower nominal (dollar) prices would not. Lower real prices are an incoherent concept. Lower labor-hour-equivalent prices would if and only if lower labor demand meant equal employment but reduced hours, otherwise it would just exacerbate the tangible inequality resulting from reduced labor demand.

> But rather than this being allowed to just happen, the overt policy is to keep labor from realizing these gains so that everyone keeps working "full time".

But, it's not: that's not what targeting low positive inflation is. That would only be the overt policy if there was an overt policy to reatrict real wage gains.

While I do think (at least large portions of) one of the two major parties is actively and deliberately pursuing policies with that goal, it's very much not an overt policy.

It feels weird to unthinkingly sacrifice valuable life preferences at the altar of Economic Efficiency Uber Alles.

This is sophomoric relativism - achieving lower day-to-day prices is exactly how market competition works. It's tautological to justify a policy of changing the value of a dollar by rejecting analysis in terms of an unchanged dollar. When creating a new variable, you have to analyze it in terms of existing variables.

> lower nominal (dollar) prices would not [help make up for the reduced demand for labor]

It very clearly would if businesses said "we're going to reduce everyone's hours by 20%" while everyone's expenses went down 20% - everyone's budget would remain the same.

I'll give you that this won't happen so pleasantly uniformly. But posit E who remains employed, and U who is laid off. If the expenses of four such E's go down, they now have extra money to spend locally to create a new job for U. Whereas if the E's expenses remain the same, then U's only options to get money are to head towards where it is being printed or compete with the E's in a race to the bottom (which is why the price of easily-interchangeable labor is now set by "minimum wage" rather than the market).

> that's not what targeting low positive inflation is.

An explicit goal of inflationary monetary policy is to drive "full employment". So yes, pushing everyone to keep working full time is one of its overt goals. A goal that is regressive in the face of needing ever-less labor.

I'm obviously not going to convince you on the merits of this, especially in a few comments, and that's fine. It's just fundamentally dishonest to discard a political viewpoint by condescending from a paradigm that rules out said political viewpoint by construction.

Just kidding. To my knowledge a lot go to processing, not consumer consumption. Typically these are also labeled as "ugly" because they're not always your traditional strawberry shape. Similar, Florida oranges were mostly juicing oranges, not consumption. Though greenery has really fucked up that market sector.

I just don't appreciate the whole "look" based market we have in the states. I think it's as stupid as stupid gets. A majority of food prices are due to people not wanting their food to "look" a certain way. Even though that look has zero correlation to taste. Which, typically, the ugly ones have more flavor. Like, the best beefsteak tomato looks like a hideous tumor. God as my witness, they have a great taste. It's good enough to just slice and eat by itself. But then the pretty beefsteak tomatoes are a watery disaster of sadness.

Just me ranting away about the terrible disconnect a majority of the population has to their food. It's really sad. There's really no cure to it unless the fed mandates Victory Gardens. Which, I'm totally for. The only big government action I'll approve is the fed saying "If you have a yard, you must cultivate 25% of it minimum as a Victory Garden or face penalty of death." A day worth celebrating.

Why should Polish people leave their country so they can find work in England? In theory, countries should be self-sufficient enough to where only niche based jobs should have such movement. I'm talking about highly specialized stuff. But when it comes to generic labor, why? Farming? Building houses? The fact people want to leave one country for another just for basic jobs is kind of messed up. I feel both countries are to blame forcing people to leave their homeland. One needs to get their fucking shit together and/or quit punishing a demographic because said gov wants to become a more service oriented country, the other country needs to stop creating incentives for such actions to become easily profitable on a large scale basis.

Countries need to be self-sufficient with their own population. One population sacrificing its people for the good of another is not sustainable, no matter how you slice or dice it.