So what's driving the impeding recession? Shouldn't the economy be on the up swing?
The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
61–70 of 114 posts
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know about strippers but I am right up there with you on tips becoming absurd here. Every kiosk where I swipe my credit card wants a tip now. I didn’t really “like” tipping before, but I accepted it as just part of the transaction for getting a waiter or waitress to write down my order and deliver me my food and refill my drinks. Now the companies want a tip for the food I pick up myself directly from the res…
I feel you so much on this. So many shops pressing for many more ways to allow tips, for example presenting a percentage with options 10%, 20%, 30%... to frame customers into picking the one in the middle! Does any of you'all know if there are law defining maximums for tipping, like maybe in european countries or something?
Yeah it drives me nuts, and I am somewhat convinced that it's going to backfire, though I don't have any hard evidence on it.
I will go to restaurants when I'm traveling for obvious reasons, but for the six months or so I haven't really eaten out more than five or six times, all of which were for special occasions. For comparison, I used to go to some form of restaurant in the past four times a week. I gradually started to avoid places that have the tipping kiosk, but then just transitioned away to just avoiding restaurants entirely
Now, there's actually a bunch of reasons that I don't eat out anymore, but one thing I'm pretty sure is this: you know what's even worse for a business than people not tipping for a service? Them not showing up to even buy the service.
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny you mention that. Its my expertise. Food Deserts are defined in a way that is unhelpful, I live in a food desert in one of the richest counties. I have 0 grocery stores within 1 mile. But I have 6 grocery stores within 3 miles. Go ahead with the conventional sayings: Tell me the fallacious remark about McDoubles being the healthiest cheapest food ever. Go ahead and say something incorrect like processed foods a…
I largely agree, but lately eggs, butter, cheese, meat have sure surged ahead in price. They cant really shrinkflate around these items. Even the kids selling eggs as a side hustle in my rural community are jacking their prices.
Price of chicken feed is up as well which might explain locally jacked egg prices.
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know about strippers but I am right up there with you on tips becoming absurd here. Every kiosk where I swipe my credit card wants a tip now. I didn’t really “like” tipping before, but I accepted it as just part of the transaction for getting a waiter or waitress to write down my order and deliver me my food and refill my drinks. Now the companies want a tip for the food I pick up myself directly from the res…
I feel you so much on this. So many shops pressing for many more ways to allow tips, for example presenting a percentage with options 10%, 20%, 30%... to frame customers into picking the one in the middle! Does any of you'all know if there are law defining maximums for tipping, like maybe in european countries or something?
I can at least tell you that in Australia, nobody tips anybody unless they feel like it, and nobody complains if you don't.
Our minimum wage is higher here though.
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really getting out of hand. I see it here with my coworkers in our small company. There are only 6 employees here total. 3 of my coworkers commute for 1hr+ away each way because they can't afford to live in our town. And then they don't eat. With their work schedule and their commute they're gone from home for 12hrs or more per day so they can't meal prep. And they can't afford to dine out. So they simply don't…
A 2 week vacation and 2 long weekends to Disney World don't seem out of reach for any middle class family, let alone a company owner. My sister is an adjunct professor and I think has been to disneyland 3 times this year already. The rest of it certainly sucks though. There would have to be a VERY good motivation for me to travel that far for work. Most of us on here are involved in software and I'd be shocked to see…
> A 2 week vacation and 2 long weekends to Disney World don't seem out of reach for any middle class family, let alone a company owner.
The fact that this person is going on all these vacations while his workers forgo meals is just kind of fucked up. The fact that people don't seem to see a problem with this is the problem.
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#66Or it could be that people are just tipped out. I hadn't been to a strip club in several years but I got dragged to one a few months back by a friend and I got to tell you the money that these girls wanted seem to astronomically high for the service that they were providing. Maybe people are just fed up with it and spending their discretionary income in other ways. The girls turn their nose up at a couple dollars on…
I think your explanation is missing a competitive element that drives the $500 price. Two similar examples: 1) Maximum City is a book about various people in Mumbai around ~2000. One of them is a sort of stripper (she dances and sometimes dates in a transactional way; I don't remember how explicit it all is). Her analysis is that her clients are partially paying for her but more so for "winning" her over the other cl…
Veblen goods.
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#67Or it could be that people are just tipped out. I hadn't been to a strip club in several years but I got dragged to one a few months back by a friend and I got to tell you the money that these girls wanted seem to astronomically high for the service that they were providing. Maybe people are just fed up with it and spending their discretionary income in other ways. The girls turn their nose up at a couple dollars on…
[deleted]
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#68Or it could be that people are just tipped out. I hadn't been to a strip club in several years but I got dragged to one a few months back by a friend and I got to tell you the money that these girls wanted seem to astronomically high for the service that they were providing. Maybe people are just fed up with it and spending their discretionary income in other ways. The girls turn their nose up at a couple dollars on…
Entertainment in general; another great example of this is ticket prices for concerts and drink prices inside the venues. Obviously drink prices have always been high, but a pint of domestic beer has been very steadily creeping up by $1-$2 a year since 2020; effectively double today relative to even 8 years ago. I just paid $250 for pit tickets to see an artist I like at a mid-tier venue. A similarly popular artist i…
Entertainment is crazy cheap. $10/month for video. $25 for local theater show. What's expensive is exclusive access to prestige on trend live performance.
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel you so much on this. So many shops pressing for many more ways to allow tips, for example presenting a percentage with options 10%, 20%, 30%... to frame customers into picking the one in the middle! Does any of you'all know if there are law defining maximums for tipping, like maybe in european countries or something?
I can at least tell you that in Australia, nobody tips anybody unless they feel like it, and nobody complains if you don't. Our minimum wage is higher here though.
Yeah I think it's a kind of distinctly American thing. You're just expected to tip for everything here. I'm sure there's historical reasons for it but they aren't really important because the fact is that regardless of the reason I just really dislike it.
I would much rather employers pay their employees a livable wage and roll the cost of that into the price of the service.
Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement
#70The media needs to report a more realistic inflation metric. Groceries are wildly expensive.
If we're going that route, the media should also more prominently report the relationship between corporate price-gouging and inflation. Some do, but not prominently[0]. When too few corporations have too much control over the market, the oligopoly can simply extract more from the population, evidently about half of the cause of current inflation [1].
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/08/10/how-corpor...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflatio...