U.S. airlines used to be fun to fly. Free food; free booze; overweight luggage was usually OK especially if you smile at the check-in station. Now prices are driven down by shoppers trying to save a dollar, so the airlines have to make up for it by charging for movies and soft drinks. :smack:
Filling your gas tank used to be pleasant. An attendant would wash your windows and check your oil. It would cost a bit more but … hey! There’s an unemployment problem today anyway. If Americans don’t want to spend an extra 20 cents per gallon financing the Liberul Welfare State, why not spend it subsidizing our unemployed young?
Where I live in Asia, airlines and gas stations are still full-service … service which comes with a smile.
And now I read this recently-unzombified thread:
Our post office charges 2½ baht per envelope but even though there are ½-baht coins in circulation they round up to the higher baht. No one complains, despite that ½-baht is worth more than a penny (in fact close to $.15 in earning power). At markets and informal stores almost everything is priced as a multiple of 5 baht (over $1 in equivalent “earning power”!)
Maybe your manager will raise the price to $5.29 and screw the customers out of the penny instead. But probably he won’t bother: $30 just isn’t as much as you think it is, even if it’s (hyperbolically) “down the shitter.”
BTW, one complication U.S. has is that sales tax, at least in California, varies widely. (The Marlboro store across the street is in a different flood control district, with a different tax rate. :smack: ) I’ve never heard of such fine-tuning of tax rates in other countries … probably because, again, people just aren’t as obsessed with getting “screwed” out of an odd nickel because their neighbors needed flood control.
Yes. I was born in the U.S.A. so am bad-mouthing my own kin, but, frankly, it’s often very hard to believe these are the same people who won the World Wars and landed on the Moon.
I think it works both ways. American Airlines is trying to capture the cheapskate market and so it tightens rules and charges for extras. I’m sure they didn’t do this without having asked customers exactly what they’d do without. However, in my experience, no frills flying isn’t particularly American. Qantas and Virgin Blue charge for entertainment on domestic flights, I believe.
The hanging onto the penny really is dumb. They’re worth so little that shopkeepers leave a bowl of them next to the register, yet every time a the subject of discontinuing the penny arises, somebody will say that it would be an excuse for prices to go up. No excuse is required. So the government continues to produce a coin that costs more than it’s worth.
Another example of suspect thrift is allowing Walmart to dictate to producers. I recently read that Rubbermaid moved some of its manufacturing overseas-- costing decent American jobs-- because Walmart demanded lower prices. Sure, low prices help consumers, but they’re cold comfort to somebody who got laid off or had to accept a pay cut.
I don’t think it is.
French here. I don’t care for chump change in my pockets since it all goes into a big jar at the end of the day, and you can’t buy anything with 600 1-cent coins without feeling like a massive tool & slowing down the whole line while the cashier painstakingly recounts that shit ; so I often tell people to keep the change when it’s under 20 Euro-cents.
The amount of “Wh…what ? Are you insane ? That’s MONEY! You’re throwing away MONEY!” looks I get, from both cashiers and the customers behind me, never ceases to surprise me.
When I flew on Pan Am from New York to Frankfort in the 1980s my parents had to pay extra so that I could hear the movie being shown.
I went to New Jersey for the first time last year and it was just bizarre that it was illegal for me to fill my own gas tank. I’m so used to pumping my own gas that I’m more comfortable doing it myself rather than having someone else do it for me.
In some states it’s the schools which are paid for out of sales taxes. At any rate, maybe the United States just has a bit more autonomy when it comes to local jurisdictions than most other countries. I know my British friends have been amazed at the sheer number of elected officials we have in the United States.
Oh, and I’m sure they’re out there, but I can’t think of any US airlines that charge for water, soda, juice, or coffee. Booze, yes. I haven’t seen any PPV movies on one yet. Plus they used to rent headsets for $5, now American Airlines sells them for $2.
Buying gas in New Jersey sucks except for the fact that it’s usually cheaper than the neighboring states. Typically, you have to wait for the attendant to come to your window, wait for them to start pumping, wait for them to take out the hose followed by more waiting while they take, process and return your card. It’s ridiculously inefficient. I always carry cash for gas stops there so I can just fork it over at the beginning and hope I don’t need change.
[serious answer]Persons who surf buttholes, i.e. engage in anal sex. Back in the heyday of punk rebellion and when homophobia was still acceptable, some bands named themselves after homosexuals* in order to piss everyone off – the “squares” who were offended that they were named after homosexuals (or didn’t get the joke and thought they were made up of gays), and the politically correct who were offended by the use of anti-homosexual pejoratives.
*yes I know, not that many gays engage in teh anal.
I’ve always heard that they performed under a bunch of ad hoc names, but had a song named Butthole Surfer. At one gig the MC forgot their name and just called them the name of the song that he knew, and the name finally stuck. But the song does seem to rely on, uh, sexual themes. But it seem the band name is as much chance as design.
