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Passing the Buck: Why We Make Less But Pay More Part 15: How We Get There
Building the Power to Win We’ve shown you the problem. We’ve named who profits. We’ve proven it doesn’t have to be this way. Now comes the hard part: How do we actually fix this? This won’t be easy. This won’t be quick. And anyone promising simple solutions is lying to you. But it is possible. We have historical precedent. We have working models from other countries. We have growing public…
So I went to a store called Dollar Store today. Next to the name, it said "1.25$ and up." Most items had no price, and were actually 1.75$ Even the saleslady seemed to realise how disingenuous it was, and I bought nothing.
See my last post--the dollar has been in freefall for decades.
It's not just that store. 99Cents Only stores have also not only shrunk the size of their 99 cent goods (e.g., cream cheese went from a normal 12 oz. pack to somewhere between five and eight ounces. I haven't been in one in a while), but now sell many goods at the 1.99$ (aka 2$) and 2.99$ (3$) price points, and even higher.
At this point, I think calling them "dollar stores" is just false advertising. Call them Value Shops or Bargain Shops (which the reason all supermarkets can claim to have the best value, an advertising trend that began in the '60s, is because things like "best value" are vague and completely subjective) But calling them dollar stores, even if they can legally get away with it, much the same way F*X News can legally get away with that just being a name even if it's just a mix of handwringing about how dare poor people have refridgerators and blatant white supremacists, and say "oh, that's just a name," it is just *false.*
I get where companies like BP are going with different brands of gas station marketed as different lifestyle brands ( e.g. Amoco appeals to the muscle car crowd, AM/PM is relaxed West Coast and always there with coffee, day or night, etc) Lifestyle branding isn't something that can be true or false, just like you can have a depressive disco dancer or a ridiculously optimistic and bubbly punk rocker.
But when you're blatantly misrepresenting the type of product you sell, like "dollar stores" have become or F*X News may have always been ( they definitely are now, but I don't know if they were always like this or not), there really needs to be a line drawn that prevents this.
The Better Business Bureau used to, and had its teeth taken out to save abusive and tyrannical megacorps like Wal-Mart, Papa John's, or McDonald's (McDonald's in America is *evil* to its employees, explanation because they're global, and in some countries, their behaviour would be instant corporate suicide)
I dunno if they'd have domain over media. I mean, you can easily find the racism and lies that newspapers spread about internment camps for Japanese Americans, but it also remained uncontested. Even today, racism against Asians is totally cool with the rest of y'all. And y'all smother our voices and gang up to gaslight us when we do speak out. So I can't really look at that and ascertain anything from it.
But my main point is that while yes, advertising in its particular modern shape of things like lifestyle branding was actually literally Freud's nephew experimenting with peacetime uses for propoganda, it's not like Pepsi associating itself with hip youthfulness makes it any less of a cola. It's the advertisers trying to get you to associate a certain feeling with their product. But it doesn't make their product any less what it is or alter the actual product in any way. It's deceptive in a way, if you lack any sort of critical thinking, I guess, because I can drink Pepsi until I'm passed out from sugar spike, but I'll never bring my hairline back to where it was ten years ago or not have arthritis again?
But they're also not actually claiming a youth serum or anything, so I guess it's more like going to a roller rink looking for what you felt in your local one in '82.
But all these so-called "dollar stores," which mostly used to actually be "everything is a dollar," since the branding is considered to mean that, even though it's arguably legacy naming, it's not that anymore, and so, I find it deceptive enough to cross a line. Just like F*x News, which is entirely bigoted hot-takes and not actual news.
(Note that I'm not saying that decieving about what you sell and Nazism are equated, but that both have names that lure people in by easily disproven falsehoods. That's why I'm comparing. Not a whole lot does that. I'm really just putting this here because most of the English internet is made of bad faith actors who will deliberately twist others' words)
There really needs to be something done about outright easily proven deception to lure people in. Even if we consider the legacy branding aspect of the stores at hand, it's just no longer true, and they really need to rename to "Bargain Shops" or something.
But even if it's somehow just too gosh darn hard for people to, yanno, not hate everyone who's not exactly like them to care about the people making your McDonald's orders or people dying of blood poisoning like it's 1803 because of lack of insurance, people generally want stuff that's not made to break and be irreparable after two years. When I tell young people about the shrine to 1987 I live in and all of this stuff being made to be maintenanced and repaired, it always sounds so wonderful to them. And every repairman left is super depressed because buying a new unit is cheaper than bare cost of parts, and they can't complete. I don't think anyone's happy about modern technology being intentionally flimsy. Americans are also beginning to realise American food makers take more chance on variety in overseas markets. There are things the average American consumer is upset about, even if the treatment of the people who serve them isn't one of them.
But the US is just such an oligarchy. A few big companies rule everything and pay off the government like a mob.
So these companies can get away with luring us in with lies. And we're more split up, isolated than ever. I'm Gen X. We were eraced into the shadows. And I'm also Asian American and trans male, two other demographs that's happened to. Mixed is a fourth one I am. As I am pointing out,erasure of a demograph makes its members become very isolated. But I do see Millennials talking about being lonely and having trouble socialising a lot. So I think the movement of socialising to the internet did *something,* and it's actually a lot of people that are having trouble reaching out.
Never mind that 21st Century society's rule is "it's wrong to hate me but fun to hate my neighbour." Divides have gotten worse/become the rule rather than just oppressor Vs. all oppressed, and that *is* fed by social media. We should also be taking action against this! Even *I* get far-right v-logger recommendations on YouTube, and the only thing I use YouTube for is music that came out before any v-loggers were born! I watch zero v-logs. It tries to shove v-logs so massively known for being hate screeds that even *I* know those names are bad news, at me. We should be protesting Tumbler... doing a lot of things, and all sites letting Nazists flourish net-wide while I've literally seen some cartoon fish meme-style joke about white cops get people banned on Twitter.
But every so often, people do band together and still get something done. Remember the internet blackout? The "pipes" are still "dumb"!
Just like that post I have about the ways voting does still matter even though gerrymandering, rigged voter machines, etc., are all true, consumer action still matters.
But no one's ever listened to me, because I'm a mixed, Asian, immigrant, disabled, trans, ace Xer. No one wants to be forced to admit I exist. So you probably won't either. You would rather contend with a lousy hand than admit I'm right.
(I literally called the US The Ring when it came out, and subsequent similar movies "unnecessary blond hair versions" over a decade before people really started saying these things were "whitewashed." Just one example)
The Consumer Action Group
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk
The Consumer Action Group is an online forum which provides free support and advice to anyone with consumer problems.
This covers dealings with banks, credit companies, retail organisations, employment, armed forces – you can see its wide reaching and it’s a huge forum with over 385,000 members and 4.8 million posts.
There’s also a library of information…
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Consumer Action: Consumer education and advocacy since 1971
Please do what you can! God bless everyone!
Breaking Through Power: Sidney Wolfe on Consumer Health.
The Center for Study of Responsive Law celebrated the 50th anniversary year of Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. on May 23-26, 2016.
TheRealNews
Consumer Action: Consumer education and advocacy since 1971
Please do what you can! God bless everyone!
