nikosoft posted:

I will not, it's going in my soup for dinner

Injuryprone posted:

Yea, butt soup

nikosoft posted:

I will not, it's going in my soup for dinner

anime was right posted:

i support OP making regular soup

Scarabrae posted:

had to return some amazon purchases at the whole foods (ahh corporate synergy) and they had big signs proclaiming they do not accept EBT cards at the entrance.

quote:

Shawn Fain is a belligerent UAW boss. There could be big trouble ahead for US automakers.

The United Auto Workers’ contract with the Big Three U.S. automakers expires Sept. 14, and we’re left to wonder if the union’s inexperienced leader, Shawn Fain, has any idea how to stop the conflict he appears determined to start.

Fain is the most belligerent union boss we’ve seen in a long time. He refused to shake hands at the outset of negotiations with the Big Three, scrapping a long-standing union tradition of civility. He refused to follow a similar union tradition and endorse an ultra-supportive Democratic president, giving a gut punch to Joe Biden’s stagnant reelection campaign.

Fain complained about not getting his wish list approved right off the bat during negotiations that for decades have gone to the last minute or beyond. Then, in mid-talks, his union filed charges against General Motors and Jeep parent Stellantis claiming unfair labor practices, even though the companies had never left the bargaining table. Fain condemned an early Stellantis contract proposal as “trash” and dramatically tossed a copy into a wastebasket, “where it belongs,” he said.

Remind us again, who was supposedly not bargaining in good faith?

Ford, meantime, is smarting over Fain’s instant rejection of a generous $130,000 annual pay package it offered to hourly workers, up from $112,000 in 2022 — nearly 20 grand more. “This offer is significantly better than what we estimate workers earn at Tesla and foreign automakers operating in the U.S.,” Ford chief executive Jim Farley pointed out, naming competitors who in many cases have avoided UAW representation, locating factories in Southern states historically more hostile to unions.

Fain said the Ford offer “insults our very worth” and continued his garbage theme. “This trash can is overflowing with the bulls--t that the Big Three continue to peddle,” he recently declared.

Fain’s huffing and puffing will be exposed as mere posturing if the Big Three and the union come together and make a deal in the days ahead. But belligerence can have consequences. Given how Fain has raised expectations, unless he can deliver on pie-in-the-sky demands such as a 46% pay hike over the life of the contract, a 32-hour workweek and platinum pension benefits, he will have a hard time winning approval from the members he has so aggressively revved up.

Biden, meantime, must be watching this guy’s antics with sweat on his aged brow. Given the economy’s surprisingly strong performance, even an octogenarian president should be more popular than he is. But voters are still smarting over inflation, including sky-high car prices, as well as a collective hangover from COVID-19. Biden can ill afford for one of the nation’s biggest unions to call a strike that damages the economy and jacks up the cost of new cars even more.

No surprise, Biden is pulling out all the stops to grease a deal — at taxpayer expense, as usual.

On Aug. 31, two weeks before the contract deadline, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $15.5 billion package of funding and loans to support the auto industry’s transition to electric vehicles (which is likely to cost the union thousands of jobs).

This sweetheart deal includes $2 billion in grants and another $10 billion in loans to support domestic factory conversion projects that retain jobs in communities currently hosting the plants. In addition, the Energy Department is offering $3.5 billion in funding to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric cars.

Parroting union rhetoric, the DOE said its program aims to bring about “a just transition” into electrification and gives preference to projects that commit to paying high wages for production workers and maintain collective bargaining agreements.

Big Labor, this one’s for you.

The $15.5 billion in taxpayer cash comes on top of nearly $400 billion in clean vehicle tax credits under last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, plus additional incentives for battery manufacturing. The UAW wanted those credits and incentives restricted to union-made vehicles, but Congress wouldn’t go for it, so think of the DOE giveaway as a timely consolation prize that doesn’t need to pass in the Republican-controlled House.

These latest subsidies got grudging approval even from the sour Fain: “I have traveled across the country, meeting displaced workers who’ve had to pick up and move their families when plants shut down recently in Belvidere, Ill., Lordstown, Ohio, and Romeo, Mich.,” he said in a statement. “These new grants and loans will give plants like these a chance for federal support to ensure those jobs and communities are protected.”

OK, Fain, you got your free money from the feds. Now how about getting real with the automakers and working out a compromise? There’s simply no way the companies could say yes to the UAW’s contract demands and still be competitive in the future.

Get real, before a war of words and trash cans turns into a war with real financial casualties for your members, the Big Three and the U.S. economy at large.

PoundSand posted:

that’s really not how I meant it but it’s certainly my bad.

I was more just asking cause like this is a topic that comes up with my coworkers too and they shop in the same places I do too, but it feels like a lot of them aren’t really good at grocery shopping. they just sort of grab whatever and are getting burned the huge gap in standard prices now, particularly on packaged stuff. 350 for a “might not last a week” trip frankly astounds me so I was more trying to figure out if that was simply the new norm of it that was a bit of redditor error but I obviously came at it the wrong way so I’m sorry about that. At least my question was answered but I wasn’t trying to upset people in the process.

Scarabrae posted:

had to return some amazon purchases at the whole foods (ahh corporate synergy) and they had big signs proclaiming they do not accept EBT cards at the entrance.

Willa Rogers posted:

wtf, that's counter to its announced policy:

What forms of payment are accepted at Whole Foods Market?
In our stores, we accept cash, electronic food stamps (EBT), Apple Pay, major credit and debit cards, Whole Foods Market gift cards as well as Visa, American Express and Mastercard gift cards.

https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/customer-service/topics/stores#00000173-965b-dfbb-a3fb-b77b3b690000

i am harry posted:

one of the best experiences in my life was buying leg of lamb with ebt at wholefoods. its akin to the pleasure i've gained from sitting down next to a professional old lady slot player and winning more than them.

PoundSand posted:

I told some coworkers about it and they chastised me for "stealing" from safeway which was pretty funny.

LonsomeSon posted:

stealing is awesome and it makes you awesome

Vox Nihili posted:

Fain sounds cool

Vox Nihili posted:

Twerk from Home posted:

Low Onion Prices

gradenko_2000 posted:

I attended a webinar with Isabella Weber talking about seller's inflation. Sharing some notes I took during the talk:

seller's inflation begins from an impulse at the bottom/base of the value chain: steel, energy
COVID collapsed demand, then prices exploded once demand picked back up and shut-down manufacturing was unable to keep up
despite high amounts of corporate concentration, firms were not exploiting their "price setting" power during "normal times", due to the risk of losing market share
the cost/profit shock triggered by COVID essentially acted as a "coordinating device" across firms to begin taking advantage by increasing prices to protect margins
and since the impulse begins at the bottom of the value chain, the price setting propagates across the entire economy
prices go up, but wages do not, so real wages go down, and the cost shock is passed back to the consumer

COVID's shock to just-in-time supply chains also encourages this behavior, because firms know that their competitors are not able to scale up their own production in response to raised prices, because everyone in an industry is already maximally producing, as they're limited by the supply chains

the decline in wages and living standards will motivate workers to fight back, hence the spike in union activity and militancy
but this instigates even more conflict, because firms will also want to raise prices even further in response to being forced to react to higher wage demands. Essentially, there is a second "impulse" of seller's inflation triggered by firms trying to protect their profit margins against demands for higher wages (as opposed to protecting profit margins that were set during the post-COVID recovery)

[Weber notes that the Ukraine conflict is yet another shock, but also says that seller's inflation was already latent even as early as 2021]

comparison to the past: unions were much stronger during the 1970s oil shock, which allowed labor to be in a better position to protect its "margins"

central banks: their problem is that their response basically comes down to hiking interest rates to put a stop to the second impulse, from labor fighting back, when they didn't help with fighting the price shock from the first impulse
"if you try to make everyone poorer, at a time when everyone is still trying to recover, you're taking out the dynamism of your economy"
Weber specifically makes a direct connection with the deliberate infliction of poverty on the working class as part of the economic response to inflation, with the rise of right-wing extremism
Weber notes that the lack of imagination in responding to inflation also stems from a lack of institutional knowledge on having to deal with inflation in the West, such as people defaulted to Econ 101 because nobody had experienced this kind of inflation in a long time (when also combined with theoretical path dependency)

Question: what are alternative policies for dealing with inflation? sectoral responses to supply shortfalls and/or demand explosions. Some industrial sectors are far more important to the economy than others, and yet economic responses to inflation keep focusing on the aggregate. Strategic petroleum reserve to protect oil. Investment in port infrastructure to protect freight.
Raising freight prices does not resolve traffic jams at a port. A sanctions regime that restricts energy imports creates its own shock.
"Price controls can only buy time, but buying time can be extraordinarily consequential"
We need policies that stabilize peoples's standard-of-living, rather than letting the corporations pass on all the costs to the consumer. Labor's wage catch-up was needed, was necessary, it shouldn't be fought against

quote:

Why you may be losing your primary care doctor

I’ve been receiving an escalating stream of panicked emails from people telling me their longtime physician was retiring, was no longer taking their insurance or had gone concierge and would no longer see them unless they ponied up a hefty annual fee. They said they couldn’t find another primary care doctor who could take them on or who offered a new-patient appointment sooner than months away.

Their individual stories reflect a larger reality: American physicians have been abandoning traditional primary care practice — internal and family medicine — in large numbers. Those who remain are working fewer hours. And fewer medical students are choosing a field that once attracted some of the best and brightest because of its diagnostic challenges and the emotional gratification of deep relationships with patients.

The percentage of U.S. doctors in adult primary care has been declining for years and is now about 25 percent; a tipping point beyond which many Americans won’t be able to find a family doctor at all.

Already, more than 100 million Americans don’t have usual access to primary care, a number that has nearly doubled since 2014. The fact that so many of us no longer regularly see a familiar doctor we trust is likely one reason our coronavirus vaccination rates were low compared with other countries.

Another telling statistic: In 1980, 62 percent of doctor’s visits for adults over 65 were for primary care and 38 percent were for specialists, according to Michael L. Barnett, a health systems researcher and primary care doctor in the Harvard Medical School system. By 2013, that ratio had exactly flipped and has likely “only gotten worse,” he said, noting sadly, “We have a specialty-driven system. Primary care is seen as a thankless, undesirable backwater.” That’s “tragic,” in his word; studies show that a strong foundation of primary care yields better health outcomes overall, greater equity in health-care access and lower per capita health costs.

One explanation for the disappearing primary care doctor is financial. The payment structure in the U.S. health system has long rewarded surgeries and procedures while shortchanging the diagnostic, prescriptive and preventive work that is the province of primary care. Furthermore, the traditionally independent doctors in this field have almost no power to negotiate sustainable payments with the mammoth insurers in the U.S. market.

Faced with this situation, many independent primary care doctors have sold their practices to health systems or commercial management chains (some private-equity owned) so that, today, three-quarters of doctors are now employees of those outfits.

One of them was Bob Morrow, who practiced for decades in the Bronx. For a typical visit, he was most recently paid about $80 if the patient had Medicare, with its fixed-fee schedule. Commercial insurers paid significantly less. He just wasn’t making enough to pay the bills, which included salaries of three employees, including a nurse practitioner. “I tried not to pay too much attention to money for four or five years; to keep my eye on my patients and not the bottom line,” he said by phone from his former office, as workers carted away old charts for shredding.

He finally gave up and sold his practice last year to a company that took over scheduling, billing and negotiations with insurers. It agreed to pay him a salary and to provide support staff as well as supplies and equipment.

The outcome: Calls to his office were routed to a call center overseas, and patients with questions or complaining of symptoms were often directed to a nearby urgent care center owned by the company, which is typically more expensive than an office visit. His office staff was replaced by a skeleton crew that didn’t include a nurse or skilled worker to take blood pressure or handle requests for prescription refills. He was booked with patients every eight to 10 minutes.

He discovered that the company was calling some patients and recommending expensive tests – such as vascular studies or an abdominal ultrasound, that he did not believe they needed.

He retired in January. “I couldn’t stand it,” he said. “It wasn’t how I was taught to practice.”

Of course, not every practice sale ends with such unhappy results, and some work out well.

But the dispirited feeling that drives doctors away from primary care has to do with far more than money. It’s the lack of respect for non-specialists. It’s the rising pressure to see and bill more patients: Employed doctors often coordinate the care of as many as 2,000 people, many of whom have multiple problems.

And it’s the lack of assistance. Profitable centers such as orthopedic and gastroenterology clinics are usually staffed with a phalanx of support staff. Primary care clinics run close to the bone.

“You are squeezed from all sides,” said Barnett.

Many ventures are rushing in to fill the primary care gap. There had been hope that nurse practitioners and physician assistants might help fill some holes, but data shows that they too increasingly favor specialty practice. Meanwhile, urgent care clinics are popping up like mushrooms. So are primary care chains such as One Medical, now owned by Amazon. Dollar General, Walmart, Target, CVS and Walgreens have opened “retail clinics” in their stores.

Rapid-fire visits with a rotating cast of doctors, nurses or physician assistants may be fine for a sprained ankle or strep throat. But they will not replace a physician who tells you to get preventive tests and keeps tabs on your blood pressure and cholesterol. The doctor who knows your health history; and has the time to figure out whether the pain in your shoulder is from your basketball game, an aneurysm or a clogged artery in your heart.

Some relatively simple solutions are available, if we care enough about supporting this foundational part of a good medical system. Hospitals and commercial groups could invest some of the money they earn by replacing hips and knees to support primary care staffing; giving these doctors and patients more face time with each other will be good for their customers’ health and loyalty if not (always) the bottom line.

Reimbursement for primary care visits could be increased to reflect their value; perhaps by enacting a national primary care fee schedule, so these doctors won’t have to butt heads with insurers. And policymakers could consider forgiving the medical school debt of doctors who chose primary care as a profession.

They deserve support that allow them to do what they were trained to do: diagnosing, treating and getting to know their patients.

The United States already ranks last among wealthy countries in health outcomes. The average life span of Americans is decreasing, even as it increases in many other countries. If we fail to address the primary care shortage, our country’s health will be even worse for it.

Tzen posted:

Am I getting ripped off on onions or not

anime was right posted:

its gonna be cool when like 10% of the country has concierge doctors and for the remaining 90% you have a chatbot that just says DENIED whenever you ask for medicine

Willa Rogers posted:

good piece on the disappearing doctors:

I'm sure narrow networks as determined by private health insurers will not exacerbate this situation.

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

This seems egregious even for the local rip off grocery chain

Vox Nihili posted:

nikosoft posted:

I thought we were still on food talk and struggled to understand this graph at first

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:

This seems egregious even for the local rip off grocery chain