Quote:
Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA
All this sidetrack brings me back to something I started to comment on earlier and didn't.
Yep, dine out prices suuuuuuck. But this fits into a recurring theme I've discussed with friends & family numerous times in recent months: what my lying eyes see daily doesn't match the narrative(s) I keep hearing.
I hear how terrrrrrible the economy is. Prices are definitely up, and noticeably so. But ...
Mid afternoon Tues traffic looks like rush hour around here. And it's not work stuff, it's people shopping, eating, etc. My roads are hot with traffic 7 days a week. If times are so tough, shouldn't gas consumption be more of an issue?
Food prices suck ... but most places here have a line around the building on the regular. Our Five Guys is never empty, and is packed at lunch. And our busiest places are generally the most expensive ones.
Will drove down to Macon to see a fairly obscure country artist tonight (Creed Fisher), drew 400-500 people at $25 - $40 per ticket ... but it was obvious that MAYBE 5% of the people in the crowd knew even the chorus of one song. This wasn't OMG-my-favorite-I-must-see-him, this was a crowd made up of "well, it's Friday so we "have" to go SOMEWHERE". And I assure you, these were not 1-percenters, these might barely have been 50-percenters. That's not behavior that fits with the times-are-tough narrative I keep hearing.
We've got perpetual labor shortage here, pay offers are absurdly high for the level of work but few to no takers, if everybody is in such dire straits, how come nobody seems willing to work?
It feels like things are bad & times are tough, I keep hearing how awful things are ... but what my eyes tell me are a very different story. And, nope, I'm not gonna tell you I can explain that disconnect. It's a complete fucking mystery to me, NGL.
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That's the issue, too. Those 50-percenters you see, especially down by Macon, I'm willing to bet 75% of them are sharing memes about gas prices with Trump vs. Biden, how shitty the economy is, etc. When in reality, the economy seems to be doing ok. What is happening is that the corporations are price-gauging people and they are paying it and blaming politicians. I mean, I'm willing to bet they even paid 25-30% fees on top of their ticket prices.