this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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A Boring Dystopia
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Ironically, these "digital labels", although problematic in their own right, could help with that.
Currently if the store employees have missed a price change on a product, it might actually cost more than the sign says
It would be pretty to easy to make those include tax IF these digital labels know which store they're in.
They'd never do 2 because they like having the fake lower price listed so people are more likely to buy it.
... Yeah, you're probably right.
I'm just used to living in a country where VAT is included in prices in stores anyway
I remember the culture shock of owing more than was listed on the price when coming back to the States.
I've only ever been in one state (NY; most time was spent upstate rather than in NYC), luckily the rate wasn't too high (something under 10% combined state + local depending on county/city I believe? Compared to 24% VAT here). Kinda tripped me up, BUT I made it make more sense by looking at the price in dollars as if it was in euros as I was mostly paying by card whenever possible anyway, so the amount that went off my bank account was fairly close to what was on the price tags.
If I were to ever visit again, it'd be even better since the USD is now weaker, but tbf with this admin and the social media history requirement, I don't think I'd even get into the country anyway so even being white enough to hopefully not be harassed by ICE isn't enough nowadays lmao.
Oh, I can't imagine voluntarily coming here now. Maaaaybe in the future if we somehow get our shit together, but that's a big if! The dollar will probably be super weak after all the punching ourselves in the face we'll have been doing by then, too.
To be fair if I'm coming over then it'd be for one of two things. Either one of my freelance customers has a big project they want me to work on full time and in-person, in which case they'd likely want me in a pretty damn hot and red part of the country, for which they'd have to pay me at least double my already decently high hourly rate (I'd be ok with this if I got triple digits hourly) - and I don't think they have any such projects coming up... Or more likely, one day I want to visit the country with my kid, go on a roadtrip, see some of the national parks, etc. They're currently way too young to appreciate that so I think it'd make more sense in like 7 or 8 years. By then I'm hoping the fascism has died down.
There would otherwise be more reason for me to visit - I have experience with some niche software built purely for the US market and do think I could architect a competitor in a market that only has choices ranking from bad to worse... But at this rate, I don't trust the US to be a stable enough business environment for me as a foreigner in particular.
I imagine visiting the US when/if we manage to overcome our fascism problem would be similar to what it was like to visit Germany in the 50s.