331–340 of 396 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regulation isn't a singular thing. People want more good regulations and less bad regulations. Even when good regulations exist, people want competent enforcement of the regulations. California passes a lot regulations, so there is a lot of red meat for either side of the regulations good/bad arguments.
Republicans say they don't want more legislation, not "bad" legislation. Also good and bad are subjective
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they know how much to charge me at the payment step, they know what price to put on the shelf. Everything else is just making excuses for keeping it as opaque as it has always been in the US. Yes, it can get a bit more complicated for internet based stores, but even there they do already know how much to charge at the payment step, so again I say that it is a (customer hostile) choice not to show the real price up…
> If they know how much to charge me at the payment step, they know what price to put on the shelf. On the shelf, yes, but then what's on the shelf wouldn't match what's advertised on the Internet, in the paper, on TV and radio, etc. Because each city can have its own sales tax, and each state can have its own sales tax, if you're, say, McDonald's, you can't say a hamburger is $3.00 in your TV ad because it'll be $3.…
While different, it irks me that there are a bunch of hidden fees with UberEats and DoorDash. Not only do delivery companies charge the consumer fees, but restaurants generally raise their prices by 50% if you are buying through an app. That delta is not shown anywhere.
Include Instacart in that group that charges more than the price on the shelf at the store, then adds on service and delivery fees on top of that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Poor people tend to spend a higher percentage of their income, and invest a lower percentage. So, they end up paying a higher percentage of their incomes in sales tax, on average.
That’s true but on the other hand if you never spend money then it’s not providing you any advantage. Money is only useful if it’s spent. In that sense a flat sales tax is the “fairest” since it reflects the actual chosen consumption of that individual. (I know this isn’t true in practice because of exclusions from sales taxes, but we could imagine one that applied to all consumption.)
There is some strange axiomatic derivation happening in this thread. The term "regressive tax" has a specific meaning; we can just start with that as an axiom, rather than re-deriving all of economics. A regressive tax is simply one that takes a higher percentage of income from low-income taxpayers than high-income taxpayers.
Does this law include taxes like Social Security? Many people think they only pay 7.5% and the company pays the other 7.5% but this is wrong. The employee pays the whole 15%, they just don't see it come out of their check. Does that count as a "hidden fee?" What about VAT taxes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> tipping This has gotten ridiculous past 2-3 year. Buy a $3.00 coffee , $1 tip is expected. I hate those ipad type payment consoles.
Just because the option is there on the tablet doesn't mean it's expected. Counter serve food/takeout and basic coffee will 95% of the time not get a tip from me.
Yes i am too much of wuss to not tip when the person behind the counter is staring right at me making that choice.
Tons of industries affected by this, though hospitality comes to mind as being particularly egregious. "resort fees" you can't get out of where they tell you what you're "getting" for those fees, Airbnb service fees, cleaning fees, things that should all be spread across the nightly rate. The feds doing this for airfare was the best thing to happen for consumers shopping for flights. Ideally we would take it further…
All my friends found it pretty hilarious; there's such a thing as marking up a sale once the consumer is invested, but when the actual cost is several times more than the advertised price it's a lot easier to say nope, no thanks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One interesting wrinkle is sitting next to another person on your ticket. By all rights it should be optional but person after person books the no assigned seat option and then is outraged that they are not seated next to their companions.
My expectation for a no-assigned-seat group ticket is that we should be seated together but not anywhere particular (front/back, window/aisle, whatever).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, I’ll agree that my definition doesn’t line up 100% with the legal definition. My definition of fraud is: “lying to someone to induce them to do something they wouldn’t have done without the lie”. I think the hidden pricing lines up neatly with my definition. What’s your definition? (We don’t need to come to an agreement, just curious how you think about it)
FWIW, I don't even really feel like the "legal definition" is relevant: a lot of people on Hacker News seem to think the only thing that matters is the law, and then attempt to move every conversation into whether the law says one thing or the other, and yet fraud is a concept that no one has ever questioned exists even when the law isn't in question or involved. The definition from Oxford Languages (the one Google p…