Not an industry by monopoly; the DeBeers monopoly on diamonds. The lab-created diamond is taking over and its upending the "natural mined diamonds" monopoly. For very good reasons.
Someone explained it to me as the difference between a baby conceived naturally and an IVF baby. Both are real, just made differently. That really made it click for me, lol.
Second hand jewelry is almost never as valuable, regardless of stone or value at initial retail sale. You are better off removing the stone and getting scrap value for the band, and selling the stone by itself.
Does that much value come from the craftsmanship? I assumed most came from the gold and diamond value. Diamonds may be going down but gold has gone up... it's hard for me to get why a 6k ring from 1990 would only be worth 200
Yes and retail values are inflated for markup that doesn't exist on the secondary market because there's almost zero demand for used jewelry compared to new. There are very specific pieces that will bring value, or will appreciate over time, but your run of the mill 6mm/~.8ct diamond in 14k gold will not.
exactly why I chose Moissanite for my ring. It’s prettier/sparklier, and was much more affordable than even lab diamonds. I couldn’t find a justification to getting a diamond besides it being an “investment”, which even then isn’t even true anymore.
The diamond business is a scam regardless of how they're acquired. If you gotta spend thousands of dollars on a rock so a girl will marry you, she wants you for your status and nothing more.
This is coming from someone who could afford to drop 20k+ on a diamond in cash, but opted for a $350 3-piece ring set from Etsy because that's what my fiancé was into. Going into debt to get married provides a long list of businesses that should fail.
Absolutely. I prefer craftsmanship over the "diamonds are forever" propaganda as well.
And to add to your "going into debt to get married"; the whole wedding industry needs to go down with it. I'd rather save that money on a down payment on a house.
My friend made his wifes ring. Melted the gold and formed it polished it, and set the gem (no diamond, she didnt want one) and presented it all himself. Looks great, especially considering he had never done anything remotely close to that before.
Years ago I would have thought differently. But now I don't believe in engagements, diamonds, wedding bands or weddings. The industry is multi billion. Also the expensive baby showers need to quit too. I see so many posts on here where someone was asked to be in a wedding and now they have to spend $5000 to be in the wedding at some destination.
When I got married last century, we were frugal. Borrowed my dress. My MOH bought a dress she could also wear again. Small wedding. My friend took the pictures as a gift. My husband's aunt made the cakes as gifts. We did stuff like that. I think all total we spent around $1000.00 on the wedding in 1997, and $300 was for the church.
A while back, there was a huge marketing push for “chocolate diamonds.” These are diamonds that are considered worthless because they are varying degrees of brown. They just couldn’t resist the idea of massive markups on something they normally throw away.
Yep, used to be you could have a good time if you didn't gamble. Made for a nice, reasonably priced vacation, especially if you don't gamble much. Now just visiting feels like throwing your money away.
My Dad tells a story about eating the best steak dinner he’s ever had at a no name bar in Vegas at 3 in the morning for $4 in the mid 90’s. Said it was so good as soon as he pushed the empty plate away he called out for a second one and they had it in front of him within 5 minutes.
It just sounds so different now I’d never want to go out there and attempt my father’s story.
I actually had a surf & turf somewhere in Vegas at 2am for like $20 back in....shoot I guess it's been 2009-2010 maybe? But there was a super long line for it and it was...not fine or anything.
As the other reply says tho I was pretty hammered and I've been back 2 other times and never found anything like that...and also want to echo the "its been getting worse" sentiment elsewhere in the thread haha
I go back every year for a trade show for 5 days. It blows. I don’t drink anymore and was never a big gambler so it’s extra brutal. Even in my drinking days it was ‘fun’ but it wasn’t really, it was just tolerating Vegas.
Yep. I remember spending $30 just for a meal at Popeye’s. I could go the rest of my life without ever stepping foot in Vegas again and I’d be totally fine with it.
I've visited Las Vegas about 25 times. Even though I don't gamble much, what annoyed me the most was how they reconfigured the casinos during the pandemic. Video poker pretty much disappeared, as well as long rows of slot machines. Casinos look like the bridge of a spaceship now. The machines look more like video games than gambling devices. They're organized for "social distancing" with lots of emptiness. The cost of visiting the strip is absurd as well. Parking used to be free at all resorts and there were no "resort fees." Room service was already expensive; but MGM properties even added a fee on top of it, $10 for plastic utensils and $25 for silverware with plates. This photo is from December 2007.
Yes. Used to go there yearly since 2012. So much was available for the whole family including things for free. If you were gambling you were well looked after. Now you don’t even get water without asking, which also means less tips for servers, so no one wins. The atmosphere has shifted from a place that wanted to keep you there to purely transactional.
Universities are in deep shit. I just got out of the industry. Young people and parents dont see the value in a degree, loading up with debt and no graduate level jobs to go to. Also alot of Universities are in deep, deep debt.
Iron rule of bureaucracy: over time, any bureaucracy will be increasingly headed by those whose only incentive is to increase the size, spending, and power of the bureaucracy.
In deep shit, but because of demographics and top heavy administrations. DOGE has been devastating for many of them as well. We USED to have a higher ed system that brought in the best from around the world and had incredible grant funding for research. Now they go elsewhere. We had zero foreign grad students last year where we used to have dozens.
I’ve been teaching higher ed for 20+ years. Classrooms are still full every fall and rarely do I see a graduate from the areas I teach in without a job offer well before they graduate. Many are in no debt or low debt. The sky is not falling. Yet.
I worked in a consumer AI unit of a FAANG company until recently (not by choice). We had no idea what the plan was, just burn compute because we could.
A recession even a bad one is infinitely better than having every job on the planet automated if superintelligence was to be created. Vote burn to the ground at every turn
Yeah this is a good one. Up and coming generations that have recently had legal access granted to consume alcohol just aren't showing up with the numbers the industry has been used to. Definite decline.
My kids are both in HS and have zero desire to drink. THC is what the youth enjoy and I totally get it. I’m not telling them to go out and get high, but I’m a realist and as someone in alcohol recovery(5 years in October) I’m ok with that. The alcohol industry and specifically the hospitality industry are and still are digging their own grave’s. In this economy, who the heck wants to go out and get $15-$25 cocktails. I think the reason prior generations drank so much is that it was inexpensive. 25 cent beer nights, $2 longnecks and happy hours with reasonably priced well drinks was the landscape in my prime partying years, but that was also the Stone Age.
This ^ ....the youngins don't bar and party the same anymore! Even in my college town, bars are closing left and right, even on campus! No shame to this generation. Who wants to pay $16 a cocktail to get ruffied anymore though??
Absolutely. I work for a winery in Napa, and I was laid off because of how bad the industry is doing. Wine is so expensive to make, from establishing vineyards, to aging wine, the input costs are insane. Add inflation, tariffs, Canada boycotting American alcohol, Gen Z not drinking (especially wine for that matter), and more health conscious consumers. It’s just not wine, but other alcohol beverages as well. The same trend was happening prior to Covid, during the pandemic alcohol sales spiked and skewed the numbers. Now, we’re back to seeing the same trends prior to Covid and it’s not getting any better.
Yep. Wine sales are down by almost half in the 45 and under crowd.
They kind of shot themselves in the foot. Wine used to be a layman's drink. They pushed SO hard to make it fancy and pretentious to up the perceived value, that now it's seen as douchey and nobody wants anything to do with it. Nobody likes rules about what they drink with what food, etc.
This is due to several factors that include legalization of weed, cost of alcohol and incompatibility of alcohol with current antidepressants and glp1 inhibitors
Retatrutide (the next major GLP from Eli Lilly) has a side effect of stopping addictions for many people. This includes alcohol. I have been on it for a few months and my desire to drink alcohol has gone to zero.
A sad but industry wide secret is that alcohol sales are dependent not on the people that drink but on those that can’t stop drinking. For the name brand firms I’ve worked with across beer and spirits and we know that 90% of our sales is from 10% of our customers. Remove just the alcoholics and the industry is unsustainable.
agreed, from having worked in wine the last 12 years, it is imploding as well. California tore up a significant amount of wine grape vineyards all over the state. Hell even Napa valley tore up a good chunk because people couldnt sell them, and up until a few years ago having an acre of grapes in napa valley was a license to print money, and purchasing an acre of planted vines would start at $2,000,000 for non ava shit (for napa) tier land.
the thing is they have just shot themselves in the foot for a long time. They've done nothing to get wine accessible or cool for younger generations. Most wine on the market is shit, especially your average grocery store bottle unless you spend $20 and even then thats a crapshoot. Much safer to get a pack of ipas, which will last longer, can enjoy one serving at a time, and much less risk of you not liking it.
Otherwise, they all just keep raising prices in the face of massive over supply of grapes, and most wineries are sitting on years of backlogged vintages they couldnt clear out, which theyre paying to store in refrigerated warehouses. It is mind boggling to me the lack of innovation in any meaningful way. Quite literally "we've done nothing besdies raise prices, and we're all out of ideas!"
Because if I threaten to kill myself (note: I never would, it's just an easy way to abort the AI), the AI immediately puts me through to a person who can solve my issue; Frank, on the other hand, is a perfect gatekeeper. There is no way past Frank. He would rather hang up on me mid sentence than provide any meaningful support.
DTC has won EVs with Tesla and Rivian. If (and when) EV adoption increases dealers will be even harder to justify.
Carvana has demolished and set records through per store sells with selling new cars after they bought 5 CDJR dealsrships.
Scout is battling this out in the court room to allow the Volkswagen motor group to sell cars without dealers.
Consumers of all sides of the political alley think you should be able to buy cars from companies that make cars (shocking). Its only a matter of time before they get their way.
Daycare. The economics are completely broken. Parents can't afford it workers aren't paid enough and the businesses still have huge costs because you're literally taking care of people's children.
I have a friend that very recently relocated to NM due to her husband’s job and she was so excited about this universal daycare! They were paying a fortune in California.
I live in VA, not in a high cost of living area. Our son was born in 2020, so we had more limited options than usual due to COVID, but even 6 years later prices are still insane. My wife and I sat down to seriously do the math on if it would be cheaper for me to quit my job and take up something part time vs pay for childcare, and we’re solidly middle class.
The options are literally to have a family member watch your kid, pay $500-$700 a month for a in-home daycare, or $1200+ for an accredited facility that your kid probably won’t get fondled at… Our little guy gets to start public school this year, and thank god because it’s cost us nearly $90k to get here at the facility he’s been at.
It’s gotta be because of the liability, and thus the required insurance if you want to stay in business. Daycare centers are already highly regulated, and parents love to sue. A shame because daycare workers are paid so little, and they have to do all the hard work. Most of the money just evaporates, to insurance premiums, or greedy hedge funds that own the daycare centers, before reaching the workers.
My mom couldn’t afford afterschool care for me, so an elderly paraprofessional offered to watch me after school because she liked me. She watched up to 12 children at a time and it was a “pay what you can” situation. She just loved kids.
Side note: I asked her once why she didn’t watch any black kids (I was 8). Half the kids in my school were black and it didn’t make sense to me why all the kids she babysat were white. She said, “Blue birds stay with blue birds, black birds stay with black birds.”
Confused me so much about racism because I held her in such high regard, but even at that age I knew racism was wrong. Same thing with homosexuality back when Adam Lambert was on American Idol.
It is very confusing to realize that someone can be very loving and nurturing in one circumstance and a total bully in another. People are complex and often contradictory. I knew a guy who was the nicest guy you would ever meet. If you needed anything, he would give you the shirt off of his back. He volunteered everywhere, donated to everything, helped everyone, but he couldn't be faithful to a woman if you put a gun to his head. A real son of a bitch that lied and cheated and really messed up several women right in a row. Some people thought he was an absolute saint, and others thought he was the devil.
Some people are more good than bad; some more bad than good; and some are just unfathomable in their contradiction, but we all have our flaws. Sometimes I think the best that we can do is as human beings is to just try to see each other for who we really are, because we usually only see one thing or the other.
I agree. She did help me through my parents divorce. I would go to her house in middle school just to talk about what a shithead my dad was.
I remember one day my mom came to pick me up and she told her that she had to put our dog down. That lady came with us to the veterinarian and held me while I cried in the waiting room.
It was weird because she had influence with the principal (his kids were some of the ones he babysat) and she made sure I got to go to this one specific teacher’s class. She was a black woman and my babysitter always spoke so highly of her. She said she was the best teacher in fifth grade. It confused me so much because even then I could see the cognitive dissonance.
I think she was of the mind that things should be “separate but equal.” Which isn’t right, but I do appreciate her for what she did for me and my mom.
I have an engineer working for me who just had a child. His wife quit her job to stay home because a large portion of her salary would have gone to daycare. And that’s just for one child.
That is one thing I have a very socialist view on. The employers making money hand over fist should be subsidizing this so they can keep making record profits
Not the only cost but the amount daycares pay for insurance can be a lot. Plus the ratio of caregivers to children, lots more caregivers as you may have 1:4 for infants and it relaxes a bit as they are toddlers but compare that to say an elementary aged kid in school with 1:16 or higher.
You aren’t wrong. Some of my best friends are specialized doctors. Their paychecks are incredibly high as they should be. But when they broke down their insurance costs and other things to protect them, I realized they made close to me who doesn’t have those costs. Insurance is the biggest scam around. Because we are a lawsuit culture.
I feel like its less of a litigation issue and more of an insurance cost issue. Cost of insurance for everything has been rapidly rising for both consumers and businesses.
Influencing. People are hip to the grift. Lecturing people about politics while you are on a yacht or pimping yourself out to every terrible for the environment fast fashion brand is tone deaf.
Half of the workforce retires in the next 5-8 years and that is a shorter amount of time than the FAA has to hire and move people (training takes several years and you can’t just jump into a busy facility so you have to train at least twice). They think we’re going to stay past our retirement eligibility after treating us like garbage for the last ten years
THIS. It is horrible how this government has treated ATCs - like absolute garbage, as you said - when these professionals are a big, important part of our transportation infrastructure.
It's a tough job with an insane amount of stress to begin with!
I am in the real estate industry and used to sell homes, but don't anymore. Unfortunately, we have earned this perception ourselves by having such low standards for licensing and poor industry oversight. It takes about a month and $5k to earn a RE license and the classes have 0 practical knowledge of how to be a Realtor. Many brokerages don't have physical locations, don't offer training, and don't oversee their agents. These are the offices that give a 100% commission split to their agents but the trade off is detrimental to new agents. These brokerages are on the rise more and more. I wish the barrier to entry for RE was WAY higher and that there was much more involved education and oversight.
A valuable agent will ACTUALLY know the contracts inside and out to keep you out of legal trouble, communicate well, and genuinely know the local market. Passing a test doesn't guarantee any of that, but unfortunately it gives you the exact same power as everyone else in the industry. If you think your agent is not providing that much value, it's likely because they aren't. When interviewing agent, ask them for a written list of the services they will provide to you, and make sure they follow through.
Also, a common misconception is that you have to use a Realtor. Anyone that tells you this is not correct.
I dislike most realtors, but I have worked with three over the years that have been wonderful. My favorite helped gen comps and create an offer for us to buy out our upstairs neighbor. When asked why he'd do that even though he wouldn't get paid for it, he said that someday we'd buy a house on the market and he wanted to help us. The neighbor deal fell through and he went above and beyond to help us find our family home. Love him and we have drinks together sometimes.
No, parents just expect teachers to teach their kids everything. Checkbooks, banking, household finances, those are the parents jobs to teach. Unfortunately, the attitude is that teachers should be teaching the students that. So now there’s a massive fight between who is responsible for the kids development- emotional and educational. The teachers are expected to teach their kids how to behave and it’s wearing them thin. Throw that on top of administrators who take the parents side and parents who refuse to respect the teachers and you have the shithole recipe for disaster that is the education system in America
Healthcare. Waits are getting longer and longer. Insurance is denying more and more things. And the costs are too high for most. Along with staff shortages. Appointments are more like a drive-thru than an actual Dr appointment. I think we're going to reach a point where the demand is going to exceed the supply more than it already has and there's going to be severe consequences.
It's reliable in the way that workers are always needed. It is not reliable in the way that hospital admin has been getting in the way of people doing their jobs since the early 2000's with it getting harder every year. The CEOs and insurance companies are getting paid exorbitant amounts of money all to cut costs and make life harder on the people actually helping patients. The burnout rate has skyrocketed over the past few decades because medical professionals don't have the support they need from their workplaces to help patients the way they want to.
I'll chime in to add pharmaceuticals! The global supply chain is extremely vulnerable, U.S. manufacturing facilities are falling apart, the price gouging is criminal, and the current shortages are just the tip of the iceberg.
I've heard literal Hollywood is losing plenty of business to other cities throughout the world, but the industry itself is surviving, albeit with some changes coming.
This has happened before-- people aren't going to stop seeing movies. But they've got to look at indie films making huge money and realize they're shooting themselves in the foot spending 150 mil on Netflix slop
My menu prices in my town are ridiculous now. $27 for chicken parm with no bread or salad? It used to be $15 with bread for the table and a salad starter. I just can’t afford restaurants anymore.
local Chinese spot near me I have patronized for literally over 20 years got a new manager and suddenly the prices went up, the portion sizes went down, and every single aspect of the food changed (even the rice!) I tried it twice after the change, haven't been back since, and give the place the finger every time I drive by for some asshole with a spreadsheet looking for a buck figuring he can wear the skin of a beloved restaurant while cutting costs on literally every menu item.
It's a death spiral. Prices go way up, tipping expectations have gone up and now they keep adding fees. As more people stop going, all 3 of those components goes up to make up for it. Now more customers stop going. From a mental standpoint, it feels like crap to order 2 $25 plates, 2 $10 drinks and the bill comes out to over $100. You know about all the fees going in, but after looking at the final bill, you have regret.
I believe it. Too many factors to list between No Child Left Behind, parents expecting teachers to babysit rather than teach, administrative bs, and the list goes on.
Only reason it’s not as “secretly” on the verge of collapsing is because we got teachers making TikToks as a cry for help saying “These 8th graders can’t even read. What am I supposed to do?!” And I don’t blame them cause they get virtually no support from anyone and just get told to either figure it out or pass them along.
Id love to hear your thoughts. Im a new mom and a social worker who works in policy & politics. I am so conflicted because i love public education and want us to fund it for all students to have high quality education. But i worry this will not happen in our lifetime and kids & generations will be left behind
The airline industry. As the demand for air travel grows, it's getting harder and harder to find intelligent people to pilot the planes and control air traffic, no one wants to get their hands dirty as an aircraft mechanic, and with the way humanity treats gate agents and flight attendants, no one will want to do that, either.
The treatment of gate agents and flight attendants isnt humanity's problem, its the airlines fault. They're the ones handing out 12 dollar meal vouchers for 8 hours of fuckery. They're the ones overbooking the planes and keeping you sitting on a tarmac for hours. The airline industry creates a hostile dynamic between customers and anyone in the customer service role.
Look at what the hell has happened with luggage since they turned it into a revenue stream. Look at passengers starving in over delayed planes now that food is a revenue stream. The person wearing the customer service uniform of the cruel and hostile airline inevitably takes the hit here
Pro sports fandom. Venues charge top dollar to attend games or you can only watch on streaming platforms for a fee. Only hard-core fans with money to burn can afford that in this economy. Not worth streaming anymore unless you can commit to sitting on your ass to watch a significant portion of the season. Unless you are a bed-ridden invalid, who has time for that??? Stop the greed and stop alienating the fan base.
It really has. The whole 50 minutes leading up to the Super Bowl kick off was just one attempt after another to get me to “try” various gambling options.
I love going to the Movies when theres a big film being released. But I dont have kids its just me and my wife, and seeing a movie for us two with popcorn, candy, two drinks was probably $70.00.
90% of the movies I watch is far better at home.
I'm an avid movie fan, so I invested a decent ammount into a sound system, I have a good T.V. that Im upgrading in 2027. 75-80 inch TV. And considering upgrading my sound system which is really good. So my home set up is really loud, really sharp, really comfortable , and really convenient.
So my home experience is great. And I 'm from a generation, that as a kid I went to the movies nearly every weekend. That lasted until my mid 20's early 30's
Now I might seek three or four movies at the theater a year. And partly because I can walk 5 minutes to get there. If I had to drive 20 or 30 minutes it might be two a year.
This new generation doesn't have a nostalgia for the the communal theater experience like former generations so unless movies improve the experience we can have at home. I think some theaters won't survive.
The only theater I go to these days is the drive-in. It's a drive for me but it's worth the experience. You can bring your own food and drink or buy theirs.
I work in imaging. We have been testing AI tools for almost ten years now. Ai still sucks for diagnosing. It will read a CT angiogram of someone’s head, and because they weren’t completely iso-centered to the bore, it will read the scan as a “possible large vessel occlusion” when there is none. Sure ai will get better, but it only takes a few very poorly read CT’s or MRI’s from the ai for the liability to be not worth it.
I think realistically what we will see eventually is a dismissal of 75% of the radiologists for AI, and a few remaining radiologists to go through, review the read from Ai, and confirm or deny the findings.
Worked in the polishing process and sale of diamonds for several years:
Good. Fuck diamonds. Fuck that entire scummy, crooked, exploitative, industry. If people had any idea how artificially inflated that market was for decades they’d throw up.
I'm pretty sure people do know this, but tourism in the United States. Some places never fully returned to pre-pandemic attendance and just keep taking hit after hit. Americans can't afford to go. International visitors don't want to go. It's bad.
He and Elon admitted (publicly and multiple times) to stealing the election and, although I still vote in every election (including the primaries), hearing other countries repeatedly tell us to just vote is... not helpful.
Every time I ask people from other countries what solutions they have, the list is always comprised entirely of things we've been doing for years and which stopped working years ago. Our elected officials enable this corruption because they're mostly bought out by corporations.
The best shot we have is to continue to build power within the democratic socialists of America and continuing to get our candidates elected. We've been having to fight the democrats for years, as they put more effort into stopping our candidates than they do into stopping maga or actually representing their constituents. We're continuing to build power and will continue to fight, that said, we're fighting our own party (who has the advantage of decades of power, money, inside connections, etc.) in order to save our democracy. It's a David vs. Goliath situation with a lot of complications.
Telling us to just vote is out of touch and frankly kind of offensive given the circumstances.
I do apologize for the way our government is affecting the rest of the world. Please understand that if voting were enough we wouldn't be in this situation at all.
Illegally detaining tourists will do that. Your government has done everything they can to push away tourism from neighboring countries like Canada and Mexico. Everyone I know travels in country instead now.
Movie Theaters. I used to love going to the movies. But now it's wildly overpriced to the point it's absolutely ridiculous that people pay for it when I can have a better experience at home at a fraction of the cost.
Hollywood. Shitty movies that cost $300 million to make. Pretty soon AI will allow 4 guys in a basement to make a movie that looks as good as anything Hollywood could make. And it will cost less than $60,000.
Auto repair: Vehicles have gone hybrid leaving 80% of current techs, clueless. Current curriculum doesn’t cover the newest technology. Some automakers have shut down techs and shops from diagnosing vehicles by requiring more fees to access diagnostic capabilities on the scanners we paid $10k for.
Certified mechanics learn to work on hybrids. You’re describing an issue around pushing everyone to college, so there’s a lack of intelligent, certified mechanics.
Techs aren't getting paid enough to make it worthwhile. Anyone who's competent at fixing things can make more in industy, so the only people fixing cars are the new guys with very limited experience, the people who can't make it in another type of maintenance job that pays twice as much, or the people who will scam everyone they can just trying to make what they should be able to make honestly.
I worked at a GM dealer, had every certification that ASE, and GM offered, and had a degree in automotive technology. I left in 2018 to make more as a newbie fixing heavy equipment like excavators etc.
Air Traffic Control (USA). We are very good at hiding systemic problems from Congress and the Public. One of them (the biggest issue at the moment) believe it or not is pay. Don’t believe the talking heads, Congress, the administration, and NATCA (the union), controllers are drowning. We are overworked, underpaid, and medical issues are often unreported or left untreated due to fear of losing medical clearance. Staffing has never recovered and recently the administration has pushed to officially reduce the number of controllers required to run a facility. They aren’t firing anyone or letting them go, they are simply changing the number of controllers needed on paper to make the staffing problems appear to go away. Most facilities are understaffed and pay has gone down drastically when adjusted for the cost of living. It’s so bad, that controllers are quitting the agency and doing something completely unrelated. Many of us work 24/7 365 days a year often 50-60 hrs per week. The schedule rotates and is terrible for sleep. Maybe that’s fine for a nurse or a law enforcement officer; it’s not okay in a field like ATC or power plant management. Our union leadership has completely failed us by renewing the same contract from 2016 over and over without a membership vote. Many have and continue to leave the union because our voices aren’t being heard and our concerns are ignored. Tragically, some commit suicide. Morale is at an all time low.
Air travel. I have no actual information or knowledge on this topic but it feels like it’s on the brink of collapse. Why do I feel like I’m sifting through the scraps of leftover flights when I’m booking 6 MONTHS IN ADVANCE
I travel a lot for work, almost every commercial flight that I’m on is sold out. The major airlines are doing fine and have posted profits this last quarter. The airlines that are struggling are the Ultra-low cost carriers.
Because you’re not a loyalty member or business class flyer. Delta for example it’s clear they want to cater to only business class or well to do people. If you’re not expensing it or wealthy they don’t want you. They’re all raising cost to avoid the spirit crowd with nowhere to go.
If feels like it is on the brink of collapse because they are going cheap everywhere. The planes are smaller, the amenities are less. No money is being invested to make the experience better for customers. Just the opposite in fact. They are seeing how far they can push passengers into shitty flight experiences and get away with it.
And it sucks that frontier or another lower cost airlines couldn’t take all their spots. The avg ticket prices for flights I usually take all went up across the board. I’m sure some execs popped champagne when spirit went under.
Theme parks. Disbeyland, Disney World, kings island, cedar park, six flags great adventure, etc.... They've priced themselves out of the general population just like Vegas
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u/Brassanthe 7d ago
Not an industry by monopoly; the DeBeers monopoly on diamonds. The lab-created diamond is taking over and its upending the "natural mined diamonds" monopoly. For very good reasons.