drphungky

It’s worth noting that not only did I not have to create this meme, I didn’t have to Google that hard to find it.

You should because that’s how tipping works. No one likes tipping (as a customer anyway, plenty of servers and owners do), but until servers are provided with a living wage that’s how it works. You’re not changing the system by tipping less - you’re just being a dick.

And not for nothing, but there is a slight difference between soda service and a simple pour service. Actual liquor service usually comes with someone asking how you like it (e.g. on the rocks vs straight vs three drops of water) whereas a soda is just a soda. Sitting at a bar, no one is gonna get pissy if you’re not tipping 15-20% on opening beers or straight pours, but that’s just how table service works.

You have clearly never worked in the service industry. They make the same sub minimum wage as every server unless there’s a local ordinance otherwise.

It’s a question of opportunity cost. In order to be really attentive they work fewer tables, so they need to have higher margins to make up for lack of volume. If you can’t afford a 15% tip, or 20% for good service, you shouldn’t be eating at an expensive restaurant to begin with. That’s the social compact in America, that’s how it works. Until servers start being paid a living wage, you’re not the arbiter of what constitutes paying “enough”, you’re just rejecting cultural norms and hurting servers so you can save a few bucks.

I hope you’re not capping your sit down restaurant tips in America. Most more expensive places have waiters working far fewer tables so they can be more attentive, and they’re also usually the cream of the crop waiter wise. The higher total tips but still a normal percentage are definitely what they need/deserve to make the longer meals and fewer tables make sense financially (assuming the service actually was good of course).

Note I’m not advocating for any of this “20% is the new baseline” bullshit, but you definitely shouldn’t be capping your tips. Same goes for capping your bar tips unless you’re talking about only pouring wine/drafts or opening beers, and then I’d still advocate a per drink cap of like a buck per - definitely not a total cap.

Well that’s just false. Many people don’t tip for takeout (I don’t), but the customary amount in the US is 10% if you’re going to. I worked in the service industry almost 20 years ago and that amount was supposed to go to bartenders and hostesses who handled the takeout, and it was a nice supplement since takeout and busy bar times didnt normally overlap. It didn’t use to be expected (unlike post covid where tipping is out of control), but if they bring the food out to you or if you have any special orders it’s definitely common. I still bristle at the idea and did back then too, but it’s a far cry from “nobody in their right mind”.

Yeah, based on OP saying low WAF, I’m guessing maybe he didn’t set up the content server? Ours is great, and I can read on my phone or 2-in-1.

Comparative Advanta-whoosy whatsits?

Seems complicated, let’s get rid of it.

??? Is to save me from tears

Yeah, my immediate thought was wondering why this manufactured content is here. Maybe a repost bot from Reddit where accounts with karma can be sold for disinfo?

That’s how it originally was in the US. I had it for years and it was absolutely useless, I used to complain about what’s the point of even having it if the only benefit was ONE return without a receipt per calendar year. You’re telling me you want to track all my purchases, but you can’t actually track all my purchases? Give me a break.

Then a few years ago they added free coffee, so it became worth it again. The 5% off thing is new enough I remember being surprised when I learned it.

Just move to NOVA. It’s not that far and it’s an entirely different world. Plus you’ll make more money and your paycheck will go farther when you go anywhere else.

Well frankly I don’t think the original point was super well made, since folks are talking about entirely different points now, but I’d agree with soccer, and tennis and golf in particular really being comfortable with far more silence in broadcasting - but that’s true on both sides of the pond. But the idea that surface level analysis is unique to American sports coverage is pretty false in my experience. Every sport I know a lot about seems covered at surface level - every sport I don’t know a ton about seems covered great. But I’ll say despite knowing a ton about amfootball the broadcasting is still pretty impressive. The soccer analysis I’ve seen is pretty good too but I’ll admit my depth of knowledge is much shallower. But there is definitely a size of audience and sportscaster population issue as well, because small sports I know a lot about have much worse coverage.

I absolutely agree that US broadcast networks show more player centric fluff portions than English or Spanish broadcasts (the only other languages I’ve watched). But the original post was more about surface level analysis, and that’s more about audience size and quality of broadcasters IMHO. But yeah, fluff, particularly between plays/matches, is crazy annoying. I hate US Olympic coverage when I can juxtapose it with BBC.

This is hilariously false. It’s a major vs minor sport thing and having a population of talent to draw on. Top top top euro soccer announcers are just as amazing as top top top US basketball and football announcers, but as soon as you start watching a handball broadcast there is very little separating it from a rowing broadcast or a darts broadcast or whatever. Sometimes you get a good play by play announcer but color is almost always rough, because it’s insanely hard, not because Americans are bad at it lol.

I’ve done sports announcing, and come from a journalism family where my dad taught radio broadcasting.

Sports casting is hard. Like really, really hard. It is very easy to criticize the way someone does it, but it is incredibly difficult to fill hours of silence. I did live commentary for college wrestling, and I was a very knowledgeable high school wrestler, but frankly sometimes there just isn’t something exciting or even describable happening. Jockeying for control, positioning, or feeling out an opponent - sometimes the announcing is “they continue struggling!” Then you think of a sport that isn’t nonstop action like American football, or God forbid, baseball? Huge swaths of time where there is nothing to say. This is why professional sports casts on major networks have huge teams. They can pull up obscure stats that don’t really mean anything, instant replay analysis done nearly live, and a ton of graphics to keep things moving and exciting.

Then you have the issue others have talked about, where your audience may have almost no knowledge of what to you is a deeply technical sport. So every time you explain a wrestling move, or defensive pass coverage, you have to assume no knowledge. You have to explain why someone is doing something, but luckily that actually fills up a bit more time because God forbid you have dead air on a broadcast, so of course you do it. And the type of deep analysis a knowledgeable fan might want is actually really hard to not only come up with live, but while watching something live without the benefit of watching a replay or a better camera angle.

Anyway, my point is that you should try to do an entry level sports broadcasting exercise. Turn the sound off on a game, and try to cast it and record yourself. You will be absolutely shocked at how much silence there is, or how many asinine things you say. Even the “worst” broadcasters that you experience on any major network have such insanely deep knowledge and an ability to just keep spewing information and anecdotes out that I promise you would be so much more impressive if you heard an amateur, or better, tried to do it yourself.

Did you listen to the NPR report? I don’t understand how you still have these questions.

Literally just copy pasting this places now because so many people are still claiming greedflation is a thing. Not trying to spam but links to comments don’t seem to work, and as a literal economist who works on inflation I’m tired of reading political talking points disguised as economic analysis.

I think everyone should probably listen to this great report from NPR that dissects this issue. The Tl;dr: is greedflation is not really a real thing.

The deeper answer to your question of, “can one party increase prices in a market?” is sort of basic economics, and the answer is, “Usually, no.” In a competitive market, the answer is no. In a monopolistic market (meaning one company controls most of the market, think like Google with browsers) with no government oversight, the answer is yes. Things get complicated when you add in government regulation or oligopolistic markets (markets where only a few players control the market). In those cases, it depends on how strong government regulations on price-gouging are and any anti-monopoly or anti-anticompetitive practice laws are, and also depends on how oligopolists behave. Sometimes, particularly in industries with few big players, the big players will make the same decisions independently. If they do this cooperating it will usually violate antitrust laws, but if they both decide they’ll be better off say, not paying workers as much, or charging super high markups, them that can happen. A lot of economic research shows that kind of “tacit collusion” happens in real life, like in the oil and gas industries. But other times oligopolies will behave very competitively, only uniting through lobbyist trade groups if at all (think Microsoft and Amazon in cloud software).

So that’s the facts, but here’s my economic musing: The reason it feels like greedflation is a thing is a combination of factors:

1. Inflation was very real, and very salient.
2. Corporations (as mentioned in the NPR piece) crowed about their “record profits” in the short term, and also mention them when they are absolute record profits, not just record profit margins (something not mentioned but very real - a company can make twice as much money but also have spent twice as much, making way “more” money but with identical margins)
3. In the US at least, we are seeing the highest numbers of industry consolidation and monopolies/oligopolies since the Gilded Age, so it feels like companies should be able to raise their prices if they want to.
4. Media coverage and online spaces have become extremely polarized, so “corporations bad” is a very easy refrain to find if you’re watching or reading anything remotely left-wing, and it has been parroted by many democratic politicians as well, because it scores cheap and easy political points (also, and this is just my opinion, it helps vilify corps more in the public eye to help get more support for better antitrust legislation and enforcement, the actual end goal. I don’t think senators like Bernie Sanders don’t actually understand what’s going on with profit margins, I think they’re using it to generate political will, but that may be my own bias creeping in).

I have literally never heard that described as a tankie talking point. Honestly, shouting down the fact that Russian aggression caused global prices to rise in everything (not just food, oil and gas causes ripples) feels like something their psyops people would do. Trying to tie it to US aid and calling it a tankie talking point is double plus hilarious. I don’t know where you’re reading that, but I’d be careful.

This concept of greedflation has been disproved in recent meta-analysis. It should probably die. I’ll copy paste a comment I wrote in some other thread analyzing it.

I think everyone should probably listen to this great report from NPR that dissects this issue. The Tl;dr: is greedflation is not really a real thing.

The deeper answer to your question of, “can one party increase prices in a market?” is sort of basic economics, and the answer is, “Usually, no.” In a competitive market, the answer is no. In a monopolistic market (meaning one company controls most of the market, think like Google with browsers) with no government oversight, the answer is yes. Things get complicated when you add in government regulation or oligopolistic markets (markets where only a few players control the market). In those cases, it depends on how strong government regulations on price-gouging are and any anti-monopoly or anti-anticompetitive practice laws are, and also depends on how oligopolists behave. Sometimes, particularly in industries with few big players, the big players will make the same decisions independently. If they do this cooperating it will usually violate antitrust laws, but if they both decide they’ll be better off say, not paying workers as much, or charging super high markups, them that can happen. A lot of economic research shows that kind of “tacit collusion” happens in real life, like in the oil and gas industries. But other times oligopolies will behave very competitively, only uniting through lobbyist trade groups if at all (think Microsoft and Amazon in cloud software).

So that’s the facts, but here’s my economic musing: The reason it feels like greedflation is a thing is a combination of factors:

1. Inflation was very real, and very salient.
2. Corporations (as mentioned in the NPR piece) crowed about their “record profits” in the short term, and also mention them when they are absolute record profits, not just record profit margins (something not mentioned but very real - a company can make twice as much money but also have spent twice as much, making way “more” money but with identical margins)
3. In the US at least, we are seeing the highest numbers of industry consolidation and monopolies/oligopolies since the Gilded Age, so it feels like companies should be able to raise their prices if they want to.
4. Media coverage and online spaces have become extremely polarized, so “corporations bad” is a very easy refrain to find if you’re watching or reading anything remotely left-wing, and it has been parroted by many democratic politicians as well, because it scores cheap and easy political points (also, and this is just my opinion, it helps vilify corps more in the public eye to help get more support for better antitrust legislation and enforcement, the actual end goal. I don’t think senators like Bernie Sanders don’t actually understand what’s going on with profit margins, I think they’re using it to generate political will, but that may be my own bias creeping in).