Grand theft in Florida starts at $300? Is that the line for a felony? It's $2,000 here.
That is a really good article - well-written, well-researched, good descriptions of the method and all the things they looked at to explain the difference (Walmart has later opening hours? nope, most of the calls are during normal opening hours).
I was interested to read the mention of the Indiana sheriff who decided to start charging Walmart for each small shoplifting call. Good for him.
I suppose another alternative would be for the police to work to rule and massively over-react to every callout; close down the store for the rest of the day because it's a crime scene, detain and take statements from every customer and employee, etc etc.
After what happened in Ohio last year, I'm opposed to police overreactions in Walmarts.
2.1 exactly. You could use it as a model for critical thinking in Phil 101.
What struck me was the blatant parasitism: your business model demands both minimal security and extreme sensitivity to shoplifting. Only one way that gap gets filled.
. Cops are called in routinely for things like shoplifting a toothbrush, it sound like.
That's good to know. I'll have to start shoplifting my toothbrushes elsewhere.
This was my very, very favorite joke when I was a kid:
A man is selling toothbrushes. Everyone walks by, he asks them if they want to buy one, and they all say no. He's not having any luck selling toothbrushes.
Finally, he gets some chips and dip, and puts it in front of his stand. A customer comes by, takes one and eats it, and exclaims, "This stuff tastes like shit!"
"It is shit!" says the salesman, "Wanna buy a toothbrush?"
He should try to sell mouthwash instead.
Also, was the chip shit or the dip or both?
And why didn't the guy smell the shit? Was there also cilantro?
It actually wasn't shit, but old decomposing regular old bean dip that had been placed over a bowl of shit, which only wafted up periodically to coincide with the eating of the chip. He didn't actually want to get sued.
I don't understand retail or Florida.
I was in Bentonville last weekend. They have a nice art museum. Otherwise it is all gated communities and traffic-jammed stroads as far as I could tell. Weird cult/company town hybrid.
4
Yeah, blatant parasitism is their basic model. IIRC at least at one store they were teaching their FT employees how to sign up for government benefits.
They also demand such low prices on the supply side that they basically force labor exploitation in their factories.
13: My first title was 'Walmart, highest stage of capitalism', but thought that was too on the nose. Maybe not.
My mom once told the joke in 6 at our family dinner table. The first and only time I've ever heard her use the word 'shit.'
Also, chips and bean dip must be the Texas version. In the northeast, it was a shit cookie.
10 days in jail for stealing a 98-cent bottle of sweet tea? That's rough.
Sweet tea is the worst. If you go south, always ask for unsweet tea.
19: So if you were the judge his punishment would have been to be forced to drink the sweet tea. Wise!
18: Where we're going, we don't need stroads.
Ah, one of these:
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/01/dangerous-street-design-spreading-through-suburbs/8033/
I'm curious what gswift says on the OP. But I think he's off hunting grizzlies or something.
While the article's interesting, thought-provoking, well-researched and well-written, the code of it is awful. A news website shouldn't peg my processor because they're trying to implement that scrolling image design so popular for long-form now.
I'm thinking of going camping this weekend. Last night I was practicing how to tie guylines.
25 pisses me off so much. I've blocked javscript on every news site I visit regularly.
Grizzlies only come out if you're man enough to face them.
Apparently, I should be learning how to hang food in a tree.
All you need is 40' of cord, a small bag, a big bag (for the food), a carabiner, and a small stick.
And the small bag and the carabiner are not absolutely necessary.
ALL A MAN NEEDS IS A GOOD RIFLE AND TWO BIG BALLS.
On topic because the bears are basically shoplifting.
Anyway, it's odd that they compare the Walmarts and Targets by square footage and not number of customers. And I feel like they're straddling the line between blaming Walmart for insufficient security and blaming poor people for being poor. Should retail be unavailable to poorer or high crime neighborhoods because it becomes a burden to police? Saying that Walmart generates less tax revenue than Comparatively Ritzy Mall (and so presumably should be seen as more of a burden on the state, given its tax/policing ratio?) is weird, too.
peg my processor because they're trying to implement that scrolling image design so popular for long-form now.
There's definitely something wrong with that site, but it's not the scrolling; you can do that with plain html and css.
36: You can also peg processors with plain html and css. Try having fun with some of the 3D transformation styles sometime.
Without looking at the code, my guesses are: those green terminal-looking infographics are some horribly implemented Flash or HTML 5,and to get the dropshadow on the headlines when you can see pictures they did something stupid. I noticed that my CPU usage went up when either of those elements were visible and went down rapidly when it was only text
35: I know the area around the Indiana Walmart in question well and it's not a high-crime neighborhood. The local Target is in a comparable location (each near a different interstate exit) with a Kmart I've never been to between them. Obviously who's being, um, targeted to shop at the stores is an important issue.
35.1: I wondered about that. How different are Targets from Walmarts, by customer volume?
Walmart customers look like they have more volume, but that's a really rude way to look at it.
Yeah, it's an important issue. If Walmart disappeared it's not like they wouldn't shop somewhere else. So we need to separate how much of this is Walmart targeting low income shoppers--who presumably have a higher incidence of shoplifting petty goods--from Walmart having insufficient security procedures, and even to what degree that's an obligation they hold. While it's hard to find sympathy for Walmart, they don't make the rules on police calls and the Indiana example shows the rules can be changed.
As for the scrolling, whatever's making it slow when scrolling over the pictures is incompetent html/css; I pulled out a profiler and only negligible Javascript is running at that time. That doesn't explain what was taking so much CPU, though.
What also got me was this:
In Port Richey, population 2,700, the department's handful of patrol officers fielded more than 450 calls in a year from the one Walmart in its jurisdiction, nearly three times as many as their next busiest commercial location, a WaWa gas station. Those calls led to about 200 arrests.
I would expect a Walmart to have way more than three times the calls of a gas station, even one that experiences a lot of crime. Or at least I think that's well in line with the utility to an area a Walmart can give relative to a gas station.
(More importantly: there are WaWas in Florida! What gives? I thought there weren't any more than a hundred miles away from Philly.)
I've never been to a WaWa, but I've heard good things.
How actually different are prices at Target and Walmart? I read that Walmart has 1/3 lower prices than competition, 1/3 same prices, and 1/3 higher prices. They lure you in with the loss leaders and then hope you don't ruthlessly comparison shop.
I've never been to a Walmart, and sporadically shop at Target, so I'm not an expert* but I'm wondering how different the customer base is, really. I get Target aggressively markets to a more middle class customer, but IME Target seems to attract a variety of SES customers.
*I've only ever been to a Walmart in China, and there it was reasonably upscale, at least slightly nicer than Carrafour, which is where I did a lot of my shopping. Then when I lived in rural China, I did did a decent amount of shopping at a pretty downmarket variety store whose tagline was "the store of The People," which gave me warm fuzzy leftist vibes even though their products were kind of shoddy.
It seems like part of it comes down to, is it a violation of norms for a superstore to try to function with no or token private security, which is apparently Walmart's MO. A lot of the differential with, say, Targets, seems to be not SES but there being no first mode of response other than calling police.
I'm sure Walmart is being exploitative in some way, but private security raises its own issues, especially as an expectation.
I no English good today. I meant, to say, IME the Target I go to seems to attract customers from various socio-economic backgrounds, with a majority appearing to be more working/lower class.
I'm also wondering if we can actually assume a link between SES and shoplifting. Poor people shoplifting more feels like a "common sense" fact that is actually probably wrong.
#where'sasociologistwhenyouneedone?
Winona Ryder is who I think of when I think about shoplifting.
While it's hard to find sympathy for Walmart, they don't make the rules on police calls
They don't? I mean, surely they do on some level. The police may push back on the policy, but they have a policy.
46: That's my experience as well--Targets and Walmarts often have basically the same people shopping at each. I think it's a Coke/Pepsi distinction--basically the same--people join a team and stick with it.
48
Me too. Also my childhood friend who used to shoplift when we were 13 and is now addicted to meth. (She made local news a few years back for stealing packages off of people's porches.)
Toothbrushes are one of those items that are way more expensive than I think they should be. I understand why they're a big shoplifting item. #fighttheman
47 last: Dealing with shoplifting strikes me as not the best use of police resources. If private security can (nonabusively) deal with it I think they should. And I'm guessing private security will work out far cheaper overall.
43:Their coffee is good, as are their sandwiches, although their made-to-order system's UI is not as well done as Sheetz. They also have a better and more consistent supply of Tastykakes. Of course, outside of one business route in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania is very clearly divided into Sheetz and WaWa territory. (Speaking of which, the governor just tweeted that we'll be able to buy 6-packs in gas stations now. That's nice.)
45: I agree with your first point, although the part where the article went into Target's policies was a lot fuzzier. The article was clearly written as pro-private security and I did find that worrisome.
I'm finding it easy to get into this trap: my understanding is that Walmart establishes itself, via predatory loss-leaders, as a necessary part of the suburban/rural lower SES retail landscape. To maintain profitable at resulting low margins, they use their massive weight to bully everyone else they interact with into offloading costs on them. It's well known how they control supply chains. This article is making the case that offload their security needs on the public, but if these security needs have substantial internal cost, could *any* retailer--or collection of retailers, undoubtedly duplicating effort--continue to sell to lower SES people at acceptable prices?
If it's merely a matter of practice and Walmart does it in a dumb way, fine, they're freeloading. But if there are genuine costs that can't be born by what the target population can pay for retail goods, increase police services are increasing the ability of lower SES people to get retail.
So I honestly can't tell if that's a garbage argument or not--it's clearly arguing in Walmart's interests, which makes me iffy, and I'm making some assumptions that seem reasonable but are rather large.
Huh, I definitely see higher SES people at the Targets I go to than the Walmarts I end up at, but that's probably a factor of where I am when I go to them: the former in well-to-do parts of Pittsburgh and inner-ring suburbs, the latter usually in rural upstate New York (where there aren't any Targets). This should be quantifiable.
I was thinking that petty shoplifting, as opposed to stealing small but high value goods, would be more likely at lower SES, but again, I also have no proof of that. The implication that Target actually has a similar amount of incidents or potential incidents, but their effective store security either prevents them or handles them without law enforcement, seems off to me--surely there are more differences between Target and Walmart than just the presence of security.
Winona Ryder is who I think of when I think about shoplifting.
I think technically that would be kidnapping. WOMEN ARE NOT COMMODITIES MOBY.
I agree that the comparison between Walmart and Target is unfair, because Target markets to a more upscale demographic than Walmart. Target periodically sells limited editions of clothing designed by Jason Wu or Missoni or Tory Burch, which I think is not something that happens at Walmart. (I went to a Walmart once, in Seoul, because I was told that they sold the best fancy sweet-rice-and-sesame buns. The one in Seoul was just like a regular mid-range department store. Except that there were young, beautiful female greeters at the door, dressed up as anime characters and giving away samples of fizzy lemonade. I assume Walmarts here are not like that.)
On the other hand, I just read Sam Quinones' Dreamland (which I recommend), which claims that Walmart is a central part of the opiate economy in Ohio, because the lax security and the crowded layout of the stores makes it so easy to shoplift huge amounts of goods. So much so that pill sellers routinely accept lifted goods in exchange for Oxycontin, at a widely-understood rate of .5 mg Oxy per $1 of value on a Walmart price tag.
I assume Walmarts here are not like that.
If there are anime characters that look like elderly white men, then maybe.
Wal-Marts have private security, or at least some do. The one local to me does.
I'm curious what gswift says on the OP. But I think he's off
At work, I'll be around tonight. But yeah, Wal Marts near poor people and/or drug areas are a shit show of constant theft calls. Our problem Wal Mart now pays to have an off duty cop there from noon till midnight, and still there's a lot of thefts even with a marked car out front. People are the worst.
On the plus side, I'd rather see people steal from Walmart than a store that was less evil.
(I went to a Walmart once, in Seoul, because I was told that they sold the best fancy sweet-rice-and-sesame buns. The one in Seoul was just like a regular mid-range department store. Except that there were young, beautiful female greeters at the door, dressed up as anime characters and giving away samples of fizzy lemonade. I assume Walmarts here are not like that.)
Are you implying that is the only time you've been to a Walmart?!?
Target has a reputation for building a lot of in-store security; I've even occasionally seen them described as a security operation with a retail store attached. So comparing Wal-Mart to Target may be comparing two extremes on the spectrum, not comparing a lax extreme with something roughly in the middle.
61. I've never been to a Walmart in the U.S. I don't even know where there is one nearby. (Looking on Yelp, I see that the closest Walmart is 8.5 miles away. Whereas there have always been one or two Targets within a couple miles of every place I've lived in Los Angeles.)
Has Walmart had such a positive effect on poorer people that we all have to accept the framing that makes Walmart sound like some kind of social services agency without which poorer people could never shop?
I've never even bought a tv at Walmart.
I dunno. Super cheap consumer goods is basically the only way life has gotten better for poor people in the last 30 or so years (aside from social changes which have benefited everyone), and WM is heavily responsible for that. OTOH their stores truly are depressing places and they were also the prime mover in turning America's pleasant small towns into meth-infested shells of depravity.
Target must have something going for it, because last time I was in the US, Mrs y's British-based niece would have spent the entire time in Target if she'd been allowed to. OTOH, last time she was in Britain, Mrs y's US-based niece was overwhelmingly anxious to shop at Primark, which made no sense at all, so.
Over here, Wamart simply acquired a mid-range supermarket and let it get on with it, as far as I can see. They wouldn't stand a chance against Aldi and Lidl anyway.
I've never been to a Walmart.
Quinones' Dreamland is great. I second jms's recommendation.
the framing that makes Walmart sound like some kind of social services agency without which poorer people could never shop
It functionally kind of is, some places. When Rowan was living in one of the poorest counties in Appalachia with only one pizza place that would deliver to the trailer park where he lived, he could get money orders at Walmart and that's really the only place he shopped even though it was a long walk. Walmart has things set up so you do your banking there especially if you're unbanked, maybe see a doctor or get a haircut, get new glasses, pay some bills, and it's one-stop shopping in a way that a company store would be. I hate it and i'm not arguing it's a force for good, but I'm not sure how we could um roll it back without making life even worse for a lot of people.
64: I think you're responding to me? I certainly don't think it's had positive effect at all; as I said, it's bullied its way into the situation by taking advantage of various weak points in capitalism, then reduced communities to not being able to continue existing without it. I see it more as, in many cases, essentially turning regular small towns into company towns.
But it is what it is now. If it weren't, in a local optimization/collective-action-problem sense, advantageous to shop there, wouldn't people not shop there so much? Walmart is sufficiently large and belligerent that you can trust that anything that has negative effects on it will have negative effects on its consumer base, and need to plan accordingly. If you can find a way to cut out their profit while providing a better quality of life to Walmart consumers, by all means let's go for it.
I'm in agreement with what Tigre said in 66.
Walmart has things set up so you do your banking there especially if you're unbanked, maybe see a doctor or get a haircut
This is why we need Post Office Banking. Also, Post Office Barbering.
70 before seeing 69. In complete agreement with that as well. Note though that my experiences with Walmart are in the northern end of Appalachia and are similar to Thorn's, which may or may not generalize well to suburban Florida.
They lure you in with the loss leaders and then hope you don't ruthlessly comparison shop.
This is also the strategy of the fancy-rich-person grocery stores on the rich side of Hennepin in Minneapolis, which is hilarious. Organic camembert from milk that comes from grass fed cattle a small family farm Wisconsin is about the same price as shrink wrapped Saga blue cheese at the Cub supermarket a few blocks away, but a bag of Gold Medal flour costs $12.
"Government Mullet" would be a great name for a band.
13 and related get it right.
Walmart doesn't really want to stop its shoplifting customer base: that's the same demographic that subsidizes its operations altogether. A disproportionate number of Walmart customers and/or employees are on food stamps or receive other government benefits* - which it encourages in turn by paying piss-poor wages.
*As I recall, Walmart declines to reveal the exact numbers, but I've seen estimates .. um, there's this.
Walmart is also one of several retailers that have a significant number of employees who make little enough that they rely on food stamps to get by. In Ohio, up to 15 percent of Walmart's workforce uses SNAP, based on our analysis of state food stamp enrollment data.
You don't actually have to shoplift just because you get food stamps.
Super cheap consumer goods is basically the only way life has gotten better for poor people in the last 30 or so years (aside from social changes which have benefited everyone), and WM is heavily responsible for that.
This feels like the causality is wrong. Because we've prioritized super cheap shit and businesses and GDP, we've ended up with this by-product of sort of improved cheap stuff for poor people in the past 30 years. Yay, trickle down economics.
This is why we need Post Office Banking. Also, Post Office Barbering.
Well, yes, or, maybe (we could have both relatively cheap consumer goods and better standards of living for poor people if we taxed and distributed more, though let's be real about the difficulty of the "if we"). But the cheap consumer goods are a real benefit and people go to Wal-Mart for real reasons. And, as to where we are now, you have to deal with the reality that consumer goods are sold through Walmarts and a lot of poor people in small towns depend on them.
Because we've prioritized super cheap shit and businesses and GDP, we've ended up with this by-product of sort of improved cheap stuff for poor people in the past 30 years.
I don't think that summary is right, because we (the US) aren't the primary driver of super-cheap commodities.
I guess I believe the story that cheap manufacturing in East Asia has lead to a decrease in living standard for the working class in the US, but an increase in living standards for hundreds of millions of people and so it's a mistake to talk about it as primarily a US development.
44
Was that the Beijing WalMart? It's one of only two WalMarts I've been to.
76: No, but if you're financially strained, you're more likely to feel the urge to do so. I said, "the same demographic" - not the identical people.
This stuff burns my ass, if you'll pardon the phrase. It's a classic case of privatizing the gains and publicizing the losses. I don't accept any bullshit from Walmart about how retail is a brutal environment in which margins are razor thin, such that the only way to make it work is to impoverish employees and lean heavily on the public dime to compensate. If that's the case, it's a flawed business model. Go down that road, and you're arguing for doing away with the minimum wage altogether: and then how are you going to simultaneously argue for small government?
I don't recall whether the Walton family are Republicans; I will say that it remains annoying to me that Hillary Clinton has been on the board of Walmart. I gather her defense is that she was trying to make change from within. Eh, maybe.
Didn't some legal changes make Walmart's growth possible? Something like "in the past this practice would have been prohibited by antitrust or restraint of trade, but on the other hand, low prices!"?
I swear I'm not making it up but it's been a long time since I read about it and am also sick and at work.
I guess I believe the story that cheap manufacturing in East Asia has lead to a decrease in living standard for the working class in the US
I partially believe this story, though I think it's often very overstated (even without East Asian competition US manufacturing [which still exists! in big numbers] would have shed tons of good jobs [which it has]).
But WM's main macro effect is kind of orthogonal to that story -- what it was massively good at was improving supply chains to cut costs and putting relentless downward price pressure on manufacturers (most of which are indeed foreign). A lot of what WM does these days is encourage Chinese manufacturers to cut costs in China; if they were buying from US manufacturers, they would do the same thing here.
Almost none of what WM did that explains its success is particularly the product of bad or "pro-business" public policy, unless you consider extreme tariffs good public policy (which I don't, and even there WM could have still done what it did, it's just that its goods would have been somewhat more expensive). It's true that better employment law and unionization would prevent WM from paying its workers so little, but the thing about WM that makes it evil on this front is that it needlessly pays its workers too little -- it could have exactly the same broader economic effect with somewhat higher wages. That would be nice, but it wouldn't be anywhere close to offsetting the genuinely disruptive effect that it's had on small towns.
It just feels weird and backwards to be grateful for the crappy bandaid that Walmart provides to the most vulnerable people in the country. Yay, the destruction of safety nets that keep people out of poverty is being partially mitigated by the presence of stores that people generally avoid if they're not super poor.
Or as these colorful local people say, "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining."
I agree with 84.
I will say that it remains annoying to me that Hillary Clinton has been on the board of Walmart
I also find it annoying, but I do think it matters that Walmart is an Arkansas company. It was an association with a local power broker, not just a random big business.
86: But it's the truth!
"I'm going to be honest. I'm pissing on your leg. I didn't ask first, but I'm not going to lie."
85 - not grateful at all! Just trying to say that if you're thinking about WM seriously it's a mistake to just ignore why they've been successful. And as Thorn says if you're thinking about where to go in the future you have to deal with the outsized reality that WM now has in small towns.
Well, you were saying it was the biggest improvement in the quality of poor people's lives in the past 30 years. But it's business model can only succeed in an environment of poor people in the first place. I mean, yes, many people's lives would be seriously disrupted if we outlawed Walmart but there's got to be some other way to address poverty besides that.
||
Unrelatedly, I'm reading all about fair housing and ordinances and that kind of thing. Every time some city has a successful program that helps create more affordable housing, I find that Governor Abbott has outlawed that in Texas. In particular, we've cracked down on local inclusionary housing laws and local laws barring discrimination against people using housing vouchers. Small government!
|>
But it's business model can only succeed in an environment of poor people in the first place.
Not really. They could do the same thing (relentless supply chain management, cost-cutting deals with manufacturers) with a richer set of consumers, and would be happy to do so. And the biggest improvement isn't necessarily much of an improvement -- it's just that on the whole poorer people would rather have access to a wide range of cheap consumer goods than not.
Well, they'd have to do something about the gross and depressingness.
They could do the same thing (relentless supply chain management, cost-cutting deals with manufacturers) with a richer set of consumers, and would be happy to do so
How so? How would they be happy to do so? They'd give up many of their taxpayer funded subsidies. Unless the people who run Walmart are stupid, they've adopted their current model for very specific reasons. What are those reasons? Sure not altruism.
But the cheap consumer goods are a real benefit and people go to Wal-Mart for real reasons.
Cheap consumer goods are a real benefit for the consumers who are buying them, but, crucially, not to society as a whole (especially to the extent that "cheap" is tied to "disposable"/"low quality").
More fundamentally, yes, you are correct that people shop at Wal-Mart for real reasons: Wal-Mart offloads a tremendous part of the true "cost" of their stores, and the goods they sell, onto society as a whole, and not onto the purchasers of their products. Their prices are cheap because they aggressively transform costs (borne by consumers) into negative externalities (borne by society).
Drone-delivered abortion on demand!
More on topic, although I agree Walmart is expert at socializing its costs any way it can, those food stamp / employee analyses rub me the wrong way, because of their implication that if someone has a job, the government should not be assisting them in any way. Taxes and services, laddies!
92
But this is eliding one of the fundamental problems, which is companies like Walmart are the reason we have a ton of poor people. People making $7 an hour of course need and want $5 t-shirts, but it's a deeply fucked up model of society, and affordable crap is also mostly a mirage since the cost of services (healthcare, education, etc.) and real estate anywhere decent have rapidly increased. It would be better to live in a world where people made decent wages, could afford healthcare & education etc, and had to save up to buy a TV than a place where almost anyone can buy a poorly made TV but have no access to healthcare and education.
those food stamp / employee analyses rub me the wrong way, because of their implication that if someone has a job, the government should not be assisting them in any way.
I think the implication is more that having a job should mean making a living wage.
96
I think the point is that an adult working a FT job should not make so little money they qualify for food stamps. Means tested services in the US are super stingy, so to qualify for foodstamps you have to be earning below a living wage.
I'm remembering the McDonald's budget calculator, which only worked if you estimated healthcare was $30/month, rent was something not attainable in a major city, and you had a second job making $900/month. Like, the basic premise of work should be that you can afford basic necessities (food, shelter, clothes, healthcare) if you have a FT job.
What if your living wage is partially coming through EITC? Or indeed a future UMI?
I can support a whole family and a drinking habit on one FT job. Theoretically speaking, I must be a very hard worker.
But yes, I can see that argument in its intended more limited sense, so okay.
Also, prices have dropped in large part because quality has dropped, which means goods have to be replaced more often and are often not worth repairing. I'm not sure that in the long-term our stuff is actually cheaper when you factor in replacement, but rather we have to buy it more regularly. Which I'm sure is part of the Walmart model.
101
Then it means taxpayers are providing subsidies to large corporations, which is another problem. I don't want my tax dollars supporting Walmart's shitty labor practices.
On the production side, people in developing countries don't much like or value producing for Walmart either. China is actively trying to move up the scale to produce higher quality, higher value commodities with higher skilled workers. The goal is to become the next South Korea, Japan, or Germany, not to remain making shitty products for next to nothing. To do so, China is pouring billions of dollars into affordable vocational tertiary training for young people, and real wages have increased almost 10-fold in the past 10 years for people doing factory work and other manual labor.
heir prices are cheap because they aggressively transform costs (borne by consumers) into negative externalities (borne by society).
Don't disagree with this or the rest of 95, nor do I disagree with the idea that WM should pay its workers more. Though shifting externalities away from itself and onto society as a whole is in no way something unique to WM, at all. It's something every company does to the extent it can. But would we be better off if we could figure out ways to fully price those externalities and make WM (and its consumers) pay for them? Sure.
They'd give up many of their taxpayer funded subsidies.
WM is happy to get these, but they're a pretty minor part of their business model. Basically their business model is to buy cheap land near a small town and then undercut prices and provide sufficient selection so that everyone in a local area shops with them and not elsewhere. Actually, now that they've done this in so much of the country, their model is largely to keep expanding the services they put in the stores while relentlessly pushing the manufacturers of products even more, and also to beat internet competition.
which is companies like Walmart are the reason we have a ton of poor people.
This, I disagree with, at least as written. Downward real wage pressure is a big problem but for the most part not caused at a macro level by companies "like" WM unless you mean "companies" or maybe "capitalism." I mean sure WM could and should pay its workers more. Absolutely. But that is a small solution at a micro level and would not at all be a solution for poverty. We need, basically, government spending to boost growth and across-the-economy measures to raise wages. Singling out WM for abuse is fine, both because they're ubiquitous and because in some ways they really are a particularly shitty employer. But they're not the "reason" we have tons of poor people, they're a part of a complicated economy-wide problem.
On the wage thing, the reason WM workers get food stamps (often) is because they are deliberately kept as non-full time workers. To some extent, that's incredibly unfair -- WM is exploiting basically a loophole in employment law that allows companies to treat part-time employees much more shittily than full-time employees, as well as to limit employee hours to keep them part-time. But the solution is changes to labor law to make that more difficult for WM, not eliminating food stamps for WM employees.
It's something every company does to the extent it can.
This is bullshit. There are many companies--mostly smaller companies, but some larger ones--that for ethical reasons do it as little as possible. Many use this as a point of marketing. And there are many others who feel ethically compromised by their own business practices and would like to do this even less than they currently do, but they are constrained by competition from companies like Wal-Mart. Those who don't employ questionable business practices genuinely struggle to compete against those who do.
Walmart is metonymically standing in for large companies in general. Of course they're not single handedly depressing wages nationally. But, we *do* have a massive shift in productivity redistribution to the very top at companies, which means that wages no longer track with productivity. We've allowed corporations to get away with this (I suspect finance is driving the mega growth in CEO and top exec salaries), but it's an issue of malfeasance that needs to be remedied politically, since general economic forces don't seem to be doing much.
Then it means taxpayers are providing subsidies to large corporations, which is another problem. I don't want my tax dollars supporting Walmart's shitty labor practices.
My only point - which is abstruse and not really against what you're saying - is that this risks being an impossible aspiration. As long as we have private enterprise, it will always absorb at least some of the benefit from good public investment and transfers, because those policies are supposed to benefit everyone.
(I worry also that in our political environment, "Walmart employees get food stamps" gets twisted into an argument against food stamps rather than for a living wage / unions - though of course that worry is no reason to police what you're saying.)
Don't disagree with 109. Do disagree with 108, which is kind of silly moralism. I mean sure there are some companies that market "ethical" practices in some areas or for some reasons have different or better labor policies. But that doesn't mean that it's sensible to see WM as villain and other companies as noble knights, it's a system that produces one result (cheap consumer products, lots of externalities) and that's how one needs to think about things.
As long as we have private enterprise, it will always absorb at least some of the benefit from good public investment and transfers, because those policies are supposed to benefit everyone.
Correct.
106: We need, basically, [...] across-the-economy measures to raise wages.
Like what? I remain baffled as to how government can get companies to raise wages. Raising the minimum wage at the federal level is problematic -- the cost of living is not the same in all areas -- and while it's happening gradually in some states, the pushback is strong; and anyway, it's not clear to me that raising the minimum wage will trickle up satisfactorily, as is sometimes projected.
How do you get companies to give up some of their often-obscene profits toward raising actual employee wages? Disincentivize the focus on company stock prices? How? Anyway, such 'measures' (I don't know what they'd be) do operate at the 'macro' level which you say are not the problem.
You're making it sound as though the issue is alleviating poverty altogether -- which is not possible -- without acknowledging that US poverty rates have risen as a function of the deliberate immiseration of workers: that's what we want to address.
And bleh, I'm becoming far too irritable, and likely unhelpful, about this.
How do you get companies to give up some of their often-obscene profits toward raising actual employee wages?
Basically, tax those profits (or, better, the individuals who receive those profits) and use the money to spend in the broader economy to boost growth across the board. Plus minimum wage changes and other labor law changes, plus, significantly, making unionization easier. Plus some corporate governance rules for executive salaries at the very top, and some rules that promote corporate stability vs. LBOs, etc. That won't create paradise but it's about the best we can do. And in the meantime provide enough social services that even those without higher wages are doing OK (that's what a good chunk of the taxing and spending can go towards).
But these are all, like, actual policies that have to be thought through by actual people doing policy work who are thinking about how to pay for them, not blog commenters.
How do you get companies to give up some of their often-obscene profits toward raising actual employee wages?
Allow people to form unions?
Raising the minimum wage at the federal level is problematic -- the cost of living is not the same in all areas
The federal government is perfectly capable of setting different minimum wages in different regions, taking COL into account. It hasn't in the past, but it's been a pretty blunt instrument in the past anyway (no inflation adjustment, which is now becoming more the norm).
105
Chinese wages rising has led to low-end manufacturing being moved to still-poor countries in (mostly) SE Asia. Sometimes the factories doing it are owned by Chinese companies. I'm not sure I can get all sad that Chinese people are becoming richer and as a result people in SE Asia are also getting richer.
Yeah, the working conditions are horrible, the national governments are often horrible, and so on. Still, do we want them to work at subsistence farming until the revolution?
Disincentivize the focus on company stock prices? How?
Profits these days tend to go toward stock buybacks, which juice the share prices and increases the concentration of ownership. I fail to see the social value of that. Stock buybacks should be taxed.
119
I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with in my comment.
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WTF Vox -- who picked the picture of Hillary Clinton for this article?
The article itself seems slightly unfriendly (I'm more convinced by Drum's response) but the photo screams, "this is not a credible news story."
|>
Drum's response seems about right to me. And hasn't the Inspector General been one of the people beating the CLINTONSCANDAL! drum for a long time now? I remember him from one of the older "she had classified information on it, maybe, ok technically not, ok not at all, ok fine but LOOK SOMETHING ELSE!" episodes of this 'scandal'.
121
I'm not sure I was disagreeing, so much adding the perspective that China becoming richer opens up possibilities for poorer countries.
122
"Slightly unfriendly" is about as accurate (based on the quoted sections) as anyone thinking that her smile in the picture is genuine. Still, aside from the forced smile that's a pretty decent photo of a woman her age. She does have wrinkles: OMGZOR. unqualified to be President! (Has anyone watched "All the Way," speaking of wrinkles?)
But these are all, like, actual policies that have to be thought through by actual people doing policy work who are thinking about how to pay for them, not blog commenters.
Sick burn, blog-bro.
Walmart doesn't really want to stop its shoplifting customer base: that's the same demographic that subsidizes its operations altogether.
"Shoplifting customer base" is the special kind of phrasing you hear when liberals talk about the world as they imagine it instead of the world as it actually is. People who don't pay aren't subsidizing shit. A hell of a lot of shoplifters are drug addicts, some are professional criminals, a very small few are people doing something stupid in a moment of weakness.
124: All the Way is excellent. Perfectly timed for this election and in different ways a rebuke to every candidate on both sides.
Also, prices have dropped in large part because quality has dropped, which means goods have to be replaced more often and are often not worth repairing. I'm not sure that in the long-term our stuff is actually cheaper when you factor in replacement
This is an interesting suggestion, but I am not sure it's true, at least not with regard to clothes. Average Americans in 1900 spent 14% of their annual income on clothing. By 2003 they spent 4%.
The dollar amounts are $108 and $1,600, and adjusting for inflation (which is dubious under the circumstances because clothing is such a big part of the CPI basket) it's $2,388 vs $1,600.
So as a proportion of income and as a constant dollar amount Americans are spending a lot less on clothing than they used to, even though (which may not be the case!) individual items don't last as long.
As for other goods, I don't know. Plus, the lifespan of a lot of these things may have been longer because they were so expensive to buy that it made sense to repair them rather than replace them. But repairs are also expensive! Maybe a pair of shoes lasted for twenty years rather than three, but how often did you have to take them to the cobbler in that time? Total lifetime cost may have been even higher than the purchase price suggests.
129. How many people know what one of these is nowadays? My mother used hers constantly.
Two uses. One, for darning socks. Two, for pushing things through sieves.
Good spot! I was thinking of darning socks, in the context of ajay's comment, but yes. Do you darn socks? Have you ever in fact done so, 30 years younger than me as you are? Or reversed the collar on a shirt, or sides-to-middled a sheet? Or, as ajay suggests, had yer boots soled and 'eeled? People just don't any more, as far as I can see, unless they're the kind of hippy who makes a point of weaving their own vegetables and growing their own sound system.
130: My mother also used one, but it was a wooden egg rather than a wooden mushroom. Same purpose though. I have never darned a sock; sixty years ago, though, it was considered odd and laughable that a nineteen-year-old soldier did not know how to darn his own socks, and needed his platoon commander to show him how. (George MacDonald Fraser, "The Servant Problem" in "The Complete McAuslan".)
I've had shoes resoled a few times. But there are people in my office who don't even know how to fix a puncture or sew on a button.
I was pretty sure it was the first use you were mentioning. I use mine for the latter. I don't darn socks, though now that I have bought myself nice made in England socks at an exorbitant cost that I could actually darn* I am seriously considering it when they start to wear out. (I am not the best sewer, though. I hand-fix things and want to learn how to do more.) I have had my shoes fixed multiple times, though. However, I would totally be one of those hippies if I had some drive.
*This is a big point. Many modern fabrics are essentially impossible to repair, even by skilled tailors. I had a wonderful stretchy modern knit dress that ripped and even though the man who fixed it also could be trusted to take apart and put back together made-to-measure suits, it just isn't the same anymore.
But there are people in my office who don't even know how to fix a puncture or sew on a button.
I'm totally rubbish at a lot of DYI - I think I just don't have the hand skills necessary (god knows my step-father tried to teach me) - but it always amazes me when people can't do that sort of thing.
I'm totally rubbish at a lot of DYI
Drivin' under Ye Influence.
Heh. I'm also rubbish at typing and writing English today, it would appear. (Too many job applications.)
I skimmed some of the thread, so I may have missed this, but one of the big things about modern goods is that they are simply not meant TO be repaired. I personally hate this and have gone out of my way to choose stuff that can be where it is possible, but invariably, those things are almost always far more expensive.
Parenthetical makes an excellent point: the cheap throwaway shit that one buys without thinking is close to unmendable, presumably deliberately. Capitalism has succeeded in making frugality almost impossible in many areas.
ajay, what do your colleagues do when they lose a button?
Pwned. It's the Vimes Theory of Boots.
I can't darn socks, but I have fixed the dryer on several occasions. A new pair of socks is like $5 and a new dryer is $500. I'm responding to the market.
I can also change the ballast in a fluorescent light. That's probably saved me more money than my entire sock-budget.
I can half-ass a repair to a french drain system, but I'm eventually going to have to pay somebody with actual knowledge on that one.
I can ask nicely and get my father-in-law to install a new water heater.
Having an in-law who is a competent plumber certainly improves one's quality of life. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
The water heater thing didn't look that hard. One pipe in, one pipe out, and the gas line. I'd just need to learn how to sweat in a pipe.
You could even use a little wooden egg if you wanted. Maybe to push the pieces of pipe together.
I would imagine that sweating in a pipe is even easier than sweating outside a pipe.
There's probably some kind of funny English-English term for when you solder a joint between two pieces of copper pipe.
I solder and do darn, though only handknit socks because I mostly buy disposable. I am probably partway to the veggie-growing hippie but it's mostly that I find clothing-related puttering enjoyable. Home repair stuff is not fun the same way but a job done sufficiently well is maybe more satisfying because I actually fixed a toilet, whereas if I've let out the hem of a dress or something I'll just be looking at how I could have done it better.
what do your colleagues do when they lose a button?
They get someone else to sew it on for them. (Not me. I limit myself to last-ditch bow-tie-tying duties.)
Having an in-law who is a competent plumber certainly improves one's quality of life.
I can't remember which book included this advice on living in the country: "In a rural community the most important person to know is not the lawyer, the vicar or the doctor, but the plumber. Get to know the plumber. Become friends with him. Marry him if you can."
I now have my wife fix buttons for me because I'm a feminist if she does it, the button looks so much better.
153. Likewise. In fact she refuses to let me mend anything. My ability to resist has been constrained by her buying a high tech sewing machine which is way out of my league.
I'm only allowed to wash my own clothes and white linens because I once washed white kitchen towels with blue napkins and turn the kitchen towels a light shade of blue. My wife asked me if I knew that washing white towels with blue napkins might dye the towels. I told her I did know that but didn't know that having blue kitchen towels would be an issue. I still think I was right.
Wait wait. $1600 a year on clothes is (even close to) average? Is that for a household? Because in my mind $108 is still the average amount of money a normal person spends on clothes in a year, and I have been miserably trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to upgrade my wardrobe (which is as close to an emergency as first-world problems get) without going too far into the multiple-hundreds. I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before. I'm totally paralyzed. I don't want to buy cheap shit, I don't want to buy up all the nice items from the local thrift stores where actually poor people need to shop, and I don't want to spend $1600. Really, over a thousand a year is not egregious?
First of all, over a thousand a year is not egregious. Second, you wouldn't be doing this every year. You want to update your wardrobe, you are not being irresponsible by doing so. Update your wardrobe and it will last you another 5-10 years before you feel like doing it again. Thirdly, do not fret about taking the good clothes from thrift stores because most people have terrible taste in clothes and do not actually want the things you perceive to be the good clothes. There is an infinite supply of clothes suitable to wear to a job, and it's more environmentally reasonable to shop at a thrift store - the limiting factor is patience. If you enjoy shopping at thrift stores, then do it without guilt. If you don't enjoy shopping and don't like your wardrobe, make every decision based on what will be most expedient to get a wardrobe you like. Throw the guilt out the window, you are not a Real Housewife of Orange County.
I agree with heebie on all three points.
I don't think I spend over a thousand a year on clothing, but I certainly did when I was younger and filling in my closet with things that I need* but that do no need replacing very often.
* Like suits or heavy winter gear.
I suppose California doesn't really have suits or winter in a way I would understand.
It hasn't really come up very often lately, but I feel like I need to be able to dress myself such that I could spend half a day outside in zero degree Fahrenheit weather. That's about $500 minimum, unless you are buying used.
Fourthly, don't forget the existence of eBay!
Ebay is great! Especially if you have a particular brand that you know fits you predictably well.
156: Looks like yes, if it's the Consumer Expenditures Survey then not individuals but consumer units, which includes families, individuals living alone, and interestingly roommates.
In 2014 the figure was $1,786, somewhat right-skewed if you examine the deciles (median maybe 1500). For the average CU that broke down into 430 on apparel for men and boys, 656 for women and girls, 76 for children under 2, 367 for all footwear, 256 for other apparel and services (which I presume includes repair).
161 is lunacy. A warm winter coat, a heavy wool sweater, heavy pants, wool socks, ski gloves, wool or trapper hat, boots, and a wool scarf can definitely be done for under $500, even if you aren't buying things on sale or second hand. And that might actually be warmer than necessary for zero degrees F. I mean, what do you need - electric underpants and bespoke tailoring or something? When it's zero farenheit people don't judge you much on what you're wearing outside.
I'm not a Minnesotan. I need a down parka.
Those actually got really cheap this winter.
I have a hat with ear flaps. It's great, but I'm saving up for the plaid one.
Oh you do not there are plenty of warm things out there that don't look like that.
And even then you're not talking about something expensive enough to make $500 the minimum: I was thinking about this coat, which sits in about the same range as a non-fancy down parka. (I have no idea what their activity adjustments are supposed to mean, but if you're wearing anything at all beneath it it's comfortable standing perfectly still in way, way under 45 degrees, let along walking around. I've spent winters here without ever putting the lining in. Also for ten to twenty dollars more you can get one rated around 15/-25 but I picked that one because I like wool.)
I own one of those. It's very old now and I wear it to the bar in the winter in order to keep my good coats from getting old smokey. It's still not getting you to zero like a parka.
It's still not getting you to zero like a parka.
Especially not for half a day unless you're doing a fair amount of moving or are have a lot of layering.
Put a wool sweater on underneath it and use other warm clothing as well and it absolutely will. Trying to deal with cold by buying one very expensive coat isn't going to work too well, but that's why like every guide for dealing with cold winters tells you not to do it.
A thick wool sweater (made of actual wool) costs $100 or so.
172: If you are active, you probably don't want the parka. But standing and waiting for the bus, I'll take the parka.
(Spending half a day out is in my criteria, but it isn't actually something I would do in that kind of weather if I had another option. Which, excepting one very rough day in 1988, I always have.)
Field coat: 159 ; flannel lined pants: 49.99;wool sweater: 39.99; wool socks: 14.44; winter gloves: 19.99; wool hat: 10.10; boots: 84.99; scarf: 9.99. That gets you to around $390.
And if you swapped out the field coat for a totally unnecessary heavy down parka you wouldn't really be adding much to that number. (I mean right now you'd be subtracting a lot, but the normal price is right around where the field coat is.)
Right. It was a very good year for buying a down coat. I guess because global warming.
But, I'd also want some nice thermal underwear and the hat with ear flaps. That gets me pretty close to $500.
I could find $700 down parkas too - there are certainly plenty of them out there. It's not somehow that the standard prices changed this winter. But there's no reason to spend that much on one. (And the same is true of hats with ear flaps.)
If you wear flannel lined pants with thermal underwear and try to move around much even at zero degrees you will feel very uncomfortable. Also it's medium a weight sweater not a particularly light one.
Maybe I'll have to give flannel lined pants a try then. But, having been out in the very coat in that exact weather, I've always been cold without several layers on my upper body (thermal shirt and a couple of fleeces).
On second thought, I'm not wearing 100% cotton pants in that weather. If I do get sweaty, that damp will not be good.
In my experience a lot of heavy winter gear can be avoided if you don't leave any open spots for the cold to get in. A wool scarf alone is probably the equivalent of a medium weight coat, and warm windproof pants make a huge difference to how effective a coat feels. But I have definitely been out in that field coat in weather cold enough that I ended up having to wear my scarf around the office for two of three minutes after coming inside because I had managed to literally freeze it to my face, and it worked fine.
A wool scarf alone is probably the equivalent of a medium weight coat
That's the kind of thing people who live in northern wastes tell themselves because they don't realize that they've just gotten used to being cold for a third of the year.
I think if you're sweating inside your clothes it means you're wearing too much winter gear, unless you're actually doing real exercise (at which point I guess you're still using too much clothing). Also I have a pair of mittens like this and they're almost unwearable above five to ten degrees they're that war.
I have a high level of ambient sweat.
If you walk around outside for a few minutes before putting on any outerwear at all the sweat will freeze and become an additional base layer.
Put a wool sweater on underneath it and use other warm clothing as well and it absolutely will.
All this canvas and cotton is fine in the city when you're walking home or at the bus stop but that's not really the same thing as a half day out in 0 F which sounds a lot closer to something like cold weather hunting. Get wet in cotton in those temps is a good way to get yourself frozen to death.
I don't think I've spent over $1000 in a year on clothing, but came close when I bought a suit and coat for a job interview, plus better fitting shirts.
I am sick of having pants where the clasp falls off but I don't think that's just a function of cheapness. Even moderately expensive (to me) pants sometimes use clasps instead of buttons.
You mean the little metal slide-y thing? I've never had one of those fall off, but most of my pants have buttons.
Yes. I have three pairs now where they've fallen off, but with a belt on it doesn't make a huge difference so I still wear them. The dryer seems to be what knocks them off eventually.
Thanks heebie! And thanks to Minivet for the breakdown -- that seems much more reasonable. I may have to do a round of try-ons at actual stores to figure out whether sizes and brands that used to fit still fit. There was a point where all pants seemed to get mysteriously larger compared to the past size distribution -- like, n fit me where n+2 would have in the past, and not because I slimmed down.
188: ??
You mean like flannel lined jeans? Because everything else was mainly wool or synthetics. I guess the field coat has a canvas exterior which acts as a windbreaker/water resistant layer, but it's still a heavy wool lining. In 0F you'd have to get pretty seriously soaked for flannel lined jeans to be a problem, if only because there's really just not much water available: splashing water on yourself is just likely to lead to a nice icy outer layer without much soaking through. Falling into a river, maybe, but sweating through from the inside isn't likely to be an issue with those pants.
You guys remember that I'm the one who lives in a place where that's actually a normal winter temperature and spends more time outside in it than a lot of people right?
Right. You need to figure that I need what you need, plus another layer.
188: yeah. Also, 185, I don't think it's a good idea to simply plan not to sweat. You don't have to be doing real exercise to raise a sweat - just walking through snow could do it. Wicking/thermal base layer, warm layers, windproof/water-repellent layer.
The other thing is to wash it regularly. Clean clothes are a lot more effective at keeping you warm.
I was raised to always wear clean underwear and not worry about the rest of it.
192: This is a thing, and I find it surprisingly annoying and disorienting.
My current clothing annoyance is that I have no sense for how long things ought to last. One of my dress shirts is wearing out - fraying at all the edges, wearing thin and developing holes here and there, and so on. Individual spots could be fixed but it's clear the whole thing is failing. When I looked at my email, I discovered that I've had it for six years, and probably wore it once every week or two during the not-summer months. Is that a good life for a shirt? Should I expect to be replacing 15-20% of my daily-use wardrobe every year?
Did you wash it every time you wore it? Because 180 trips through the washer will kill about any cotton shirt.
I also rarely spend more than $500 a year on clothes--often much less, and much of what is spent is by others for birthday and Christmas gifts.
Of course, I do live in CA, where the teens is the coldest it ever gets in winter. And I dress like an engineer, which is probably much less demanding than a fashion plate...
192: This is a thing, and I find it surprisingly annoying and disorienting.
It's called "vanity sizing" or size inflation.
Yeah, I know. But there's been a noticeable jump, say, since I got out of law school. I'm the same size I was then, measured in objective units, but I'm two pants sizes down, which irks me. I know what size pants I wear! This is not it.
size inflation
I was already using that as a euphemism for something else.
I can't believe nobody has yet pointed out that the sock darning thingy, (is there a name for it?) could double as a but plug. Get with it Unfogged!
(is there a name for it?)
Mushroom I think.
205: yes. The egg-shaped ones are darning eggs.
Many's the vicar who's shown up at the A&E to have one removed from his nether regions after having fallen while, um, "naked on ladder and just dusting the drapes Doctor", from the look of it.
This thread picked up while I was frantically writing a dissertation chapter. I was born in 1982, and I have darned socks, pretty much only because my grandmother made me do it as a kid. Apparently I sucked at it, unlike my father. I don't darn socks now, but I do sew tiny toe holes shut, and feel guilty about throwing away a holey sock (which is why I have a collection of shapeless unmatched holey socks which I plan to use for other things.) I have 3 pairs of underwear which need the seams repaired, but once the underwear get giant crotch holes I throw them out. (There doesn't seem to be a real rhyme or reason--I buy packs of cheap cotton underwear, and I've had a three-pack where one pair developed a hole within a few months while another pair from the same pack is going strong 13 years later.) I sew on my own buttons and also hem my own pants, and I've remodeled t-shirts so they fit better. I've also gotten my shoes resoled or otherwise repaired. For more extensive tailoring, I bring my clothes to China and get a tailor there to do it.
The comment about stuff being made to not be repaired is absolutely spot on. The craziest things was my mother had to get rid of a perfectly functioning glue gun because the company no longer made glue rods(?) for that gun, and it was way easier and to buy a new one.
I also agree with thrift stores (no need to feel guilty! Also, if you donate old stuff think of your consuming as part of the cycle of life.) Consignment stores are also great for work and formal wear, they're more expensive than thrift stores but generally great value for money.
I bought a ankle length down coat rated to the coldest level from Lands End this December for $80. It was marked down from $200, but there are certainly warm coats for well under $500. It's warm enough that this Chicago winter wasn't really cold enough to wear it--I got really sweaty walking to campus in 25 degree (F) weather.
Size inflation is a horrible plague on women's clothes, especially because every store has a completely different sizing system, and the clothes don't ever match the stated measurements listed online. Also, at some stores the same size of the same style will be different actual sizes.
I'm having a problem (as in tiny violin first world problem, not a real one), which is that I'm going on a clothes buying diet, because I own too many clothes and still wear stuff from the 90s and don't have much money. I've vowed to go this year without buying anything except out of absolute necessity. My problem is I've gained about 5 lbs and my body shape has shifted ever so slightly so a chunk of my wardrobe doesn't fit or fits differently. I'm kind of hoping to lose the 5 lbs, but it's probably more reasonable and healthy to accept this is my new mid 30s body. These two things aren't super connected, except now that I'm "shopping my wardrobe" way more than I might be if I were buying new clothes and I'm realizing how many of my clothes don't fit the same way.
My problem is I've gained about 5 lbs and my body shape has shifted ever so slightly so a chunk of my wardrobe doesn't fit or fits differently.
Of all the tiny violin first world problems, this is objectively the worst. Seriously.
210
Yeah, the thing is I'm curiously light so 5-7 lbs on me is like 10-20 lbs on someone else. I would say, I've always looked probably 10 lbs heavier than I actually am. In retrospect I can see how a little weight change could be insensitive to someone dealing with a much bigger weight change, and I apologize. It was meant as a relatively lighthearted comment on dealing with subtle aging and changing body shape and not fitting into clothes, which is a thing I assume most people can relate to.
210
Um, I reread your comment, and realize you meant something completely different. Apologies! I hope you'll accept my excuse that I'm working on 4 hours of sleep and stress and coffee.
Probably for the best. Working on 4 hours sleep without stress and coffee seems unreasonable.
But yes, seriously, it's the worst. I have a formalish graduation celebration thingy for my BA students tomorrow that in my sleep deprived state I thought was today, and tried on three dresses that had been my go-to teaching/looking nice-but-professional on campus outfits, and none of them fit, or at least in a way that I would consider "office appropriate." I don't have time to do laundry because I have to write a dissertation chapter by tomorrow, but I'm hoping I'll come up with something to wear by then.
Also, there was one out of town conference I didn't have much time to pack for, so I threw outfits I knew had worked in the past into my suitcase to wear. Well, half the clothes were unprofessionally tight, and then everything else was uncomfortable and ill fitting. Pants I'd hemmed to floor length were a few inches too short, making them look stupid, and a skirt I'd brought couldn't be zipped all the way, so I had to wear an untucked shirt over it.
213
Yeah, unfortunately, stress, coffee, and extreme sleep deprivation seems to be the only way my dissertation gets written.
No, as far as I can tell from your comments, you & I have very similar body types, and the sympathy is real. (Also you were underweight for a long time, right? That is something a person gets very used to. I was still within the normal BMI range for my height when I went into labor (at term!) -- another 11 pounds would have put me over -- and it seems like a pretty stupid exercise to starve myself back down to the pre-conception dimensions.) Anything that makes a person feel uncomfortable in their own skin is insidious and terrible. It is kind of a fascinating problem, though, how to engineer clothes and styles that would be tolerant of small changes like that -- because half your clothes are fine, right? And half are not? And it doesn't seem to track tightness/bagginess or anything like that? That's been my experience. And yep, dresses are the worst.
Yes, dissertation time is an unhealthy time. Are you going on the market and all that?
Nothing is unprofessionally tight unless you specify the profession.
217
Yeah, we might have similar body types. Even now I'm still at the low end of BMI, but my body feels and looks (to me, not to most other people) really different. (I don't think I look bad or even need or want to have a thigh gap or anything, but it just doesn't feel like my own body.) I also had this weird gap where I lived in China for two years, lost weight, and then put a bunch on when I got back to the US in a way I've never gained weight before--like, poof, overnight I'd gained 10 lbs.
I'm also finding that there's no rhyme or reason to what fits--a dress that was very form fitting 5ish lbs ago still looks great, but something that was drapey then now makes me look pregnant. The subtle change in shape is also throwing me, because even stuff that should "fit," as in, "possesses enough fabric to fully cover me without straining" doesn't work at all.
I'm in my early/mid 30s, planning on having kids in the next few years, and should probably just get rid of all the too tight stuff, but for some reason I'm not quite ready to give it (or my late 20s/early 30s figure) up.
For my dissertation, I'm going on the market this summer/fall. I just found out today I got a write-up fellowship, so I have breathing room for next year, but psychologically I really need to finish and get out ASAP. I'm dreading the job app process, which sounds hellish and cover letter writing is my least favorite genre in the world.
218
What is too tight for a woman in academia? I'm in a humanties-ish-oriented social science and a sciencey-oriented humanities.
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Is there any nice way to correct my cubemate's pronunciation of "Deutsche" as "DOO-shch"? I mean, she's Norwegian-American, but still.
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Maybe she just hates Germans and this is her passive aggressive way to insult them? (I'm assuming doo-shch sounds a little like douche)
177: All this hyper-fill power stuff is just bullshit, right? Who's going to reasonably be able to tell the difference between 600 and 900 fill power? They're both super light and warm, when used properly.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure she studied French in HS and college, and she's actually pretty deracinated as far as the Norwegianness goes. She's not great with some other pronunciations either. Former cheerleader. Younger than "The Simpsons". And surprisingly, we get a long really well. It's just the Deutsche mispronunciation that bugs me.
223: Not in a coat, it doesn't really. The fabric needs to be heavier anyway so a few more ounces of down won't matter. In a winter sleeping bag, a 600 FP would maybe add a pound over 800 FP.
Yeah, the thing is I'm curiously light so 5-7 lbs on me is like 10-20 lbs on someone else.
I have this. I've had a number of people comment on my weight loss of less than five pounds. A swing of ten pounds seems to cover 3 sizes of clothes.
Oh, I mean, I'm not curiously light whatsoever. Just that modest fluctuations have an outsized impact on my clothes.
226
Yeah, I always get confused by those people who say they gained 40 lbs before anyone noticed.
I have gone into the bathroom and lost five pounds through ordinary processes. (I measured because once I had an office with a scale on the way to the bathroom.) I don't think if affected how my clothes fit.
Adding five pounds if just having six beers without taking a leak before the last one is done.
