▪️This is so dumb. Basically, people invented a controversy that didn’t actually exist, and are now patting themselves on the back when Wendy’s had to clarify that they weren’t, in fact, doing what everyone was freaking out about.
▪️Wendy’s CEO announced in an earnings call that they would soon be testing digital menus, which allow restaurants and AI to change the menu throughout the day, including things like dynamic pricing and suggestive selling. This is a perfectly normal use of business technology.
https://news.yahoo.com/wendys-says-it-wont-use-surge-pricing-for-burgers-after-announcing-dynamic-pricing-whats-the-difference-between-the-2-175039236.html
▪️Media reports pick this up and start using the term “surge pricing” (which Wendy’s never used) and people en masse started claiming Wendy’s was going to jack up prices during peak times. This was an entirely made up controversy, based on nothing except people’s imagination.
▪️Then, because of all the drama, Wendy’s issues a statement clarifying that they never said or meant that they would raise prices during peak times, rather this would likely benefit the consumer by offering discounts during slow times. Idiots then rejoiced that they “made Wendy’s back down.”
https://www.wendys.com/blog/wendys-digital-news-update
▪️There is “dynamic pricing” in almost every business. If you have a fast food app, you constantly get deals and offers. As you do with apps for retailers, airlines, pretty much every business that sells you things. They are constantly changing prices to sell you things, almost always by offering deals and discounts.
▪️Wendy’s seems to be trying to incorporate what apps do (and what coupons did before that) into their physical menu. Whether it’s a good idea and actually works will be determined by the market, but that people freaked out about it is the epitome of first world problems.
▪️The left keeps using this meme but they don’t actually believe it. If you believe SNAP subsidizes companies to pay below a “living wage” this implies that if you take food stamps away they would suddenly pay a higher, “living” wage. So why not get rid of food stamps, then?!
▪️Except they know, and everyone knows, this isn’t true. Wages are set by supply and demand, not some mythical “living wage” metric. Absent food stamps there would actually be downward, not upward, pressure on wages, because the reality is food stamps subsidize the poor to not work as much as they might otherwise need to.
▪️Without SNAP, some low income people would need to work more hours to make ends meet, increasing the availability of low-skilled labor and lowering wages (all else being equal).
▪️Plus, we all know the left loves and supports food stamps. Which means, by this meme’s logic, they love to subsidize corporate profits. But they don’t really, they just think this ...
▪️Wait, this is the guy libertarians and the new right rave about being a great historian?! This sounds like a clueless meme from The Other 98%, except they wouldn’t add in the bizarre defense of feudal lords. Feudalism didn’t deprive peasants of their livelihoods for abstract goals? This is total fantasy.
▪️Amazon employs 1.55M, so this is less than 2% of their workforce, although these cuts will be to corporate, which employs 350k, so 8.5% of that. The CEO says there is an excess of bureaucracy at Amazon, and AI can automate certain repetitive tasks. Also, much of the cuts will be to HR, which is expected shrink by 15%, yay. Managers and HR are peasants now?
▪️I don’t know the inner workings of Amazon, and neither does Darryl, but this seems to be normal management practice to keep a company efficient and competitive. Given the immense size of Amazon the numbers look large, but far bigger shakeups happen all the time in the private sector. Apparently, under the new ...
▪️This statistic is just made up. The reality is that there hasn’t been a real study on this since 2013, when Pew did a poll. They found that Democrats were actually more than twice as likely as Republicans to report ever using food stamps (22% vs 10%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/
▪️Obviously, those percentages could have changed over the past decade, but it’s very likely that Dems still receive more SNAP benefits. Certainly, without an actual study or poll the claim should be thrown out, as it wildly contradicts a previous study.
▪️The meme probably comes from a 2024 analysis by Social Explorer, which found that 78.7% of US counties with the largest increase in SNAP since 2010 voted for Trump in 2020. But that tells us nothing about the actual number of Republicans (or Democrats) who are receiving benefits, just county-wide trends.
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