Wed, 12/03/2008 - 12:20pm — Sarah
As Jim Hightower points out in his blog entry, while the prices don't increase for some commodities at your grocery store and the packages look the same, the amount of product is dropping -- sometimes dramatically.
Then there's the excellent "Mouse Print" web site, which reveals the fine print (in readable fonts) behind many retail, coupon and online offers. You could do worse than read both sites regularly, folks, if you -- like me and many others -- want to avoid waste and scammage.
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25-cent bags of potato chips are now 33 cents.
Bummer.
"Capitalists on the way up, communists on the way down." -- Stirling Newberry
Thanks, Sarah,
for the "Mouse Print" site. I've been noticing shrinking packages and price differentials for a long time (I'm one of those crazy people that loves to go to the grocery store, and I usually note comparisons on price and size of product).
I think people should remember two things:
1) If it's too good to be true, it probably is.
2) You get what you pay for.
The economic downturn may affect those, but not significantly.
Folks
"You could do worse than read both sites regularly, folks, if you -- like me and many others -- want to avoid waste and scammage."
The term folks is derogatory. It belittles the reader or listener.
I am not a folk. I am a citizen. If I wanted to be spoken at as a folk, I would listen to Rush Limbaugh.
(Please note, that this comment has nothing to do with substance of Sarah's post.)
If you let Rush Limbaugh control the language, Okie,
you have already lost.
"Folks" is a perfectly legitimate collective noun with a thousand-year or more rich and honorable history that likely preceeds English, never mind Limbaugh, and there is no reason to give it up because Rush is a jerk. The right thing to do with words that have been to some degree sullied by abuse from the Right is to use them ourselves, properly and proudly. I am, for instance, quick to tell people I am a Liberal
despite the false negative associations the Right have been trying to tag on that good term. Often with strangers I'll get a snide comment, opening an opportunity for a nice lecture on what it means to be Liberal and how much finer it is to be me than a brain-dead Ditto-Head. I quite enjoy doing that.
From Merriam-Webster's, our collective agreement on what the word means:
Sarah's usage was absolutely accurate and correct, and gave me no pause or discomfort whatsoever - nor does anyone else have good cause to choose to be offended. And it is your choice, Okie, if you decide to allow one blubberous gasbag overthrow a thousand years at least of clear and beneficial history. Why give him that kind of power? Why not, instead, ignore his attempts to control and manage your thoughts and feelings? Why not choose to diminish him, instead of the language?
If "folks" was good enough for Chaucer and Shakespeare and Samuel Clemmons, it is more than good enough for me. I in fact feel a definite ownership of it, and refuse to allow such a flagon of flatulence as Rush Limbaugh to obscure and make off with it.
One further thought, in consideration of your nom de blog. You know - of course you do - that "Okie" was originally a pejorative, an insult, yet you claim it as an online name and do so I assume with some degree of pride. You have refused to let others manipulate you with a derogatory term and have instead decided to own it, to seize it and make it valuable and worthwhile. I invite you to join Sarah and I and hundreds of millions of other good folks everywhere to do the same thing with this fine word, and let the Limbaughs of the world go to hell rather than surrender that which is ours.
Nah. Now if the term were "volk"...
I just read "folk" as a Texas-ism (as well as a Beltway-ism along the lines of "the _____ community). No biggie, in either case.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
The Okie?
I decline your attempt at dominance.
We can admit that we’re killers … but we’re not going to kill today. That’s all it takes! Knowing that we’re not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
1 John 4:18
Coffee used to come in 1 pound cans
A full 16 ounces. Now they are in 12 ounce cans.
This has been going on for quite some time, and happens when they don't want to raise prices.
I have also seen prices being raised just before something goes on sale, then dropped down a bit, but not to the original price, when they are put on sale. That way they can claim such and such percent off.
Then, after the sale, they go back to the original price.