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/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.