FoxTrot by Bill Amend for May 26, 2024

Dynamic pricing is nothing new. See “happy hour” and “Take out Tuesday” … and even coupons.

When the sun isn’t bright in the sky, it’s the time to buy.

Here comes the sun, and I say It’s alright (The Beatles).

Wendy’s tried this a short time ago, and they’ve already abandoned the idea.

Just make it a flat $1.50 already.

Whether and object had a “true value” or value was arbitrary and based on “supply and demand” was an issue in popular discussion for centuries. Economists pretty must settled on supply-and-demand, and governments usually recognize that, although price gouging, rather than being called a textbook case of supply-and-demand, is called a crime.

Today’s missing classic is (gocomics.Com/foxtrot/2003/06/01)

Just do like I do. Chat with them a minute and find out what they do for a living: doctor, 3x normal price; lawyer, 5x normal price.

I do believe this is an homage to “Lemonade Stand”… a Very early computer game.

If you are wondering why we continue to pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, you should know that Pfizer has increased its profits by 42 percent so far this year to $26.4 billion.

Gasoline? Profits of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell skyrocketed by 169 percent so far this year to $125 billion. They are spending over $73 billion not to reduce gas prices at the pump but to buy back their own stock and increase dividends to their wealthy stockholders.

Groceries? Global food prices skyrocketed by over 33 percent last year and are expected to go up another 23 percent this year. Billionaires in the global food and agri-business industry became $382 billion richer during the pandemic.

Covid actually did cause problems that could be used as an excuse to raise prices. Once those prices were raised, they aren’t coming down unless people stop buying and there is a glut of product that has to be addressed by lowering them. Since people are going to buy groceries, meds and gas as long as they possibly can, the rich will get richer while the middle class gives up everything but these necessities. And the lower classes can’t even afford them.

Now, it is possible to regulate commerce to control prices, it is done in other countries, but that is the last thing the Republicans want to see happen. They fight against any regulation of capitalism, because it’s an American right to be free of government interference, except in your religious rights, your medical decisions, your choice of reading materials and your bedroom.

…ah, leave it to these two to take a stupid idea and make it even dumber.

Coca Cola did that at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. Machines would vary the price dependent on the temperature. At one point they were charging $4.00 for a 12 oz can. People got smart and went down and emptied the machines at night when the prices dropped below $1.00. Or tipped them over.

I remember reading one of those esoteric trivial facts about Coca Cola installing vending machines which would change the price of soda depending upon the weather, costing more when hot and sunny. They later abandoned that.

Anyone else play “Lemonade Stand” on an Apple IIe 40 years ago in school? Basic economics taught in low-res graphics!

Wendy’s at least upgraded to digital menus so it’s harder for people to tell if the prices changed before they announced their dynamic pricing scheme.

It doesn’t look like they sold much lemonade.

Lemonade sales are “temperature-linked” and only indirectly “Sun-linked”.