this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
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Work Reform

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[โ€“] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If I have a $150 grocery bill, a 10% discount would be $15.

If you have a $150 grocery bill, it's being hiked to ~$166.66 before you get to the checkout. Then the 10% discount is bringing it back down to the $150 you were paying before. The net discount is zero: you're paying exactly what you're paying now.

If you keep going to the cashier after this, you're paying the company the hiked price, which gives them an extra $16.66 for maybe 5 minutes of cashier labor. The company turns around and pays the cashier $1.66, netting an extra $15 from you for their shareholders.

[โ€“] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

Cost of labor, overhead, and profit are already accounted for in that $150 price of the goods. That's why the store charges $150 for them - because that's what covers the wages, overhead, and includes the maximum markup they can get away with (~3% margin for grocery stores afaik).

All I'm saying is, they do have to be able to cover costs. So because of that and their thin margins, they'd just hike prices (probably more than they'd need to take advantage of the situation).

So it makes more sense to either tax them for avoiding using human labor and passing that labor on to customers (to help pay for the drain they're placing on the economy by not hiring people), or just ban the practice outright. Couple that with price controls to ensure they can't unfairly inflate prices. Things they can't avoid rather than a fee they can hike prices to avoid.