Why are companies fighting rules to eliminate hidden fees? Consider this case study from StubHub. In 2015, the company randomized 50% of their millions of customers to see the full price while shopping; the other 50% saw lower prices up front but were hit by added (junk) fees at…
Cineplex, the biggest movie theater chain in Ontario, started adding an "online booking fee" for buying tickets on their website. It was basically a price increase of 15%. Also, tax used to be included in the price. Now, it's added at the end. So, customers get a total 30% price shock. A movie ticket that was $20, is now $26.
Check out the comments. The one by MrElectrifyer is especially galling: The guy pays for Netflix, downloads a show, travels abroad, and then can't play it because he's in the wrong locality. He would have had zero issues had he not paid Netflix and simply pirated the content.
— BowTiedBull - Read Pinned Tweet or NGMI (@BowTiedBull) November 3, 2023
Yeah, it's strange to see when tiny women walk around with their blinged-out iPhones, pricey jackets, and dumb luxury purses. Literally, with a few seconds of effort, a thug can snatch away thousands of dollars of merchandise from these scared victims.
I have someone in the family that is an engineer. As part of a charity effort they were part of a team that built a water treatment facility in Africa. The poor Africans lacked clean water. As in the case below, the native Africans destroyed and looted it within a year. https://t.co/ldZRf8nQzD
Yeah, it's one of the most controversial opinions one can hold today: diverse peoples are different.
It has been almost 100 years since black gold was discovered in the Middle East. The Arabs still need to pay thousands of White professionals from the US, Canada, Europe, and Australasia to design and maintain their massive oil infrastructure. Also, it's not like they do the harsh, physical labor to build any of that. They simply import tens of millions of low-wage workers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.
Once that oil runs out, it'll be back to sand and camels.
I bought my house 5 years ago. Since then, the value has allegedly gone up 50%. Combine that with 8% rates, if I tried to buy my house today my mortgage payment would be 3x higher. Insanity.
Big part of the problem right here. She can get a job in her field but she doesn't want it unless she can start at 200k a year. She's not willing to put in the work to climb the ladder, so she'll stay at the bottom forever and whine about it the whole time. https://t.co/Vx6GAbh3OQ
The real estate market here in Ontario, Canada is insane but this tiny house is basically double the price of a similar home on the edges of the Greater Toronto Area!
$1.75 million for a house in Bend Oregon. 2,639 sq ft
Seriously? Listen to this guy explain the local market and how crazy it is for the incomes in the area.
What are we missing here? Why is it so expensive there? How are younger people ever expected to afford any homes? pic.twitter.com/plcCFDEdin
Billionaire property developer Tim Gurner said in September that "We need to see unemployment rise. We need it to rise 40-50%. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around." pic.twitter.com/lSh3ei29lF
Funny, yesterday, got an email from a Canadian bank about my pre-approved line of credit. $15,000 for a sweet 9.15% interest rate. I don't even have a chequing account with them; just a credit card.
Government Slave Class Success: 1) blow $10T into system, inflate assets the top 1% own
2) entrench new wealth with ~5% interest rates
3) now rip apart their 401Ks and real estate (down) so middle class has to sell to the ultra rich - own nothing be happy
4) introduce CBDC/UBi
— BowTiedBull - Read Pinned Tweet or NGMI (@BowTiedBull) October 4, 2023
Yeah, I've heard several stories of professional couples who are begging mom and dad for money because they can't make their mortgage payments. If their hours are cut, then they'll be forced to sell. These are households making ~$150,000. Those making less are locked out of owning a house.
Yep, and the value of the assets they purchase then increases in the inflation, while their initial borrowings decline in real value. Win-win.
— English BullTerrier Appreciator (@Brokennfang) October 4, 2023
Fixed, low rates on debt for the 0.1%. Low supply of housing. Middle class forced to sell because can't pay mortgage. So, rents go up. The top 0.1% gets 5% from T-bills and increasing rent payments from the squeezed middle. Simple and diabolical.
$100M already in real estate that will go down in value + extreme maintenance cost of at least $5M a year (that size needs staff + repairs + property tax)
The commute part is also depressing. I had a one-time meeting in Toronto many years ago. I took a ride with a colleague. It took us two hours to arrive at the place and we were in a car! The other option was bus-train-subway-bus which would have been closer to three hours!
A person who has an 8-hour workday in Toronto but lives outside still has to burn 12 hours for work every day. If you look at the long run, that's years stuck in the car, bus, train, or subway. So, even living close to Toronto is not economically feasible in many cases.
At least 100 migrants, six properties and several companies are now at the centre of a complex Immigration New Zealand (INZ) probe. [...]
INZ has now provided an early insight into the major investigation, revealing it involved a total of 115 Indian and Bangladeshi nationals living in "overcrowded and unsanitary" conditions across six Auckland homes.
That's 20 slaves workers per house. Assuming that each idiot paid $20,000 for a better life, that's a cool $2.3 million dollars for the scam artists.
Subway launched a three-inch sandwich in Pakistan, the first time the fast-food chain has launched a mini version globally.
The bite-size sandwich, which appeared on Pakistani menus and social media posts with little fanfare last month, provides “value” to Pakistani customers, a spokesperson for Subway told Bloomberg News on Wednesday. The US-based chain’s main offerings are six-inch and 12-inch sandwiches.
A tradesman known as “Parrow” who described himself as an “old timer” said he has been going to the Home Depot on Merrick Boulevard in Queens to pick up construction, plumbing and home improvement work for “20 plus years” but is now struggling.
“If you can get the work cheaper you are going to use those guys. You are not going to pay $200 when you can get [for] $40. Anything you give them, they’ll take it.
“I’m an old guy…get the f—k out of here. I’m not taking it.”
Blacks and Hispanics overwhelming vote for Democrats who open the borders for super-cheap labor which has a greater financial impact on Black and Hispanic voters!
Another old timer who has been picking up work from parking lots for four years accused hiring managers and contractors of taking advantage of the undocumented migrants.
According to him, one man offered to pay just $50 for the day to pour concrete.
“I wouldn’t do that for less than $300,” he said.
It's bizarre to see significant numbers of Indians working at service jobs across Ontario. Many are international students. They often work full-time and don't complain about working conditions or not getting overtime pay. I heard of one who worked double shifts -- nearly 20 hours -- without a word. Another issue is that they are not qualified; they are not licensed. I've seen Indian women who work as security guards. They weigh around a 100 pounds. Recently, one of them was attacked by a druggie. She is in the hospital with a fractured skull.
Dishonest employers hire them because they're cheap. Unfortunately, many young Canadians who could gain valuable job experience and extra cash are getting locked out.
A person working full-time in Canada typically earns an average salary of 120,000 CAD per year. The average salary in Canada ranges from 30,200 CAD to 534,000 CAD.
Where is this mythical average salary of a half million dollars in Canada? No wonder the number of Indian students has exploded in Canada. I knew an Indian guy who studied at a university in Ontario and after looking for a job for a year, he decided to leave Canada. He simply couldn't find work in his field. This was twenty years ago!
It's much worse now. A one-bedroom apartment, outside Toronto, rents for $2,000 while a full-time minimum wage job nets you $2,600 per month. Of course, one can break the law and live like a sardine in a can as one of twenty people in a house and save on rent but that's just atrocious and depressing.
Anyway, it was amusing to see the average salaries of the eleven provinces of Canada.
Although the pace of increase has come down ever so slightly, the price of rental accommodation in Canada continues to go up, with the average new tenant now being asked to pay $2,117 a month.
In my city, a two-bedroom apartment rented for $800 per month ten years ago. Now, that average rent is approaching $2,400!
Forget about buying a house, just renting is becoming insane:
Kranjec works two jobs yet still spends more than half of her income on rent. Her main job could be done remotely, so she contemplated moving to a part of Ontario with cheaper rent, but quickly realized those options were also limited.
The Liberals imported millions of people in the past few years. The result? Explosion in real estate, spiking rent, and depressed wages.
— BowTiedBull - Read Pinned Tweet or NGMI (@BowTiedBull) September 12, 2023
Yeah, that's a subset of a bizarre societal outlook. It's strange when those who make $5,000 a month look down upon those who can pull the same in a week. They'd rather take a shit salary in an airconditioned office than make bank doing a dirty job.
In Australia the politicians have always known mass immigration was unpopular. So what did they do? They continued increasing immigration and conspired between themselves to to simply never bring up immigration policy. This conspiracy continues to this day in our “Democracy”. pic.twitter.com/yJtpgx2gGz
An overwhelming majority of Canadians want to decrease the rate of immigration. Yet, the leaders of the big political parties ignored the issue in the previous election. In fact, Trudeau has increased immigration quotas again and again. Canada now imports 500,000 people, a small city, into the country every year.
Yeah, let's continue to suppress wages by increasing labor supply and inflate the real estate market by pumping up the insane demand for housing. Result? Cheap housing!
Even high school students who take economics must be scratching their heads.
Britain’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS) was forced to restrict the flow of aircraft on Monday as it works to address a technical issue, it said, with airlines and airports warning of delays and cancellations.
Several passengers took to social media to say they were stuck on planes on the tarmac waiting to take off on what is a busy travel day due to Monday’s public holiday in parts of Britain.
One Reuters witness being held on the tarmac at Budapest said their pilot told passengers that they faced an 8-12 hour delay.
Hey, the Big Pharma sponsored new shows have reliably informed me that vaccines are super safe and anyone who disagrees loves eating horse paste.
Seriously, it's all about the $$$$. The vaccine schedule in the US is utterly insane. There's something like 70+ shots recommendation for a child. The combined impact on the health of the kids can't be denied.
Boeing has found another significant manufacturing flaw in its 737 Max aircraft and it’s likely to throw a curveball at deliveries of its most popular aircraft.
The company says fuselages from its largest contractor, Spirit AeroSystems, have random extra holes drilled in the rear pressurization bulkhead.
What happens when you feed 10 million starving Africans?
Africa has always been dysfunctional. Remember “We are the World” in 1985 to feed starving Africans? The root cause is that the people cannot maintain civilization. Leave them be. https://t.co/ihOkEJwnzL
After graduating from university, she'll be making only 25% more than minimum wage. Her after-tax monthly pay will be roughly $2,800. If she lived in a basic apartment in Toronto by herself, then her entire income would be consumed by rent. Even if she shared the place with a friend, she would have $1,400 left over for food, utilities, internet, phone, transportation, etc.
After the doubling of prices over the past four years, it's no wonder that she's crying. Salaries and wages won't go up much though, thanks to Prime Minister Zoolander who will be importing over half a million new people every year. In fact, he'll soon be announcing an increase in immigrant quotas to keep wages low as the average young Canadian gets crushed under higher prices.
Wow. That's $70 a day on delivery food! The list includes donuts!?
So far, this year, my DoorDash, UberEats, and all other food deliveries combined equal to $0. I've ordered a few times online and then simply picked up the meal.
The sheer volume of mistakes! The insane 4090 results in Cyberpunk should have been a huge red flag. Also, how does a huge organization get the basic specifications like PCIe lanes or L2, L3 cache wrong? Isn't that just a copy and paste job?
What really shocked me was when they used an incompatible graphics cards in their negative review. Nobody from the staff stood up to Linus! He idiotically saved a few hundred bucks but severely tarnished his reputation.
The normies are understanding the costs of free health care the hard way:
My daughter had a spinal fusion 10 years ago and one of the rods has broken free (also causing a hairline fracture) and is protruding out her back (not thru the skin … yet) and was told a surgeon will see her for a consult in 12-18 months.
If you or your loved one has a serious health issue in Canada, then waiting can be lethal. It's better to make an appointment in the US, pay some serious cash, and get immediate results. On average, over 100 Canadians travel to the US every day for hospital visits. So, even when more than 36,000 Canadians are getting treatments outside the country every year, Canada still has artificial shortages of doctors and nurses!