I tend to associate brands with corporations. I have found that corporations are pretty much the reason prices have been gouging us to the bone. Corporations have been raking in record profits, handing out insane year end bonuses, and beating us all down with hyper inflated prices, well above a respectable profit margin, and very much outpacing inflation.
All the while, they are not paying a fair share in taxes. Plus a lot of the money they don’t spend on themselves, goes to politicians, to grease the rails, to keep things just as they are.
So brands, to me, represent something I don’t care much for at all. But to some degree you can’t get away from it. The cars we drive, the food/drink we consume, the stores where we buy these things, all corporations with a “brand.”
You can’t get away from it. But I do work at limiting my handing $$$ to them. Most of the time I’d rather go home and have a peanut butter sandwich, rather than grab a burger in town at a corporate fast food joint. If my needs require me to walk into a Wal-Mart (corporate!) I do my damndest to just get the 3-4 things I actually need in there. I truly despise every moment I spend in a Wal-Mart. We generally try to get more of our necessaries at a smaller, local food store. My wife feels exactly as I do.
I don’t wear hats, shirts, or pants, emblazened with corporate logos. I refuse to advertise for them. Now if they wanted to pay me to wear that stuff, we could talk.
Corporate brands are nothing more to me, than artificially created propaganda, intended to get you to associate with their specific, brand. Once you’ve done that, who gets your money? They do.
I ain’t buying it. Fuck ’em.
Evidence Based Reality 
I’m with you right there. 😀
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Always good to see a new commenter. Don’t be shy.
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Man oh man Shell, do I have a sh*t ton to say about Corporate America’s bending the American middle- and lower-classes over since Feb. 2022 with widespread price gouging and NOT using any lubrication for us!!! 🤬
Is it any surprise at all that during the present campaign for the White House no one, I mean NO ONE, especially mainstream news media, are talking about REAL issues of (fake & propagated) “inflation” by our corporations or the major cause of illegal migrants into our country!
The reason why migrants keep coming and coming and coming every year to this country (illegally?) is because they all know Corporate America—via small private contractors—will always hire them for an exploitive cheap wage that is still much better than what they can earn in their native country. Does anyone enforce and go after our (white-owned) companies that use small contractors as scapegoats (if caught) to exploit migrants? One political party in this country does not believe in “big government” and “obese programs” by the U.S. Immigration & Customs or the U.S. Dept. of Labor and all the southern border states’ same agencies. And yet, these state and federal law-enforcement agencies INDIRECTLY and passively contribute to human trafficking of foreign laborers. But is THIS real issue ever talked about in mainstream news? By either political party? No.
And the Republican party will NEVER throw their corporate America donors who practice this form of human trafficking and gross abuse of price gouging on American consumers.
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Sorry, left out:
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I kinda gathered that from the gist of your post 🙂
It’s all good man.
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To be fair, I do hear about the price gouging from my MS media sources. They do talk about it. But talk don’t get shit done. You have to hold their feet to the fire, even then it only gets a three minute soundbyte. I’m sure the sanity party would take it up in the House/Senate, but it would be shot down like a lame duck, by the insanity party.
Because that’s how our flipping gov’t works for us.
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Hi. Like you Shelldigger I detest Walmart because 30 years ago I worked for them for 6 months. I saw first hand how exploitive they were. They expected employees to work off the clock so the not funny joke among employees was if we got hurt take our badges to the time clock and punch us back in before telling anyone. As I refused working for free and other stupid things like showing up 20 to 30 minutes early every day to do mandatory company exercises and Walmart praise sessions, I got bad reviews even though I was the only one willing to work and co-workers told me to slow down as I was making others look bad. I just couldn’t stand around not doing anything. I was fired after 6 months for a bad attitude. But my spouse claims he saves a lot of money there and as you say with high profits due to price gouging we need to make our money stretch as far as possible. Hugs. Scottie
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Has Ron actually compared prices or is he just going by what Walmart advertisers want you to think? Besides, is saving a few pennies (and that’s what it generally boils down to) worth supporting a company that treats its employees like SH__? I don’t know what is offered where you live, but most all cities have a variety of “money-saving” stores to choose from.
BTW, are you guys affected at all by the latest storm?
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Hi Nan. As I said Ron spends hours in stores comparing prices and products. It is why I can not go with him anymore. In fact Publix has raised the price of one of the only two sodas I can drink to a $1.50 a bottle while Walmart is still at $1.25 a bottle. That makes a big difference when you figure I go through three or four bottles a day. Pennies are worth it. Nan this month we bought new shoes. I was not paying attention to the costs but Ron got four and I got one. Yes he needed them. As for my pair I had not had new shoes in five years. When I looked at our bank account we had $29 dollars for the next 8 days until I got paid, during that time a lot of small bills come automatically out of the account. Now granted we both bought stuff we don’t normally like I bought a $137 dollar computer program and Ron bought several medications for the cats. But the upshot is we had to take $300 out of savings to buffer the account and next week when I get paid when I will have to find a way to pay the bills and also return that. We simply don’t make enough to live today. So yes saving everything we can is important.
As for money saving stores, here they have all gone out of business. All we have left is big chain stores and some of those are closing around us or being bought out by other chain stores and closed. Here in North Fort Myers where I live, grocery stores are a cutthroat business. They just built a senior housing complex accross the street from us … afordable senior housing starting from the low $300,000s and up. Florida is not for the poor anymore. Yet most people who moved here I know are moving out if they can.
Thank you for asking about the storm damage. We had no issues from the storm, other than Ron got very anxious that our living room roof flexed. It is the thinnest part of the roof over our home, as it only has the pan roof and the new AMS roof. But it held while our neighbors lost parts and one of our friends lost the entire new roof she had put on her home. Ron has plans to buy four new 2X4s and glue them with epoxy to the inside pan roof strengthening them both. Another expense. See why eating and grocery shopping for price and best deals are important? We eat a lot of red sauce these days. Good thing I make them great. Hugs. Scottie
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