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The state of the economy at the street level

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divs4ever said:
depends on where you shop , some smaller businesses seem to maybe not $$$ off the bill but maybe an extra 'bonus gift '

but not at the bigger chains/franchises
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I've obtained cash discounts at national chains in the past.

Albeit that was for a purchase over $1000 not just a meal but being willing to pay cash on the spot got me a better price than they were willing to offer otherwise. From memory I ended up paying $1150 for an item priced at $1699. Kitchen appliance for the record.

There's a bit more to it however. Firstly that the item was the last one they had and they wanted it sold, it was a discontinued product. Second I made the purchase on the afternoon of 31 December so at a guess there's probably some "internal" value in making the quarterly, six monthly or calendar year figures look slightly better with a discontinued product gone and cash in the till.

This was quite a while ago though, no idea if the same trick would work today.
 
wayneL said:
There's a little Vietnamese restaurant that we go to, won't say the name or where it is in case this site is being monitored, but they always offer a discount for cash.
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At the local shopping centre they have a sign at the food hall offering 5% off for cash and I know that they do ring it up in the till as I have watched for it.
 
It really sucks... Probably more a sign of the times than state of the economy though, as one can buy a vacuum in many places now.

I recently bought 2 x German made Bosch vacs from Bing Lee for $150 each, on special.

​

Godfreys collapses into administration, to shut stores and cull staff​

Godfreys collapses into administration, to shut stores and cull staff

Major vacuum retailer Godfreys has collapsed into administration and is expected to shut down 54 stores as well as cull 193 jobs.
insideretail.com.au
 
Poverty, socially disadvantaged, the most vulnerable etc are all highly subjective labels.
Even so, I found this charts from the World Bank Somewhat surprising.



and according to another world bank chart, the poverty level has been falling since the 1820"s


Poverty bar keeps rising.
I remember years ago listening to the head of ACOSS saying how many people were living below the poverty threshold, then went on to explain what that threshold was.
As she spoke, I realised that my entire life up til about 17 was lived below the poverty line.
And I did not even know out.
How embarrassingly out of touch was I.
Mick
 
I wonder if this is where we are heading, eventually people get past caring, when the bar is set too high.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

www.bloomberg.com

In the biggest US market for institutional landlords, squatting in vacant rental homes has reached such extremes that owners offer intruders money to leave and many property managers won’t check on suspect houses alone.

Around 1,200 homes in metro Atlanta recently have had squatters — or people occupying a property illegally without a landlord-tenant relationship — according to an estimate from the National Rental Home Council trade group. That’s far more than in any other US metro area tracked by the council. And it’s hitting big names in America’s single-family-rental business, including Starwood, Cerberus Capital Management’s FirstKey Homes and Amherst Group — all of which have had dozens of properties with squatters. Landlords say evicting intruders can take half a year or more, due to backlogged court systems and overwhelmed sheriff’s offices.
 
I've noticed in the last two or three weeks that the shopping centres are far more busy than they have been, during times when they are not traditionally busy. FWIW
 
wayneL said:
I've noticed in the last two or three weeks that the shopping centres are far more busy than they have been, during times when they are not traditionally busy. FWIW
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Good evening wayneL
Hoping find you well.

Maybe, they have flocked to the shopping centres to stay cool in the air-conditioning... certainly that has been the case in the north with the oppressive heat and humidity.

Have a very nice night.

Kind regards
rcw1
 
Belli said:
I will have to upgrade my "C" dive to a greater capacity.
Click to expand...

Coming to my senses, I got another computer (ex-Govie, two years old). I fear I may need to get more memory in order to process photos.

The JPG's alone are about 24MB and when imported seem to expand to 430MB. I'd hate to think the size the RAW files will be when they are already 45MB. Gee, the modern world is definitely sent to annoy us.
 
Just be a little careful if you are putting more DRAm memory in.
Some motherboards do not allow expansion, and you cannot mix different sized modules.
I expanded my memory to 32 GB, but had to buy two sixteen GB ram modules to replace the original 2 4gb modules.
At the same time, I bought a 2 TB Western Digital SATA 3 drive for 99 bucks.
Inserted in a spare slot and keep all my music photos etc on that drive.
Leave system drive for real work.
mick
 
There was much talk about the cancelled Tax cuts in the thread about the Albanese government.
The data point below is related to tax cuts, but it is something that has occurred under every government since governments were invented.
So the top 5th are carrying every one else.
Thats ok, provided of course they get some acknowledgement, as distinct from the constant barrage about being greedy parasites.
Mick

 
The original AMP article from which the above quote came is This one.
He also posted another interesting chart.


no matter how you slice and dice it, the growth has been on a steady decline since the start of this millenium.

We are indeed a fairly low taxing country, which is not surprising given that only 20% of the "taxpayers" actually pay any net tax.



And although there has been a hue and cry about mortgage interest eating into households disposable income, the growth in tax courtesy of bracket creep has outpaced it by a some margin.
i would love politician to insert these charts into Hansard and then ask all the people making stupid economic statements with nothing to back them up to respond.
Mick
 
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Does this ‘income’ include Capital gains from sale of assets ? I presume welfare payments do not include ‘costs’ of rental income.

I would have thought it would be less than the top 20% income earners.
 

More US banks are in trouble.​

NYCB’s Credit Grade Is Cut to Junk by Moody’s​

(Bloomberg) -- New York Community Bancorp’s credit grade was cut to junk by Moody’s Investors Service less than a week after the regional lender alarmed shareholders by slashing payouts and stockpiling reserves to cover troubled loans tied to commercial real estate.
 
Gunnerguy said:
Does this ‘income’ include Capital gains from sale of assets ? I presume welfare payments do not include ‘costs’ of rental income.

I would have thought it would be less than the top 20% income earners.
Click to expand...
I doubt it would include capital gains, as it would be impossible to calculate for any group, not knowing when they disposed of, or planned to dispose of any asset likely to attract capital gains, and what the value of the gain might be.

Mick
 
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