Vox - The Big Squeezehttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2024-01-04T07:50:00-05:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/227104072024-01-04T07:50:00-05:002024-01-04T07:50:00-05:00You don’t need everything you want
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<figcaption>Paige Vickers/Vox</figcaption>
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<p>Our expectations around money are all out of whack.</p> <p id="ptX203">I am tired of talking about money. I recognize how that sounds, given that I talk about money for a living. Still, it feels like an inordinate number of conversations I’m involved in lately end up about how much more expensive everything is now (<a href="https://www.vox.com/money/2023/11/8/23951098/economy-inflation-prices-job-market-sticker-shock">which is true</a>) and how much the <a href="https://www.vox.com/economy" data-source="encore">economy</a> sucks (<a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/11/20/23964535/labor-market-employment-inflation-sentiment-economy-bad-polls">which is false</a>). <em>Can you believe how pricey that restaurant was? I’m shocked at the cost of my wedding. Tipping culture is so out of control. </em></p>
<p id="OyAEWL">It’s not that these issues aren’t painful, it’s just that they’re also exhausting. Some of them have simple solutions, too, just not fun ones. You can cook at home. A fancy wedding is not compulsory. Tips <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/23978458/tipping-culture-tablet-tipflation-doordash-square-toast-tips">are optional</a>, and if you’re that upset over giving the barista a dollar or two, there are cheaper alternatives for your morning coffee. </p>
<p id="23H7tw">Part of the issue is that we seem to have blurred the distinction between a want and a need. Child care and a place to live and a tank of gas to get to work are necessities. The latest iPhone, not so much. On this, some people — and I include myself here — have lost the plot. If you took a European vacation this year, what a delight. Also, it was a privilege, not a right. It’s a choice, too, and one that might make your financial goals later down the line harder to attain. </p>
<aside id="G642a4"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_big_squeeze"}'></div></aside><p id="rtR7vx">The American economy remains one of abundance. Said abundance <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xa9T2OMzmw">isn’t equally distributed</a>, of course, and lots of people really are struggling. But as angry as consumers say they are about the economy, they’re not, on aggregate, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-retail-sales-unexpectedly-rebound-november-weekly-jobless-claims-fall-2023-12-14/">changing their spending habits</a>. For many people in the country, life is pretty good. And yet, they often don’t feel that way. No matter how much we’ve attained, we always want more. </p>
<p id="Ht7BOX">The landscape has gotten me thinking about expectations lately — what is fair to expect out of life, financially, and what is not. It sometimes makes me wonder if part of the answer here is that we need to scale back expectations. Things may not turn out <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/myth-unemployed-college-grad/676364/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook">as perfectly</a> as everyone wants, but fine is also, you know, fine. Just because something <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/23770003/economy-job-market-rich-poor-middle-class-stocks">doesn’t feel great</a> doesn’t mean it’s fundamentally unfair. (Sometimes, the most unfair things are the ones that feel <em>really</em> great — as long as you’re on <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23013102/american-consumers-expectations-anger-entitled">the right side</a> of the trade.)</p>
<p id="gKpWiR">I say all of this recognizing that I am in a bubble — I am a millennial living in New York City and surrounded largely by middle- and upper-middle-class people, <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/23770003/economy-job-market-rich-poor-middle-class-stocks">though many of them don’t see themselves that way</a>. I also say this as someone who is upwardly mobile from a solidly working-class background. If I could tell the child version of myself how things were going to turn out — that I’d be living in a big city, be able to afford to rent an apartment in said city, and have the chance to regularly take trips that involve a plane — she would not believe it. I am aware this is not the case for <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/11/politics/millennials-income-stalled-upward-mobility-us/index.html">everyone in my generation</a> or <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/downward-economic-mobility-boomer-generation-x-debt/671260/">those before or after me</a>. Still, I sometimes catch myself feeling like it’s not enough. </p>
<p id="oE439W">All that being said, why are we like this? Why do so many of us feel like whatever we have, it’s not sufficient? </p>
<p id="3kZZbl">A lot of it isn’t our fault, really. We live in a consumer economy that tells us that more is always better. We’re constantly being <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/12/18112538/best-search-choices-psychology-barry-schwartz">bombarded by more and more choices</a>, which leads us to chase the latest version of <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/12/11/18134598/best-of-everything">the “best” of everything</a> — an enthralling but impossible quest.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="EvETOk"><q>There is nowhere you can look in society that isn’t screaming at us to spend, spend, spend</q></aside></div>
<p id="UABSWK">“When there are lots of options, one consequence is that your expectations go up,” said <a href="https://www.swarthmore.edu/profile/barry-schwartz">Barry Schwartz</a>, Dorwin P. Cartwright professor emeritus in social theory and social action at Swarthmore College and the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/Barry-Schwartz/author/B000APW378?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true">multiple books</a> on <a href="https://www.vox.com/psychology" data-source="encore">psychology</a> and the economy. “When [businesses] start making all this variety, it’s just inevitable that your expectation is something up there is the one that’s going to be perfect. If that’s your standard, then everything you ever choose is going to end up disappointing.”</p>
<p id="kpp7mT">There is nowhere you can look in society that isn’t screaming at us to spend, spend, spend — and, frankly, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22662889/september-11-anniversary-bush-spend-economy">we view it as un-American</a> to live any other way. It causes us to conflate nonessentials with essentials; we don’t just want the thing, we feel like we <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22547185/consumerism-competition-history-interview">have to have it</a>.</p>
<p id="e8KK7d">Modern technology puts all of this on overdrive. To “keep up with the Joneses” means contemplating an expanding universe of Joneses, because we’re not just comparing ourselves with our neighbors but also with that <a href="https://www.vox.com/23960702/big-family-ballerina-farm-hannah-neeleman-dougherty-dozen-instagram-tiktok-influencers">TikTok mom</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23640192/sebastian-ghiorghiu-youtube-hustle-gurus-passive-income-dropshipping">YouTube hustler</a> who seem to have everything figured out. The availability of so much information makes what’s possible a presence in our daily lives in a way that was much less salient a generation and two generations ago. If XYZ is possible for someone, you get to thinking, well, why isn’t that possible for me? </p>
<p id="hUqFWO">Credit cards and <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/23875697/ios-17-apple-pay-overspending-tap-to-pay-tech">smartphones</a> make spending money easier than ever without having to do the math. “We just have a lot of people that really don’t know how to budget, and this is because of the credit card society,” said <a href="https://www.commerce.virginia.edu/faculty/dgm9t">David Mick</a>, a professor of commerce at the University of Virginia who focuses on a mix of consumer behavior, marketing, and mindfulness. “People have ready access to buy a lot of things quickly without a lot of thought.”</p>
<p id="ixaKAF">It all feeds into the <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/hedonic-treadmill#:~:text=The%20hedonic%20treadmill%20is%20the,was%20prior%20to%20these%20experiences.">hedonic treadmill</a>, where we’re constantly chasing down the next dopamine hit but ultimately return to our baseline level of happiness, whatever happens. The pursuit of constant pleasure or fulfillment is enticing, but it’s also not wise — eventually, that Big New Thing just doesn’t have the same kick. Even if we can buy that $40 bottle of wine to have with dinner, it’s genuinely <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVKuCbjFfIY">often better</a> to stick to the $15 bottle and keep the pricier option for special occasions. Really good and special experiences in life should be rare, Schwartz said, so they don’t become commonplace and can still deliver satisfaction. (He joked that as far as he knows, “no one on Earth” has ever taken this advice.) </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="SYmS4a"><q>“Money is a zero-sum game”</q></aside></div>
<p id="IrmEYO">Some of the ugliest truths about the economy are the ones that we prefer to keep from ourselves. The future may not be rosier — you might never land that perfect job or make that “right” salary. A college degree will <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/myth-unemployed-college-grad/676364/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook">certainly help you in the labor market</a>, but even <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/harvard-mba-grads-anxiously-navigate-a-tepid-job-market?sref=qYiz2hd0">a Harvard MBA isn’t a guaranteed ticket</a> to an ideal life. The lifestyle you aspire to may not be compatible with the cost of living in the city you want to be in. That down payment for your dream house may be out of reach, not just because of economic forces but also because you didn’t save in your 20s. Maybe you couldn’t because of <a href="https://www.vox.com/student-loan-debt" data-source="encore">student loans</a>; maybe you were a little frivolous. If you do get what you think you want, it may not feel sufficient; you can’t have it all, unless you are <a href="https://www.vox.com/elon-musk" data-source="encore">Elon Musk</a> or something. </p>
<p id="md4uvo">“There is always a trade-off, because money is a zero-sum game. If you’re spending it on X, you’re not spending it on Y,” said <a href="https://business.vanderbilt.edu/bio/kelly-goldsmith/">Kelly Goldsmith</a>, a marketing professor at Vanderbilt University who studies consumer psychology and behavioral science. “Unless you’re increasing the pie,” she added, which isn’t guaranteed. </p>
<p id="5kwssU">I don’t want to undercut anyone’s hardships, whatever their income level. Part of the reason many of us feel such pressure in the economy is <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22673605/upper-middle-class-meritocracy-matthew-stewart">because everything is so unequal</a> — the 99 percent are left fighting over the leftovers of the 1 percent who are indeed in a real-life, permanent fantasyland. This makes it easy to want to say screw it and just spend whatever.</p>
<p id="r2mSdP">“It’s hard to deprive yourself ever, and it’s especially hard to deprive yourself when it seems like the economy has turned in a way that is not favorable to your current situation for reasons that have nothing to do with you,” Goldsmith said.</p>
<p id="owfbs9">Still, it would do us a favor to take a step back. Sometimes a simpler life is a better one, Mick said, despite all the social pressures to the contrary. “There’s a lot of entitlement out there,” he said, particularly in American culture. </p>
<p id="N3dU1c">Life shouldn’t be entirely absent of some treats. But if you’re boxed out of necessities because of spending on extras, it’s something to consider. It’s completely fine and wonderful to want to see <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23905279/taylor-swift-eras-concert-film-image-analysis">Taylor Swift</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2023/12/5/23988555/renaissance-movie-review-beyonce">Beyoncé</a> live. What a joy! Just know that if you’re not in the 1 percent, it’s likely going to cost you, possibly even at the expense of something you need later down the line. Lucky for you, Taylor and Bey also have <a href="https://www.vox.com/movies" data-source="encore">movies</a> out, which are much cheaper to see and also, hopefully, fun. </p>
<p id="5G5qzT"><em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Each month, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em>The Big Squeeze</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="NF25sR"><a href="http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter"><em>Sign up to get this column in your inbox</em></a>.</p>
<p id="fEmYHz"><em>Have ideas for a future column or thoughts on this one? Email </em><a href="mailto:emily.stewart@vox.com"><em>emily.stewart@vox.com</em></a>.</p>
https://www.vox.com/money/24009905/money-personal-finance-goals-expectations-needs-vs-wants-economyEmily Stewart2023-12-07T07:50:00-05:002023-12-07T07:50:00-05:00It’s just a tip
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<p>You can say no to the tipping tablet. That doesn’t mean you should.</p> <p id="BQGlAQ">If you haven’t heard it or felt it yourself, people are angry about the state of tipping. Consumers have noticed that they’re being asked to tip more often and for higher amounts than before. They buy their <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/23896266/latte-price-pumpkin-spice-starbucks-coffee-inflation">morning coffee</a> and the barista flips around a screen that nudges them to add on a little more, or they go to pick up lunch and they’re prompted to leave an extra $1. In particularly confounding situations, some people have found themselves being asked to tip their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/style/tipping-cosmetic-medical-procedures.html#:~:text=Tips%20are%20always%20optional%2C%20but,fuzzy%20after%20a%20medical%20procedure.">dermatologist</a> or an <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/07/25/i-was-asked-to-tip-while-shopping-online-guilt-tipping-has-gone-too-far/">e-commerce website</a>. In the media, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tipping-backlash-inflation-who-should-get-tipped/">story</a> after <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/10/7/23389885/square-toast-tipping-retail-tipflation-guilt">story</a> has been written, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adjust-the-tip/id1346207297?i=1000634296333">recorded</a>, and televised about the current state of affairs in tip culture in America.</p>
<p id="KO6hQT">To describe this culture, we’ve coined terms like “tipflation” and “guilt-tipping.” Many of the conversations I find myself in about <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/2023/11/8/23951098/economy-inflation-prices-job-market-sticker-shock">high prices</a> these days end with someone saying, “And then<em> </em>you’re supposed to tip on top of it.”</p>
<aside id="UXFXfD"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_big_squeeze"}'></div></aside><p id="K8yXZG">Contrary to the high emotions around it, tip requests aren’t that big a deal. What every frustrated consumer seems to forget is that you can just say no — plenty of people do. (Whether you should is a separate question, especially for workers whose livelihoods depend on tips.) Tipping in the vast majority of cases is optional. Maybe that tip jar was a little easier to ignore than the tablet, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret here: The worker behind the counter hoped you’d put money into the jar, you just didn’t feel as icky about not doing it.</p>
<p id="sw2V6W">“There are bigger things in this world going on to get frustrated about,” said <a href="https://dianegottsman.com/">Dianne Gottsman</a>, a national etiquette expert.</p>
<p id="NXq7Wc">So why does this rile people up so much? Tipping has become a sort of proxy for frustrations about the <a href="https://www.vox.com/economy" data-source="encore">economy</a>; it’s a small thing that often feels easier to focus on than the bigger things, like inflation. It can pit workers, consumers, and even businesses against one another in a way that’s uncomfortable for all involved. </p>
<p id="dzOwFV">It’s also an issue with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/dining/danny-meyer-no-tips.html">no easy solutions</a>. Some service workers don’t want tipping to go away, even if it means they’ll be paid a higher base wage. And while it’s easy to suggest businesses simply pay their workers more, that extra pay will come from somewhere — often in higher prices being passed on to consumers.</p>
<h3 id="ekLQt8">Why tipping gets people in such a tizzy</h3>
<p id="Vp2e1W">One thing is true: Tipping is different from what it used to be, even a few years ago. During the pandemic, there was a groundswell of support for service workers and small businesses, and practically everyone who could overtip did. That support hasn’t lasted — society has pretty quickly given up on <a href="https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-explainers/2020/4/23/21228971/essential-workers-stories-coronavirus-hazard-pay-stimulus-covid-19">worrying about essential workers</a> — but some of the tipping changes have. “That emboldened a lot of companies to be more aggressive in asking for tips,” said <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/authors/ted-rossman/">Ted Rossman</a>, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate. “It was followed pretty quickly by this big bout of inflation, and now we’re starting to see the backlash.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="9CYa5f"><q>The unwritten rules of the game have changed, and even though those rules are merely suggestions, many people don’t like it</q></aside></div>
<p id="LohAoi">Irritation with tipping can be both financial and emotional. Consumers don’t like surcharges, whether it be <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23410970/flight-fees-airlines-frontier-spirit-baggage-pick-seat">airline fees</a> or an extra $1 to pick up your meal at the local burrito place. Adding an extra 20 percent onto a price that’s quite a bit higher than it used to be is a hit to the wallet. </p>
<p id="Ayo3mg">It’s also jarring because many consumers aren’t entirely sure what to do. The unwritten rules of the game have changed, and even though those rules are merely suggestions, many people don’t like the change. Technology is a factor here, too — now, a computer screen is often asking people what they want to do, sometimes in circumstances where tipping didn’t used to be a factor at all.</p>
<p id="wCZVv1">“People are feeling social pressures to leave tips in circumstances that they wouldn’t ordinarily expect to tip,” said <a href="https://sha.cornell.edu/faculty-research/faculty/wml3/">Michael Lynn</a>, a professor of consumer behavior and marketing at Cornell University and an expert on tipping. What’s more, they’re being asked for money in an information vacuum — the point-of-sale tablet gives no indication of how the person in front of them in line tipped or didn’t. “We’ve had counter tip requests before in the form of tip jars, but that contains information about what other people are doing. Those current tip screens don’t give us that,” Lynn said. (There’s a reason why before the tablets, some workers put their own money into tip jars to try to encourage customers to drop cash in. This is not <em>not </em>something I have done in the past when bartending.)</p>
<p id="tXvDQ4">One <a href="https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/tipping-survey/">Bankrate survey from 2023</a> found that 66 percent of American adults have a negative view of tipping, though just 16 percent said they would be willing to pay higher prices to do away with tipping. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1094670519900553">A research article from 2021</a> found that requesting a tip before a service instead of after was perceived as manipulative, with consumers saying they were less likely to return to the establishments, leaving lower online ratings, and tipping less. </p>
<p id="VTr0iT">As frustrated as many people say they are with tipping requests, it’s not entirely clear how many of them are changing their behaviors. While consumers may say they won’t go back to businesses because of a perceived unfair tip ask, it’s not clear whether they follow through, Lynn said. People don’t appear to be tipping a great deal more in light of the nudges, either, according to some of the companies behind the tablets.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="4wjuZQ"><q>“If tipping culture had really exploded as some people may think, you would expect restaurant workers to be really wealthy”</q></aside></div>
<p id="zN5giO">According to data <a href="https://squareup.com/us/en/the-bottom-line/tools/square-payroll-index">on payrolls</a> from commerce technology company <a href="https://www.vox.com/square" data-source="encore">Square</a>, restaurant workers are making more overall, but it’s largely due to increases in their base wages, not an explosion of tipping. “While tipping ... may have increased modestly, it’s definitely not doing so at the rate that some of the more clickbait-y headlines I’ve seen would have you believe,” said Rachel Deal, a spokesperson for Square. (You can see some examples <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/01/how-tipping-in-the-united-states-got-out-of-control.html">here</a> and<a href="https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2023/05/05/how-much-to-tip-tipping/"> here</a>.)</p>
<p id="0uaXtX">“If tipping culture had really exploded as some people may think, you would expect restaurant workers to be really wealthy,” said <a href="https://squareup.com/us/en/the-bottom-line/about/ara-kharazian">Ara Kharazian</a>, research and data lead at Square. “They’ve definitely had a lot of wage growth, but it’s been pretty modest, all things considered.”</p>
<p id="6nrSnz">Data from Toast, a Square competitor, shows something similar. Tips at full-service restaurants and quick-service restaurants <a href="https://pos.toasttab.com/news/most-popular-alcohol-by-state-toast-restaurant-trends-report">are actually down slightly</a> from 2018. Toast suggests tipping fatigue, inflation, and service charges may play a role, as well as beliefs companies should just pay their workers better. The latter is a nice sentiment, but forgoing tipping your server after a meal at a restaurant isn’t going to magically lead to an overnight pay raise for them.</p>
<h3 id="zfkKZX">For workers, the tip thing can be tricky</h3>
<p id="MXKXXm">Reporting for this story, I decided to reach out to some workers who are on the other side of the tablet to hear what they think about the current state of tipping culture in America. The general sentiment: yes, it has gotten to be a lot, but also, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/17/1187275511/tipping-minimum-wage-tips-tip-screen">tips are really helpful in getting them through the day-to-day</a>. </p>
<p id="V0INAM">Helen, a barista in Seattle, understands people’s frustration with tipping culture in general, even though it does make a “huge difference” for her pay. (Vox granted her a pseudonym so she could speak candidly about her job.) She doesn’t understand why consumers get weird, specifically, about tipping a barista. “I’ve worked as a server, and servers keep most of their tips even though they don’t make the food,” she said. People like to say with baristas it’s a quick transaction, “but the difference is we’re actually producing something for you.”</p>
<p id="WzRcTa">She tries not to pay attention to what people do when she spins around the Square device that prompts people to tip, though sometimes she overhears people discussing what to do. “Sometimes, they’ll talk about how much they want to tip and whether or not they think they should tip, but never to me,” she said. When I asked if that was awkward, she laughed and replied, “Oh, yeah.” </p>
<p id="rci3rr">Charles, a ride-hail driver in California, said his pay for rides is often so low that it wouldn’t be worth it to drive if not for tips. He’s become strategic about how to try to up tips from riders. He tries to focus extra on customer service; he started carrying water in his car before realizing that was an extra cost to him that wasn’t really helping. Now, he asks for a tip directly in his driver profile. </p>
<p id="GBdD1g">“It makes a difference because you’re not making ends meet the way <a href="https://www.vox.com/uber" data-source="encore">Uber</a> pays you or <a href="https://www.vox.com/lyft" data-source="encore">Lyft</a> pays you by themselves,” he said. “[People] see it as tipping culture is overdone, but they don’t see it as Uber has cut your wages to the point you need it.”</p>
<p id="bo2ALC">Another Uber driver I talked to for this story said he wished the company did pre-tipping. When I pointed out that might make riders unhappy, he didn’t respond. DoorDash has started to adopt the practice, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/31/23940442/doordash-delivery-delayed-no-tip-warning">warning customers that their food orders might take longer</a> if they don’t add a tip ahead of time.</p>
<p id="yzlDBz">Michelle Eisen, who works for <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/12/09/1062150045/starbucks-first-union-buffalo-new-york">the first Starbucks</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22993509/starbucks-successful-union-drive">to unionize, in Buffalo in 2021</a>, explained that adding credit card tipping was one of the first acts she and her coworkers campaigned around. It wasn’t something the company had previously offered, and with the rise of credit cards over cash payments, workers were losing out on money they’d made before. The company has since granted credit card tipping, but not for stores that unionized ahead of a certain date, including hers. “They used it as punishment for the workers that were organizing, which is pretty sickening,” she said. </p>
<p id="SKDZDL">Adding credit card tips has made a “significant difference” for the workers whose stores have it, Eisen said, which is why it’s such a sticking point. She gets it can also be a sticking point for consumers. “In the case of Starbucks, I do think if you’re already spending $7 to $10 on a beverage, which is pretty insane, that throwing another $1 or $1.50 on there so that the worker who made that drink can put gas in their car, I’m in favor of that,” she said. “Do I think a company like Starbucks that makes that much money a year should be able to just pay their workers $2 more an hour so it doesn’t fall to the customer? Yeah. Absolutely.”</p>
<h3 id="FgKJFa">We might just have to learn to live with the tablet for a while</h3>
<p id="CyJZyx">Maybe someday <a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5888347/one-more-case-against-tipping">tipping culture in America will be abolished</a>, workers will be paid fairly, and everybody will be happy. Businesses will figure out how to make their margins without raising their prices (margins which, for businesses like restaurants, are very low). Service workers won’t feel like they have to do a special song and dance hoping a customer will leave them an extra-nice tip. Consumers will not feel pressured by the dreaded tablet. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="E1mmsu"><q>Tipping is a fixture of the American economy. It can create both enemies and allies.</q></aside></div>
<p id="jBlezK">However, that day is not today. The world we currently live in is one where a DoorDash driver goes viral <a href="https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/doordash-driver-texas-woman-18187180.php">after commenting</a> that a woman who ordered a $20 pizza lives in an awfully nice house for a $5 tip. The driver, who was fired, has a right to be frustrated over the low pay and hard work many people in the gig economy deal with. The customer has a right to feel like a 25 percent tip is perfectly acceptable — and is also perhaps wondering whether that pizza didn’t used to be $15 not too long ago.</p>
<p id="74BBrW">Tipping is a fixture of the American economy. It can create enemies and allies, and who exactly is benefiting and how isn’t entirely linear. “People assume that tipping is to the benefit of the business, that they’re getting lower labor costs and that just goes to their bottom line. But no, it goes to consumers in the form of lower prices,” Lynn, the tipping expert, said. “So effectively it’s not the consumer subsidizing the business, it’s consumers subsidizing other consumers.”</p>
<p id="qEXhWX">Gottsman, the etiquette expert, issued a reminder that people have choices in tipping. “It’s a nice gesture if you want to leave it, but that’s called discretionary,” she said, though she also noted there are parameters — when you sit down at a restaurant, you should generally know that unless told otherwise, gratuity is expected. “We can monitor our own daily routine or spending, we can curtail it or go someplace else, or we can decide that, okay, it’s not necessary to leave a tip at the counter, it makes me feel uncomfortable,” she said. </p>
<p id="cfcwSx">You probably should tip that barista $1 (and, yes, Starbucks should just pay them more). But you can say no. And at the self-service checkout that prompts you to tip without a single worker or explanation in sight, you can say no, too. It really is just a tip.</p>
<p id="5G5qzT"><em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Each month, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em><strong>The Big Squeeze</strong></em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="NF25sR"><a href="http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter"><em><strong>Sign up to get this column in your inbox</strong></em></a>.</p>
<p id="fEmYHz"><em>Have ideas for a future column or thoughts on this one? Email </em><a href="mailto:emily.stewart@vox.com"><em><strong>emily.stewart@vox.com</strong></em></a>.</p>
<p id="m7NaJs"></p>
https://www.vox.com/money/23978458/tipping-culture-tablet-tipflation-doordash-square-toast-tipsEmily Stewart2023-11-02T07:50:00-04:002023-11-02T07:50:00-04:00America’s shoplifting problem, explained by retail workers and thieves
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<img alt="An animated illustration shows items going missing throughout the shelves of a pharmacy." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/f7P1QfoQdtz71yqEjEZFRqq2ETA=/240x0:1680x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72820410/BigSqueeze_PaigeVickers_11_1.0.gif" />
<figcaption>Paige Vickers/Vox</figcaption>
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<p>Retailers would rather complain about shoplifting than invest in fighting it.</p> <p id="ZEWyee">Jonathan wants me to guess how often retail workers see someone steal. It’s a challenge he likes to make to friends, who always underestimate it. “It’s multiple times a day, maybe as often as once an hour. And that’s the stuff you can see, like the really blatant ones,” he says. “A lot of people picture a scared kid with a candy bar under their jacket, and you get that, but the majority of it is seasoned shoplifters going out with carts full of beer and liquor and hygiene products and electronics and laundry detergent, etc.”</p>
<p id="JzRcaP">He recently quit his job at a major retail pharmacy chain over the issue. (Jonathan is not his real name, and he spoke with me on the condition that he be granted anonymity and the company not publicly named. All of the workers I spoke to for this story were given pseudonyms and/or anonymity.) His frustration isn’t so much with the thieves, per se, but instead with how his former company has dealt with them.</p>
<aside id="tVL0yV"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_big_squeeze"}'></div></aside><p id="nzxlMH">Corporate ignored employees’ requests to <a href="https://sfist.com/2016/10/28/why_are_sf_safeways_suddenly_puttin/">put booze in locked cases</a> because the liquor aisle is an area of the store that attracts some especially “sketchy” characters. It also blew them off when they warned of camera blind spots that shoplifters were aware of. “The company didn’t really seem that interested in solving the problem, they seemed more interested in, I don’t know, complaining,” he says. The cops weren’t much help, either. They’d show up hours after being called and ask whether the perpetrators were still there (they obviously weren’t) and which way they’d gone (what does it matter if it was six hours ago?). </p>
<p id="KiipDs"><a href="https://www.curbed.com/article/walgreens-duane-reade-cvs-rite-aide-nyc-shoplifting-new-liberty-loans.html">Retail theft is a problem</a>, albeit one that can be difficult to unpack. Some people overstate the spike in shoplifting, others underplay it. Part of the matter is there just <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/02/27/shoplifting-retail-theft-lawmakers-response">isn’t great data</a> out there on what’s going on.</p>
<p id="M6cvmA">Figuring out what to do about it all was above Jonathan’s pay grade. He’s got some ideas, like increasing staffing and, really, locking up the liquor, which would mean more work for employees but would also have increased safety. But these solutions would all cost money the company was apparently not willing to dole out. </p>
<p id="Ibi31f">I interviewed more than a dozen workers in retail and loss prevention — and two retail thieves — about what the country’s supposed shoplifting epidemic looks and feels like on the ground. In conversation after conversation, one thing became clear: While many corporations are frustrated by retail theft, they’re not doing enough to try to solve it.</p>
<p id="1yqyd1">As David Rey, the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Larceny-34th-Street-Depth-Professional/dp/163867048X"><em>Larceny on 34th Street: An In-Depth Look at Professional Shoplifting in One of the World’s Largest Stores – A Memoir</em></a>, explained to Vox in an interview, “Most retailers really don’t spend [money] when it comes to asset protection, when it comes to the resources needed to protect themselves from shoplifting ... because there’s no return on the investment.” </p>
<h3 id="JzNELY">Slowing down stealing isn’t free</h3>
<p id="JebE1D">Some amount of shoplifting is always going to happen. “Shrink” — retail-speak for missing inventory that may have been stolen by outside parties or its own workers, damaged, or just plain lost — is inevitable. <a href="https://nrf.com/media-center/press-releases/retail-crime-accounted-over-112-billion-industry-losses-2022-according">According to the National Retail Federation</a>, the average shrink rate increased from 1.4 percent in 2021 to 1.6 percent in 2022. Taken as a percentage of sales, that translates to an increase from $93.9 billion to $112.1 billion in losses. That’s a big number — it’s also one that companies could take more steps to bring down, workers say. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="zcI0D0"><q>“All these companies that are screaming about theft, they’re kind of complicit in it because they keep reducing staff”</q></aside></div>
<p id="MqDt3L">Last year, the Walmart that Riley worked at outside of Baltimore was well above the NRF average. It lost nearly 3 percent in sales to shrink — he says it’s a number that wouldn’t have been acceptable a few years ago but is now par for the course. Still, Riley, who worked in asset protection, says there are plenty of steps the company could have taken to make things better that it just didn’t, like hiring and retaining more associates. “If they had better sales coverage, a lot of this stuff wouldn’t happen, or if they didn’t have such high turnover,” he says. </p>
<p id="gx1vDK">He recalls watching a security video of a man cutting into a merchandise case, looking around as he committed the crime and seemingly noticing there was nobody in the department around to see him. He says new cashiers often fall for <a href="https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/bbb-warns-of-cash-cash-scam-while-holiday-shopping/">scams with gift cards</a> at the register because they haven’t been properly trained, and self-checkout aisles go woefully underwatched because the store doesn’t have the labor budget to staff them. “Walmart’s really going heavy on the technology side of it right now, but all the upgraded tracking systems and computers in the world can’t make as much of a difference as having somebody actually in each aisle, or even in each department,” he says. </p>
<p id="chCNCo">One former manager at Ulta Beauty in Illinois recalled seeing the same handful of men coming into the store over and over, loading up on fragrances, and walking out the door. It spooked workers and customers alike. Reporting the thefts, doing inventory, and restocking added to her workload, not to mention the extra time on talking to police and even going to court. Having a security guard at the door — even if the guard couldn’t really do anything — did make some difference, but the company wasn’t always willing to pay for it. The same goes for extra payroll. “It was just a cycle,” she says. </p>
<p id="Iqc0nO">A worker at OfficeMax says she finds empty ink cartridge packages lying around almost every shift, their contents having been lifted. She and her coworkers get lectured over it, but what are they supposed to do? She can’t go past aisle 5 while still keeping an eye on the register. “We’re stretched so thin,” she says. </p>
<p id="rhCnlI">“All these companies that are screaming about theft, they’re kind of complicit in it because they keep reducing staff,” says Steven Rowland, the host of <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-retail-warzone/id1553717583"><em>The Retail Warzone</em></a><em> </em>podcast and a former retail store manager. “From an hourly standpoint, a lot of these folks feel like they’re not paid enough to care anyway. And then you have store managers who are bleeding out, basically, because they have a lack of payroll, they don’t have enough staff just to get their basic functions done.”</p>
<p id="N8LhGE">Nobody wants retail workers to be acting as vigilantes — indeed, employers actively encourage them not to be, as situations can turn dangerous and even deadly. In mid-October, a GameStop employee shot and killed a man who <a href="https://apnews.com/article/gamestop-florida-shoplifter-shot-killed-af99584d03a525724892cec8fb4e499b">attempted to steal</a> five boxes of Pokemon cards. Months earlier in April, a shoplifter <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/home-depot-employee-killed-shoplifter-pleasanton-california/">shot and killed a Home Depot employee</a> who tried to stop her. </p>
<p id="9BLEl9">Mark, a loss prevention specialist who has worked for companies such as Walmart, Lowe’s, and Home Depot, says sometimes the issue is firms aren’t even sure what exactly they want to focus on. “Are you guys focused on theft? Or are you guys focused on shrink? Because there’s a big difference between the two,” he says. “One is more glamorous and more showy, while the other, focusing on shrink, you’re attacking your business model and your operational spend.”</p>
<p id="QdrNxc">Companies can be quick to blame shrink on external theft, but it might be employees who are stealing, or merchandise that’s lost in transit. Say it’s a hardware store and 10 $400 leaf blowers are supposed to come in a pallet and nine show up, or one is a $200 model but nobody checks. “It’s extra time and extra money to look into something like that,” he says.</p>
<p id="pd55Q3">It’s difficult to estimate exactly how much it would cost companies to really go after the shoplifting problem. Many retailers <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-09-26/retail-theft-2022-112-billion-losses#:~:text=Many%20retailers%20who%20participated%20in,to%20support%20their%20risk%20efforts.%E2%80%9D">say that they are spending more to combat retail theft</a> than they have in the past. In its <a href="https://ir.homedepot.com/~/media/Files/H/HomeDepot-IR/2023/2022_HD%20Annual%20Report.pdf">2022 annual report</a>, Home Depot made note that combating shrink and theft and keeping stores safe requires “operational changes” that could increase costs and make the store experience worse for customers and associates alike. (Nobody likes the whole unlock-the-box-to-buy song and dance.)</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="n8yb2W"><q>“Loss prevention, in and of itself, does not bring any profits”</q></aside></div>
<p id="ktliFg">It’s not even clear exactly how much money is being spent to fight theft right now, explains Jeff Prusan, a security and loss prevention consultant to the retail industry. Retailers don’t generally disclose the data, payroll increases vary by retailer and job purpose (employee versus loss prevention specialist versus private security guard), and the amortization of long-term security solutions, such as cameras and alarms, can be complicated to factor in. “There are so many variables in these situations that it is difficult to quantify,” he says. </p>
<p id="OQfTZZ">There’s no strong consensus about what would really work, investment-wise. And loss prevention doesn’t bring in revenue, it’s just an expense. “Corporate offices want to see profit. Marketing brings profits, the buyers bring in profits. Loss prevention, in and of itself, does not bring any profits. We just try to deter loss,” says one loss prevention agent who works at a corporate office for a national retailer. “Loss prevention, typically, is the most underfunded department of any company.”</p>
<h3 id="WzIxWL">The financial incentives around retail theft make it a toughie</h3>
<p id="qh0sJX">I’m not going to litigate the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/shoplifting-holiday-theft-panic/621108/">size and scope</a> of shoplifting in America, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/u649kn/who_cares_if_someone_is_shoplifting_essentials/">offer opinions</a> over whether it’s really a “victimless” crime to steal makeup from a multibillion-dollar corporation, or question if retailers are <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/is-target-really-closing-a-new-york-store-over-shoplifting.html">overplaying their hands</a> by blaming so many of their problems on shoplifting. I’m not getting into public policy questions, either, on whether <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/facts-bail-reform-and-crime-rates-new-york-state">bail reform</a> or <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2017/04/the-effects-of-changing-felony-theft-thresholds">the amount at which a state considers theft a felony</a> impacts shoplifting rates. But I do think it’s important to acknowledge that this is a tough nut to crack. At the core of retail theft are all sorts of financial incentives on multiple sides that contribute to the problem.</p>
<p id="6ICrqk">Companies can and do try to crack down on theft by locking items up, but unless they really have enough workers to unlock everything, it’s a pickle, business-wise, not to mention an annoyance for customers. “Lock up your whole store and you’ll never lose anything. You’ll also never sell anything,” says Joshua Jacobson, a loss prevention professional in California. “Sales are more important to a company than shopping theft.”</p>
<p id="Wyy0lt">Organized retail crime operations made up of boosters — people who steal the goods — and fences — those who purchase or receive and resell the merchandise — do actually exist, and they are difficult to combat. Stores and police departments can and do build up cases against them and <a href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/14-facing-charges-in-20-million-retail-theft-ring-busted-in-miami-dade/3139916/">make</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arrests-nyc.html">arrests</a>, but it can be a bit of a game of whack-a-mole. </p>
<p id="bRQxbk">Most workers say that even when they catch boosters in the act, they blow right past them, and they’re often not allowed to say anything at all for safety reasons. That includes security staff, many of whom aren’t permitted to make physical contact with thieves (some say they want to be allowed to be “hands on,” though you can see where this could start to become a problem on multiple fronts, from liability to safety). Stolen products wind up sold in the open on the street or online on <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-products-on-amazon-and-facebook-marketplace.html">platforms like Amazon and Facebook</a>. In June, the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/INFORMAct">INFORM Consumers Act</a> became law at the federal level, which requires online marketplaces to verify and disclose information on “high-volume third-party sellers” in an attempt to crack down on organized retail crime. It’s not yet clear how much of an impact it’s making.</p>
<p id="zKXXJB">I found someone on <a href="https://www.vox.com/facebook" data-source="encore">Facebook</a> Marketplace recently selling deodorant and a variety of hygiene products in Brooklyn for well under the price I’d find at a store. When I asked where they got them from, they replied, “On clearance.” I have my doubts.</p>
<p id="L0oBVp">One former booster told me he got into retail theft on a “massive scale” to support a drug habit. (He’s now been sober for over three months and has a regular job.) He described going to Home Depot and Lowe’s dressed relatively nicely — with a collared shirt, maybe a Bluetooth piece in his ear — and asking workers to get him generators or tools down from shelves. He’d put them on a cart, walk out the door, sometimes with a manufactured receipt in his hand, and get into an <a href="https://www.vox.com/uber" data-source="encore">Uber</a> or <a href="https://www.vox.com/lyft" data-source="encore">Lyft</a> he’d ordered. “The times I was stopped, I never would acknowledge the fact that I’d just been caught,” he says. “If it’s already on the cart, I’m committed.” He’d then sell the items to a local pawnbroker or even to a foreman on a construction site. They had to have figured out what he was up to, handing over a brand-new generator for a fraction of the cost, but they didn’t ask. “They’ve got to be pretty stupid not to know.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="yovGAX"><q>“People aren’t going to ask, ‘How did you get this? Is this stolen?’”</q></aside></div>
<p id="x2tGQX">Asked whether he thought there was anything that would have stopped him, he says maybe customer service — where retail employees approach and sort of ask what’s up, if someone needs help, even acknowledge what’s going on — might have been a deterrent. He also notes the undercover loss-prevention people were often easy to spot, walking around aisles endlessly and picking up random items at random. “I go with my gut a lot,” he says. “At that point, I feel like they might know that I’m up to something and I’m not going to do it.”</p>
<p id="GwdJiq">Another booster in Hawaii described getting “orders” from fencing operations for a variety of items — Tide pods, baby formula, Spam. She and a friend stole Christmas lights for a woman who worked at a local clinic. After they dropped them off and were paid, the woman told them her coworkers had orders for them, too. “People aren’t going to ask, ‘How did you get this? Is this stolen?’” she says. “It’s a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of thing. They know it’s stolen, but it’s a better deal.”</p>
<p id="OApyGP">Shoplifting isn’t her favorite — it’s a high risk for small amounts of money — but it’s something she’s done when she needs to for cash. (She told me her “passion” is credit card fraud.) As to what might stop her, it’s a hard question to answer. “People are going to do what they want to do regardless,” she says. She tries not to take anything from mom-and-pop stores, only big chain retailers. The Ross in her area regularly throws out a lot of its inventory in dumpsters behind the store to replace it with new. “We could wait until stuff goes in the dumpster, but why?”</p>
<p id="qce8NY">“The professionals, unfortunately, are rarely deterred, and the biggest deterrent to them is having off-duty law enforcement, which is very expensive,” says Prusan, the security and loss prevention consultant. “You can’t catch everybody, no matter who you are.”</p>
<p id="DpqVNF">In certain progressive circles, there can be a bit of a “who cares” attitude around retail theft, especially when it hits big companies like Walmart and Home Depot. There’s also often skepticism about just how much stuff is being shoplifted, an assumption that companies are overstating the losses. Target <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/09/is-target-really-closing-a-new-york-store-over-shoplifting.html">recently blamed theft</a> for its decision to close multiple locations even as other locations opened. While there may be some exaggeration (Walgreens has admitted it maybe “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shoplifting-retail/index.html">cried too much</a>” over retail theft), publicly traded companies get into trouble when they lie to investors, so they’re probably not making this all up. </p>
<p id="6PBFqY">Most of the workers I spoke to weren’t agonizing over their employers losing merchandise to theft, but they weren’t unbothered by its effects. They wondered about hours and staffing being cut even further to try to make up for losses. They worried about their safety. They figured some of what’s going on may eventually lead to higher prices. They often asked why their companies weren’t at least trying to do more about it — having someone at the door, more people on the floor, just listening to their feedback — even if that was going to cost them a little more. </p>
<p id="AIJOev">One night, Jonathan, who worked at the retail pharmacy chain, was about to close with just one other worker on staff when a man walked in with a gun. The guy told them to empty the store’s safe — he wasn’t interested in their personal belongings — and at one point suggested Jonathan check on his coworker to make sure she was okay. “That kind of stuck with me,” he says, “because the robber actually showed more concern for our well-being than my manager or the police did.”</p>
<p id="5G5qzT"><em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Each month, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em><strong>The Big Squeeze</strong></em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="NF25sR"><a href="http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter"><em><strong>Sign up to get this column in your inbox</strong></em></a>.</p>
<p id="fEmYHz"><em>Have ideas for a future column or thoughts on this one? Email </em><a href="mailto:emily.stewart@vox.com"><em><strong>emily.stewart@vox.com</strong></em></a>.</p>
https://www.vox.com/money/23938554/shoplifting-organized-retail-crime-walmart-target-theft-lawsEmily Stewart2023-10-05T07:50:00-04:002023-10-05T07:50:00-04:00Rental cars, where the fees are limitless and a reservation is a little bit fake
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<img alt="A figure stands at one end of a long, winding ribbon of printed paper next to an empty signature line. At the other end, in the distance, a person stands in front of a pink SUV with a clipboard." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7vpQf-lcFncx-FXq2FLotDOMdX8=/0x0:1440x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72723413/BigSqueeze_RentalCars_PaigeVickers.0.png" />
<figcaption>Paige Vickers/Vox</figcaption>
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<p>The baffling structure of rental car taxes and fees, explained.</p> <p id="mVLSVl">The experience of renting a car can give you some trust issues. You’re booking on some travel website, where you start at Price A. Then, by the time you get to the checkout, you’re at a higher Price B that wasn’t the one you saw prominently advertised — maybe it was in small letters, but you didn’t notice. When you go to pick up the car, you’ve got to make a deliberate effort to avoid the even higher Price C, which the guy at the counter is pretty intent on selling you on. Even if Price B sticks, you find yourself staring at your receipt, wondering what in the world all those extra charges are. That’s assuming that the vehicle you intended to rent is even available. That’s assuming any vehicle is available. </p>
<p id="m0UPnC">We all know <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/23862850/flights-travel-delays-fees-nightmares-compensation-airlines">flying sucks</a>. Airlines <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23410970/flight-fees-airlines-frontier-spirit-baggage-pick-seat">squeeze every penny they can out</a> of us with add-ons and fees, and airports are <a href="https://www.vox.com/23460965/airport-restaurant-flight-prices-lounge-bar-expensive">wildly overpriced</a>. The experience of renting a car often flies under the radar, but it can be similarly terrible. </p>
<aside id="JsZbOR"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_big_squeeze"}'></div></aside><p id="djzRoe">The pandemic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/nyregion/car-rental-nyc-shortage-coronavirus.html">was an absolute nightmare</a> for renting a car, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/12/01/hertz-customer-kate-klonick-rental-car/">horror stories were not hard to come by</a>. (To be fair to the companies here, a business where your inventory may be taken very very far away and not returned to its initial location is inherently complicated, and the pandemic <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/05/01/rental-car-shortage-economy/">was a doozy</a> for the industry in a lot of ways.) Even though some of the dust has settled, it’s hardly smooth sailing now. The customer service experience remains exhausting. The concept of a reservation still comes with a bit of a wink — there’s a whole <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T2GmGSNvaM">Seinfeld scene</a> about it. The fees and tax scheme is incomprehensible. </p>
<p id="7Ak4GV">“The fees in the car rental sector, in many ways, are worse than fees in the airline sector because there’s a factor of sticker shock,” said <a href="https://www.economicliberties.us/william-mcgee/">William J. McGee</a>, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly think tank. </p>
<p id="Xn8CRY">There’s a specific and daunting element of surprise that comes with the price and logistics of renting a car. And yet, the rental car rodeo is often an inevitable part of travel: It’s expensive, it’s annoying, and it’s not clear it’s getting better anytime soon. </p>
<h3 id="qz4r1k">Don’t just be mad about rental car companies for the fees</h3>
<p id="MIpaw5">A family friend recently reached out about the cost of their rental car from Budget at the Denver airport. They sent over the receipt, and it’s really something to behold. The base rate for an eight-day rental is $555.19; the total they owe is more than $400 higher. </p>
<p id="me49DF">Deciphering what each line item corresponds to requires navigating a ton of jargon. A “concession recovery fee” costs $77.74; the “Colorado road safety fee” is $19.17; an “energy recovery fee” is $7.11. A look at Budget’s <a href="https://www.budget.com/en/customer-care/faqs/global/glossary">glossary</a> and some googling provide an explanation of the fees, especially where they come from. The concession fee is a kickback to the airport. The state fee <a href="https://www.dollar.com/AboutUs/FEESLanding.aspx">helps pay</a> for Colorado’s roads. The energy fee is because customers are supposed to chip in to keep the company’s lights on, which seems like it could be rolled up into the base rate but okay. </p>
<p id="RZCfw5">It’s ridiculous that consumers would need to look in a glossary to decipher the list of charges they’re faced with. More importantly, it’s representative of the issue with rental car fees and taxes: They’re coming at you from every which way, and many of them you can’t avoid. The guy at the counter trying to sell you on insurance is someone you can hopefully say no to (more on that later), but the locality that’s figured out that a rental car tax is <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/10/07/proposition-302-rental-car-tax-stadium-holds-us-supreme-court-dismisses-case/3904307002/">a nice way to pay for a new sports stadium</a>, not so much. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="Kk4rby"><q>It’s sort of like consumers are walking down the street, and state and local governments, airports, and car rental companies are all picking cash out of their pockets at every step</q></aside></div>
<p id="VI0e5L">“People are not wrong to hate all the fees that they’re hit with, but we distinguish between fees that are unavoidable and those you can potentially do something about,” said <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/about-us/our-people/our-experts/chuck-bell/index.htm">Chuck Bell</a>, director of financial services policy at Consumer Reports.</p>
<p id="4E6TEa">It’s sort of like consumers are walking down the street, and state and local governments, airports, and car rental companies are all picking cash out of their pockets at every step. </p>
<p id="Jbxu17">Airports can charge different fees that add up quickly, such as <a href="https://www.theflightexpert.com/glossary/airport-concession-fee/">concession fees</a>, which amounts to the rent companies are supposed to pay for being allowed to do business on their premises. That’s generally passed on to the consumer. The same goes for <a href="https://images.hertz.com/pdfs/chargeexplained.pdf">facility fees</a>, which are supposed to go toward new car rental facilities. If you pick your car up at the airport, those fees are unavoidable.</p>
<p id="qTISAQ">Many state and local governments across the country <a href="https://blog.autoslash.com/states-with-highest-car-rental-taxes-and-fees/">levy a number of fees and taxes on rental cars</a>, too, whether it’s for <a href="https://www.mass.gov/info-details/surcharge-on-vehicle-rental-transactions-for-police-training-in-massachusetts#:~:text=Vendors%20will%20collect%20a%20%242,Trucks">police training</a> or miscellaneous projects or (I was being serious earlier) <a href="https://lithub.com/youre-paying-for-sports-stadiums-you-dont-even-go-to/">sports arenas</a>. The reasoning on the part of lawmakers is that it’s easier to raise taxes on out-of-towners than it is on locals, and state and local governments want and need the money. “In some cities and states, there are politicians that say, ‘Well, if we try and put in a tax for this big project ... the people that vote for us are all going to be upset, and they’re not going to want to pay this tax,’” McGee said. “But if you have tourists coming through, they don’t vote for you.”</p>
<p id="bXYZe6">One question you might be asking yourself here is why any of these fees and taxes are even broken out. If it’s an unavoidable part of the total cost, who cares who the money’s going to? One simple answer is it is a way for rental car companies to offer full disclosure to consumers — and to show them their bill is more expensive in part because of mandated extra charges outside of their control. From the consumer’s perspective, it’s a bit of a wash.</p>
<h3 id="xHLbcC">But also do be mad at the companies for the fees</h3>
<p id="6WZonx">There’s probably a discussion to be had about whether governments and airports should account for so much of the rental car receipt pie. But what can be a bigger pain point for consumers — and one that’s within the industry’s control — is the extra charges the companies themselves add on. </p>
<p id="WP6sPi">The industry will say a lot of the extra fees are your choice, which is true. You decide whether you want to pay that extra driver fee, and you pick if you want that insurance. Still, some of it isn’t up to you, like <a href="https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/reservation/reviewmodifycancel/templates/rentalTerms.jsp?KEYWORD=FEES&EOAG=YQB">having to pay</a> the company for parking and licensing the vehicle, or being hit with some random penalty for smoking in the car even though you swear you did not. Regardless, a lot of it is confusing.</p>
<p id="BVTujv">In the summer of 2022, Brittany Miller, who works for a nonprofit in Seattle, got duped by a Hertz location in Las Vegas on what was and was not her choice. The agent there told her she had to purchase additional insurance (in rental car parlance, a collision damage waiver) even though she and her boyfriend had insurance of their own — your regular car insurance usually covers rentals. She says the agent made it seem as though they wouldn’t be able to walk out of the lot if they didn’t agree, telling them it was Nevada state law. So, they relented. </p>
<p id="QAEBqe">Once they later realized they’d been tricked, they decided to try to get their $300 back — an endeavor that took over a year. Hertz at one point told her it would be $25 to even investigate the case because six months had passed since the original rental date. Eventually, she found an email address on Reddit that got her results. Hertz returned the money and apologized for the “misinformation” the couple was given at the lot. “It was kind of gratifying but also frustrating to hear,” Miller said. “It shouldn’t be pulling teeth to get them to admit wrongdoing.” </p>
<p id="lMTQhV">Hertz did not respond to a request for comment for this story.</p>
<p id="8yIuQb">While Miller’s experience is perhaps an extreme one, it’s not entirely novel. Once you’re at the counter trying to pick up your car, you’re faced with a barrage of questions that can be tough to decipher, especially as the agent tries to upsell you. A few years ago, I found myself in a back-and-forth with a rental car agent over whether I should get the <em>extra</em> extra insurance. He warned me the coverage I had wouldn’t pay for damages ... if a tree fell on my car.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="2WCXkR"><q>“The devil’s really in the details with a lot of these things”</q></aside></div>
<p id="3v8IFy">“There’s a lot of fine print, so if you’re not prepared for it when you walk up to the counter, you can be persuaded to take it because you’re afraid,” Bell said. “The devil’s really in the details with a lot of these things, and I think people get bamboozled into accepting add-on charges that they don’t need.”</p>
<p id="qDpG46">Car rentals, relative to other services, have more discretionary and add-on services that they try to induce people to accept. There are all sorts of levels of protections for the car, for liability, for possessions, and accompanying fees consumers have to sort through. Do you need a car seat? What about GPS? Will someone under 25 be driving? Really, have you thought about the insurance? What about transponders for tolls? There can also be penalties for canceling, for dropping off a car too late, or for dropping it off too early. </p>
<p id="3IAKde">Your mileage may vary on which of these is fair and which isn’t, but some of it does feel, at the very least, mildly unfair. Rental companies sometimes push consumers to pay extra for toll transponders, even though there aren’t tolls in the area. If people forgo a transponder and do hit some tolls, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/travel/rental-cars-and-cashless-tolls.html">the add-on charges can be much higher than the tolls themselves</a>. There <a href="https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investigates/how-few-40-cent-tolls-your-rental-car-can-result-90-bill/531-9a3dde85-caf0-4b7b-be90-4e63b8bdfc35">have been lawsuits</a> around the issue, and some rental car <a href="https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/use-avis-or-budget-you-could-be-owed-part-of-45-million-hidden-fee-settlement/">companies have reached settlements</a> to repay consumers over hidden fees around tolls. This is all likely disclosed somewhere in rental agreements, but who has time to pore through contracts to see where they may or may not get gouged?</p>
<p id="4hyzR1">“There’s a lot of confusion at the front desk, and there’s that huge rental document that they’re scrolling through on an iPad and getting you to sign,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjmcgovern12/">Melanie McGovern</a>, a spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau.</p>
<h3 id="dqTvvL">Why are we — or rather, rental cars — like this?</h3>
<p id="en3ADT">Reporting for this story, I heard all sorts of terrible tales from consumers. </p>
<p id="JqPB7p">Shoshana Weissman, a Washington, DC, strategist, was charged some $2,000 by Budget after her rental because the company claimed she hadn’t returned the car to the Salt Lake City airport. She sent the company all sorts of proof she had, going as far as to request security footage from the airport. Eventually, Budget sent her an email saying the car had been re-rented in Minneapolis and returned the money, no further explanation offered. “They accused me of stealing a car,” she said. (This is a problem Hertz <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement">has made headlines for</a>, too.)</p>
<p id="ZVozkn">Budget didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story.</p>
<p id="aSzXLa">One man couldn’t get ahold of the company’s tow service when his rental car broke down, so he had to hire an outside service and then fight to be reimbursed even though it was the company’s car that was defective. Another man spent days going from location to location trying to find something comparable to the van he’d reserved, eventually realizing that the agent at the first office had lied about the vehicle’s availability elsewhere. Another customer was in an accident that wasn’t his fault while driving a rental car. He has insurance through his credit card; the rental car company tried to charge him for forgoing its insurance anyway.</p>
<p id="71jDEY">I don’t want to malign the car rental industry here, which did go through quite a roller coaster ride in terms of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/12/car-rental-shortage-covid/621068/">inventories and demand as a result of the pandemic</a>. But it feels fairly clear there is much to be desired in the consumer experience. As to why it’s like this, there’s no one specific answer, though there are some issues in play.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="rDnnYQ"><q>“It’s an oligopoly, really, between the big three”</q></aside></div>
<p id="iFnjsh">For one thing, there isn’t much competition in the car rental industry. Enterprise, Avis, and Hertz run some 86 percent of the show, McGee said. “There are only three car rental companies in the United States, which is kind of shocking when you think about it. Because Enterprise owns National and Alamo, and Hertz owns Dollar and Thrifty, and Avis owns Budget,” he said. “It’s an oligopoly, really, between the big three. And so that’s problematic in terms of service, in terms of cost.”</p>
<p id="DINQ6K">McGee said he believes the industry needs more regulation and attention. “Problems with car rental companies just don’t seem to get the sort of media coverage that other problems do with <a href="https://www.vox.com/travel" data-source="encore">airlines</a> and hotels and whatnot,” he said.</p>
<p id="0bd1C6">Some efforts to address “<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/2/15/23599953/biden-junk-fee-protection-act-white-house-ticketmaster-resort">junk fees</a>” in rental cars, among other sectors, may be underway as part of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/joe-biden" data-source="encore">Biden administration</a>’s efforts to broadly take on hidden charges and drip pricing, where companies draw consumers in with one price and then slowly add on extra charges. (I will note here that the rental car websites are generally pretty good about telling you at least the base unavoidable total cost upfront. The travel websites are not so great; the total cost might show up on the search page, but in much smaller print than the lower advertised price they’d like you to notice.) The FTC is currently <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/10/federal-trade-commission-explores-rule-cracking-down-junk-fees">exploring a rule</a> on junk fees. It also has <a href="https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/renting-car">resources for consumers</a> on navigating the rental car industry. </p>
<p id="aocGRa">Part of the issue here is that there’s nobody advocating for the consumer in the web of rental car fees. “There’s nobody at the table telling the airport or state and local government, ‘Don’t tax people for this,’” Bell said. “That also just reflects interest-group-based politics where consumers are underrepresented.”</p>
<p id="noPhc9">You could imagine a government that would say it wants to hold down costs for people when they go on vacation and would regulate the fees that are charged by providers, but our system doesn’t really do that. “You can charge extra fees to consumers because you can,” Bell said. </p>
<p id="q5aZ4c"><a href="https://www.internationalcarrentalshow.com/speakers/gregory-m-scott">Greg Scott</a>, a spokesman for the American Rental Car Association, said that every rental car company he is aware of “is aware of and in complete compliance” with the National Association of Attorneys General guidelines on disclosure to consumers. “There’s no question that at the counter, you’re asked a series of questions and you have to make a series of decisions,” he said. “We’re in the customer service business. We rent cars, we want you to be happy with it.”</p>
<h3 id="c4eSpT">Good luck and Godspeed next time you’re at the rental car counter</h3>
<p id="N7ZOC5">The fact of the matter is that when it comes to rental cars, a lot is out of consumers’ hands. There really is no getting around a lot of the fees, whether it be from states or airports or the companies themselves. The whole which-car-will-you-even-get situation is frustrating but inevitable. Prices, while they’re coming down, <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/car-rental-price-increase">are still much higher than they were in 2019</a>. But there are some limited measures consumers can take.</p>
<p id="ETITuW"><a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/fees-billing/how-to-avoid-sneaky-car-rental-fees/">Do your homework</a> before you get to the counter so that when you get there you know what you’re going to do. Check if you’ve already got some sort of insurance coverage on the rental so you’re ready to say no on the collision damage waiver. Figure out the closest gas station so you’ll be able to fill up before returning the car instead of paying the prepaid fuel fee, which is almost always more expensive. You can bring your own toll transponder if you have one. If you don’t, look up whether the route you’re going to take has tolls and how hard it is to avoid them. Avoid picking your car up at the airport and choose a non-airport location. Call ahead to make sure your reservation really is there. Note any potential damage to the car and how many miles it has on it before you leave the lot.</p>
<p id="QQ6ZxP">If you’re not sure about something at the counter, press the agent on it, even if you feel pressured to move fast. “BBB encourages consumers to read the fine print and take the time to ask questions to understand the full agreement before they sign anything,” McGovern said.</p>
<p id="Cl3elk">If something does go awry, complain, not only to the company but also to the FTC and CFPB and Better Business Bureau. “I would encourage people to fight back if they’re having problems,” Bell said. McGee noted that people can appeal to their credit card companies, specifically invoking the <a href="https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/what-is-the-fair-credit-billing-act/">Fair Credit Billing Act</a> that limits liability for unfair billing practices, and ask them to put a hold on the charge and investigate it. “It often works,” he said. </p>
<p id="LsBUY9">Comparison shopping can be tricky because the initial price you see often has little to do with the final cost. There are other options, like <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/11/22878329/turo-car-sharing-ipo-s1-stock-price-losses">Turo</a>, which is sort of like <a href="https://www.vox.com/airbnb" data-source="encore">Airbnb</a> for cars, said Charles Leocha, president and co-founder of Travelers United, a traveler advocacy group. “There’s different levels of car rentals, and they all have different pricing,” he said. He also recommends looking at budget brands, even if many of them are owned by the big three. “They take care of the car the same way, it’s just they’re maybe a year older.”</p>
<p id="yn9azC">The catch in all of this is that it puts a lot of onus on consumers to do what they can to make sure they don’t get tripped up at every turn. </p>
<p id="oaf1Do">And yet, many of us have found ourselves there before and will likely be there once again: Standing at the rental car counter, ready to get moving, and wondering what on God’s green earth is going on. </p>
<p id="5G5qzT"><em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Each month, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em>The Big Squeeze</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="NF25sR"><a href="http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter"><em>Sign up to get this column in your inbox</em></a>.</p>
<p id="fEmYHz"><em>Have ideas for a future column or thoughts on this one? Email </em><a href="mailto:emily.stewart@vox.com"><em>emily.stewart@vox.com</em></a>.</p>
<p id="d7mm6q"></p>
https://www.vox.com/money/23894657/rental-car-fees-taxes-hertz-budget-avis-costEmily Stewart2023-09-07T07:50:00-04:002023-09-07T07:50:00-04:00Offered a bonus at work? Ask for a raise instead
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<img alt="A woman is walking away from a sundae with a cherry on top in the direction of a cherry tree on a hill." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tOdAgAgrIwNztqb6JqrnMg_3LYc=/0x0:1440x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72620456/Bonuses_BigSqueeze_Vox_PaigeVickers.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Paige Vickers/Vox</figcaption>
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<p>One-time checks are a little bit bogus.</p> <p id="FDtZF0">I am not saying that the next time your boss offers you a bonus, you should tear up the check and throw it back in their face. Money is money, after all. But it might be an opportunity to explain why you would be much happier about that bonus if it were spelled R-A-I-S-E. </p>
<p id="KYiol4">It is a pretty decent moment to be a worker in America and <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22841490/work-remote-wages-labor-force-participation-great-resignation-unions-quits">has been</a> for the past couple of years. <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/07/12/real-wage-gains-inflation">Wages are rising</a>, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wages-surged-lowest-paid-americans-pandemic-covid-19/">especially for lower earners</a>, and now faster than inflation. Companies <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/06/30/fast-food-restaurants-hiring">have had to compete</a> to get people in the door and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/business/employee-retention-quitting-companies.html">fight to retain</a> those who are already there. </p>
<p id="8uz2O7">Many employers have tried to accomplish that with bonuses, offering workers an extra financial treat for signing on or staying on, for the holidays, or for a particularly good moment for the business. But, to quote <a href="https://www.vox.com/joe-biden" data-source="encore">Joe Biden</a>, here’s the deal: A one-time bonus is often just that, <em>one time</em>. A bonus is not a lasting change to your compensation, and it can be taken away just as easily as it’s given out.</p>
<aside id="IU7FuQ"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_big_squeeze"}'></div></aside><p id="L3ohIJ">“You want to get the gift that keeps on giving,” said <a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/sharon-block/">Sharon Block</a>, a law professor at Harvard and former Biden administration official.</p>
<p id="RKSZ7T">Receiving a bonus in place of a pay bump can feel like a gut punch — and like it’s less than advertised when it lands in your bank account. Jenny Petty, a teacher in Arkansas, was miffed over the state legislature’s <a href="https://www.kait8.com/2022/08/23/school-district-votes-teacher-bonuses/">decision</a> to hand teachers a $5,000 bonus in 2022 instead of giving them a raise. “If they just raise our salary, we’re not going to be taxed so heavily on that. Plus there’s no guarantee year-to-year what they’re going to do,” she said. Bonuses <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/why-bonus-taxed-high">can be taxed at a higher rate</a> than normal wages, though <a href="https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/jobs-and-career/how-bonuses-are-taxed/L7UjtAZbh">there are some ways to mitigate that</a>, and you might wind up getting a refund.</p>
<p id="S6kwQM">This year, <a href="https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/apr/02/state-says-it-will-fund-learns-raises-but/">the state voted to increase</a> teachers’ minimum salaries and give raises, resulting in a $13,000 raise for Petty that will show up in her paycheck for years.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="fAPgwJ"><q>“You want to get the gift that keeps on giving”</q></aside></div>
<p id="nxKf8O">“Pay raises have so much more of a ripple effect because it affects a lot of things, like even what goes into Social Security on your behalf,” Block said. “Anything that is calculated as a percentage of your income, a pay increase is going to ripple out through other benefits.” </p>
<p id="bq0njk">Here’s a look at the problems with bonuses, why they may not sometimes even benefit the companies that give them out, and what you should ask for instead — especially now.</p>
<h3 id="KlGDHU">Why your boss might like this bonus thing</h3>
<p id="OOPBD3">A bonus is <a href="https://www.themuse.com/advice/how-bonuses-work">any form of compensation</a> that’s not guaranteed, a proverbial cherry on top of the sundae that is your salary. They’re often doled out after the fact, when a certain target is hit or when the business has had a good year, but not always. Plenty of companies use signing bonuses, for example, as a way to recruit new talent. </p>
<p id="O9wWJI">Now, I know what you might be thinking here: Aren’t bonuses mainly a thing for already high-paid lawyers and finance guys who manage to get handed thousands of dollars in extra cash each year for ??? reasons? The answer is not really. According to the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ebs/factsheets/nonproduction-bonuses.htm#:~:text=Access%20to%20nonproduction%20bonuses%20includes,other%20(such%20as%20birthday%20and">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a>, in March 2022, 41 percent of private industry and 37 percent of state and local government workers had access to nonproduction bonuses — meaning bonuses for the holidays, longevity, retention, attendance, management incentives, and more. Two-thirds of workers in finance and information had bonus access, but so did over half of workers in manufacturing, a third of workers in education and health services, and a quarter of workers in leisure and hospitality. In other words, this is an issue for workers across the <a href="https://www.vox.com/economy" data-source="encore">economy</a>.</p>
<p id="W5JpFp">There are plenty of reasons an employer might want to opt for a bonus instead of a pay raise. For one thing, pay raises are sticky. “On a fundamental level, pay raises are quite a permanent change to compensation. One might think that companies, nothing would stop them from lowering pay, but empirically, that very rarely happens,” said <a href="https://mgmt.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/barankay/">Iwan Barankay</a>, an associate professor of management, business economics, and public policy at Wharton. “There’s a downward rigidity to wages.”</p>
<p id="0mypIR">If the economy goes south or business starts to falter, it’s a lot easier to skip holiday bonuses next year than it is to ask everyone to take a 10 percent pay cut. </p>
<p id="pCJXxt">Raises often include a more comprehensive review of someone’s performance and include objective and subjective measures, whereas a bonus may be based on something specific — a worker helped recruit someone or met some sort of attendance threshold. To that end, bonuses can be used as ways to incentivize workers toward certain behaviors, and companies spend time trying to figure out the right balance to make them work. If the required task to get the bonus is too hard, people don’t bother; the same goes for if the amount of the bonus itself is not generous.</p>
<p id="pSTuBL">Whether companies use bonuses can depend on what’s happening outside of the firm altogether, Barankay noted, and what’s common among competitors. “When there’s a change in the marketplace, a company will introduce or discontinue bonuses,” he said, noting that monetary incentives are often easier to dole out or get rid of than other, softer and perhaps more psychological measures. “The advantage of money is that it’s easy to pull back and correct it,” he said. </p>
<h3 id="CtVgZD">Permanent money > temporary money</h3>
<p id="66jBSR">I think about the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/12/20/16790040/gop-tax-bill-winners">Trump tax cuts a lot</a>, when in late 2017 then-<a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump" data-source="encore">President Donald Trump</a> signed into law legislation that, among other things, slashed taxes for corporations. A bunch of companies subsequently <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/01/11/list-companies-paid-bonuses-boosted-pay-since-tax-bill-passed/1023848001/">made splashy announcements</a> about spending on workers, including on bonuses. </p>
<p id="IGxc2Q">Much of the fanfare was <a href="https://www.vox.com/explainers/2018/1/25/16904136/corporate-america-tax-cut-celebrations-explained">largely about PR</a> — a lot of these companies had these plans in the works already — and <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/17/18136119/republican-tax-cuts-bonus-announcements-companies">trying to make the tax cuts look helpful up and down income levels</a>. However, as discussed, those bonuses <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/12/18/18144509/tax-cut-bill-workers-bonus">didn’t amount to much</a>, <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/2020/01/14/tax-cut-bonus-one-time-wage-growth-lower/41000013/">nor were they a lasting change</a>. That’s the rub with a bonus. </p>
<p id="9VsVTa">“It’s not as good as a permanent raise, that’s the core, and I think workers know that, they’re not fooled,” said <a href="https://www.epi.org/people/heidi-shierholz/">Heidi Shierholz</a>, former chief economist at the Department of Labor and the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. “It makes a massive difference in your expected earnings over a longer period than just the current year.”</p>
<p id="hsjHsD">A wage increase will continuously mean higher contributions for Social Security and 401(k) matching and retirement benefits. It can also help workers negotiate higher wages in their next <a href="https://www.vox.com/labor-jobs" data-source="encore">jobs</a>. Like it or not, we still live in a world where potential employers ask candidates what their current pay is. I suppose you can try to lie, but a lot of people don’t. </p>
<p id="1aLZNa">If you’re buying a new house, getting a new car, or applying for some kind of a loan, a lender <a href="https://time.com/3342841/bonus-bad-news/">might not give as much credence</a> to bonuses as they do your total salary. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="FKT2OU"><q>Bonuses are not always all they’re made out to be from the corporate angle</q></aside></div>
<p id="LbFj2n">Paige, who works for a Chicago-based electronics company and asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of jeopardizing her job, recalled her feelings around her company’s decision to hand out a one-time bonus in December 2020 in lieu of the raises employees had been asking for. “A raise is consistent ... you can factor it into your budget,” she said. Her employer has announced it’s doing another “one-time bonus” this year, but again, it’s very much at their whim. “Because they’re phrasing it as a one-time bonus, it can obviously go away at any time.”</p>
<p id="bTOn4J">Bonuses are not always all they’re made out to be from the corporate angle, either. A signing bonus isn’t going to help with retention — it’s just as easy for a worker to say, “Thanks for the extra $300 that one time, bye,” in three months as it is three years. Short-term incentives are just that: short term.</p>
<p id="VxDLxI">“Merit increases actually provide a higher sense of security and stability,” said <a href="https://ler.illinois.edu/directory/998/">Mengjie Lyu</a>, an assistant professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They can also help employees get a line of sight into how to make progress in an organization’s pay structure — especially when there’s transparency around pay. </p>
<p id="WXPj1o">Employers may ultimately miss out on certain workers by focusing on bonuses over base pay and raises because some people just can’t accept that level of variability in their <a href="https://www.vox.com/personal-finance" data-source="encore">personal finances</a>. “Employers may think if I use bonuses I’m attracting good performers and people who are more competent with their productivity, but maybe the good performers are risk-averse or have financial constraints, have a family to support, have children to raise,” Lyu said. “That means they cannot go the bonus way, they just want to make sure that they have a secure income level every month.”</p>
<h3 id="YMWY5y">The labor market is strong right now — and it won’t be forever</h3>
<p id="PdQy64">Negotiating at work can be hard. (If you’re great at it, good for you, and teach me your ways.) But this is really the moment to push for what you want. The unemployment rate in the United States is at decades-long lows, and <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/08/29/jolts-july-data">while there are signs the labor market is cooling somewhat</a>, it’s still pretty damn good. Now is the time for workers to try to make some of that strength stick for themselves. At some point, the job market won’t be like this anymore. </p>
<p id="qEpL76">“This is such an unusual moment when workers have such leverage. It’s a shame to bargain that away, whether that’s actual collective bargaining or even other just non-<a href="https://www.vox.com/unions" data-source="encore">union</a> workers deciding whether to take a job or not,” Block said. “We don’t know where the labor market will be next year. Workers won’t be able to say, ‘You gave me a bonus last year, I would like one this year.’ They may not have as much leverage to demand that from an employer.”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="yeEYYt"><q>“This is the moment for workers up and down the wage scale to push for as high wages as possible”</q></aside></div>
<p id="ZOD7ou">That means, practically, that if there’s a signing bonus in the mix, try to see what sort of movement you can make on your base pay instead. That applies to someone applying for a service job and someone looking to land a new gig in marketing. “Employers think that’s the kind of thing that can lure people into the labor market. But again, I think if you step back, workers are much better off getting a higher wage than getting a one-time bonus payment,” Block said. </p>
<p id="AkYmqE">Workers may not always win this fight. Who among us hasn’t asked for a raise or bump in compensation, either to be told no, flat out, or offered some sort of one-time pile of cash as a consolation prize? Plenty of workers have seen spot bonuses and holiday bonuses come and go, seemingly at random, without any rhyme or reason.</p>
<p id="pqsg5a">Still, this is the time to go for it, Block said. “This is the moment for workers up and down the wage scale to push for as high wages as possible. We’re seeing wages rise for low-wage workers actually faster than high-wage workers. I can’t think of a time when that’s happened before,” she said. “My advice is then organize a union, so you can be sure that you continue to push for higher wages.”</p>
<p id="5G5qzT"><em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Each month, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em>The Big Squeeze</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="NF25sR"><a href="http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter"><em>Sign up to get this column in your inbox</em></a>.</p>
<p id="fEmYHz"><em>Have ideas for a future column or thoughts on this one? Email </em><a href="mailto:emily.stewart@vox.com"><em>emily.stewart@vox.com</em></a>.</p>
https://www.vox.com/money/23851170/bonus-raise-job-market-work-moneyEmily Stewart2023-07-11T16:40:05-04:002023-07-11T16:40:05-04:00We all just fell for Amazon’s made-up holiday yet again
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<img alt="A pile of Amazon boxes wrapped in plastic wrap.." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NqOGWC8Mk6JkZ9yLmhtaEbpu1Is=/146x0:2813x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71114302/1229055019.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>We don’t have to shop because Amazon says. And yet. | Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Get something you didn’t need on Prime Day? You’re not alone. </p> <p id="I56oF7">You might not think an Instant Pot would be at the top of your summer shopping list. The sweltering heat doesn’t exactly put people in the mood for a hearty stew. But <a href="https://www.vox.com/amazon">Amazon</a> has <a href="https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2017/06/05/startup-instant-pot-became-amazon-prime-day-star/">managed to help make it into a hot item to buy</a> among consumers in mid-July each year thanks to Prime Day, its now 48-hour deal extravaganza.</p>
<p id="AM1opY">As the saying goes, if you build it, they will come, which in Amazon’s case means poof! inventing a shopping holiday out of thin air.</p>
<p id="S51GjB">Amazon Prime Day first launched in 2015, initially as a way to celebrate Amazon’s 20th birthday (to the extent companies can have birthdays, I guess). It was a way to reward members of its <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/3/18511544/amazon-prime-oral-history-jeff-bezos-one-day-shipping">Prime program</a>, which started in 2005, and to bring consumers into its ecosystem of products and services. It was also a way to pump sales in what is normally an offseason for the company. <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/the-history-of-prime-day">According to Amazon</a>, consumers across nine countries bought over 34 million items on the first Prime Day, then just 24 hours. It surpassed the number of items sold on Black Friday the year prior, the e-commerce giant’s biggest Black Friday yet at the time.</p>
<aside id="VKmR2P"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_big_squeeze"}'></div></aside><p id="uFlZyh">Today, Amazon Prime Day is one of the biggest shopping events of the year. In 2022, Prime Day set a new record, with <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/prime-day-2022-was-the-biggest-prime-day-event-ever">more than 300 million items purchased</a> and, the company claims, customers saving $1.7 billion (how much they spent in total is not included in the company’s rundown, but other estimates put it at <a href="https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/amazon-prime-day-sales/">$12 billion</a>). Historically, Amazon says, “Jump,” as in “Shop.” Consumers across America and the world ask, “How high?”</p>
<p id="QlYeHR">“People everywhere, but Americans in particular, love sales; they love deals,” said Sucharita Kodali, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. “And if they’re told they’re going to find great deals, they’ll go and look.”</p>
<p id="lzZHDv">Even if that means looking for a glorified crockpot during one of the hottest months of the year. In 2015, 24,000 Instant Pots were sold on Prime Day. By 2018, that number was 300,000. In 2021, Instant Pot was still <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/product-recommendations/electronics/prime-day-top-products-sold-1076028/">among the biggest sellers</a> on Prime Day.</p>
<p id="puEPy8">I recognize people make things that are not soups in Instant Pots, but still.</p>
<h3 id="pa49yJ">Christmas in July, but for yourself</h3>
<p id="G8mDfu">The idea of a holiday for buying yourself stuff is not unique to Amazon or something Amazon invented. Prime Day was inspired by Alibaba’s <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/12/china-singles-day-2021-alibaba-jd-hit-record-139-billion-of-sales.html">Singles Day</a>, on November 11, in China. All sorts of holidays, real and invented by retailers, have become about buying. For some reason, we’ve collectively decided Presidents’ Day is a time for mattress sales. Even Juneteenth <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23150067/juneteenth-walmart-icecream-consumerism-merch">has become awkwardly commercialized</a>.</p>
<p id="NgMKgb">Greg Greeley spent 18 years at Amazon, including running Prime, and oversaw the early Prime Days. He explained to me that while Black Friday and Cyber Monday, for example, were always about gifting to other people, Prime Day had a distinct appeal. “I liked to describe it as our gift to Prime members so they could gift something to themselves.”</p>
<p id="ATa3Ih">Prime Day occupies a space consumers don’t really have to fill but might just kind of want to. It falls between tentpole shopping moments like the holidays and the back-to-school season. It’s also a moment where it feels a bit more like it’s okay to buy just to buy, instead of for a specific purpose — and, maybe, to be a little selfish about it.</p>
<p id="NDDWHC">“Cultures have been inventing commercial holidays for a very long time,” said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at the advertising firm Publicis. “People are very motivated by price, they’re very motivated by the treasure hunt of a deal, and when clever marketers do a good job of creating this perception that there’s some special reason for a deal, that triggers some cognitive bias that we have.”</p>
<p id="hUAyKM">As Hilary George-Parkin <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/15/20694723/psychology-sales-prime-day-fomo-scarcity">laid out for Vox in 2019</a>, sales and deals make consumers feel like they’re getting something special even if they’re not, like they’re getting free money. People can be pushed to buy out of FOMO, and the belief they’ll lose something if they don’t buy now before inventory runs out or the deal ends.</p>
<p id="T7DZjz">“These deals are structured in such a way that the products that are on deal won’t be there forever,” said Kelly Goldsmith, a behavioral scientist at Vanderbilt. “Scarcity marketing tactics, they’ve been a mainstay of the marketer’s toolkit for a very long time.”</p>
<p id="EQyfWS">Some consumers head into Prime Day with a clear idea of what they want and hunt for discounts on items they already intend to buy; if not on that specific day, then eventually. Others, however, just buy stuff because they see it and it’s there.</p>
<h3 id="teWZhj">Prime Day is neat for Amazon, medium for a lot of other parties</h3>
<p id="AgrbVs">Whatever deals consumers feel like they’re getting out of Prime Day, the real winner in this is probably Amazon. Even though, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-prime-day-isnt-quite-the-blockbuster-it-once-was-11656235800">as Sebastian Herrera notes in the Wall Street Journal</a>, Prime Day isn’t quite as big of a thing as it once was, it’s still very much a net positive for the company. It helps lift third-quarter sales and brings in billions of dollars. It is also a way to get people to join Prime (though much less so now than at the beginning) and get consumers familiar with and buying Amazon’s products and services.</p>
<p id="I35dLv">“In the old days, it was mainly a deal on stuff Amazon was selling, and Amazon could kind of curate it and say, ‘Hey, we’re having a super good deal on Alexa,’” Goldberg said. Now, he said, that’s diminished, and there’s almost too much for consumers to sort through when buying, whether it’s products from Amazon or not. “Today, there’s 10 million <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GW3L8JX7Q9FH8ALB">Lightning Deals</a> on Prime, and the vast majority of them are for crap nobody wants.”</p>
<p id="dtAG9B">Prime Day can be a mixed bag for third-party sellers on the platform, Goldberg said. They generally don’t get much notice of the exact dates, making the whole thing logistically challenging, and sellers sometimes wind up discounting so deep to make sales that it hurts their margins. “The reason you would sell something at a loss on Prime Day is to meet a new customer that might buy more stuff from you over time,” he said. Increasingly, that’s not possible on Amazon, as people often just buy from the first listing that comes up instead of going back to a specific seller. “Sellers are increasingly learning that you can’t acquire customers on Amazon; you’re renting customers on Amazon.” </p>
<p id="R7qFaS">In 2022, An Amazon spokesperson said Prime Day 2021 was its biggest ever for third-party sellers and that in 2022 customers could shop more products from those sellers than the year before. The spokesperson declined to say how much notice of Prime Day sellers get, or address speculation that the company might add another Prime Day at a different point in the year. In the <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/prime-day-2022-was-the-biggest-prime-day-event-ever">company’s roundup of 2022 Prime Day stats</a>, it touts $3 billion in sales on “small business items.”</p>
<p id="x4KBa8">While third-party sellers may not always have a ton of visibility, Amazon is watching buyers’ every move. “Every click you make on Amazon is likely something that somebody somewhere is studying,” Goldsmith said. </p>
<p id="WnOjXl">Prime Day encourages consumers to scoop up a bunch of stuff over the course of a couple of days in a way that <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/amazon-prime-day-fulfillment-center-working-conditions.html">is a stretch for Amazon’s warehouses</a> and, ultimately, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/21/tech/workers-amazon-prime-day/index.html">its workers</a> to deliver on. There is a reason <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-warehouses-hiring-shortage">Amazon is worried it will run out of potential employees at some point</a>, though Amazon said it is adequately staffed for the season.</p>
<p id="MzSiUZ">For shoppers, Prime Day can even be less than ideal — you’re not saving money if you load up on a bunch of stuff you don’t actually want.</p>
<h3 id="otlPz5">Maybe try buying a mini bit less next year</h3>
<p id="VoDG4b">Prime Day 2023 is July 11 and 12, and if you got a good deal on some stuff you’ve been wanting, good for you! If you got a good deal on stuff you did not actually want and maybe now are having some regrets, hey, it happens to all of us. There are always <a href="https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/save-date-july-12-13-prime-day-returns-offering-amazons-lowest-0">returns</a>. Maybe you will really wind up liking that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097BB83LC/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&aaxitk=b7a0e003bc8bc79d65e80503e3433b3c&content-id=amzn1.sym.cd95889f-432f-43a7-8ec8-833616493f4a%3Aamzn1.sym.cd95889f-432f-43a7-8ec8-833616493f4a&hsa_cr_id=2457745430301&pd_rd_plhdr=t&pd_rd_r=fb0e57e0-6ab5-48ca-a876-2495e4b4813e&pd_rd_w=J4dHN&pd_rd_wg=W6dQ3&qid=1689107767&ref_=sbx_be_s_sparkle_lsi4d_asin_0_img&sr=1-1-9e67e56a-6f64-441f-a281-df67fc737124">plant stand</a> you now have to buy a bunch of plants for and the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Women-Straw-Panama-Buckle-Fedora/dp/B0B1Q45K37?ref=dlx_deals_gd_dcl_img_4_be49ff47_dt_sl15_6b">fedora</a><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Womens-Straw-Panama-Fedora-Summer/dp/B07P64DD5H/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=fedora&qid=1689107797&sr=8-7"> you</a> are starting to suspect you’ll be too embarrassed to actually wear in public. </p>
<p id="BhBAu2">“We have so much crap in our lives, do we really need more?” Kodali said. “A lot of this stuff is getting to a point of just wastefulness; it just ends up in landfills, contributing to our global warming problem.”</p>
<p id="6ukw5x">As consumers, we’ve been trained to <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23013102/american-consumers-expectations-anger-entitled">buy cheap stuff without thinking about the broader implications</a>. Amazon and Prime Day are part of the problem. We actually do not need a new holiday for buying stuff.</p>
<p id="gaLA8S">Still, the whole situation is hard to resist. It’s not just that Amazon pushes Prime Day on consumers — so does the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/amazon-prime-day/">media</a> and the <a href="https://people.com/fashion/amazon-early-prime-fashion-deals-under-30/">entire internet</a>. News stories about the best Prime Day deals get clicks. I got an email from my bank reminding me Prime Day is coming. Other retailers, such as <a href="https://www.target.com/c/deal-days/-/N-xgolj">Target</a> and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/reviewed/2023/07/11/walmart-sale-deals/70397940007/">Walmart</a>, get in on these special deal events, too. A lot of parties are complicit in making the whole thing churn, including consumers themselves.</p>
<p id="sHb96C">I did not buy anything on Prime Day this year, or last. It’s not because I am a virtuous consumer or anything, but mainly because I am lazy, and sifting through a bunch of stuff on Amazon’s website seems exhausting.</p>
<p id="OjPjwy">Last year, I considered an Instant Pot a little, which I am told can be an enjoyable thing to have and use, even in the summer months. I didn’t even have room for it, but after all the talk, I sort of sort of wanted one. I suppose that’s the point. </p>
<p id="POXn7v">“Nobody needs an Instant Pot — there’s nothing that you can make that you need to survive that you can’t make without an Instant Pot, so it’s not a necessity. But it’s an aspirational item,” Goldberg said. “When the $100 Instant Pot becomes $60, it opens the floodgates.”</p>
<p id="I3kAhN">I didn’t end up buying one, and my life turned out just fine. Maybe Prime Day 2024.</p>
<p id="MJgVth"></p>
<p id="aMNCG2"><em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Every two weeks, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em>The Big Squeeze</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="NF25sR"><a href="http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter"><em>Sign up to get this column in your inbox</em></a>.</p>
<p id="fEmYHz"><em>Have ideas for a future column? Email </em><a href="mailto:emily.stewart@vox.com"><em>emily.stewart@vox.com</em></a>.</p>
<p id="xajYdf"><em><strong>Update July 11, 2023, 4:20 pm: </strong></em><em>This story was originally published on July 14, 2022, and has been updated for Prime Day 2023.</em></p>
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/7/14/23203964/amazon-prime-day-deals-capitalism-discountsEmily Stewart2023-06-29T07:50:00-04:002023-06-29T07:50:00-04:00Amazon, Walmart, and the price we pay for low prices
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<img alt="Amazon boxes and a Walmart sign with some dollar signs." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SD2IOA2eAJDZeAnYaaQ0EfE2i_k=/240x0:1680x1080/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72411867/V2_Vox_TheBigSqueeze_WalmartAmazon.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Amazon and Walmart are in a race to make everything cheaper, faster, and ... worse. | Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Amazon and Walmart are a little bit evil and make us a little bit evil, too. </p> <p id="4Zs24u"></p>
<p id="s17nTW">It’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/amazon" data-source="encore">Amazon</a>’s world, and we’re just living in it. Or Walmart’s. Or really, actually, both.</p>
<p id="yOWtdn">Many Americans like to think of themselves as conscientious consumers — as the types of people who shop their values, support small businesses, and generally try to do the right thing when they buy. We also all live in reality, where people are busy, our funds are limited, and convenience is really nice. Many of us <em>know </em>that buying shampoo at the local pharmacy would be the better option, but it’s 20 minutes away, and what if, once we get there, it’s locked up? So we place an order on Amazon and move on. We’re well aware we could go to any number of stores for a new bath mat and holiday decorations and back-to-school gear, but we also know we get them all at Walmart for less. We appreciate that; we just don’t appreciate thinking about how little they pay their employees.</p>
<p id="xdsP7o">Amazon and Walmart are fixtures of commerce in the United States today, retail behemoths that have a stronghold on what consumers buy, online and off. We have played a key role in helping them get there, often neglecting to weigh the trade-offs we make when we resort to them when we shop. </p>
<aside id="9WstXv"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_big_squeeze"}'></div></aside><p id="lWAqro">The two companies are fierce competitors, and the competition between them has led to a race to the bottom on pricing, speed, and ruthlessness in an effort for one to come out on top. Their rivalry — and its implications — is the topic of the recently released <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/winner-sells-all-jason-del-rey"><em>Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets</em></a><em> </em>by veteran business reporter (and my former Vox colleague) Jason Del Rey. </p>
<p id="auYKgb">I recently spoke with Del Rey about the grip Amazon and Walmart have on the American <a href="https://www.vox.com/economy" data-source="encore">economy</a>, the trade-offs they (and, ultimately, we) make for them to run their businesses, and what, if anything, poses a threat to these companies. We also got into how Amazon has managed to take over from Walmart as the Bad Guy in retail — even though nobody’s really a hero here. </p>
<p id="gf1oR1"><em>This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.</em></p>
<p id="JkUlJU"><strong>How much of a hold do Amazon and Walmart have on us, as consumers? Like, are there any legitimate competitors?</strong></p>
<p id="hnqweT">They have a huge hold on us. What Amazon has done over the years with Prime is a profound change that, by now, goes overlooked. It makes it so a lot of us feel like we can order one product at a time from this magic screen, and that it’s sustainable for business in this country and for the world that it will arrive that day or tomorrow. And that’s the way shopping is today. The effect of Amazon Prime on shopping habits just can’t be overstated enough. </p>
<p id="VufWFv">What Walmart’s done, and they’re not the only ones, is they’ve drilled home the idea that what we should value above all else is the lowest possible cost for a good. There are plenty of reasons why tens of millions of people base their shopping on that — they have no choice. But my fear is just within the rivalry that there’s a constant race to the bottom that might be good for each of us in the short term, but long-term poses a whole slew of problems. </p>
<p id="5McprZ"><strong>It feels to me that part of the story is that these two companies have sort of out-terribled each other over the years to try to compete, constantly undercutting one another and competitors to be faster and cheaper. Do you think that’s a fair assessment?</strong></p>
<p id="X1NSYh">Listen, I can understand how that can be the view, and there are many times in my reporting history on them that that’s how I felt. If I take a step back, I look at it with a little more nuance.</p>
<p id="3RGwyn">They have each had, at different times and to different levels, negative impacts on small businesses and working-class people in this country, and they deserve to continue to have scrutiny placed on them for that. It may very well take government intervention to quote-unquote “fix” some of those issues. Putting that aside, it’s hard for me to look at events like the pandemic and the role each of them played in different ways in helping large masses of people get by on a day-to-day basis and think it’s all bad.</p>
<p id="7Y9kLP">Now, why were they in that position to be almost utilities in the first place? A lot of competition has gone away over the years. Is that government’s fault? Do we wish there were better people leading these companies that took a different path? There are a bunch of different answers.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="YfcyA2"><q>“They have played the role of doing what this country has rewarded big corporations for doing in the last few decades, and that’s showing growth at all costs”</q></aside></div>
<p id="DsoYdu">They have played the role of doing what this country has rewarded big corporations for doing in the last few decades, and that’s showing growth at all costs. Everything else is an afterthought. </p>
<p id="ThIRrU"><strong>Is it possible to compete with Amazon and Walmart in the current landscape?</strong></p>
<p id="ewyqcY">If you’re going head-on at them in industries or categories that are core to their business, it has been very difficult to compete with them at scale. You can carve off customers on the fringes, but if you’re talking about building a multibillion-dollar business doing something that they do well or they care about, it has been next to impossible. There are a few exceptions. I think about Chewy in the pet product category. I don’t know what Chewy’s market cap is today, but it’s a considerable-sized business that has found success. </p>
<p id="imwfID">In decades past, if you went head-to-head, Amazon and Walmart were going to eventually crush you or buy you. </p>
<p id="uxpqeH"><strong>So really, really hard to try to compete, even with </strong><a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22836368/amazon-antitrust-ftc-marketplace"><strong>possible antitrust action</strong></a><strong> from government regulators swirling around them?</strong></p>
<p id="RHVveD">In the future, I think a lot of it will depend on whether there is some type of government intervention. I’m mainly talking about Amazon here, because the days of Walmart being at risk of any antitrust scrutiny feel like they’re gone — much to the frustration of Amazon leadership.</p>
<p id="BNk6rv">They have both failed a decent amount when it comes to them trying to enter a new space that has successful incumbents.</p>
<p id="WeBkRt"><strong>Like what?</strong></p>
<p id="vgFgA4">Health care is one space they’ve both had challenges in. Amazon’s trying to buy their way in with their <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/22/amazon-closes-deal-to-buy-primary-care-provider-one-medical.html">acquisition of One Medical</a> [a primary care provider]. </p>
<p id="N8mxlr">Amazon’s physical retail initiatives, including buying Whole Foods, have largely been, for them, huge disappointments. When I talk to former Amazonians, as they call themselves, they think of themselves as technologists. They just get bored as hell working on physical retail, and I think that showed.</p>
<p id="9P0DIW"><strong>So maybe you can compete with them in things that they’re bad at, or at something else in the future we don’t see yet.</strong></p>
<p id="sfdtAW">You can look at the apparel and accessories space, companies like <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22573682/shein-future-of-fast-fashion-explained">Shein</a> and Temu; those companies are growing very quickly and have extremely low prices. I’m sure Amazon’s paying attention as they once did <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/6/17/18679107/wish-shopping-app">with Wish.com</a>, but I’m skeptical about the long-term sustainability of those businesses and those models. </p>
<p id="U6xj6N">I hope there’s a company that doesn’t exist today or isn’t getting attention, and in 10, 20 years from now, we are talking about them in this space. Walmart and Amazon are just so entrenched, especially in their combined size in online retail. Even with the slowdown in the last year or two, it’s hard to see real threats to them — unless it’s a company coming from a different angle, maybe a Shopify in software or a <a href="https://www.vox.com/tiktok" data-source="encore">TikTok</a>. </p>
<p id="s413jS"><strong>Walmart was the original Big Bad in terms of taking out competitors, killing off local retailers, underpaying workers, etc. And then Amazon came along and their positions kind of shifted, at least reputationally. What’s changed?</strong></p>
<p id="lgEIjv">In the early 2000s, Walmart leadership, including their CEO, essentially made nice with some of their biggest critics — on the environmental front, with critical journalists. It was self-serving, yes, but they went out and took the time to actually meet with and listen to critics, and I think that actually worked for them. Whether that was them really changing their business for moral or good reasons at the time, undertaking some environmental or green initiatives, or whether it was all about PR, it kind of worked. </p>
<p id="B1WFGo">Amazon has never accepted or had the self-awareness of “maybe these people who say bad things about us have a point.” Folks who have been at the company in recent years talk about this extreme lack of self-awareness that they’re not just a startup out to do good anymore and that when they make decisions, whether it’s labor decisions or partner decisions with the small businesses that sell on their marketplace, these tiny tweaks have massive impacts. All the way up to the top of the company, they have a hard time accepting criticism. They are largely thin-skinned and think they’re misunderstood. It definitely has an effect in Washington, DC, and it makes a lot of critics dig in their heels. </p>
<p id="YVTMeZ"><strong>So Amazon’s just kind of bad at the PR part at this point?</strong></p>
<p id="WmNpK9">Amazon is Walmart 2.0 or 3.0. Walmart, on the fringes, has made some changes to better satisfy some critics, but at their core, there’s a lot of similar, justified criticisms of them that Amazon mostly takes the brunt of.</p>
<p id="hp0XCz">One big difference, as smart Amazon critics lay out, is Amazon is doing so much in so many different ways across the internet, essentially laying the pipes and then putting up the tollbooth so that their power feels much more dangerous and harder to break. I think that’s why you see in DC and in antitrust circles the infrastructure they’re trying to control from AWS [Amazon Web Services, their cloud computing service] to the advertising platform to all the other fees they charge to their partners. It makes them seem like a different type of danger to competition.</p>
<p id="qSBu8E">Having <a href="https://www.vox.com/jeff-bezos" data-source="encore">Jeff Bezos</a> as the world’s richest man for a long time only hurt them as well, which is ironic when you consider what the Walton family’s combined wealth is. </p>
<p id="WFVRHC">I wouldn’t understate or undersell how much Jeff Bezos putting himself into <a href="https://www.vox.com/media" data-source="encore">the media</a> over the last three or four years has hurt the company in that it has brought more overall attention to him and his wealth.</p>
<p id="uaBZ25">I’m sure [Amazon CEO] <a href="https://www.vox.com/andy-jassy" data-source="encore">Andy Jassy</a> would love to sit down with you and make the case that Walmart should get a lot more scrutiny. But it does feel, despite their longstanding <a href="https://www.vox.com/unions" data-source="encore">union</a> beliefs, like they’ve escaped their darkest days of criticisms. I wouldn’t say they’re beloved, but they’re not viewed as poorly as Amazon is in some circles. </p>
<p id="nbbLRi"><strong>Right. Walmart is no longer the boogeyman. </strong></p>
<p id="SO6k22">One more thing: There are a lot of people who have issues with Amazon, but I’m no longer surprised how many people do love the company, or love the service. I don’t know if your readers do, or I think a lot of them won’t admit it, but they do. </p>
<p id="dPSCk8"><strong>Well, that’s always the thing. You see the media and certain critics saying everybody hates Big Tech, Amazon’s evil. And then you look at brand favorability, and Amazon is one of the most popular brands in the country. It’s a good service. </strong></p>
<p id="9G3801">I think it’s gotten worse, but yeah. </p>
<p id="b7cXg2"><strong>How do you think about some of the trade-offs both of these companies make — and have consumers make — in order to get people stuff fast and at super-low prices? What does that mean for how they pay and treat their employees so consumers can have low-priced convenience?</strong></p>
<p id="OZW0dy">There are some really shitty trade-offs. I used to think each of us is to blame for those trade-offs, and I kind of feel that way sometimes, but there are all these reasons why these companies were allowed to become as entrenched and as hard to compete with as they are. Is it the average person’s fault, day to day, doing what they think is the most convenient thing for their lives? </p>
<p id="p8gChV">In our house, we are customers of Amazon, of Walmart, of Target and Trader Joe’s and the local coffee shops and restaurants. On a personal level, we try to think about whether we actually need that thing the next day or two days later. Sometimes, it feels like yes, and we’ll still place that order with that service. We’ve gotten better about taking other paths when we don’t. But these companies have convinced us that we need everything within one or two days. </p>
<p id="ZGCaT4">Jet.com, an e-commerce company that briefly existed as an independent company [before being acquired by Walmart], had this idea that they would kick you back some savings if you waited a little longer. That would take some costs out of the logistics part of the business, and oh, by the way, maybe that’s a little better for employees and the environment, too. I wanted to believe all of that could work because it seemed the direction we were heading was a really bad one for everyone except the executives, but that model ended up not working for a variety of reasons.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="WTeODB"><q>“A lot of people are addicted to convenience”</q></aside></div>
<p id="a4POBp">I’m hopeful there’s a world where we can turn back the clock, but I think a lot of people are addicted to convenience and have convinced themselves it saves time that they use in better ways. Instead, we’re fucking scrolling TikTok.</p>
<p id="knJ7YA">We’re headed in a direction where there’s absolutely <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/27/23373588/amazon-warehouse-robots-manipulation-picker-stower">more automation</a> going into these businesses. Walmart and Amazon will make the argument that workers are not going away, we are making their lives and work better and taking away the worst work. But there are also really negative consequences when you add automation to the work, such as quotas for workers being increased. </p>
<p id="ZkQckx">I’m really hoping there are entrepreneurs out there who can somehow convince us that we don’t need things the same day or the next day, or there’s a sustainable business model to really make a go at a new type of service. It may be just too late, which is dark and depressing. </p>
<p id="Jwy931"><strong>Once these companies offer one-day shipping or two-day shipping or whatever, doesn’t everybody else have to in order to even try to compete or keep up? </strong></p>
<p id="6U9cFX">The ripple effects of everyone else following them are real. For someone to choose a different path or a different way, it has to be a very, very young company that is sort of naive and has nothing to lose because they only have three employees. That seems, to me, to be just about it.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="8zl0gW"><q>“What you do with Amazon is actually not shopping it’s buying”</q></aside></div>
<p id="HQSVVh">What you do with Amazon is actually not shopping; it’s buying. Largely, it’s a very transactional relationship that people have with it. Every so often, there’s an Amazon dress or Amazon whatever, but usually, you’re being sent to the site for some very specific reason. You’re transacting, you’re fulfilling some desire or need. But the idea that you’re browsing or enjoying yourself or window shopping or getting some kind of entertainment value is something they’ve been terrible at. And they’ve tried for years. They’re best at selling stuff that lends itself to transactions and not shopping. </p>
<p id="h08C2i">Is there a competitor that upends them by taking the shopping approach? I don’t know. When the stuff we buy most frequently, like groceries or consumer goods or clothing basics, is stuff you don’t need to do much browsing to feel good about your buying decision. </p>
<p id="XWyg19"><strong>I’ve never thought about it, but it does feel like every time it’s the holiday season I wind up on Amazon looking for stuff to buy and within two minutes am like okay, this is pointless, I can’t do anything, and log off. </strong></p>
<p id="gzONIG">The site is not a fun one to move around on, and it doesn’t look all that different from 15 years ago, but they still feel so entrenched that it’s reflex or comfort just to turn to them. </p>
<p id="xwDmzr"><strong>If we think that Amazon and Walmart do have too much control, what’s the biggest threat to them? Unions? Government regulation? Is there a threat at all?</strong></p>
<p id="P3gbkH">On the Amazon side, they are at this inflection point with layoffs and cost-cutting and a pullback in some areas where they were heavily investing, such as Alexa. Morale is not good there. It feels, in some corners, like a boring, mature company. One big risk to them is bigness and moving slower than they have in their early years, when really their biggest advantage was speed. They were able to roll stuff out and test it for a variety of reasons. Wall Street gave them a long leash, so they didn’t have to worry about profitability. Their bigness is a threat. </p>
<p id="3GNwis">On unionization, I’m more skeptical today than I was a year ago that there’s a real, sustainable drive that’s going to make a difference in working conditions there. Maybe if the Teamsters make up more ground than they have to date, they could make a difference, but I’m skeptical of that. </p>
<p id="jbMCv3">I, like a lot of people, am waiting for this long-rumored FTC antitrust lawsuit to drop [separate from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/6/21/23768370/ftc-amazon-prime-dark-patterns">Prime cancellation lawsuit</a> that the Federal Trade Commission recently filed], and that could have an impact. But it also could be a five- to seven-year process. How much ground they gain in five to seven years as a technology company of their size, I don’t know; it in some ways seems like a hopeless fight. I look at Amazon and think the biggest threat to themselves today really is themselves. </p>
<p id="VLMNJe">With Walmart, it has taken so much effort and time for them to get to a place where their online services are not awful. They are more committed than they have ever been to try to meet shoppers where they want to be met, when they want to be met, with the products they want to buy, but man, it’s taken a long time and a lot of money. The CEO told me it’s gotten better, but he’s still dissatisfied.</p>
<p id="R0fYLf">There was a time where Amazon was a real existential threat to Walmart because of how much Walmart was ignoring them, but now it just feels like perhaps they’ll stay in this position of a much smaller number two in e-commerce and kind of be content with that.</p>
<p id="qT3AyH">Walmart stores, especially as they try to convert them, finally, into mini warehouses and <a href="https://www.vox.com/robots" data-source="encore">robot</a> headquarters, are not going away. That’s still where so much of their business is done that they’re going to do okay for themselves for a while. </p>
<p id="rZwT9S"><strong>So, for now, we’re just stuck with Amazon and Walmart and being a little complicit in the meantime?</strong></p>
<p id="8zpkF9">These are complicated companies with complicated impacts. I’d love to say there’s a world where someone upends them because they are big and bad and do a lot of harmful things to partners and employees, but I’ve accepted that they’re not going anywhere and we’ve got to make do with them and then hope on the fringes competitors can gnaw away. Maybe, if they are in fact breaking the law, they can be forced to change the way they do business, but I’m not holding out much hope on any of that.</p>
<p id="5G5qzT"><em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Every two weeks, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em>The Big Squeeze</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p id="NF25sR"><a href="http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter"><em>Sign up to get this column in your inbox</em></a>.</p>
<p id="fEmYHz"><em>Have ideas for a future column or thoughts on this one? Email </em><a href="mailto:emily.stewart@vox.com"><em>emily.stewart@vox.com</em></a>.</p>
https://www.vox.com/money/23771693/amazon-walmart-ecommerce-shopping-antitrust-jason-del-reyEmily Stewart2023-06-15T07:50:00-04:002023-06-15T07:50:00-04:00Who’s making money on the anti-woke, anti-trans backlash?
<figure>
<img alt="A flattened Bud Light box is posted up on a wooden sign with a spray painted circle-backslash symbol atop." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2s93lCVdbejTw_lOleVrW9NB9zg=/0x0:1707x1280/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72372286/Vox_PaigeVickers_AntiWokeDollars.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>It’s tough to figure out where it’s safe to buy if you hate Target and Bud Light. | Natalie Behring; Getty Images/Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Turns out, shopping when you’re trying to boycott everything is hard.</p> <p id="xs5uAe">If you are a conservative consumer in America right now, shopping is getting weird. You’re not supposed to drink <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/2023/4/12/23680135/bud-light-boycott-dylan-mulvaney-travis-tritt-trans">Bud Light</a> or shop at <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/25/23737338/target-abprallen-pride-boycott-bud-light-trans-controversy-stock-price">Target</a> or eat at <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/31/23742373/chick-fil-a-boycott-controversy-conservative-backlash">Chick-fil-A</a> or watch <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/5/22/23732777/fox-news-trans-bud-light-employee-handbook">Fox News</a>. It’s Pride month, meaning <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/6/25/17476850/pride-month-lgbtq-corporate-explained">all the companies have gone gay</a> again, despite you <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/5/28/23740489/pride-anti-lgbtq-sentiment-laws-desantis-sanders">trying to make clear</a> that you’d really rather they not. Maybe you’ve signed up for <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/04/14/conservatives-plot-text-warning-woke-products">alerts</a> to start getting warnings about allegedly “<a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy" data-source="encore">woke</a>” businesses, and the list of brands there is getting long — Nike, Adidas, Speedo, Lululemon, the LA Dodgers. The alerts also say Bank of America is bad, and some guy on <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeyMannarinoUS/status/1663895742455373832">Twitter</a> has included Citi in a list of companies you’re supposed to avoid for the month of June, meaning you need to ... I guess change your bank account?</p>
<p id="hhzTZX">Boycotting companies that don’t align with your politics is exhausting, which is why most people don’t, at least not for a sustained amount of time. It’s hard enough to exist in the world without worrying whether every purchase you make matches up with your personal views and values. But in recent months, the push for conservative consumers to vote with their dollars — or, rather, downvote by withholding their dollars — has been rampant. </p>
<p id="6ZeQ7z">“The number of boycotts is vast, and we’re talking about inconveniencing people at a level that doesn’t make any sense,” said Maurice Schweitzer, a Wharton professor who focuses on behavioral decision research, emotion, and negotiations.</p>
<aside id="CObx8V"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"vox_big_squeeze"}'></div></aside><p id="U2hA0O">If you do want to avoid certain companies, or, in the current context, a lot of companies, it can also be tough to find alternatives. Say you did give up Bud Light. You might not realize the beer you swapped for is also owned by Anheuser-Busch, or you picked up some Miller Lite, which <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/2023/5/16/23725262/miller-lite-woke-ad-shit-ilana-glazer-bud-light-boycott">you might be upset to learn is also now a no-no</a>. </p>
<p id="ZjiCmb">All that said, there is money to be made on being anti-woke, or some people believe there is. </p>
<p id="c4Kmbg">There’s a reason right-wing <a href="https://memo.co/blog/bud-lights-crisis-explored/">media outlets</a> and commentators are seizing on <a href="https://www.vox.com/lgbtq" data-source="encore">trans</a> issues and Pride month — it generates outrage, which generates traffic and subscriptions, which, these outfits hope, generates money. There are <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22412478/coffee-partisan-right-wing-conservative-grounds-black-rifle">plenty of niche businesses out there</a> that tout conservative bona fides, from coffee to <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/conservative-etf-american-values-exchange-traded-fund-liberal-flaig-ridgeline-2021-4-1030359673">investment products</a>. There are what appear to be somewhat sincere efforts that offer right-wing options for <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/upstart-money-manager-gets-billionaires-to-back-the-anti-blackrock-11652134919?mod=article_inline">banking and e-commerce</a>, which have seen <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/11/22/glorifi-bank-shuts-down/">varying degrees of success</a>. Among all the offerings, there are some common themes: American-made, small business, traditional values.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="njzpfy"><q>“Is this a fad, or is this a business?”</q></aside></div>
<p id="NwFGYV">“There are a lot of companies that are making products that are geared toward conservative consumers. It’s becoming a whole market,” said Howard Polskin, president and chief curator at TheRighting, a website that aggregates stories from right-wing media. “Now, how big is that? I have no idea. Is this a fad, or is this a business? That’s the question.”</p>
<p id="cGHo4V">The cynical view here is that a handful of people are trying to capitalize on conservative outrage to try to make a quick buck. A less cynical view is that this is an earnest effort to create a sort of shopping safe space for conservatives. If the latter is the case — and that’s a big if — setting up an entire parallel economy might be, you know, a little hard.</p>
<h3 id="Q2rbxS">A six-pack of beer should not cost $30 no matter how mad you are at Bud Light</h3>
<p id="3LLIGw">Assuming you’ve heard about the <a href="https://www.vox.com/money/2023/4/12/23680135/bud-light-boycott-dylan-mulvaney-travis-tritt-trans">Bud Light thing</a> (it sent some beers to a trans influencer in April and conservatives had a bit of a meltdown), you have perhaps heard of “<a href="https://ultrarightbeer.com/products/conservative-dads-ultra-right-beer">Ultra Right</a>” beer. Being marketed as “100% Woke-Free American Beer” by <a href="https://twitter.com/sethweathers">a guy who goes by Conservative Dad</a>, this beer is expensive. It’s $19.99 for a six-pack plus shipping, which, in my case when I ordered it on June 1, amounted to $31.55. I imagine <a href="https://twitter.com/sethweathers/status/1666168022405349377?s=20">I will get this beer eventually</a>, but I’m going to have to wait because it won’t ship for about 30 days. Ultra Right has had a hard time getting up and running, it appears, and <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/debug/bent-river-brewing-denies-making-ultra-right-beer/">was dropped from its first brewery</a>. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="Xq75Ix"><q>What beer drinker wants to spend $30 on a six-pack that they can get in the mail in a month?</q></aside></div>
<p id="dNpiLR">Conservative Dad, whose actual name is Seth Weathers, is probably making money off of this endeavor — once you click to buy the $20 beer, his website also prompts you to buy other stuff, like a T-shirt and a cup. But it’s hard to look at this and think this is a serious operation. What beer drinker wants to spend $30 on a six-pack that they can get in the mail in a month?</p>
<p id="rMBHiO">When reached by Vox for comment about this story, Weathers responded, “I see our beer has angered the commies. Thoughts and prayers!”</p>
<p id="3xdLPL">There are all sorts of examples of anti-woke businesses and products. Some of them appear to be <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/anti-woke-chocolate-razor-daily-wire-1234741151/">little more than an (often overpriced) ploy</a> to separate hyped-up right-leaning consumers from their money, from <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22412478/coffee-partisan-right-wing-conservative-grounds-black-rifle">coffee brands</a> to <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/12/19/conservative-dating-app-helps-singles-avoid-the-biggest-deal-breaker/">dating apps</a> to <a href="https://www.jeremysrazors.com/products/jeremys-chocolate">chocolate bars</a> that cost $25 for a pack of four. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><div id="ALxQla"><div data-anthem-component="aside:11927773"></div></div></div>
<p id="Zr7NmM">“They’re novelty items,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a media watchdog group. “You can probably sell some products, but that’s not changing the industry.”</p>
<p id="nVDSjC">In the investment realm, where conservatives <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2022/12/10/23496712/esg-gop-climate-corporate-responsibility">have been irked</a> by the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22714761/esg-investing-divestment-fossil-fuels-climate-401k">rise of ESG</a> — meaning investments that consider environmental, social, and governance factors — there are options that try to give those people a place to go. You’ve got exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, which are basically baskets of <a href="https://www.vox.com/stock-market" data-source="encore">stocks</a>, that are supposed to appeal to the right, such as the God Bless America ETF (YALL), the American Conservative Values ETF (ACVF), and ETFs from <a href="https://www.strivefunds.com/">Strive</a>, a firm co-founded by <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/2/23/23611828/2024-republican-presidential-candidates-trump-christie-burgum">now-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy</a>. </p>
<p id="jYBZW5">They’ve all got their own sort of shtick. YALL <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1742912/000138713122009963/yall-497k_092322.htm">says</a> it screens out companies that “have emphasized politically left and/or liberal political activism and social agendas at the expense of maximizing shareholder returns.” It’s got about 40 holdings, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/YALL:US?sref=qYiz2hd0">the largest being</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/tesla" data-source="encore">Tesla</a>, Charles Schwab, and Nvidia. </p>
<p id="ZzOMDA">ACVF says it excludes companies “perceived to be most hostile to conservative values” and <a href="https://acvetfs.com/downloads/ACVF_Factsheet-Mar2023.pdf">has upward of 300 holdings</a>; its performance largely mirrors that of the overall market. It <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/acvf-hits-target-corp-divesting-173000162.html">made noise</a> amid the Target Pride backlash after it announced it was adding the company to its “refuse to buy” list of stocks. Strive is a little different — it basically says it will only focus on shareholder value when casting shareholder votes for the companies its ETFs invests in, no environmental or social funny stuff. </p>
<p id="Urr5vL">These ETFs perform decent-ish, said Eric Balchunas, a Bloomberg analyst who covers ETFs. But they’re expensive compared to non-anti-woke products, which may explain why they’ve only managed to garner a middling amount of assets under management. “This is a tough area because generally, people, when they invest, they leave their politics at the door and just want to make money. This is going to appeal to a niche audience,” he said. “None of these anti-woke ones are really low-cost at all.”</p>
<p id="6ETYU0">Anti-woke in <a href="https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance" data-source="encore">finance</a> is a little tough. Just look at GloriFi, a bank backed by big names such as Ken Griffin and <a href="https://www.vox.com/peter-thiel" data-source="encore">Peter Thiel,</a> which was supposed to be an answer to an overly liberal Wall Street. The operation <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/glorifi-how-new-anti-woke-bank-stumbled-11665174704?mod=article_inline">turned out to be a disaster</a>, and the bank <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/anti-woke-bank-glorifi-to-shut-down-11669051554">quickly shut down</a>. </p>
<h3 id="T94Dnh">An alternative to Target: Possible? But very hard. </h3>
<p id="rw3Cku">One of the issues with boycotting is that it can be hard to figure out where else to go. Some close competitors may get a boost when a corporation sticks its neck out and gets pushback — Coors Light and Miller Lite <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/bud-light-beer-coors-miller-81443892">have benefited</a> from the Bud Light debacle. But those companies aren’t specifically anti-woke, they’re just companies. Setting up an anti-woke alternative is not easy. Take Target, which conservatives <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/25/23737338/target-abprallen-pride-boycott-bud-light-trans-controversy-stock-price">have taken aim at</a> over its annual LGBTQ Pride month collection, causing the company to pull some items and, in certain cases, move Pride merchandise to the back of stores.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="rWLHdO"><q>“You’re not going to be able to pop up overnight and create an alternative Target company”</q></aside></div>
<p id="JC8k8r">“It depends on what the product is and whether there’s an obvious alternative to that product,” said Kyle Williams, a historian and the author of the upcoming book <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/taming-the-octopus-the-long-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-corporation-kyle-edward-williams/20059948?ean=9780393867237"><em>Taming the Octopus: The Century-Long Battle over the Soul of the Corporation</em></a>. “You’re not going to be able to pop up overnight and create an alternative Target company.”</p>
<p id="Nte9I8">That doesn’t mean there aren’t efforts underway. Enter <a href="https://publicsq.com/">PublicSq</a>, an online marketplace for “freedom-loving Americans” that’s about to become part of a public company through a SPAC deal with a company called Colombier Acquisition Corp. (SPACs are a type of investment vehicle that were really hot a couple of years ago — <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22303457/spacs-explained-stock-market-ipo-draftkings">Vox has an explainer on them here</a>. They haven’t generally <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacs-delivered-easy-money-but-now-companies-are-running-out-f086c255">fared so well</a>.) PublicSq <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12166255/Anti-woke-marketplace-reveals-DOUBLED-number-users-Bud-Light-boycott-began.html">says it has seen</a> a lot of user growth recently, including in the wake of the Target backlash. “Any time Target pulls a Target, it’s kind of a reminder for our consumers of, ‘Hey, there’s maybe some other options out there that we should pursue,’” PublicSq CEO Michael Seifert <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/31/anti-woke-movement-spac-investment-publicsq-target">recently told Axios</a>.</p>
<p id="XP1bP6">It’s not clear how much of that user growth is translating to sales — you can’t actually buy much on the site right now, it just directs you to each seller’s website. (PublicSq <a href="https://www.colombierspac.com/sec-filings##document-264-0001213900-23-045973-3">says</a> it will release an e-commerce platform later this year.) The web platform and app are clunky, and the product offering leaves much to be desired. About 10 products are listed in its “Ditch Target 2.0” section, including “smelly proof” reusable sandwich bags, a set of forks and spoons for toddlers, and earth-friendly “Bumroll” toilet paper. </p>
<p id="UcbUtZ">Could PublicSq wind up being <a href="https://www.vox.com/amazon" data-source="encore">Amazon</a> for the GOP? I mean, sure. It’s still early days, and building a giant e-commerce operation takes time. It could also go the way of MyStore, set up by <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/8/19/21375208/mypillow-oleandrin-mike-lindell-trump-corona">the MyPillow guy</a>, which doesn’t appear to be a runaway success. It also has competitors in the space who are doing ... something, such as <a href="https://mammothnation.com/">Mammoth Nation</a>, which lets you pay to be a member to then “shop your values” and says it donates that money somewhere. There are <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Great-Patriot-BUY-cott-Book-Conservative/dp/099173372X">books</a> that tell conservatives where it’s safe to buy and invest, too.</p>
<h3 id="ymaIyY">It probably pays to be Mad and Loud Online</h3>
<p id="u3B9Nd">Perhaps the real winners here are in the attention economy. </p>
<p id="et22yV">It’s not entirely clear where, if anywhere, conservative consumers are able to turn for the majority of their commerce needs amid the current Pride month-induced boycott mania or at any time, really. For their content needs, they are able to turn to right-wing influencers and outlets, which are fighting for readers and listeners and, likely, making some money off of all of the rage. </p>
<p id="KDz6jD">The Bud Light drama did gangbusters traffic in right-wing media, according to a <a href="https://info.memo.co/hubfs/Marketing%20Files%20-%20Reports/Bud%20Light%20Crisis%20Report.pdf">recent report from Memo</a>, a media tracking and insights company. Nearly seven times as many readers of right-leaning outlets read content about the controversy compared to readers of left-leaning outlets, and right-leaning outlets have continued to lean in. “Those publishers are getting tremendous traffic from this,” said Eddie Kim, Memo’s CEO and founder. “When a story lands and you see it working, there’s an inclination to write more of those stories because you have a lot of domain authority and SEO value. That drives readership, and that fuels the story.” Kim is also on the board of directors at Colombier, the firm trying to merge with PublicSq. </p>
<p id="lVPMfz">Carusone, from Media Matters, said that conservative media is in the midst of a bit of a land grab over eyeballs in the wake of radio commentator <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22287675/rush-limbaugh-dies-obituary">Rush Limbaugh’s death</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/25/23698083/tucker-carlson-fired-theory-fox-news-peter-kafka-media-column">Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s firing</a>. So if the anti-woke, anti-Pride stuff gets clicks, that’s an incentive. </p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="1LjIYL"><q>From the anger come the clicks and, eventually, the dollars</q></aside></div>
<p id="7ZwWl5">The Daily Wire, a media company founded by Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing, is really the “tip of the spear” here, he said, “because they have the mechanics in place to commercialize this faster.” They’ve launched gimmicky products, such as chocolate bars and razors, but they <a href="https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/daily-wire-100-million-kids-entertainment-disney-1235219678/">also say they’re putting together a $100 million fund</a> for children’s programming to try to offer a counter to <a href="https://www.vox.com/disney" data-source="encore">Disney</a> over its <a href="https://www.vox.com/23036009/disney-culture-war-desantis-florida-dont-say-gay">opposition</a> to Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill. The Daily Wire didn’t respond to requests for comment from Vox. </p>
<p id="2sBkWY">The Daily Wire is also streaming <em>What is a Woman?</em>, a film about the “logic behind a gender ideology movement that has taken aim at women and children.” It stars Matt Walsh, an influential anti-trans commentator who podcasts and blogs for the platform. Walsh has also been vocal in <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1661438131365707798?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">the right’s boycott strategy</a>, advising his fellow conservatives to “pick a few strategic targets” and “make them pay dearly.” </p>
<p id="OTgHx0">That’s not what’s happening; the right appears to be in boycott-everything mode. With it being Pride month and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/6/25/17476850/pride-month-lgbtq-corporate-explained">the way corporations are about Pride</a>, conservatives have a rainbow to freak out about at every corner. Maybe that’s a bit of the point, at least on the part of the people stoking the flames.</p>
<p id="SOBB59">“The current monetization strategy is conversions, it’s getting all these monthly subscriptions, so the way you do that is having these breakout moments in the best way you can,” Carusone said. “There’s basically a race for subscriptions, and the way you get subscriptions in this model is through these types of high-valence, emotionally charged calls to action that you can then dominate.”</p>
<p id="v0nrjU">From the anger come the clicks and, eventually, the dollars. </p>
<p id="5G5qzT"><em>We live in a world that’s constantly trying to sucker us and trick us, where we’re always surrounded by scams big and small. It can feel impossible to navigate. Every two weeks, join Emily Stewart to look at all the little ways our economic systems control and manipulate the average person. Welcome to </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-squeeze"><em>The Big Squeeze</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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https://www.vox.com/money/23755227/target-bud-light-pride-conservative-boycott-anti-woke-lgbtEmily Stewart