As a person of developing countries who have prefer in cash, i still don't get the idea yet.
Is it like credit card? Credit card existed in my country but only rich pop in offfice use it.
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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never understood this. If you can't buy it now will you be able to.pay later?! You need groceries every month
If you're living paycheck to paycheck, it takes one unexpected expense and suddenly you're hustling to get food on the table. The cycle then repeats itself.
I've been there. It's expensive to be poor with little to no way out.
You need a car to work. Cars are expensive. You get a old clunker.
You work and live check to check. Maybe $50 or $100 left over after taxes and expenses. Not really possible to have an emergency fund.
A single injury or car breaking down and you need to borrow money. From family, friends or some shitty company.
Oh and then your yearly raise comes around at $1/hr that barely covers your rent increasing let alone inflation.
Whoops some bill auto-drafted unexpectedly
Your account is negative now, oh and throw a $25 fee on top.
Looks like you're scrounging for dinner tonight. And the rest of the week. Maybe skip some meals because you have no choice.
Shit sucks ass.
Getting a checking account with no overdraft fees is definitely a plus in those situations
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Once I bounced a check to our water company and they refused to take checks or credit cards from me for a YEAR as a punishment. It was a one-time accident after paying on time for around seven years. I literally had to drive my ass down there with cash. It's a small rural water service, not a big corporation - they chose to be complete assholes even after I explained the situation (we had a baby that month and forgot a monthly $ transfer in the chaos).
Same mistake probably cost us $120 in overdraft fees. Society financially punishes people who need money the most and rewards the people who have plenty. It's ridiculous.
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The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.
Yep. This tracks.
My issue now with products is planned obsolescence. Any things aren't made to last like they used to. They also have extra technology in them making them harder to repair. Appliances, cars and more.
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Cost of living is too high, put it on credit.
Your alternative is starve now.
Either way, this is about to get a lot more bonkers in roughly the next 30 to 60 days as Just In Time delivery... kinda just, stops working, and grocery stores will have to both raise prices and ration items per customer per week to deal with shortages and try to minimize in-store injuries and deaths.
Go look up a compilations of black friday shopping stampedes.
Imagine that, but for groceries, every time a grocery store restocks.... for the forseeable future.
That's probably part of why the capital class want fascism. Because if that happens in a democracy, they would have their capital expropriated.
Historically speaking, basically, yes, the capitalist class essentially always sides with a nascent fascist movement as it is opposed to making any truly meaningful concessions to workers.
But it is important to note that fascism is, or arises from... an ostensible capitalist democracy ... in decay.
It arises as a reaction to the over exploitation of the capitalists.
The fascists are always incompetent idiots at actually running anything, actual policy... beyond being brutally indimidating and violent bullies.
But! They promise growth and stability.
Morons believe them. Many of these morons... are the capitalists.
This works well for a while, but eventually, fascist mismanagement leads to the capitalists actually having a whole bunch of their businesses collapse, as the economy broadly suffers, or maybe its war time babyyyy and oh well turns out that its also bad to fund endless foreign invasions and/or be invaded yourself.
But, by then, its too late.
The capitalists sided with the fascists initially, to avoid structural concessions to workers... but now that everything is fucked, and/or dear leader / the party has some incomprehensible zany nonsense plan... well now the capitalists mostly get either outright or functionally nationalized, and lose even more than if they had just gone with the comparatively more minor concessions to workers.
Poison chalice.
Prisoner's Dilemma, game theoretic suboptimal outcome, that humanity just keeps replicating with minor variations and new flavors.
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Can you elaborate on this? Just In Time delivery? Is this a US thing?
Edit: okay, I looked it up and I understand it now. The ripple effect already happened though when big box stores told Trump to fuck off with the tariffs, because their shelves are empty.
Yeah, put super simply:
Minimize needed actual storage space and time a thing spends in storage... by relying on very frequent and consistent logistics.
Its very efficient in the sense of minimizing operating costs...
But it is also extremely fragile, a minor perturbation can fuck shit up for weeks or months.
... And we are getting... well basically the most major disruption in the history of JIT as a logistics paradigm.
Really thought we would have learned that JIT is a horrible strategy after covid... That was only a few years ago...
America follows Seinfeld rules:
No hugging.
No learning.
... Larry David is even writing poignant political satire pieces just right in the New York Times now!
There was an episode of Comedians in Cars like a decade ago now, Jerry just muses something like... God, is NYC just gonna be nothing but corporate coffee shops and banks?
Yes. Yep. That is what happened.
If you are at the point where you are buying grocoeries in installments, who cares about paying it back. What good is a good credit score if you cant afford to buy anything anyways. Just survive any way you can at that point
Some people don't have the option, and end up relying on these services. It's similar to the payday loan trap. Being poor is expensive.
Then you've never been poor and living paycheck to paycheck.
There are times when it's either find a loan from someone or not eat for two weeks because something in your house broke and that's unfortunately a reality for many Americans including myself at one time.
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Capitalism isn't paying enough for workers to live off of and they system is papering over it with debt. Problem is debt isn't a sustainable way to do it since it has to get paid back. We've been seeing sketchier and sketchier things happening in finance and when these loans don't get repaid (and this article is a sign we're getting close) the whole house or cards comes tumbling down
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I keep on wondering who the fuck has the money to be using things like grubhub. I realize its a non sequitor for this article but I really don't see how these businesses stay in business.
Credit card debt is a pathway to many abilities some would consider unnatural
My neighbor gets everything delivered, but I have no clue what he or his wife do. If my spouse made the same as I do, we could afford to do all that delivery stuff. But it still makes no sense
I have friends that talk about getting food delivered nearly daily, plus groceries and whatnot. I am so frugal it makes my asshole pucker to think about delivery fees PLUS them getting your order wrong so often PLUS the food is cold and takes way longer than simply driving there. And then in addition, we actually need the human contact. But I'm not gonna criticize my friends to their faces. Just here.
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People who don't really understand credit cards or have a cognitive disconnect between cost and value when fulfilling their sustenance need.
When people get hangry they don't make good choices.
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The people in power will soon come to realise we are all just 3 warm meals a day away from anarchy.
What kind of psychopath has three warm meals a day? You cook three times a day? Or do you eat out three times a day? I believe the latter to be more crazy.
I do share the intended sentiment however.
Breakfast: Coffee and toast
Lunch: Toasted sandwich or reheated dinner leftovers
Dinner: Something home-cooked
As someone who usually prefers a hot meal over a cold one, that's my standard fare. It's not a crazy effort.
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Literally what russians were doing while being loud on internet about how sanctions don't work. You can look foward to anti theft tags on bread soon.
And butter locked up
What about shaving items and deodorant?
....yup done already.
Odd to think if you can't afford food now you could afford it later plus interest.
Also odd to think people can put off eating until they have the proper funds.
I am talking more about the people lending the money, not sure why they think this would be sound lending. People will do far worse then default on a loan to keep eating.
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First off, I fully agree with you. But how people are lured in is that there is no interest if you pay on time, so it's advertised as interest-free. But obviously the business model is built upon people not paying on time, and as such one should calculate that cost into it…
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I get 5% cash back for using ny credit card to buy groceries. I use the card and pay it off every payday. Free money.
Those benefits are usually your own money + the money of those who fail to make payments since merchants have to increase their prices to compensate for credit card fees.
They indirectly steal from you, launder the funds and present it back to you as a "benefit", but only if you've been a good boy.
This is a similar principle to modern loyalty programs. In exchange for your personal information and your eyes (advertising), you get to pay slightly above the regular price and accumulate ✨points✨ while other schmos get a jacked up price that pays for your points (or the value of your points is built into the price of the items you purchase).
Not exactly. Card benefits come directly from fees charged to merchants, which is why processing fees vary wildly from card to card and the merchant has no clue what their fees are going to be per transaction (though this is starting to change with services like Stripe charging a flat percentage+ transaction fee). Interest and the like are pure profit for CC companies. You as the cardholder receive the benefits even if you carry a balance.
Yes precisely, and merchants increase their prices to account for those unknown processing fees since it varies wildly from card to card.
If you carry a balance, you will pay interest, hence reducing the value of your rewards.
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The people who subsidize rewards are customers paying cash/debit.
The prices are higher to cover the Visa Infinite or whatever premium card merchant fees.
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Right after I got my house I had to basically live on bread and water for the first couple years as the tax situation devolved and resolved. Not above doing it again to keep my home
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Putting food on layaway?
So much winning /s
And people have an issue with dumpster diving. Fools
The only time I've used these was on Black Friday, and ultimately, it was worth it.
But they are 100% predatory.
I grow a lot of my food in a fairly small space, and it's quite easy. There's also a community garden a few blocks away. Everything else is avoiding corporate supermarkets as they seem to have the worst quality at the highest price for meats, baked goods, etc. So I'm rarely doing a grocery shop and notice my money goes much slower.
If you're struggling to get groceries, assess your receipt and look for alternatives. Reducing spend while increasing quality is definitely a thing with staples.
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