[Doomsday Economics] Home of Kirbeh's FREE SLICE ($25 delivery fee)

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(Thread IKs: skooma512)

anime was right: Jun 27, 2008; death is certain
keep yr cool

the best part about all of this is there are no other search engines besides google and bing. if theres a search engine that you think is run by someone else? guess what, its just modified bing or google results

# ? May 11, 2023 03:17

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 25, 2024 00:48

spacemang_spliff: Nov 29, 2014; wide pickle

i am harry posted:

well, today I�m making gumbo but I didn�t have a bell pepper or any green onions, so I walked to the grocery store and got one of each. the bell pepper was $1.50 and the onions were $0.89, and between me and the cash registers was the door, so I just walked out and walked home.

Limes were $.25/each last year

Last week they were $.55/each lol

Sunday I paid $.65/each lmao

# ? May 11, 2023 03:17

i am harry: Oct 14, 2003

gradenko_2000 posted:

Imgur gonna die
Reddit gonna die
Google gonna die

Book havers stay winning

bought PIKAL, bought How to Grow Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms
think I�m god I mean good

# ? May 11, 2023 03:20

i am harry: Oct 14, 2003

spacemang_spliff posted:

I paid

there�s your problem

# ? May 11, 2023 03:21

Mustached Demon: Nov 12, 2016

spacemang_spliff posted:

Limes were $.25/each last year

Last week they were $.55/each lol

Sunday I paid $.65/each lmao

please think of the shareholder value you create

# ? May 11, 2023 03:27

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

anime was right posted:

the best part about all of this is there are no other search engines besides google and bing. if theres a search engine that you think is run by someone else? guess what, its just modified bing or google results

Yandex

# ? May 11, 2023 03:30

In Training: Jun 28, 2008

Eggs were $2.50 today. looks like Biden saved the economy again. Like a boss.

# ? May 11, 2023 03:30

Mr Hootington: Jul 24, 2008; I'M HAVING A HOOT EATING CORNETTE THE LONG WAY

https://twitter.com/StatusCoup/status/1656320395094421505?t=h5Dp1tMnYCKIlI2KxGemxg&s=19

# ? May 11, 2023 03:31

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Spaced God posted:

Americans are the most docile, cucked herd animals on earth so we will gladly fight to the death over the slop as those in power cash in and enjoy the remaining days in paramilitary guarded luxury

Every (American) liberal believes that because they also had Locke drilled into them, so the comparison to people who are worse off seems to be the only way to organize society, and airtight explanation of How Things Are.

but the bottom line is that he, Hobbes, Rousseau and company didn�t describe material reality in their ramblings about property rights and liberty. The assurance in these beliefs is going to buckle under American material conditions declining.

Americans were docile herd animals when they could be self sufficient yeoman farmers, or when the frontiers were open, or when they had material prosperity despite working for wages. Take away these things, that social order - and remember liberalism itself denies there is one, there are no social relations, only transactions - completely falls apart.

# ? May 11, 2023 03:33

Jon Pod Van Damm: Apr 6, 2009; THE POSSESSION OF WEALTH IS IN AND OF ITSELF A SIGN OF POOR VIRTUE. AS SUCH:
1 NEVER TRUST ANY RICH PERSON.
2 NEVER HIRE ANY RICH PERSON.
BY RULE 1, IT IS APPROPRIATE TO PRESUME THAT ALL DEGREES AND CREDENTIALS HELD BY A WEALTHY PERSON ARE FRAUDULENT. THIS JUSTIFIES RULE 2--RULE 1 NEEDS NO JUSTIFIC

I guess it's time to learn Chinese & Russian to get the good search results

# ? May 11, 2023 03:42

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Jon Pod Van Damm posted:

I guess it's time to learn Chinese & Russian to get the good search results

# ? May 11, 2023 03:43

FlapYoJacks: Feb 12, 2009

Mr Hootington posted:

https://twitter.com/StatusCoup/status/1656320395094421505?t=h5Dp1tMnYCKIlI2KxGemxg&s=19

Booorrrriiiinnnnnngggggg. That derailment happened 500 news cycles ago.

# ? May 11, 2023 03:43

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/BigApeHates12/status/1656432637186301952?t=jLvDDjffDBtWz7nmoOyfvQ&s=19

Hahahahaha good thing Google is gonna be around forever!

# ? May 11, 2023 03:47

Cpt_Obvious: Jun 18, 2007

Mr Hootington posted:

https://twitter.com/StatusCoup/status/1656320395094421505?t=h5Dp1tMnYCKIlI2KxGemxg&s=19

I'm pretty sure the answer is in Poland cuz that's where Joe Biden went when this happened.

# ? May 11, 2023 03:48

really queer Christmas: Apr 22, 2014

spacemang_spliff posted:

Limes were $.25/each last year

Last week they were $.55/each lol

Sunday I paid $.65/each lmao

If you are tired of inflation, simply stop buying products that have gone up in price.

# ? May 11, 2023 03:55

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

Anyway, as far as de-dollarization goes, I think everyone knows that it is going to be a slow/gradual process and that the USD isn't going to actually completely combust out of nowhere. It is less the US is going to go bankrupt or dollars will become toilet paper over night but as more and more nations refuse to sponge every increasing amount of debt being produced, it is going to force the hand of the US in a lot of ways, likely higher than average interest rates on time, which will likely also mean higher yields on bonds and therefore more interest that needs to be paid, and possibly devaluation.

IT is an issue that will continue to go on for years regardless if there is a banking crisis or not.

# ? May 11, 2023 04:21

Vox Nihili: May 28, 2008

spacemang_spliff posted:

Limes were $.25/each last year

Last week they were $.55/each lol

Sunday I paid $.65/each lmao

Limes are controlled by the cartels iirc

The prices are also seasonal and go up and down like crazy every year even before the cartel manipulation

# ? May 11, 2023 04:26

Father Wendigo: Sep 28, 2005; This is, sadly, more important to me than bettering myself.

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/flglmn/status/1656401212374228993

https://twitter.com/thetomzone/status/1656431145628606465

This is just a New Coke false flag campaign to cover for an even shittier, more ad infested search engine algorithm to be introduced as Google Classic once this is predictably hated.

# ? May 11, 2023 04:34

anime was right: Jun 27, 2008; death is certain
keep yr cool

Father Wendigo posted:

This is just a New Coke false flag campaign to cover for an even shittier, more ad infested search engine algorithm to be introduced as Google Classic once this is predictably hated.

this is a likely scenario but it will probably be by pure accident

# ? May 11, 2023 04:36

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

i am harry posted:

"things are relatively okay"

relative to what

Let's turn student loans back on. That'll help the economy.

Although they may want to exactly that because it's deflationary. Immiserating the middle class at best and leaving the all the new billionaires intact, which are definitely not inflating the currency in anyway.

# ? May 11, 2023 04:47

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

anime was right posted:

this is a likely scenario but it will probably be by pure accident

It's Google. They'll put it in beta, leave it that way for 3 years, and then shut it down.

# ? May 11, 2023 04:47

RadiRoot: Feb 3, 2007

anything happen today?

# ? May 11, 2023 04:47

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

RadiRoot posted:

anything happen today?

CPI came in at expectations and the market poo poo itself then went "No, everything's fine, here's why 1/47"

Google announced their intention to destroy their business

Debt ceiling doomsday creeps from 1% to 2%

# ? May 11, 2023 04:51

HAIL eSATA-n: Apr 7, 2007

Mustached Demon posted:

I know how we can get better billionaires

is this deflationary

# ? May 11, 2023 04:55

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

doomsday economics?!? no, DOOM loop economics!!

quote:

n the spring of 2019, Marc Benioff surveyed his kingdom and it looked good. He stood on the top floor of the Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in San Francisco, named after his company, then the largest employer in San Francisco. You could see every part of the city and out across the bay. The UCSF Benioff Children�s Hospital and the Benioff Children�s Hospital in Oakland (to which Benioff had donated $250 million). The site of a 200-bed Navigation Center for the homeless (which Benioff had defended in the face of other rich � but less rich � San Franciscans who tried to fight it off). The city looked sun-kissed and thriving from this view: the elegant Golden Gate Bridge, Twin Peaks, the surreal green of the Marin Headlands.

�It�s cool up here, right?� said Benioff. �And the vibe. Are you getting the vibe, too? There�s, like, a vibe.�

There was indeed a vibe.

That Friday afternoon, like every Friday afternoon in those days, Salesforce employees and their families promenaded on the top, or ohana, floor of the building � ohana means �extended family� in Hawaiian; appropriating Hawaiian culture was still considered corporate okay � drinking the free espresso drinks, marveling at the tremendous view.

Benioff�s PR team brought him water and Diet Coke and made sure the big man�s chair was not in the sun. �You can see that helicopter is about to land with a child going to the NICU?� he said, pointing south toward the UCSF Benioff Children�s Hospital. �Can you see it? It�s just about to land on top of the medical center � There�s only one helicopter landing pad in the entire city, and it�s on the top of the Children�s Hospital for kids who have to get to the NICU, which is the neonatal-intensive-care unit � So that�s what just happened.�

But that was a lifetime ago, before the pandemic, when we were still debating if you could have good billionaires. Since that time, Salesforce has laid off 9,000 employees and ditched nearly a million feet of office space. Meta has laid off 21,000 employees and ditched 435,000 feet of office space in San Francisco. Now, late one morning this dark spring, next to the Salesforce Tower, the Salesforce Transit Center � designed by C�sar Pelli�s firm and opened in August 2018 to serve as the city�s main bus hub �was empty, as in truly vacant, save for a security guard in black Dickies and a yellow-and-black jacket walking in circles on the poppy-tiled floor.
....
The doom-loopy vision laid out for downtown SF was not pretty: Workers don�t return, offices remain empty, restaurants shutter, transit agencies go bankrupt, tax bases plummet, public services disappear. According to research from the University of Toronto, cell-phone activity in downtown SF is 32 percent of pre-pandemic levels. That number is 75 percent in New York.
...
A woman with smart eyes and a dirty sweatshirt, 50-ish, drunk, approached me near the corner of Market and 4th Streets. We shared the sidewalk with Urban Alchemy crews made of formerly incarcerated people now dedicated to bringing peace and compassion to the streets, stunned tourists, official San Francisco Welcome Ambassadors in their orange jackets, and young Evangelists with microphones and a taste for filibustering � �We can die tonight, and if we die in our sin, and if you die in your sin ��

�You seem like an intelligent woman,� the drunk woman with smart eyes said.

I said, �You too.�

Our whole conversation was a series of understatements.

�How does it feel to live in San Francisco?�

�You have to deal with people, and people have their own personalities.�

�What�s difficult about life in this city?�

�There�s a lot of temptation. You have to deal with yourself.�

�How did you end up here?�

�My mother died � she had a stroke. And my father, he had a temper. He said, �Yeah, I don�t like you.��

On Market, near 6th, a security guard stood in front of Blick art supply. He�d just ejected a man who had been smoking fentanyl inside the store, a man his bosses suggested he should refer to as �an unhoused guest.�

The guard, who described himself to me as �a cis white male who stands six feet tall,� had previously worked security one block east at the Anthropologie. But that, he said, was just for show. He wasn�t even supposed to try to stop shoplifters who, at other stores on Market Street, filled up bags, or sometimes even suitcases, with food they needed to feed themselves or their families or merchandise to sell on the black market on Mission Street. But here, the guard told me, his co-workers� pay depended on sales. His job was to make it tolerable for customers to shop.

Elsewhere in San Francisco, wisteria was blooming, crazy fragrant blooms, like lilac on MDMA. At Ocean Beach, runners stopped to marvel at an osprey hovering over the surfers. In Hayes Valley, recently rebranded Cerebral Valley, 20-somethings filled the AI hacker houses, eager to have the classic SF experience: getting rich while thinking they were saving the world. But none of that beauty, none of that wealth, was the guard�s reality. This stretch of Market Street was this three-block zone, four lanes wide, where he stood, alone, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., five days a week. The job was taking a toll.

A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I�m sorry. I know. There�s always some story in the east-coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate�HATE�these pieces. You�re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD�ed, up 41 percent from last year.�It�s like a wasteland,� the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. �It�s like the only way to describe it. It�s like a video game � like made-up poo poo. Have you ever played Fallout?�

I shook my head.

�There�s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they�re like rotted. They�re like zombies.� There�s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. �I go home and play with my wife, and we�re like, �Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.��

The next day, I drove over to talk to Michael Lezak, a rabbi who works at Glide, a church and social-justice organization in the heart of the Tenderloin, a block from the Nextdoor office.

When I arrived, Glide was running a harm-reduction clinic in front of the sanctuary, connecting people to same-day Suboxone prescriptions. Lezak said, as rabbis often do, �I�m going to tell you a story.� Before Glide, he led a congregation in wealthy suburban Marin. Then he started here. �I open the door of my Sienna minivan. I�m 48 at the time. I see human feces all over. I see people face down on the pavement. My rabbi self does not know if that dude is alive or dead, right?�

After three weeks, he walked into the executive director�s office. �And I�m like, �Rita, I have to quit, man. I�m out. Why are my tax dollars not paying for that guy to get help?� And she�s like, �Yeah, I know. Sometimes I gotta take a walk. Sometimes I gotta get a drink. Sometimes I gotta leave the Tenderloin.�� Often we mistake our own discomfort for threat. �Then she flipped it on me. She�s like, �How do you know you�re not looking at the face of God?��
...
ine days after Bob Lee�s death, the police arrested Nima Momeni, a 38-year-old tech consultant. The two men knew each other. The charging document alleged that Lee died in a drama involving Momeni�s sister, who �was married but the relationship had possibly been in jeopardy.� Honor, family, infidelity: the oldest story in the world.

The autopsy made a farce of the San Francisco-is-dangerous-because-of-poor-people-and-their-street-drugs narrative. Lee died with a pharmacopeia in his system: cocaine, ketamine, alcohol.

The city continued looping. The Whole Foods on Mid-Market closed a year after it had opened. People kept threatening employees, melting down in aisles, OD�ing in the bathroom. What could you do?

On April 19, Governor Gavin Newsom took a �surprise� walk around the Tenderloin. �Hey, Gavin, tell me what you�re going to do about the fentanyl epidemic!� a man from the neighborhood shouted. �I want to know what you�re going to do about the fentanyl epidemic.�

Newsom kept walking and said, �You tell me what we need to do.�

Two days later, he called in the National Guard.

Almost certainly it was a political stunt. But did it even matter? Something needed to change. A poll from the controller�s office found that San Franciscans felt less safe in the city than we had in 27 years. And of course we did. Everywhere you looked, you saw it billboarded: The social contract had ruptured, and we�d ceased to believe we could fix it. The city often seemed to operate like an incompetent parent, confusing compassion and permissiveness, unable to maintain boundaries, producing the exact opposite result of what it claimed to want.

�We just need to make people go back to those offices,� a silver-haired man at a cocktail party in Pacific Heights told me, as if those with power could make it 2019 again. That man, like every adult there, had a high-school student in formal attire in the garden on their way to prom. All those kids� lives were turning as they were meant to turn: up and away. What were the rest of us doing here?

sat downtown and talked to Simon Bertrang, executive director of SF New Deal, about his idea for Vacant to Vibrant, a new program in partnership with the mayor�s office. His group was giving grants for people to pop up bookstores and art galleries and dance clubs and restaurants downtown, and they�d be clustered �to create a boom loop,� Bertrang joked, knowing the pun was cheesy. Permanent renewal was a long way off. Nobody wanted to sign a long-term lease. But the idea of the bookstore and the pop-up restaurant and people enjoying something novel in the city I loved and ached for filled me with relief. It filled everyone with relief. Urban planners know that relief is a mirage. There�s a 30 percent vacancy rate now. That number is going to go up � up a lot. We�re going to need major work, maybe even on the scale of the commission that revitalized downtown Manhattan after 9/11. We need museums, a university, people, community. We need a shared project. We don�t have that now.

Meanwhile, the Blick security guard kept texting me videos. He needed someone to see what he was seeing out there, on his patch of Market Street, between Fifth and Sixth. Did I know how the black markets worked? Had I walked down Market Street at night? Did I know that some of the street addicts were rotting, literally: their decomposing flesh attracting flies. The Anthropologie, where he used to work, announced it would close. �What it really feels like living in San Francisco is that you�re lying to yourself,� he said. �Oh, I live in San Francisco. It�s so nice. When you walk by the junkies you�re like, They don�t exist. they don�t exist. You�re lying to yourself.�

A week later, a security guard, working at a Walgreens a block from Blick, shot and killed a 24-year-old. He would tell Jonah Owen Lamb at the San Francisco Standard, �It�s a lot to deal with. It�s a lot of pressure. A person can only take so much � When you are limited to certain options, something will happen � Who has my back? Nobody?�

I thought back to Benioff, before the pandemic, when we believed tech could save us. In addition to sitting with him in his tower, I sat with him in his house � or, I should say, one of the five houses he owns in Sea Cliff, the fanciest neighborhood in San Francisco. We did not meet in the house where he actually lived. He�d taken the past three months off. He�d invited 500 executives and their families to Hawaii, as he does every summer. He was getting ready to announce that Salesforce again, that year, was giving $8.5 million to San Francisco Unified School District and $8.7 million to Oakland Unified School District, bringing the total he�d given to the schools in the past six years to $67.4 million. At that point, Salesforce had donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars since Benioff co-founded it. It was a lot of largesse. And yet life in San Francisco was still not going well. Despite all his giving, it was not enough. It would never be enough.

People emailed Benioff, trying to get him to help � dozens and dozens a day. �It�s a constant stream,� he told me. Citizens stopped him at the zoo. Citizens accosted him in elevators. People had started asking Benioff if he was going to run for mayor. He found the na�vet� of the idea funny. �I�m like, Why would I ever do such a thing?� he said. �I have far more power doing what I�m doing.�

Now, it was clear tech wouldn�t save us. Tech wouldn�t even stay in town. I rode the bus around the city, scribbling in my notebook: face of god, face of GOD, trying to keep myself open to the world as it fell apart. Less than a mile from my house, a woman got on the 24, screaming, �FUUUUUCK you.� Fifteen seconds later, �FUUUUUUCK you,� again. Everybody sitting near her moved away. Eventually an older guy boarded � mid-60s, watch cap, maybe Jewish, maybe Irish. He opened a beer in a brown paper bag. She screamed, �FUUUUUUUCK you!� He nodded in solidarity.

�All day, every day,� he said, raising his beer to toast.

A small gesture of common humanity. She stopped screaming.

Xaris has issued a correction as of 05:06 on May 11, 2023

# ? May 11, 2023 04:58

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

HAIL eSATA-n posted:

is this deflationary

Taxing or otherwise impeding the people with literally 80% of the wealth of this country, would not be helpful for inflation and is an option that is anathema.

# ? May 11, 2023 04:59

RadiRoot: Feb 3, 2007

SKULL.GIF posted:

CPI came in at expectations and the market poo poo itself then went "No, everything's fine, here's why 1/47"

Google announced their intention to destroy their business

Debt ceiling doomsday creeps from 1% to 2%

what project thing did google kill now?

all i can look up is boring poo poo about AI. i guess machine learning is no longer a thing.

RadiRoot has issued a correction as of 05:03 on May 11, 2023

# ? May 11, 2023 04:59

FlutieFlake: Nov 5, 2017

SKULL.GIF posted:

People are hedging against the debt ceiling implosion. They believe it to be 3x more likely to happen than in 2011.

Thanks for explaining. I now realize that "CDS" is short for "credit default swap."

# ? May 11, 2023 05:09

FUCK COREY PERRY: Apr 19, 2008

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Weird how all the idiots stfu when the banks were melting down.

not me

i was hollering

# ? May 11, 2023 05:23

FUCK COREY PERRY: Apr 19, 2008

Paradoxish posted:

I mean, I keep looking at that screenshot and I'm legitimately coming around to the take that this can kill Google. That's really bad, to the point that it's going to make Google useless. And I don't mean useless as in "this is bad lol" but as in there is going to be no use case for anyone to rely on Google search results anymore; you might as well just put your search directly into Amazon. They're actually going to destroy their ad business by undermining their own platform.

# ? May 11, 2023 05:31

taqueso: Mar 8, 2004

anime was right posted:

the best part about all of this is there are no other search engines besides google and bing. if theres a search engine that you think is run by someone else? guess what, its just modified bing or google results

Kagi. It's actually good but it keeps getting more expensive. I got my boss to pay for a year when it was $5/month but now it's gone up a couple times and it has turned into 25/mo for unlimited searches which is ridiculous.

# ? May 11, 2023 05:39

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

taqueso posted:

Kagi. It's actually good but it keeps getting more expensive. I got my boss to pay for a year when it was $5/month but now it's gone up a couple times and it has turned into 25/mo for unlimited searches which is ridiculous.

i haven't heard of it, or used it, but this is the root of the problem that an internet founded on consumerism, particularly referring to ads and user manipulation, is mostly how it's been more twisted and corrupted than even baudrillard could understand. there's no "real" to go back to even. turns out the "FREE!*" is actually a terrible semiotic system upon which to conduct anything.... anything. when your system is driven by people who are trained to believe in DEALS!, it's free! how great! i'm getting the one up on the Others by using this FREE! thing, that system is simultaneously driven by a need to corrupt people into good little paypiggies and siphon off as much user information to better sling ads in their face, that inherently twists the very functionality that made it desirable. Capital must turn a profit, an ever increasing profit, and the blood gears must grind harder and harder -- even if its mulching their users into non-existence it cannot stop.

if the internet was actually founded upon monetary transactions for services instead of FREE!* that became the norm it would still suck but for different reasons than it does today.

now you can also extrapolate that to the real* world, and.. well....

communism now pls

Xaris has issued a correction as of 05:51 on May 11, 2023

# ? May 11, 2023 05:48

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

I was reading and stumbled on this:

�There is a much greater probability that communism will gain its victories in the agrarian orient than in the industrial occident. In the west even agrarian Spain shows signs of stabilizing its revolution upon the semi-bourgeois, semi-socialistic pattern, which Germany has made familiar. The world may become divided between a communistic orient and a semi-socialistic occident, moving slowly toward the socialistic goal, but always running the danger of moving too slowly to avert another catastrophe.�

# ? May 11, 2023 07:15

double nine: Aug 8, 2013

Source ?

# ? May 11, 2023 07:33

genericnick: Dec 26, 2012

comedyblissoption posted:

https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1656331173390327811

Sounds like they should go on strike

# ? May 11, 2023 07:47

forkboy84: Jun 13, 2012; Corgis love bread. And Puro

"we�re like, �Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.'"

# ? May 11, 2023 08:11

Xaris: Jul 25, 2006; Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry

lets see how america is doing...

quote:

The line outside Boston�s American Red Cross Food Pantry on a recent Saturday morning stretched the length of two football fields.

The number of people filing into the red-brick industrial-zone warehouse on some days now exceeds the worst periods of the pandemic economic crisis and in April it had the second highest monthly traffic since it opened in 1982, according to David Andre, the director.

His organization, like food banks across the country, has been flooded with requests for help since food-stamp recipients were hit with a double blow: the expiration of a temporary boost in benefits put in place during the pandemic and onerous grocery prices, which are running 24% above pre-COVID levels.

�It�s a hunger cliff � inflation and ending these emergency allotments,� Andre said. �People are really crashing.�

About 32 million Americans had their monthly food stamp benefits cut at the end of February, on average by about $90 per person � though some households experienced much deeper reductions.

The end of the emergency allotment for food stamps largely completes the unwinding of a series of coronavirus relief measures that staved off a wave of destitution during the crisis and even brought child poverty rates down to a 20-year low. Many more Americans now are going hungry than at the peak of the pandemic aid. Some 24.6 million adults didn�t have enough to eat in early April versus 16.7 million the same month two years ago, the Census Bureau estimates.

And Republicans are seeking new restrictions on food aid and cuts to safety-net programs as a price for raising the debt ceiling.

At the same time, food prices have soared more than any other major category of consumer costs except energy since the start of the pandemic, disproportionately burdening poor Americans who devote a larger share of their resources to such essential expenses. Since February 2020, the last month before the pandemic lockdown, grocery prices have surged half again as much as the 16% increase in overall consumer prices.

In the first quarter alone, global foodmaker Nestl� SA reported raising prices in North America 12.4% compared to last year. Unilever Plc raised prices 13.4% globally in its food division.

Melissa Lopes, a disabled 40-year-old in Boston with a kidney transplant and two children at home, has started going to the Red Cross food pantry once, sometimes twice a week since her benefits were cut. Yet she�s rationing chicken and whatever other meat she gets against adolescent appetites.

�They�re like �Mama, I want two pieces, I want three,�� Lopes said. �They�re boys. They�re big. They want more. They used to get seconds or more.�

Concerns are rising of a recession on the horizon, adding to the peril for households on edge. Morgan Stanley economists said the expiration of the pandemic food stamp benefit is already weighing on economic growth and project an annualized $50 billion hit to disposable income.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as food stamps are formally known, provides low-income families and individuals with benefits loaded onto a card that can be used to buy food and non-alcoholic beverages but not other items. The benefits account for about 12% of US food and beverage sales, making it an important source of revenue for supermarkets such as Kroger Co. and supercenters such as Walmart Inc. A Moody�s analysis forecasts supermarkets will more than make up for the loss of sales through price increases and consumers diverting spending from other retailers.

National figures for food banks aren�t yet available. But calls to local 211 community service help lines seeking referrals to food pantries jumped 9.8% March 1 through April 16 compared to the two months before the benefits reduction in affected states, according to an analysis by Washington University in St. Louis�s Health Communication Research Laboratory.

The Haymarket Regional Food Pantry in Gainesville, Virginia, an outer Washington suburb, added 55 new weekly intake appointments in April after a 90% increase in families seeking food. The Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, which supplies more than 1,100 local pantries around the rural Susquehanna Valley, faced 10% more demand in March. At Southern Colorado�s Care and Share Food Bank, which distributes to soup kitchens, pantries and emergency shelters across 29 mostly rural counties, requests for aid rose 20%.

Even with help from a local food pantry, Niccole Cervanyk, a 45-year-old discount-store manager and single mother in Pueblo, Colorado, said she has had to curtail snacks she used to provide her children for after-school sports practices and scrimp on dinner.

�You have to cut the proportions of food down,� said Cervanyk, whose food stamp benefits dropped $500 a month. �Having three teenage kids, that�s not good. They�re still hungry.�

Nathan Springer, a retired army colonel who is president and chief executive officer of the Colorado Springs-based Care and Share Food Bank, said his organization is seeing more requests for groceries from military families, teachers, nurses and even dual-income couples following the cut in assistance.

�We�ve seen young full-time employees who are for the first time facing hard decisions: Are we going to buy food or pay our utility bills?� Springer said.

The expiration of the SNAP pandemic aid affected residents of 32 states and Washington, D.C. The added benefits already had stopped in 18 states that acted on their own to drop COVID emergency declarations.

Still, even without the extra pandemic assistance, SNAP beneficiaries receive more food aid than they would have before the COVID outbreak, said Craig Gundersen, a Baylor University economics professor who studies food assistance programs and poverty.

The Biden administration permanently raised the average SNAP benefit by 27% in October 2021, the first increase beyond adjustments for inflation in more than 45 years, following a review of benefit levels Congress ordered in the 2018 Farm Bill.

The extra pandemic allotment also was a blunt tool designed for a temporary crisis that risked distorting work incentives if continued indefinitely, Gundersen said. Unlike normal SNAP benefits, they were structured in such as a way that in some cases recipients who earned extra money could lose more in benefits.

Overall, the average SNAP benefit per person climbed from $121 a month just before the pandemic to $256 in January, shortly before the emergency allotment ended.

Yet decades-high rates of food, energy and rent inflation place an extraordinary burden on many SNAP beneficiaries, Gundersen said. In most cases, food stamps only cover a portion of grocery costs. And families already on the financial edge may have depended on the extra food aid for years.

�We�re in for a big adjustment period these next months,� said Springer, the Colorado food bank director. For the families that his food pantries help feed, �a few hundred dollars less a month is a lot.�

Heather Thomas, a 48-year-old disabled mother of four in Centreville, Virginia, married to an unemployed Air Force veteran, said she suddenly lost almost $600 a month in benefits, unsettling her family. Her 13-year-old son grew moody, less attentive at school and started getting headaches.

�It�s because he was not eating like he was before,� she said, �because he was trying to not eat as much to stretch the benefits for his siblings.�

oh... well, soft landing y'all. too much excess savings

# ? May 11, 2023 08:21

DancingShade: Jul 26, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

Xaris posted:

lets see how america is doing...

oh... well, soft landing y'all. too much excess savings

Part of equality is being equal to the rest of the world and that includes the starvation & misery part.

# ? May 11, 2023 08:23

Weka: May 5, 2019; That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.

I think Google with ai will be a success based on all the most popular websites being artfully awful. It's what people want.

# ? May 11, 2023 08:24

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# ? May 25, 2024 00:48

err: Apr 11, 2005; I carry my own weight no matter how heavy this shit gets...

Xaris posted:

lets see how america is doing...

oh... well, soft landing y'all. too much excess savings

Combo of inflation and losing SNAP benefits is crazy. Going to see some real fallout from that.

# ? May 11, 2023 08:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > [Doomsday Economics] Home of Kirbeh's FREE SLICE ($25 delivery fee)

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