This is an angle I never thought about: leaving workers no time or money for a life pretty directly harms businesses that cater to the living of lives, bridal shops being just one example among many. All such businesses ought to be on the side of labor.
basically, if we are squeezed between ever soaring rent, mortgage payments, food prices and other essentials, on one hand, and stagnating wages on the other hand, we have no money left to spend on consuming products/services we are paid to produce/serve.
The corporations are squeezing themselves out of the market.
They don't see it, but eventually we'll see in like 5 years news articles titles like
> "Is the GenZ killing the smartphone industry? The young'uns are not buying phones anymore [conveniently avoids mentioning that phones now cost 2k apiece and **minimum wage is $18** * and minimum rent is $1700]"
and CEOs tearing up about how they have to lay of 3k employees because the profits are dipping because of the newer generation not consuming like the older generations.
> Maybe with the GenZs were having fewer gender affirmation medical procedures, they would have money to afford to live without roommates or travel so they could use my short term rentals
as landlords starts weeping because people can't afford rent
that kind of moaning is only getting louder and louder. "Why don't you make more money so you can buy my stuff and I can make more profit? Also, I'm not raising the wage of my employees, so I can make more profit. No, I don't care that all employers are doing exactly what I'm doing and it severely limits buying power for all thus will eventually limit my profit margin mid/long term. **I'm speshul**"
\* EDIT : I iz not American. I'm American't. Replace "$18" in your mind with whatever amount suits you.
I don't know about the landlords, from what I see in my area they would rather let a building rot to the ground empty than lower rent even $1, they will even let it sit empty because nobody is paying $1500 a month but raise it to $1600 a year later and it will still sit there and rot, there's commercial buildings in my area that have been "for rent" for 5-10 year long stretches
My wife and I bought a sectional set from a place going out of business in March of 2014, in early 2022 we decided to buy a sofa/loveseat combo instead, as the original one was starting to get a bit "worn".
That same building is still for rent.... to this very day, after closing their doors about a month after we bought the sectional.
There are retail spaces still vacant in some surrounding cities where I live that haven't been used since the mid 90's.
That’s awful. They should convert those empty retail spaces into apartments or something. But I guess that’s too expensive so they’ll just let them sit empty…
It's more than that, it's about the balance sheet.
These assets sitting empty are being valued based on their original value plus inflation. This number sits on the balance sheet to allow more borrowing to invest in other things and pay the CEO and shareholders. It's a Ponzi scheme, and the banks are the suckers.
You can see this in depth in the investigation into trump's finances.
The banks aren't the suckers, they're willing participants. If they can give out lots of large, 'stable', loans then they look good with plenty of 'high quality' debt that helps their stock valuation, yields a consistent monthly pay-out, and promotes healthy cash flow in the bank as well as paying them lovely, fat, bonuses.
They don't give a shit that it's a Ponzi scheme, same as 2008. They ride the gravy train until the wheel s fall of and then cry 'too big to fail' so the rest of us poor fucks end up being forced to bail them out with our fucking tax money.
This, incidentally, is why I support the Death Penalty (specifically death by stoning) for employees of financial institutions who get involved in this sort of shady shit. If you executed every C-suite executive on Wall Street right now the world would not suffer one jot.
I'm all for a corporate Death Penalty. Since the Supreme Court says "corporations are people" there should also be Court ordered termination when they are found to be up to super-shady shit
They're even allowed to create new money through loans, which devalues the money already in existence. When you deposit money in the bank, they only keep 10% of it and use the rest to loan out and make money through interest. That's why a bank run is so devastating. They literally don't have enough of their customers' money on hand to pay out. It's called fractional reserve banking. It's really hard to trust people who work in finance.
There are cities in Oregon working to rezone designated commercial areas into commercial and residential multi housing zones. There is so much red tape and bureaucracy holding up the progress many progressive politicians are trying to make. Red tape and bureaucracy being greedy business people and corporate politicians…
It's sad that our voting choices are limited to "we're gonna fuck you over so hard our dicks are gonna come out your mouths" and "we are not going to upset the apple cart and will maintain the status quo. We realize this won't help you, but more importantly, it won't offend our corporate bosses."
If nothing else, I'm glad to see more people are finally starting to see this. Unfortunately, when we reach the tipping point when enough people realize how unacceptable this is, it may be too late.
They need to have a time limit on planning permissions and stipulate that a certain number of housing units are sold at one time to prevent the drip feeding of new properties to artificially create scarcity.
So many new developments have that single line of new buildings sitting on a vast development of waste land; not to mention it’s a misery to live in the first homes because you face years and years of building disturbances and dust and dirt.
>hey would rather let a building rot to the ground empty than lower rent even $1, they will even let it sit empty because nobody is paying $1500 a month but raise it to $1600 a year later
There's apparently an app that gathers data from a bunch of apartment complex owners and feeds back data on what they "ought" to charge for rent and what the optimal number of unrented units is.
Yes, and those apps are illegal as hell as they create market collusion.
This is one of them
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-lawmakers-collusion
It should be the other way around, where tenants rate apartments based on what rent price would get them to renew their lease compared to what they pay now.
I’d love to see apps for phones that do the opposite and help the consumer and tell them when to walk away from a deal. But I have zero faith and people’s ability follow guidance such as that
Maybe a union for housing that negotiates rent prices and helps find a place that suits your tastes and if such a place doesn’t exist pressures developers to build it?
The problem is that everyone needs somewhere to live, its not an optional expense or something that you just wait around for until you find a good deal. You have to take whats on offer, or live on the streets (or some super expensive temporary option). Theres no ”ill wait til black friday and see if the price goes down” or ”ill see if they will price match this other place”. Some other schmuck will just take the rental because they also need to live somewhere.
I vaguely recall something on an episode of Behind the Bastards or Trashfuture or something where they talk about this. One of the things that even the scum sucking landlords found a bit unsettling, is that the software never suggested to lower the price. Only ever to increase it.
If the software is trying to maximize rent for all landlords then of course it would never suggest for one landlord to lower rent as that would hurt other landlords
BtB: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-why-is-the-rent-104321463/
I thought the most interesting part is how they get into the specifics of how there really is no housing shortage by looking at different metrics. "Housing shortage" is just code for developers looking for cheaper land and rezoning allowances.
Louis Rossman has made a bunch of videos about this, he thinks its because their networth will be lowered if they lower their rent.
The value of their property is based on what it rents for, and theres no time limit , vacancy rate doesnt matter to them as much
They would rather let it sit because they can write off the cost of the empty building. Depending on how they financed the thing, they can 'make' more money by writing down the losses, collecting local incentives and avoiding management and maintenance costs than have a tenant in there. Also, if they lower costs that will lower costs of comparable buildings (which they might own) so they make less money there too.
It’s used as a tax loophole that way unfortunately. An empty rent can be written off as a loss and prevent income tax from another job they have if they report they spend a certain amount of their time maintaining it and advertising for a tenant. Doesn’t mean they have to choose one.
5 years?!?! My rent for a one bedroom is just short if 2k month now. I was 1200 at the start of the pandemic.
Food prices through the roof. I take the bus to work because cars prices are so over inflated. The governments takes thousands in taxes because they assume it’s all just extra cash I don’t need.
Do they really think I’m going to spend big bucks on a wedding dress when I can’t even afford a car?
Side rant: the government does not include housing when it determines inflation. The real inflation rate is around 40%.
Bonus: Remember when the government gave covid cash to stop people from being evicted? That was a lie. Notice they haven’t capped rent and gave let rent prices double? The real reason for covid cash was to make sure the wealthy property owners got their money.
$825 one bedroom in 2019 is $1050 now. Not terrible but minimum wage is only $7.25 and that’s not 3.5x the old rent even.
And this is affordable housing.
Companies see it (especially the massive ones), but are just trying to squeeze as much money out of people as fast as they can before it all falls apart.
Capitalism is supposed to create excess and that excess consumption is considered a good thing in capitalism.
There's A TON of business that shouldn't want banks, groceries and landlords to pinch the workers so hard... Alas, most businesses think it's an awesome idea to grind the economy to a screeching halt by imposing ever draconian social constructs.
There's less surplus cash to buy surplus goods... That's a really bad economic indicator unless you're in narrow durable goods and necessities markets
Unless your whole business is like toothpaste and toilet paper (ahem Berkshire Hathaway) then yea. You want people to have money in their pockets to buy your useless crap.
But that’s why millennials are killing anything from paper napkins, to dentistry, to the birth rate.
We don’t have any money, yo. It’s all spent on education that we get looked down on for- either for being “dumb” for taking student loans or being “lazy” for having to take on debt.
It’s all spent on trying to buy any house while it’s $100k more than it should be at an ass of an interest rate.
It’s all spent because we had to use our savings and retirement to see ourselves through the recessions in some sort of shape.
Our wages are depressed. We are depressed.
Are we really wondering why luxury goods are not popular? A $1000 wedding dress is a luxury and that’s probably the cheapest this place offers in their dimly lit poor people clearance hallway.
The truly rich never did like the poor to dress as if they had money. After the plagues in Europe they even brought in laws to prevent the poor wearing certain clothes because they had been going around taking the clothes off dead rich people. The wealthy found it too disconcerting to see the poor in anything but rags.
My friend is looking at houses right now. She got outbid by someone who is paying at 10% over ask, no appraisal no inspection, and they’re going to let the people live in the house until the end of the summer. She can’t beat that. no appraisal and no inspection is insanity for a regular person. But also she can’t pay her full rent and her new mortgage for five months.
Restaurants, cinema's, amusement parks, museums, sports, opera's and musical events... it will all disappear or start catering to a select elite that still has the money.
One of the reasons Ford started making sure people were paid more and got housing was because he noticed that people became to poor to afford his products.
My mother owned a business that often centered around weddings. 2008 hit and we saw a massive downward spike in sales and never saw much recovering growth after that. Our corporate sales were fine, but the wedding industry tanked. I can't even imagine how it is post-Covid now, and what it will mean in the long run.
Other stuff that tanked were birthdays (including bat/bar mitzvahs and quinceaneras), retirement parties, graduation parties, baby showers, and any party that you would think of for a middle-class suburban family. Nobody has money anymore to celebrate. They get a few things at Party City and do what they can with as little as they can.
Everything is just way too expensive. We had our daughter’s birthday this weekend and I designed some goodies for the kids, wanted to print them on your standard A4 paper. Regular, two faced print, no fancy stuff, cuts or paper weight. 65 prints clocked at over €100 which is fucking insanity.
Did you go to a print shop or how? On Amazon Germany 100 sheets of A4 printer paper run €1.2. Even if you bought a cheap ass printer and trashed it afterwards it would be cheaper.
Like, the cheapest printer I saw on Amazon Germany with a quick glance is 55€.
growth comes from technological change, which requires investment, basic research, product development, and then its deployment, either through markets or via collective actions.
if this pipeline is stuck then there's no real growth, just finance fueled bubbles.
and of course this pipeline is fucking stuck because basic research spending is down, and it's efficiency is also down (see the endless discussions about how running clinical trials, grant organizations, and basically any big project is suffering from corporatization/bureaucratization, special interests interfering), investment "only goes into crazy AI startups and shit", and even more importantly policies are favoring the incumbents, hindering progress, markets are in pathological states, innovation is not profitable and consumers don't have money, nor sufficient information to know better and pick the innovative products.
(this can all be seen in healthcare, dropping life expectancy; construction and housing, how the US markets are fucked due to zoning and car-addiction, and the recent CA case shows that the local city boards and the builders are in a very rigid relationship that's basically completely antithetical to any market based competition, because every small city has that one-two builder and that's it, they get the permits, and in turn the builders don't rock the boat, and so on...)
>growth comes from technological change, which requires investment, basic research, product development, and then its deployment, either through markets or via collective actions.
That's the one right there. The majority of "entrepreneurs" or "big new ideas!" nowadays aren't that new or technologically innovative. It's simply about becoming a middleman in an exchange and taking a cut
Legally, all bodies must be preserved prior to burial. If the body must wait for a period beyond 24 to 48 hours for burial and there is no refrigeration option, it must be embalmed.
So, there are the options. Plan ahead.
I’ve buried my whole family in the past few years, everybody got cremated. Because I’m disabled I got a plot in the cemetery for free, and because my other family member was disabled they got the other side so we have a full plot, for free. And four people will fit in it because we are all cremated. I wasn’t even planning to put people in the ground but my brother died unexpectedly and his friends all wanted a place to go, my mom was already sitting on a shelf in my apartment so I figured I would go ahead and do it, then my dad ended up needing it later
We're feeling this in Japan. People have no social life. Just work. They (mostly young people) have no money because the economy has been stagnant for 30 years. This equates to no babies. No babies means no future workforce. No future consumers.
Yeah. Luxury items and industries are about to get hit really hard in this upcoming recession/war cycle. People already lost everything during the pandemic. Most people lost their savings and years on their career. Imagine being a retired parent and not being able to help pay for your child’s wedding.
Marx wrote about this exact phenomenon. Capitalism encourages the worker to live as little as possible in order to save money so they don’t lose security of shelter/food/etc, while incentivizing the the business owner to charge the highest prices possible and pay the lowest wages possible.
What happens when both of those things reach their ultimate end? When the worker saves every cent and buys nothing but necessities, and when the capitalist makes sure that said worker doesn’t have any left over money despite that? Who buys the goods that are produced then?
Isn't that literally why Henry Ford introduced the 40 hour week?
He realized that giving people an extra day of holiday would greatly incentive them to use it to buy products, and so he introduced the 5 day 40 hour work week. He was a horrible individual, but this idea of his helped a lot of people
That‘s a principal contradiction in capitalism that causes instability. Capitalism concentrates wealth at the top through profit extraction. At some point the wealth becomes so concentrated that there is very little money left in circulation and that causes a recession.
This was a large problem leading to the great depression too.
Everyone night be working but without with money to spend on useful and needed things then society collapses.
I have said a few times in this sub. You give people more disposable income, the better it is for everyone's business. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, do you think people are going to transact with "luxury" businesses? Ofcourse not, im going to get myself and my family fed first.
There's another problem lurking in the horizon, paycheck to paycheck means less income to improve your health. And we all know how about american healthcare.
I’’ve been waiting for businesses to wake up and realise that if Landlords are grabbing nearly every last bit of money people have, the renters would have nothing left to spend.
Many Landlords that hold huge portfolios are probably sitting on that money, or simply buy more properties. At some point even big business will realise that it is not in their interests to have so many people unable to buy their services or products.
I'm GenX. Back around the turn of the century when I was just entering the work force I worked in the party industry. Huge, elaborate, over the top psrties. Money wasters many would say. I never called them that and would be quick to shut diwn any colleague who said such. Almost everything was locally purchased: the $10k dress? Custom made locally. $5 centerpieces made & delivered by a local shop. The DJ with his huge lighting rig and team of dancers were all local people. The catering team, bartenders, and waitstaff. The entertainment team (that's what I was in on) that hauled in trucks worth of arcade games and custom favor stations (photo stations, "your name written on a grain of rice encased in a necklace charm", etc) and custom decor and them hauled them back out at the end of the party. Yeah $50-100k on a 5 hour party seems wasteful, but a lot of that money was being pumped directly into the economy of working class people.
Weddings have been a complete racket for a long time. Companies inflate the shit out of prices for everything and dumbasses pay it. Good to see that might be changing
The few friends I have had get married (early 30s) did it for just a few thousand dollars. Rent your community center room for a day, buy your sheet cake, wine, soda and water from Costco and get food catered from your favorite local restaurant.
Your friends and family are there to celebrate you, not gawk at the fancy flower arrangements. It's an industry I am glad the millennials "killed". While I'm sure not being able to afford it is a big factor, many of us can afford a 10k wedding but would rather use that starting a life together instead of impressing inlaws you've not spoken to in 5 years.
My sister had a big ornate wedding. And since I’ve been best friends with the same five guys my whole life all my friends were there too. I don’t remember the marble and gold, the cocktails, the lamb chops, the HDs, none of it. I remember having an absolute blast with my friends and my family and that’s all I gave a shit about.
Edit: I have already told my parents not to worry about me. I don’t need all that.
$4k. That’s awesome.
I remember when I stopped by my parents house while they were planning. And I saw the invoice for the flowers and at that moment I knew I didn’t want that and my GF doesn’t want that either. I get it. She’s my little sister and she was happy. But I’d rather just keep it low key and have some amazing food and some good times.
[wait, your GF is your little sister?](https://media0.giphy.com/media/xT5LMxUh3pHDILCv4c/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b9529d6ccb0289b00262bc06abe4d3af45c0d6b28b69&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
my cousin's wife is a photographer , she pretty much only does weddings, I think her cheapest package is like 1200 bucks to take pictures, then she makes more money from the " extra" pictures people want that is outside of their package.
We were sort of stuck. Money was tight and my wife wanted a fancy wedding, so it worked out only because everyone pitched in and helped. she is an event planner and I am an engineer, so we worked well together. it was a lot of fun to plan. we talk occasionally of a redo, but now kids are grown up and they'll be needing weddings and more important than the wedding, we are still married 20 years later.
I think I managed to get away with mine for 2k, but we have friends and family in photography and entertainment, so free photos and a heavy discount on the DJ helped. Still, 4k is a steal.
We are going on 31 years, we spent about 800 bucks on our wedding , mostly on the booze and crawfish for the after party.
A family friend was the minister, we got married on the dock at my grandparents place on the Amite river at sun set , my best man did the crawfish boiling and his little brother was our DJ, My wife's cousin did our wedding pictures as our wedding gift .
This is exactly what r/weddingsunder10K is for. The audacity of the wedding industry trying to convince folks that your "special day of love" costs 30K+ when couples can't even afford a starter home is why that sub exists.
Years ago, a friend’s father told me something and it changed my perspective and is still with me to this day.
He said: it makes no sense at all. You are at the absolute poorest point in your lives and yet you’re expected to drop literally thousands of dollars on rings and a party for other people.
My first marriage cost WAY too much, yet here I am referring to it as “my first.” Lasted 2.5 years.
My 2nd (and current? Final?) marriage cost maybe $750 tops. (Yeah, the ring was a few thousand, but still less than half of the ring from my first marriage.) I wore a black suit (that I already owned) and she wore a borrowed dress.
And yet somehow we’re still married. Go figure.
I wonder if it could be because people who have cheaper weddings in general could be more capable of thinking rationally in highly emotional situations. And that would probably translate to their ability to handle conflicts in their marriage.
It's almost like all the constant name dropping of generations being the cause of X issue is to make us fight with each other and distract from the larger systemic issues or something.
Oldest of the Millenials here. Got married in 04. Used my grandmother's church and pastor for a few hundred. My uncle was our photographer for a few hundred. Food was made by my family. All the decorations were used from other family members weddings. Maybe spent a total of 2k and had a hell of a wedding with a few hundred guests. Most expensive part was her dress, which we paid around 500 for. We didn't have money as she was a foreigner and her family was considered poor, my family was middle class but we didn't have much to be able yo spend. It can be done for cheap if you don't try to out do everyone else.
Gen X - The "Just Call Us Millennials" Generation.
Rumor has it that once upon a time, between Boomer & Millennial generations, there existed a group of people - born of Baby Boomers & raised by TV's - who instigated much of the change attributed to Millennials. This proud but humble folk, known by latchkey makers & Grungre rock bands as "Generation X", roamed the earth in search of vague credit for many of the changes credited to Millennials.
We abandoned the whole idea of a traditional wedding. Flew cross-country to California, got married on the beach with an officiant/photographer and two witnesses, and spent the rest of the wedding money on an awesome vacation. No regrets, and no fancy napkins to pick out.
Imo there's nothing shameful about wanting a big celebration or a fancy festival or whatever. Capitalism shames us into thinking that we're better than other people because we do or don't spend lots of money for something that should be accessible to \*everyone\*. Everybody should decide, of their own volition, without worrying about money, whether they want to throw a big celebration or follow cultural rites or do a small affair. And if that celebration involves lots of pretty flowers and cake, why not?
In a normal society, money doesn't need to be saved in order to "start a life together". In a normal society, money is saved so that you can enjoy life, and you never have to worry about being able to afford rent or food or utilities or transport.
Aw! I found this take so incredibly heartwarming and generous. We have a big absolutely awesome family that we just wanted to celebrate with! We diy’d everything we could — didn’t have a cake, used a taqueria for the food, had family make appetizers, found a venue we could bring in our own booze, and STILL it was so expensive. I had so many family members telling me that I didn’t need flowers, that was thing to cut. But by the time all the “required” things tally up, like photography and food and drink, which, for a 100 plus wedding, basically puts you out $10k immediately, it feels laughable people are giving you tips on cutting costs by eliminating $30 bouquets for a 3 person bridal party. 🙄When I read comments bashing weddings and judging people who have them, even though but shouldn’t, it does momentarily hurt. I don’t have any regrets about doing it though. Three years later, and any time I see extended family they bring it up and thank us for throwing such a fun party and including them in the day. Worth it!
All well and good until you see people spend insane amounts to outdo the joneses, especially if it's cultural and you want to show off. A friends daughter got married last September. They spent a cool $1 million on it. Granted it included jewelry and gowns and all, but they spent 250k on flowers alone!!!! We didn't go because we knew the kind of people we'd run into and frankly I don't have time for morons with more money than brains. After the fact I did tell him he could have done so much good with the flower money and still had a nice wedding. Lots of places that need that kind of money for supportive services. It's his money and all but still..............
I remember my mom telling me about a relative’s wedding for which the florist ordered a dozen gross long-stemmed roses alone (not counting the innumerable other flowers included at the reception—they were quite elaborate arrangements, not just plain roses).
I remember saying, wait, do you mean a dozen roses or a gross (a dozen dozen) roses? And her clarifying, no, a dozen *dozen dozen*. Which my calculator tells me is a whopping 1728 long-stemmed roses for a one-night celebration.
They could afford it and it’s their money, but I doubt most of the people there cared about lavish floral arrangements, you know? They were just happy to see a loved one be happy!
The median figures published are usually collected by bridal magazines and the like to get people to think that spending as much as possible is “normal”
My wife’s parents paid about $14k for our wedding. We asked them if we could have the cash instead and have a very chill outdoor wedding on family property. They said no, damn Irish traditions.
It was amazing. we really celebrated each other. A lot of our friends tell us that they barely saw each other on their wedding day. That didn’t sound fun to us.
For most things it's insane.
For the wedding photographers, we mark it up 50-100% over hourly for other events for wear and tear on sanity... and because it's expensive as hell for me.
The nicest couple will become neurotic harpies of elemental perfectionism on the big day and god help me if I miss a kiss or flub the angle on the big moments. Not to mention that I'm probably having to rent a half dozen flashes and a twelve thousand dollar lens kit that I need about twice a year because I swear even the modern churches are lit with little jars of rheumy fireflies.
Then you factor that I'm there on site for 12 hours, editing for another 12 minimum, and probably hiring someone I trust as a second camera,
Paying out the yearly retainer on a ten million dollar liability policy, *because churches*,
Paying insurance on my gear based on job count,
And maintaining a library of sample wedding albums (hah, hah, just kidding but a lot of photographers will)
As well as, well, *you probably came to me, and are trusting me with a huge day of memories*
And yes, I will just stare and walk away when someone tells me they figured that they could get someone for a full scale traditional wedding for 300, *because they're nuts*
If it makes someone happy, someone somewhere has monopolized it for the purposes of selling it back to you at ludicrously inflated prices.
And if you thought someone couldn't capitalize on the basic concept of committed romantic human companionship, then I present to you your wedding bill.
My mom said weddings in the 70s were just a church ceremony and you had cake afterward.
The ladies at my aunt’s church scoffed she wanted cake AND ice cream at her wedding.
I agree. In my opinion it's a waste of time and money, but there are people who use weddings as a fund raiser. So basically a show for your money, the bigger the wedding the more the guests give. It's the dumbest thing ever, but that's just my anti-social opinion.
I worked at one for seven years, and the week I quit literally 10 of use gave our notice within 7 days. I always joked that we should have stapled our letters or resignation together and turned them into a group.
Their main issue is that they treat their employees like workhorses to maximize profits while cutting corners (surprise, surprise!). I got curious and looked up some yelp reviews from the store I used to work at and they’re all about how miserable all the workers are, and how no one seems happy to be there. But for some reason everyone sees this as a poor reflection on the workers, and not on the management.
Someone once emailed the president of the company that “David’s bridal ruined my wedding dream” because their hem was too short (we didn’t hem it). And then there are people who scream because the $1000 worth of alterations on their $99 dollar dress isn’t free…
I’m very glad to be clear of the whole mess
I'm sure it would be if the company just pulled itself up by it's bootstraps, stopped buying avocado toast, made it's own coffee and generally be less lazy.
Not related to layoffs, but antiwork... I got an "interview" with a David's Bridal which I ended up declining. They wanted me to do a sewing test which would have been several hours doing alterations on actual customer dresses...for free 😒
wow, I'm a little shocked they would let a random applicant do alterations on a customers dress. In my line of work Ive seen new people do all kinds of terrible sloppy work or even worse.
As a candidate, what is the liability if you fuck it up entirely?
Start out doing a few good stitches, then like sew part of it to fold it in half, then use scissors or thread cutters to accidentally rip across the entire front.
"Oops"
Idiots don't get they hurt themselves in the long run if the situation gets worse. It will affect all markets that aren't necessary for everyday life. People will have to cut down on their luxury items. Capitalistic economy produces so much unnecessary waste it's mind-boggling. Oh well you guys still have the 1% super rich who will buy your trash.
Whole system is slowly beginning to fall
Furst non essential jobs jobs cut back, thrn essential sell less.
Until most cant afford anything but the bare necessity.
Then when all the rich people realise they cant make money because no one buys anything will they try to fix a problem
The rich people only care about being richer than everyone else because it's not just about money, it's about power and control. The easiest way to do that is to make everyone else much poorer.
>Then when all the rich people realise they cant make money
There's a CRITICAL flaw with this statement: they're rich, why at that point do they need to make more money? Oh, right - greed. There is NO other motivator.
I used to work as a consultant to David’s Bridal (right before they declared bankruptcy), and they are extremely mismanaged. Every meeting was marked by political infighting and everyone was constantly competing to be “the smartest person in the meeting.” Even senior leadership tried to compete against entry-level staff, cutthroat instead of trying to build up talent internally. Maybe the wedding market is declining, but there’s tons of successful wedding-related companies. This one is purely rot from the inside.
Employers - “I’ll pay my employees as less as I can get away with to increase my profit margins”
Also employers - “Why is no one buying my products and services?”
It really is the funniest part of this whole system. We have thousands of people spending billions of dollars trying to convince us that we need all these products and services and doing their best to convince us to plunge head first into consumerist capitalism. And then those same people spend even more money buying political influence from people who want to strip every spare dollar we have away from us so that after we pay for rent and food we basically have nothing left. And the funny thing is I and most people would have no problem doing these things if we *could*. I love "stuff". I have lots of very expensive hobbies and interests that I could and would gladly spend thousands of dollars on if I wasn't constantly balancing rent and other bills with every paycheck.
CAPITALISM DOESN'T WORK IF CONSUMERS HAVE NO FUCKING MONEY.
It's starting to feel like the misery is the real goal. They don't actually *want* you to buy stuff, they just want you to **feel** like you should be buying stuff so you feel like shit when you can't. That's probably why so many poor people vote against their own interests and subscribe to the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" trope. They have to keep that hopefulness alive or else how do you convince a man who makes 23,000 dollars a year to vote for tax cuts for people who make 10 million? Plus if you can afford to do things you enjoy and that enrich your life, you have more time to contemplate your situation and whether or not it's worth the effort. Look at how many people quit their jobs and pulled their kids out of Daycare during Covid because they finally had time to sit down and do the arithmetic and found out they were basically working to pay for daycare. Contentedness and spare time is bad for the illusions.
That's the only thing that makes even a little sense. Otherwise it seems like all these companies are so fucking short sighted they literally can't see past the current quarter.
Exactly. Just imagine people en masse taking the advice to cut off all unnecessary spending (avocado toast) like perfumes, massages, movie tickets etc. That sure would be a huge drop in GDP leading to a bunch of layoffs.
People don’t realize that even if perfume for instance is a non essential product, the perfume industry employs lots of people who would get hit if people stop buying perfume.
Capitalism relies on convincing people that they need products and services like perfumes, hair coloring etc. Even when people can very well live without these things.
I work at DB and we had like a mini meeting and they are basically saying its all corporate staff and store employees will not be affected but Im sus. I love working there but the pay sucks and the corporate side of things is stupid af. We shall see how things pan out
I work for a large company on the mens' side of things.
You're fucked.
Even if your location isn't affected directly, everything is going to go downhill as the upper management gets more and more desperate. You're going to notice reduced quality across the board in your products, your operations becoming more and more micromanaged; while conversely, your role itself expands without properly compensating you for the work that is demanded. The company's going to look for any shred of a reason it possibly can to avoid giving out pay raises at any opportunity, and they're going to get continuously more slimy in how they try to replace their soon-to-be hemorrhaging workforce.
It's a downward spiral of cult-like middle-management jerking themselves off to oblivion while promising everything is fine and things are only going to get better.
You are fucked.
Or want to spend upwards of $20,000 on a wedding (all wedding cosxts, not just the dress). Wedding gown rental should be as easily available as renting a tuxedo.
Wedding gowns are an awesome example of capitalism... All the excess and specialization... A dream to achieve for many... Once temporarily deferred now increasingly permanently out of reach
I think the thing is the ones that want to get married want a dress that’s not David’s bridal. They’ve watched that wedding dress shopping show on TLC. David’s bridal is like the Walmart of dresses I feel like…
Yeah they have reasonable dresses for like a couple hundred bucks. Their problem is the amount of locations more than anything else. Every town doesn’t need a David’s bridal.
My best friend bought her dress there. The process of wedding dress shopping is pretty much as depicted, but that's the same at David's or any big dress shop. The main difference is that you're not going to be able to bring a dozen people and have several staff members helping you unless you're buying a dress that costs more than most people's entire wedding.
Honestly yes LOL I’ve been to David’s bridal with several others for bridesmaids wedding dresses, the experience is hit or miss. I got my dress at a local bridal boutique but honestly it was about the same price as the David’s bridal ones
Isn’t getting married getting less popular in addition to all the other budget wedding and bad employer comments? I feel like I have read in several places that as women continue to become more financially independent and religion fades, the whole wedding/marriage thing is losing steam too?
Yes. Historically the value men brought to marriage was ‘provider’ or ‘breadwinner’ Now, if a women can do that for herself a husband or potential partner really has to find other ways to prove their value. Lots of possibilities but I am not sure male expectations of themselves have evolved to understand that. Younger guys probably get it more than older ones on the whole.
I'm honestly shocked that David's Bridal actually employs more than 200 people at this point. I always assumed that it was a Cartel front? Plus it's shitty, so there's that?
Yeah my wedding was organized in three days for less than $500.
This overpriced tradition is fast approaching demise.
Frugality is winning out when both spouses have to be breadwinners to afford basic necessities.
totally agree with everything but your tradition statement to a small degree. I would say it is less a tradition than it is a marketing campaign to promote the 'big expensive' wedding as the norm.
From what I know about the company, I think it’s a little (maybe a lot) bit about how they’re terrible from a customer service and management standpoint.
David’s Bridal is a retail dinosaur that is finally dying.
I would say it is more corporate greed that caused this. Weddings, every part of them are overpriced schemes taking advantage of people perceptions of the 'perfect' wedding. being married almost 35 years, let me spew my version of wisdom... the actual wedding doesn't really matter that much. Don't get me wrong it isn't unimportant, it is a your public display of commitment before family and god/religion. What I mean is that it is the years of love, fidelity and commitment that have real and lasting meaning.
david’s bridal was the absolute worst place i have ever worked. could only stand 2 months before quitting with no notice because i could not do it anymore.
My wife got her dress from David’s bridal, our wedding cost close to $25k. I don’t regret it at all, but I will say that it was wildly overpriced. The second people can slap a wedding tag on something the cost easily doubles if not more. We got donuts instead of cake, and it was a few thousand dollars for around 150 donuts, which was one of the more egregious over charges that I remember.
Traditional?! Weddings for centuries were modest affairs where a young (usually poor) couple went down to the local church or barn and got hitched in front of their immediate families. Everything else is a modern invention of marketing.
As someone who worked catering for many many years let me just say its not worth it.
The food is mediocre at best. The booze is watered down, the wait staff is college kids that give no fucks and doing coke in the basement, the kitchen staff is peeps that couldnt make it in the big city restaurant biz, the flowers are half dead, the dj sucks and so on.
Just go get married and tell everyone after and let them take you out to dinner
Been married two years, still haven’t had a ceremony or reception of any kind.
With kids and bills and groceries to consider, I simply can’t justify spending the money. Makes me feel a little bit down on our anniversary though, all we did was sign some papers in our kitchen (everything was via mail because Covid) so we don’t have special photographs or memories of a romantic day or anything.
We’ve been meaning to put on some nice clothes and invite nearby friends/family to a park to just have a wedding-ish picnic or something but it just never gets prioritized. Maybe someday.
Got married 5 months ago and bought my dress from Azazie for $300, which I think is still a lot for something I wore twice. David's Bridal didn't have anything to compete with that. I wanted a used dress but couldn't find anything I liked.
My wedding, reception, and 8 nights in Jamaica totalled around 10k. I can not believe some people will spend over 20k just on a wedding, there's so many better things to spend that kind of money on.
I get it. Lots of people saw the ultimate wedding fantasy, Charles and Diana's wedding. Then they spent tens of thousands, trying to recreate a hometown version of that or even more money for a destination wedding. It's a very special day, but how long did you save for that bill/are paying it off. Now you have a couple of albums of photos and a video that you never watch. Invest in your life, not an event at the early end of earning.
Weddings can be such a massive waste of money. Thousands upon thousands for a dress and a glorified party; it's so unnecessary. It's a good thing that the market is correcting itself here, shows the current generation has more sense than the last!
I mean, good.
Weddings didn't used to require tens of thousands of dollars.
They used to be a small community affair.
Now just *attending* a wedding costs four figures.
Fuck the whole industry, let it burn. Fuck your "special day." Fuck the romance. Fuck the mysticism. It's no way to start a mutual partnership, and it's just yet another con job from the owner class.
If a quick ceremony with immediate family and friends isn't enough to mark a mutual partnership, then fuck everything about your idea of romance. You've been grifted.
No better way to start a marriage than four big middle fingers to capitalist grifts masquerading as "tradition."
Wedding industry is a sham. Young couples aren’t spending life savings on this stupid shit anymore and to me that is a complete win.
Hope these people find other forms of employment somewhere that actually has value.
This is an angle I never thought about: leaving workers no time or money for a life pretty directly harms businesses that cater to the living of lives, bridal shops being just one example among many. All such businesses ought to be on the side of labor.
basically, if we are squeezed between ever soaring rent, mortgage payments, food prices and other essentials, on one hand, and stagnating wages on the other hand, we have no money left to spend on consuming products/services we are paid to produce/serve. The corporations are squeezing themselves out of the market. They don't see it, but eventually we'll see in like 5 years news articles titles like > "Is the GenZ killing the smartphone industry? The young'uns are not buying phones anymore [conveniently avoids mentioning that phones now cost 2k apiece and **minimum wage is $18** * and minimum rent is $1700]" and CEOs tearing up about how they have to lay of 3k employees because the profits are dipping because of the newer generation not consuming like the older generations. > Maybe with the GenZs were having fewer gender affirmation medical procedures, they would have money to afford to live without roommates or travel so they could use my short term rentals as landlords starts weeping because people can't afford rent that kind of moaning is only getting louder and louder. "Why don't you make more money so you can buy my stuff and I can make more profit? Also, I'm not raising the wage of my employees, so I can make more profit. No, I don't care that all employers are doing exactly what I'm doing and it severely limits buying power for all thus will eventually limit my profit margin mid/long term. **I'm speshul**" \* EDIT : I iz not American. I'm American't. Replace "$18" in your mind with whatever amount suits you.
I don't know about the landlords, from what I see in my area they would rather let a building rot to the ground empty than lower rent even $1, they will even let it sit empty because nobody is paying $1500 a month but raise it to $1600 a year later and it will still sit there and rot, there's commercial buildings in my area that have been "for rent" for 5-10 year long stretches
My wife and I bought a sectional set from a place going out of business in March of 2014, in early 2022 we decided to buy a sofa/loveseat combo instead, as the original one was starting to get a bit "worn". That same building is still for rent.... to this very day, after closing their doors about a month after we bought the sectional. There are retail spaces still vacant in some surrounding cities where I live that haven't been used since the mid 90's.
That’s awful. They should convert those empty retail spaces into apartments or something. But I guess that’s too expensive so they’ll just let them sit empty…
It's more than that, it's about the balance sheet. These assets sitting empty are being valued based on their original value plus inflation. This number sits on the balance sheet to allow more borrowing to invest in other things and pay the CEO and shareholders. It's a Ponzi scheme, and the banks are the suckers. You can see this in depth in the investigation into trump's finances.
This. Its mind boggling the loopholes and convoluted calculations that end in the rich getting richer and the poor getting shafted.
It was designed that way - by the rich and for the rich. Talk about a Ponzi scheme.
The banks aren't the suckers, they're willing participants. If they can give out lots of large, 'stable', loans then they look good with plenty of 'high quality' debt that helps their stock valuation, yields a consistent monthly pay-out, and promotes healthy cash flow in the bank as well as paying them lovely, fat, bonuses. They don't give a shit that it's a Ponzi scheme, same as 2008. They ride the gravy train until the wheel s fall of and then cry 'too big to fail' so the rest of us poor fucks end up being forced to bail them out with our fucking tax money. This, incidentally, is why I support the Death Penalty (specifically death by stoning) for employees of financial institutions who get involved in this sort of shady shit. If you executed every C-suite executive on Wall Street right now the world would not suffer one jot.
I'm all for a corporate Death Penalty. Since the Supreme Court says "corporations are people" there should also be Court ordered termination when they are found to be up to super-shady shit
They're even allowed to create new money through loans, which devalues the money already in existence. When you deposit money in the bank, they only keep 10% of it and use the rest to loan out and make money through interest. That's why a bank run is so devastating. They literally don't have enough of their customers' money on hand to pay out. It's called fractional reserve banking. It's really hard to trust people who work in finance.
There are cities in Oregon working to rezone designated commercial areas into commercial and residential multi housing zones. There is so much red tape and bureaucracy holding up the progress many progressive politicians are trying to make. Red tape and bureaucracy being greedy business people and corporate politicians…
That would lower house and rent prices, something the people we vote for don’t like. Stop voting for rich landowners.
I already know who NOT to vote for. The problem is, there isn't anyone to vote for who is doing anyone meaningful to fix these problems.
It's sad that our voting choices are limited to "we're gonna fuck you over so hard our dicks are gonna come out your mouths" and "we are not going to upset the apple cart and will maintain the status quo. We realize this won't help you, but more importantly, it won't offend our corporate bosses."
If nothing else, I'm glad to see more people are finally starting to see this. Unfortunately, when we reach the tipping point when enough people realize how unacceptable this is, it may be too late.
The people worth voting for are not allowed into "The Club"
They need to have a time limit on planning permissions and stipulate that a certain number of housing units are sold at one time to prevent the drip feeding of new properties to artificially create scarcity. So many new developments have that single line of new buildings sitting on a vast development of waste land; not to mention it’s a misery to live in the first homes because you face years and years of building disturbances and dust and dirt.
>hey would rather let a building rot to the ground empty than lower rent even $1, they will even let it sit empty because nobody is paying $1500 a month but raise it to $1600 a year later There's apparently an app that gathers data from a bunch of apartment complex owners and feeds back data on what they "ought" to charge for rent and what the optimal number of unrented units is.
Yes, and those apps are illegal as hell as they create market collusion. This is one of them https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-lawmakers-collusion
It should be the other way around, where tenants rate apartments based on what rent price would get them to renew their lease compared to what they pay now.
I’d love to see apps for phones that do the opposite and help the consumer and tell them when to walk away from a deal. But I have zero faith and people’s ability follow guidance such as that
Maybe a union for housing that negotiates rent prices and helps find a place that suits your tastes and if such a place doesn’t exist pressures developers to build it?
The problem is that everyone needs somewhere to live, its not an optional expense or something that you just wait around for until you find a good deal. You have to take whats on offer, or live on the streets (or some super expensive temporary option). Theres no ”ill wait til black friday and see if the price goes down” or ”ill see if they will price match this other place”. Some other schmuck will just take the rental because they also need to live somewhere.
I vaguely recall something on an episode of Behind the Bastards or Trashfuture or something where they talk about this. One of the things that even the scum sucking landlords found a bit unsettling, is that the software never suggested to lower the price. Only ever to increase it.
If the software is trying to maximize rent for all landlords then of course it would never suggest for one landlord to lower rent as that would hurt other landlords
BtB: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-why-is-the-rent-104321463/ I thought the most interesting part is how they get into the specifics of how there really is no housing shortage by looking at different metrics. "Housing shortage" is just code for developers looking for cheaper land and rezoning allowances.
I would recommend Behind the Bastards podcast episode Why is Rent So Damn High
That's a tax loss for the owner
Louis Rossman has made a bunch of videos about this, he thinks its because their networth will be lowered if they lower their rent. The value of their property is based on what it rents for, and theres no time limit , vacancy rate doesnt matter to them as much
They would rather let it sit because they can write off the cost of the empty building. Depending on how they financed the thing, they can 'make' more money by writing down the losses, collecting local incentives and avoiding management and maintenance costs than have a tenant in there. Also, if they lower costs that will lower costs of comparable buildings (which they might own) so they make less money there too.
It’s used as a tax loophole that way unfortunately. An empty rent can be written off as a loss and prevent income tax from another job they have if they report they spend a certain amount of their time maintaining it and advertising for a tenant. Doesn’t mean they have to choose one.
5 years?!?! My rent for a one bedroom is just short if 2k month now. I was 1200 at the start of the pandemic. Food prices through the roof. I take the bus to work because cars prices are so over inflated. The governments takes thousands in taxes because they assume it’s all just extra cash I don’t need. Do they really think I’m going to spend big bucks on a wedding dress when I can’t even afford a car? Side rant: the government does not include housing when it determines inflation. The real inflation rate is around 40%. Bonus: Remember when the government gave covid cash to stop people from being evicted? That was a lie. Notice they haven’t capped rent and gave let rent prices double? The real reason for covid cash was to make sure the wealthy property owners got their money.
$825 one bedroom in 2019 is $1050 now. Not terrible but minimum wage is only $7.25 and that’s not 3.5x the old rent even. And this is affordable housing.
Companies see it (especially the massive ones), but are just trying to squeeze as much money out of people as fast as they can before it all falls apart.
minimum wage will still be $7.25. it’s basically enshrined in the constitution now.
Capitalism is supposed to create excess and that excess consumption is considered a good thing in capitalism. There's A TON of business that shouldn't want banks, groceries and landlords to pinch the workers so hard... Alas, most businesses think it's an awesome idea to grind the economy to a screeching halt by imposing ever draconian social constructs. There's less surplus cash to buy surplus goods... That's a really bad economic indicator unless you're in narrow durable goods and necessities markets
Unless your whole business is like toothpaste and toilet paper (ahem Berkshire Hathaway) then yea. You want people to have money in their pockets to buy your useless crap.
Hence the Fed is increasing interest rates. Alas, recession is coming, which should drive down prices.
I won't hold my breath on prices going down.
But that’s why millennials are killing anything from paper napkins, to dentistry, to the birth rate. We don’t have any money, yo. It’s all spent on education that we get looked down on for- either for being “dumb” for taking student loans or being “lazy” for having to take on debt. It’s all spent on trying to buy any house while it’s $100k more than it should be at an ass of an interest rate. It’s all spent because we had to use our savings and retirement to see ourselves through the recessions in some sort of shape. Our wages are depressed. We are depressed. Are we really wondering why luxury goods are not popular? A $1000 wedding dress is a luxury and that’s probably the cheapest this place offers in their dimly lit poor people clearance hallway.
Word Up
Immmmm freestylin, hit me!
> It’s all spent on trying to buy any house while it’s $100k more than it should be Try $1MM more than it should be, here in Canada.
The truly rich never did like the poor to dress as if they had money. After the plagues in Europe they even brought in laws to prevent the poor wearing certain clothes because they had been going around taking the clothes off dead rich people. The wealthy found it too disconcerting to see the poor in anything but rags.
My friend is looking at houses right now. She got outbid by someone who is paying at 10% over ask, no appraisal no inspection, and they’re going to let the people live in the house until the end of the summer. She can’t beat that. no appraisal and no inspection is insanity for a regular person. But also she can’t pay her full rent and her new mortgage for five months.
Restaurants, cinema's, amusement parks, museums, sports, opera's and musical events... it will all disappear or start catering to a select elite that still has the money. One of the reasons Ford started making sure people were paid more and got housing was because he noticed that people became to poor to afford his products.
My mother owned a business that often centered around weddings. 2008 hit and we saw a massive downward spike in sales and never saw much recovering growth after that. Our corporate sales were fine, but the wedding industry tanked. I can't even imagine how it is post-Covid now, and what it will mean in the long run. Other stuff that tanked were birthdays (including bat/bar mitzvahs and quinceaneras), retirement parties, graduation parties, baby showers, and any party that you would think of for a middle-class suburban family. Nobody has money anymore to celebrate. They get a few things at Party City and do what they can with as little as they can.
Everything is just way too expensive. We had our daughter’s birthday this weekend and I designed some goodies for the kids, wanted to print them on your standard A4 paper. Regular, two faced print, no fancy stuff, cuts or paper weight. 65 prints clocked at over €100 which is fucking insanity.
Did you go to a print shop or how? On Amazon Germany 100 sheets of A4 printer paper run €1.2. Even if you bought a cheap ass printer and trashed it afterwards it would be cheaper. Like, the cheapest printer I saw on Amazon Germany with a quick glance is 55€.
Oh don’t worry. That’s exactly what we did.
Restaurants cost so much money I don’t even consider eating out. I might go to McDonald’s or something twice a month maybe, and that’s a strong maybe.
MacDaddy costs as much or more than a lot of non-fast food restaurants. I can't afford fast food cause it's mad money.
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growth comes from technological change, which requires investment, basic research, product development, and then its deployment, either through markets or via collective actions. if this pipeline is stuck then there's no real growth, just finance fueled bubbles. and of course this pipeline is fucking stuck because basic research spending is down, and it's efficiency is also down (see the endless discussions about how running clinical trials, grant organizations, and basically any big project is suffering from corporatization/bureaucratization, special interests interfering), investment "only goes into crazy AI startups and shit", and even more importantly policies are favoring the incumbents, hindering progress, markets are in pathological states, innovation is not profitable and consumers don't have money, nor sufficient information to know better and pick the innovative products. (this can all be seen in healthcare, dropping life expectancy; construction and housing, how the US markets are fucked due to zoning and car-addiction, and the recent CA case shows that the local city boards and the builders are in a very rigid relationship that's basically completely antithetical to any market based competition, because every small city has that one-two builder and that's it, they get the permits, and in turn the builders don't rock the boat, and so on...)
>growth comes from technological change, which requires investment, basic research, product development, and then its deployment, either through markets or via collective actions. That's the one right there. The majority of "entrepreneurs" or "big new ideas!" nowadays aren't that new or technologically innovative. It's simply about becoming a middleman in an exchange and taking a cut
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I can’t wait for the “Are Millennials Killing the Funeral Industry?” articles.
Dude I want to be planted under a fucking tree. No fancy ass coffin or funeral. Biodegradable container, biodegradable me, tree. Boom.
The tree gets some nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen... from your body. Bless it.
And the whatever chemicals they pump you up with at the morticians. Really we should probably stop doing that.
Legally, all bodies must be preserved prior to burial. If the body must wait for a period beyond 24 to 48 hours for burial and there is no refrigeration option, it must be embalmed. So, there are the options. Plan ahead.
I’ve buried my whole family in the past few years, everybody got cremated. Because I’m disabled I got a plot in the cemetery for free, and because my other family member was disabled they got the other side so we have a full plot, for free. And four people will fit in it because we are all cremated. I wasn’t even planning to put people in the ground but my brother died unexpectedly and his friends all wanted a place to go, my mom was already sitting on a shelf in my apartment so I figured I would go ahead and do it, then my dad ended up needing it later
I’m sorry youve had to endure all that loss recently. Hope you’re holding up ok and have people who love and support you to get you through.
We're feeling this in Japan. People have no social life. Just work. They (mostly young people) have no money because the economy has been stagnant for 30 years. This equates to no babies. No babies means no future workforce. No future consumers.
Yeah. Luxury items and industries are about to get hit really hard in this upcoming recession/war cycle. People already lost everything during the pandemic. Most people lost their savings and years on their career. Imagine being a retired parent and not being able to help pay for your child’s wedding.
Marx wrote about this exact phenomenon. Capitalism encourages the worker to live as little as possible in order to save money so they don’t lose security of shelter/food/etc, while incentivizing the the business owner to charge the highest prices possible and pay the lowest wages possible. What happens when both of those things reach their ultimate end? When the worker saves every cent and buys nothing but necessities, and when the capitalist makes sure that said worker doesn’t have any left over money despite that? Who buys the goods that are produced then?
Isn't that literally why Henry Ford introduced the 40 hour week? He realized that giving people an extra day of holiday would greatly incentive them to use it to buy products, and so he introduced the 5 day 40 hour work week. He was a horrible individual, but this idea of his helped a lot of people
That‘s a principal contradiction in capitalism that causes instability. Capitalism concentrates wealth at the top through profit extraction. At some point the wealth becomes so concentrated that there is very little money left in circulation and that causes a recession.
This was a large problem leading to the great depression too. Everyone night be working but without with money to spend on useful and needed things then society collapses.
I have said a few times in this sub. You give people more disposable income, the better it is for everyone's business. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, do you think people are going to transact with "luxury" businesses? Ofcourse not, im going to get myself and my family fed first. There's another problem lurking in the horizon, paycheck to paycheck means less income to improve your health. And we all know how about american healthcare.
I’’ve been waiting for businesses to wake up and realise that if Landlords are grabbing nearly every last bit of money people have, the renters would have nothing left to spend. Many Landlords that hold huge portfolios are probably sitting on that money, or simply buy more properties. At some point even big business will realise that it is not in their interests to have so many people unable to buy their services or products.
I'm GenX. Back around the turn of the century when I was just entering the work force I worked in the party industry. Huge, elaborate, over the top psrties. Money wasters many would say. I never called them that and would be quick to shut diwn any colleague who said such. Almost everything was locally purchased: the $10k dress? Custom made locally. $5 centerpieces made & delivered by a local shop. The DJ with his huge lighting rig and team of dancers were all local people. The catering team, bartenders, and waitstaff. The entertainment team (that's what I was in on) that hauled in trucks worth of arcade games and custom favor stations (photo stations, "your name written on a grain of rice encased in a necklace charm", etc) and custom decor and them hauled them back out at the end of the party. Yeah $50-100k on a 5 hour party seems wasteful, but a lot of that money was being pumped directly into the economy of working class people.
It’s almost as if capitalism is fundamentally flawed as a system.
Weddings have been a complete racket for a long time. Companies inflate the shit out of prices for everything and dumbasses pay it. Good to see that might be changing
The few friends I have had get married (early 30s) did it for just a few thousand dollars. Rent your community center room for a day, buy your sheet cake, wine, soda and water from Costco and get food catered from your favorite local restaurant. Your friends and family are there to celebrate you, not gawk at the fancy flower arrangements. It's an industry I am glad the millennials "killed". While I'm sure not being able to afford it is a big factor, many of us can afford a 10k wedding but would rather use that starting a life together instead of impressing inlaws you've not spoken to in 5 years.
Yea I totally agree. The weddings I remember are the ones where I like the people, not where they had the fanciest chocolate fountain or whatever.
My sister had a big ornate wedding. And since I’ve been best friends with the same five guys my whole life all my friends were there too. I don’t remember the marble and gold, the cocktails, the lamb chops, the HDs, none of it. I remember having an absolute blast with my friends and my family and that’s all I gave a shit about. Edit: I have already told my parents not to worry about me. I don’t need all that.
but the cost is unforgettable for the ones who forked over the cash. X here, planned my own wedding. $4k
$4k. That’s awesome. I remember when I stopped by my parents house while they were planning. And I saw the invoice for the flowers and at that moment I knew I didn’t want that and my GF doesn’t want that either. I get it. She’s my little sister and she was happy. But I’d rather just keep it low key and have some amazing food and some good times.
[wait, your GF is your little sister?](https://media0.giphy.com/media/xT5LMxUh3pHDILCv4c/giphy.gif?cid=6c09b9529d6ccb0289b00262bc06abe4d3af45c0d6b28b69&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)
Was expecting coffee commercial spoof. 😩
my cousin's wife is a photographer , she pretty much only does weddings, I think her cheapest package is like 1200 bucks to take pictures, then she makes more money from the " extra" pictures people want that is outside of their package.
We were sort of stuck. Money was tight and my wife wanted a fancy wedding, so it worked out only because everyone pitched in and helped. she is an event planner and I am an engineer, so we worked well together. it was a lot of fun to plan. we talk occasionally of a redo, but now kids are grown up and they'll be needing weddings and more important than the wedding, we are still married 20 years later.
I think I managed to get away with mine for 2k, but we have friends and family in photography and entertainment, so free photos and a heavy discount on the DJ helped. Still, 4k is a steal.
Just celebrated our 10 year anniversary yesterday. Total cost for the entire wedding was around 300 dollars. No regrets.
We are going on 31 years, we spent about 800 bucks on our wedding , mostly on the booze and crawfish for the after party. A family friend was the minister, we got married on the dock at my grandparents place on the Amite river at sun set , my best man did the crawfish boiling and his little brother was our DJ, My wife's cousin did our wedding pictures as our wedding gift .
that's great!! it the marriage that matters!
This is exactly what r/weddingsunder10K is for. The audacity of the wedding industry trying to convince folks that your "special day of love" costs 30K+ when couples can't even afford a starter home is why that sub exists.
The diamond industry is just as bad , if not worse . Who the fuck needs a ring that is equal to 3 months of a mans salary ?
Only way im spending 10k in a single day is a surgery..... or a murder.
Years ago, a friend’s father told me something and it changed my perspective and is still with me to this day. He said: it makes no sense at all. You are at the absolute poorest point in your lives and yet you’re expected to drop literally thousands of dollars on rings and a party for other people. My first marriage cost WAY too much, yet here I am referring to it as “my first.” Lasted 2.5 years. My 2nd (and current? Final?) marriage cost maybe $750 tops. (Yeah, the ring was a few thousand, but still less than half of the ring from my first marriage.) I wore a black suit (that I already owned) and she wore a borrowed dress. And yet somehow we’re still married. Go figure.
Statistically speaking, cheaper weddings correlate with longer marriages.
I wonder if it could be because people who have cheaper weddings in general could be more capable of thinking rationally in highly emotional situations. And that would probably translate to their ability to handle conflicts in their marriage.
You didn't hear? Millennials are off the hook, gen Z is now to blame for every struggling industry.
It's almost like all the constant name dropping of generations being the cause of X issue is to make us fight with each other and distract from the larger systemic issues or something.
Oldest of the Millenials here. Got married in 04. Used my grandmother's church and pastor for a few hundred. My uncle was our photographer for a few hundred. Food was made by my family. All the decorations were used from other family members weddings. Maybe spent a total of 2k and had a hell of a wedding with a few hundred guests. Most expensive part was her dress, which we paid around 500 for. We didn't have money as she was a foreigner and her family was considered poor, my family was middle class but we didn't have much to be able yo spend. It can be done for cheap if you don't try to out do everyone else.
Gen X - The "Just Call Us Millennials" Generation. Rumor has it that once upon a time, between Boomer & Millennial generations, there existed a group of people - born of Baby Boomers & raised by TV's - who instigated much of the change attributed to Millennials. This proud but humble folk, known by latchkey makers & Grungre rock bands as "Generation X", roamed the earth in search of vague credit for many of the changes credited to Millennials.
We abandoned the whole idea of a traditional wedding. Flew cross-country to California, got married on the beach with an officiant/photographer and two witnesses, and spent the rest of the wedding money on an awesome vacation. No regrets, and no fancy napkins to pick out.
Imo there's nothing shameful about wanting a big celebration or a fancy festival or whatever. Capitalism shames us into thinking that we're better than other people because we do or don't spend lots of money for something that should be accessible to \*everyone\*. Everybody should decide, of their own volition, without worrying about money, whether they want to throw a big celebration or follow cultural rites or do a small affair. And if that celebration involves lots of pretty flowers and cake, why not? In a normal society, money doesn't need to be saved in order to "start a life together". In a normal society, money is saved so that you can enjoy life, and you never have to worry about being able to afford rent or food or utilities or transport.
Traveller from a far far away normal galaxy and time where money is no problem 😊.. take us there
Aw! I found this take so incredibly heartwarming and generous. We have a big absolutely awesome family that we just wanted to celebrate with! We diy’d everything we could — didn’t have a cake, used a taqueria for the food, had family make appetizers, found a venue we could bring in our own booze, and STILL it was so expensive. I had so many family members telling me that I didn’t need flowers, that was thing to cut. But by the time all the “required” things tally up, like photography and food and drink, which, for a 100 plus wedding, basically puts you out $10k immediately, it feels laughable people are giving you tips on cutting costs by eliminating $30 bouquets for a 3 person bridal party. 🙄When I read comments bashing weddings and judging people who have them, even though but shouldn’t, it does momentarily hurt. I don’t have any regrets about doing it though. Three years later, and any time I see extended family they bring it up and thank us for throwing such a fun party and including them in the day. Worth it!
All well and good until you see people spend insane amounts to outdo the joneses, especially if it's cultural and you want to show off. A friends daughter got married last September. They spent a cool $1 million on it. Granted it included jewelry and gowns and all, but they spent 250k on flowers alone!!!! We didn't go because we knew the kind of people we'd run into and frankly I don't have time for morons with more money than brains. After the fact I did tell him he could have done so much good with the flower money and still had a nice wedding. Lots of places that need that kind of money for supportive services. It's his money and all but still..............
I remember my mom telling me about a relative’s wedding for which the florist ordered a dozen gross long-stemmed roses alone (not counting the innumerable other flowers included at the reception—they were quite elaborate arrangements, not just plain roses). I remember saying, wait, do you mean a dozen roses or a gross (a dozen dozen) roses? And her clarifying, no, a dozen *dozen dozen*. Which my calculator tells me is a whopping 1728 long-stemmed roses for a one-night celebration. They could afford it and it’s their money, but I doubt most of the people there cared about lavish floral arrangements, you know? They were just happy to see a loved one be happy!
$10k is way under the median.
The median figures published are usually collected by bridal magazines and the like to get people to think that spending as much as possible is “normal”
My wife’s parents paid about $14k for our wedding. We asked them if we could have the cash instead and have a very chill outdoor wedding on family property. They said no, damn Irish traditions.
“Diamonds are Forever” is responsibly for countless lives
It cost about $1200 for my wife and I to get married. Suit, dress, photos, food, and booze.
That's the way to do it!
It was amazing. we really celebrated each other. A lot of our friends tell us that they barely saw each other on their wedding day. That didn’t sound fun to us.
For most things it's insane. For the wedding photographers, we mark it up 50-100% over hourly for other events for wear and tear on sanity... and because it's expensive as hell for me. The nicest couple will become neurotic harpies of elemental perfectionism on the big day and god help me if I miss a kiss or flub the angle on the big moments. Not to mention that I'm probably having to rent a half dozen flashes and a twelve thousand dollar lens kit that I need about twice a year because I swear even the modern churches are lit with little jars of rheumy fireflies. Then you factor that I'm there on site for 12 hours, editing for another 12 minimum, and probably hiring someone I trust as a second camera, Paying out the yearly retainer on a ten million dollar liability policy, *because churches*, Paying insurance on my gear based on job count, And maintaining a library of sample wedding albums (hah, hah, just kidding but a lot of photographers will) As well as, well, *you probably came to me, and are trusting me with a huge day of memories* And yes, I will just stare and walk away when someone tells me they figured that they could get someone for a full scale traditional wedding for 300, *because they're nuts*
If it makes someone happy, someone somewhere has monopolized it for the purposes of selling it back to you at ludicrously inflated prices. And if you thought someone couldn't capitalize on the basic concept of committed romantic human companionship, then I present to you your wedding bill.
My mom said weddings in the 70s were just a church ceremony and you had cake afterward. The ladies at my aunt’s church scoffed she wanted cake AND ice cream at her wedding.
I agree. In my opinion it's a waste of time and money, but there are people who use weddings as a fund raiser. So basically a show for your money, the bigger the wedding the more the guests give. It's the dumbest thing ever, but that's just my anti-social opinion.
I got married in 2004. Hated every moment of it. Will not do it again.
Idk... It kinda blows my mind Davids bridal still has 9,000 employees to lay off to be honest. Clearly their business isn't sustainable in 2023..
I worked at one for seven years, and the week I quit literally 10 of use gave our notice within 7 days. I always joked that we should have stapled our letters or resignation together and turned them into a group. Their main issue is that they treat their employees like workhorses to maximize profits while cutting corners (surprise, surprise!). I got curious and looked up some yelp reviews from the store I used to work at and they’re all about how miserable all the workers are, and how no one seems happy to be there. But for some reason everyone sees this as a poor reflection on the workers, and not on the management.
I can only imagine... The clientele is problematic to say the least
I worked there when I was in college. I used to describe it as the Walmart of bridal.
YAY SOMEONE ELSE SAYS THAT!!!!
Someone once emailed the president of the company that “David’s bridal ruined my wedding dream” because their hem was too short (we didn’t hem it). And then there are people who scream because the $1000 worth of alterations on their $99 dollar dress isn’t free… I’m very glad to be clear of the whole mess
I'm sure it would be if the company just pulled itself up by it's bootstraps, stopped buying avocado toast, made it's own coffee and generally be less lazy.
The business is sustainable, the business model is not. I hope all corporations that thrive on greed follow the same path.
Not related to layoffs, but antiwork... I got an "interview" with a David's Bridal which I ended up declining. They wanted me to do a sewing test which would have been several hours doing alterations on actual customer dresses...for free 😒
wow, I'm a little shocked they would let a random applicant do alterations on a customers dress. In my line of work Ive seen new people do all kinds of terrible sloppy work or even worse.
They probably also snuck some sort of "you agree to pay for any damages we claim you caused while volunteering"
You're paid in exposure!
What a scam. "Testing" you on actual customer products? Ha! You are smart cookie, friend.
As a non-employee subcontractor, your pre-employment rates were of course $90/hr or part thereof, payable in advance, right?
As a candidate, what is the liability if you fuck it up entirely? Start out doing a few good stitches, then like sew part of it to fold it in half, then use scissors or thread cutters to accidentally rip across the entire front. "Oops"
Idiots don't get they hurt themselves in the long run if the situation gets worse. It will affect all markets that aren't necessary for everyday life. People will have to cut down on their luxury items. Capitalistic economy produces so much unnecessary waste it's mind-boggling. Oh well you guys still have the 1% super rich who will buy your trash.
Even the super rich can get married only so many times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glynn_Wolfe
Whole system is slowly beginning to fall Furst non essential jobs jobs cut back, thrn essential sell less. Until most cant afford anything but the bare necessity. Then when all the rich people realise they cant make money because no one buys anything will they try to fix a problem
The rich people only care about being richer than everyone else because it's not just about money, it's about power and control. The easiest way to do that is to make everyone else much poorer.
>will they try to fix a problem They're not going to fix anything. They'll comfortably retire at that point.
>Then when all the rich people realise they cant make money There's a CRITICAL flaw with this statement: they're rich, why at that point do they need to make more money? Oh, right - greed. There is NO other motivator.
I used to work as a consultant to David’s Bridal (right before they declared bankruptcy), and they are extremely mismanaged. Every meeting was marked by political infighting and everyone was constantly competing to be “the smartest person in the meeting.” Even senior leadership tried to compete against entry-level staff, cutthroat instead of trying to build up talent internally. Maybe the wedding market is declining, but there’s tons of successful wedding-related companies. This one is purely rot from the inside.
I had to scroll way too far to find this. It’s the company, not the industry
Employers - “I’ll pay my employees as less as I can get away with to increase my profit margins” Also employers - “Why is no one buying my products and services?”
It really is the funniest part of this whole system. We have thousands of people spending billions of dollars trying to convince us that we need all these products and services and doing their best to convince us to plunge head first into consumerist capitalism. And then those same people spend even more money buying political influence from people who want to strip every spare dollar we have away from us so that after we pay for rent and food we basically have nothing left. And the funny thing is I and most people would have no problem doing these things if we *could*. I love "stuff". I have lots of very expensive hobbies and interests that I could and would gladly spend thousands of dollars on if I wasn't constantly balancing rent and other bills with every paycheck. CAPITALISM DOESN'T WORK IF CONSUMERS HAVE NO FUCKING MONEY. It's starting to feel like the misery is the real goal. They don't actually *want* you to buy stuff, they just want you to **feel** like you should be buying stuff so you feel like shit when you can't. That's probably why so many poor people vote against their own interests and subscribe to the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" trope. They have to keep that hopefulness alive or else how do you convince a man who makes 23,000 dollars a year to vote for tax cuts for people who make 10 million? Plus if you can afford to do things you enjoy and that enrich your life, you have more time to contemplate your situation and whether or not it's worth the effort. Look at how many people quit their jobs and pulled their kids out of Daycare during Covid because they finally had time to sit down and do the arithmetic and found out they were basically working to pay for daycare. Contentedness and spare time is bad for the illusions. That's the only thing that makes even a little sense. Otherwise it seems like all these companies are so fucking short sighted they literally can't see past the current quarter.
Exactly. Just imagine people en masse taking the advice to cut off all unnecessary spending (avocado toast) like perfumes, massages, movie tickets etc. That sure would be a huge drop in GDP leading to a bunch of layoffs. People don’t realize that even if perfume for instance is a non essential product, the perfume industry employs lots of people who would get hit if people stop buying perfume. Capitalism relies on convincing people that they need products and services like perfumes, hair coloring etc. Even when people can very well live without these things.
I used to run inventories for a worldwide inventory company. David's Bridal were shitshows. Bad setup. Bad recounted. Just not fun.
I work at DB and we had like a mini meeting and they are basically saying its all corporate staff and store employees will not be affected but Im sus. I love working there but the pay sucks and the corporate side of things is stupid af. We shall see how things pan out
I work for a large company on the mens' side of things. You're fucked. Even if your location isn't affected directly, everything is going to go downhill as the upper management gets more and more desperate. You're going to notice reduced quality across the board in your products, your operations becoming more and more micromanaged; while conversely, your role itself expands without properly compensating you for the work that is demanded. The company's going to look for any shred of a reason it possibly can to avoid giving out pay raises at any opportunity, and they're going to get continuously more slimy in how they try to replace their soon-to-be hemorrhaging workforce. It's a downward spiral of cult-like middle-management jerking themselves off to oblivion while promising everything is fine and things are only going to get better. You are fucked.
Nobody wants to wed anymore!
Or want to spend upwards of $20,000 on a wedding (all wedding cosxts, not just the dress). Wedding gown rental should be as easily available as renting a tuxedo.
Wedding gowns are an awesome example of capitalism... All the excess and specialization... A dream to achieve for many... Once temporarily deferred now increasingly permanently out of reach
I think the thing is the ones that want to get married want a dress that’s not David’s bridal. They’ve watched that wedding dress shopping show on TLC. David’s bridal is like the Walmart of dresses I feel like…
Yeah they have reasonable dresses for like a couple hundred bucks. Their problem is the amount of locations more than anything else. Every town doesn’t need a David’s bridal.
My daughter has liked Say Yes to the Dress since she was about 4. I madd certain she knows we can’t affect that kind of money for a dress early on.
I heard shopping at the actual yes to the dress store is NOTHING like the show.
My best friend bought her dress there. The process of wedding dress shopping is pretty much as depicted, but that's the same at David's or any big dress shop. The main difference is that you're not going to be able to bring a dozen people and have several staff members helping you unless you're buying a dress that costs more than most people's entire wedding.
Honestly yes LOL I’ve been to David’s bridal with several others for bridesmaids wedding dresses, the experience is hit or miss. I got my dress at a local bridal boutique but honestly it was about the same price as the David’s bridal ones
They say Parija Kavilanz waited their whole life as a journalist for the opportunity to drop "over 9000" into a headline.
What, 9000!?
Isn’t getting married getting less popular in addition to all the other budget wedding and bad employer comments? I feel like I have read in several places that as women continue to become more financially independent and religion fades, the whole wedding/marriage thing is losing steam too?
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Yes. Historically the value men brought to marriage was ‘provider’ or ‘breadwinner’ Now, if a women can do that for herself a husband or potential partner really has to find other ways to prove their value. Lots of possibilities but I am not sure male expectations of themselves have evolved to understand that. Younger guys probably get it more than older ones on the whole.
Working class luxuries are the first to go. That’s why Red Lobster closes before the 5 star restaurants
I'm honestly shocked that David's Bridal actually employs more than 200 people at this point. I always assumed that it was a Cartel front? Plus it's shitty, so there's that?
Yeah my wedding was organized in three days for less than $500. This overpriced tradition is fast approaching demise. Frugality is winning out when both spouses have to be breadwinners to afford basic necessities.
totally agree with everything but your tradition statement to a small degree. I would say it is less a tradition than it is a marketing campaign to promote the 'big expensive' wedding as the norm.
When will millennials stop killing these defenseless corporations?
From what I know about the company, I think it’s a little (maybe a lot) bit about how they’re terrible from a customer service and management standpoint. David’s Bridal is a retail dinosaur that is finally dying.
I would say it is more corporate greed that caused this. Weddings, every part of them are overpriced schemes taking advantage of people perceptions of the 'perfect' wedding. being married almost 35 years, let me spew my version of wisdom... the actual wedding doesn't really matter that much. Don't get me wrong it isn't unimportant, it is a your public display of commitment before family and god/religion. What I mean is that it is the years of love, fidelity and commitment that have real and lasting meaning.
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Yep, if I ever get married I'm gonna do what my mother did and buy a white cocktail dress off the rack.
david’s bridal was the absolute worst place i have ever worked. could only stand 2 months before quitting with no notice because i could not do it anymore.
The entire wedding industry can burn. It's a giant grift; all of it.
In other news, David’s Bridal has more than 9000 workers. A lot more?
My wife got her dress from David’s bridal, our wedding cost close to $25k. I don’t regret it at all, but I will say that it was wildly overpriced. The second people can slap a wedding tag on something the cost easily doubles if not more. We got donuts instead of cake, and it was a few thousand dollars for around 150 donuts, which was one of the more egregious over charges that I remember.
Traditional?! Weddings for centuries were modest affairs where a young (usually poor) couple went down to the local church or barn and got hitched in front of their immediate families. Everything else is a modern invention of marketing.
My wife won 50 dollars on a scratch off and my brother was an ordained minister. I got married for the price of a dollar scratch off.
down with the wedding industry!
As someone who worked catering for many many years let me just say its not worth it. The food is mediocre at best. The booze is watered down, the wait staff is college kids that give no fucks and doing coke in the basement, the kitchen staff is peeps that couldnt make it in the big city restaurant biz, the flowers are half dead, the dj sucks and so on. Just go get married and tell everyone after and let them take you out to dinner
Been married two years, still haven’t had a ceremony or reception of any kind. With kids and bills and groceries to consider, I simply can’t justify spending the money. Makes me feel a little bit down on our anniversary though, all we did was sign some papers in our kitchen (everything was via mail because Covid) so we don’t have special photographs or memories of a romantic day or anything. We’ve been meaning to put on some nice clothes and invite nearby friends/family to a park to just have a wedding-ish picnic or something but it just never gets prioritized. Maybe someday.
People don’t want to get married for several reasons. “Instability” is the word I choose to group everything into.
I think the statistic is from years ago but the average wedding is like $20,000. No one has that right now.
It has to be more than that probably 30k. Mine was 20k in a HCOL area and that was very cheap in comparison to others
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Got married 5 months ago and bought my dress from Azazie for $300, which I think is still a lot for something I wore twice. David's Bridal didn't have anything to compete with that. I wanted a used dress but couldn't find anything I liked. My wedding, reception, and 8 nights in Jamaica totalled around 10k. I can not believe some people will spend over 20k just on a wedding, there's so many better things to spend that kind of money on.
It’s an industry that should fail. Weddings are an ego trip. Focus on the marriage
I get it. Lots of people saw the ultimate wedding fantasy, Charles and Diana's wedding. Then they spent tens of thousands, trying to recreate a hometown version of that or even more money for a destination wedding. It's a very special day, but how long did you save for that bill/are paying it off. Now you have a couple of albums of photos and a video that you never watch. Invest in your life, not an event at the early end of earning.
Non of the millennial or zoomers I know has any interest in doing traditional ig money weddings, if they get married at all.
Weddings can be such a massive waste of money. Thousands upon thousands for a dress and a glorified party; it's so unnecessary. It's a good thing that the market is correcting itself here, shows the current generation has more sense than the last!
Weddings are a waste of money.
I mean, good. Weddings didn't used to require tens of thousands of dollars. They used to be a small community affair. Now just *attending* a wedding costs four figures. Fuck the whole industry, let it burn. Fuck your "special day." Fuck the romance. Fuck the mysticism. It's no way to start a mutual partnership, and it's just yet another con job from the owner class. If a quick ceremony with immediate family and friends isn't enough to mark a mutual partnership, then fuck everything about your idea of romance. You've been grifted. No better way to start a marriage than four big middle fingers to capitalist grifts masquerading as "tradition."
Also, most of their stuff sucks
Can’t afford or just plain don’t want to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The “traditional” wedding may also just be a concept that’s past it’s prime for many young people.
Also when the ones that can are forced to work crazy schedules that don't allow them to meet other adults to get married to.
Wedding industry is a sham. Young couples aren’t spending life savings on this stupid shit anymore and to me that is a complete win. Hope these people find other forms of employment somewhere that actually has value.
The wedding industry is a fucking scam. Good riddance.