Absolutely theatrics.
The last new car I bought, while I was at the desk negotiating, they had the car driven up and parked right outside the showroom windows where I couldn't help but see it. Then, the salesman got a phone call, "Yep, we have one, but I have a guy right here looking to buy it right now", which was either his manager or no one on the other end.
At first, I was like, oh crap, someone else wants to buy it, I have to hurry and get it, but a second later, I thought, no, this is the game they play to make me think if I don't do everything I can to buy this, pay whatever I have to, I'll lose it.
Crooks, every one of them.
Google floor plan if you want to know how new car dealerships put cars on the lot.
Holy hell, I never learned about this in school. (Hat tip: Charley Patton, Deep Water Everywhere Part 1)
This happened in my (still living) Mom's lifetime. Black sharecroppers were legally held by landowners -- they did not have the right to leave.
Those were the days when successful job creators weren't held down by gubmint red tape and job killing regulation.
Legit question:
Say minimum wage gets hiked to $15 like we wanted all along. What can be done to protect the "per hour" part of it? Reason I ask is because I've worked for Walmart and Sam's Club before. And when I worked for them, every time they gave us a slight pay increase, my hours were cut. In 2017, when I finally left for a 40 hour a week job, Sam's was paying me at $10.50/hour, but couldn't get more than 20 hours a week, if that.
In places like retail, the payroll budget will remain the same, so workers will be required to get the same amount of work done in less time. The other option is to bring in two 20 hour/week part time workers instead of one, 40 hour Full Time person. The cost savings in in not having to pay benefits.
If Amazon gets some (ever-changing and unknown) number of complaints about a product or seller (say... of confederate flags, MAGA hats, or black rifle coffee?) they will boot them off the platform and charge them for the privilege of having their product packed and shipped back to their own living room. I can't do much, but I do have time to complain about objectionable Nazi swag.
Sounds like a job for an automated crawler. Hunt for key strings and then spam the complaints server.
Regarding the happy birthday email that was sent out last week wishing somebody happy birthday, and was sent out to the whole company: the company store is now selling “happy birthday *****” T-shirts and mugs in honor of the event. $5 of every sale goes to the company’s charitable foundation.
I'd like to think the events of the past few days have made conservatives and libertarians reconsider their notions of massive deregulation, "letting the free market decide," and the idea of private business being able to pretty much do as they please.
But I am probably dreaming and need to come back to reality.