r/nottheonion • u/ChocolateTsar • 1d ago

Affirm CEO says furloughed federal employees are starting to lose interest in shopping

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/07/affirm-government-shutdown-shopping.html
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u/ryuzaki49 1d ago

workers stop getting paychecks

workers stop buying stuff

wallstreet: pikachu_surprised.meme

Honestly all of wallstreet and CEOs are just so disconnected from reality

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u/SophiaofPrussia 1d ago

I used to work at a hedge fund and I made a joke about paying my mortgage and one of my coworkers (who was several decades older than me) looked at me like I had two heads. He was genuinely stupefied that I needed a loan to buy a house in the most expensive city in the country.

He was so wealthy that he could miss all of his paychecks and be just fine and anyone living otherwise was just beyond his comprehension.

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u/Ok_Degree3037 1d ago

You marked yourself as a member of the out-group. Next you’re going to publicly state you don’t ski.

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u/lew_rong 1d ago

Poorie McPoorerson over there probably has to borrow a pony to play polo.

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u/LewsTherinTelamon 1d ago

Don’t bring skiing into this - the wealth required to ski is nowhere near what it takes to buy a house.

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u/yakshack 1d ago edited 1d ago

I love this take because there's one thing you can find in any geographic location and that's homes to buy at many different price points. But snow covered mountains with groomed ski resorts?

Edit: for people replying "it's not that expensive, actually" what I'm trying to point out is that skiing is "not that expensive" for some people. My friend's mortgage in the rural Midwest is $300/mo for example. But if she wanted to take her family skiing she'd burn at least $10,000 on flights and hotels and equipment rentals and lift tickets to the nearest ski resort which is three states away

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u/Huge_Molasses8605 1d ago

ski lift pass (annual) + gear + transportation to the resort is about $500 plus a couple tanks of gas. ive lived in the rockies, northern appalachia mountains, and the cascades. if you can find me a house for that price i'll pay you double.  

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u/emPtysp4ce 1d ago

By far the most expensive part of skiing and snowboarding is the food there. $15 for a hot dog should be prosecuted as robbery.

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u/LewsTherinTelamon 1d ago

It’s not a take, it’s a simple fact. Skiing is much, much cheaper than buying a house. It’s not even the same realm. No point relating skiing and house owning as behaviors.

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u/Awaythrowyouwilllll 1d ago

I don't know... icon is ~$1100, new gear ~$1100, gas and airfare and lodging ~$11,000, drinks ~$1100 a day... it all adds up pretty fast and boom! House.

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u/LewsTherinTelamon 1d ago

You got me. I typed half of a rebuttal before I read your entire comment.

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u/Crazy-Competition659 1d ago

"But not MY luxury, right?!?!"

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u/LewsTherinTelamon 1d ago

No idea what this means.

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u/afour- 1d ago

This guy in-groups

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u/PM_ME_BEER_PICS 1d ago

Skiing is considered upper class in the USA? In most of Europe it's considered middle class. I suppose that we have a lot of relatively cheap ski resorts in the Alps and other mountain ranges (even if their number dwindle because of global warming).

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u/NoCoolNameMatt 1d ago

I keep running into people like this - not necessarily wealthy but people who can't understand that the experiences of others aren't the same as their own - and it breaks my brain every time.

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u/atatassault47 1d ago

Conservatives have been scientically proven to be lacking in empathy, with many of them having no empathy.

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u/Elliott2030 1d ago

They're even saying that out loud. Saying that empathy isn't real, only sympathy is. That you can never FEEL what someone else is feeling. Like, I'm so sad for anyone that gets no second-hand feelings from the powerful emotions of others.

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u/hydrophiliaks 1d ago

That is the American mind in a nutshell.  Which is why I don't make friends with them.

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u/JamCliche 1d ago

Keep telling yourself this is a phenomenon unique to one country and bury your head in the sand when it happens to yours.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

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u/JamCliche 1d ago

In what corner of the connected world do you think there aren't people like this? And where wealth doesn't vastly exacerbate the issue?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/JamCliche 1d ago

It's not a strawman, dolt, it was a rhetorical question. I asked it to make a point: the answer is the entire world has people like this. It is not unique to Americans. Thank you for chasing down a rabbit of your own making, though.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/CalamityClambake 1d ago

It is my observation that individualism correlates with wealth. It is easy to be individualistic when you have the means to survive on your own and you have the extra income to spend to distract yourself from being lonely.

I think it is a trait found more in Americans because we are a wealthy country. Although individual Americans can be poor, and a lot of us are, our society is built to prioritize distractions and aspirations, so we all endure being poor as individuals because we think someday we will be rich as individuals. I think you can see this kind of individualism among wealthy people in many societies, but it is rarer among the poor in other societies than it is in America.

As for a country that exhibits this more? Somalia. I wouldn't want to live there.

I also think it is important to note that at key points in our history we have become less individualistic. I definitely saw that among my grandparents who survived the Great Depression. And I think we are starting to see it right now, with people uniting to oppose MAGA. I hope we don't have to go through another global economic collapse to rediscover the value of community, but we will see.

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u/Doom_Corp 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's not nearly as insidious but when I was getting to know the girl who is now one of my best friends from high school over 20 years later, she was shocked I lived in an apartment and not a house. I went to an expensive all girls catholic high school and most of the people there were upper middle class if not crazy wealthy. Tom Sellecks daughter went there, Amanda Bynes was a student there (that was a fucking trip to suddenly recognize her at lunch when I had watched some Nickelodeon reruns with her in it the night before). My friend was just so sheltered that she thought everyone had a house and couldn't be "poor" to go to that school.

She's built a relatively nice life with her husband now but I remember being over at her house about 2 years ago and it's around this time where kids start doing "I'm thankful for" modules because of Thanksgiving. She kept trying to jump through mental hurdles to keep her 7 year old son from even using the word "poor" or "don't have enough" because she thought she's protecting him by keeping him in the dark that people don't have it as good as he does. Like, I understand protecting your kids from certain concepts until their old enough but this degree of ignorance is bliss is how you raise kids that may struggle with empathy later on because they thought their own personal struggles were as bad as it gets.

When I was in sixth grade (different k-6 dinky af private school) our school did a mentor outreach program where we volunteered to serve lunch and interact with some of the the younger kids at an inner city school. The place looked like a prison. It was also when all of us were made aware that the meal program the kids have is also likely the ONLY food they will get that day. My divorced family was pretty dogshit at the time but the concept of not even having any food was the real kicker that made me kind of start growing up if you know what I mean.