One of these unintended consequences hits the people who can least afford it. I refer to the people who are low income, those who have less than moderate income. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 146.4 million American citizens are low income; that is 48 percent of the population in the United States of America. That is a lot of people! The poorest of the low income people live in poverty; and, less than a year ago, back in November of 2012, "more than 16% of the population lived in poverty in the United States" as you may read in the embedded link contained in the quoted phrase.
One of the ways that people of all income levels can save money, a way to purchase items and especially grocery items at a lower cost and therefore get the biggest bang for the buck, is through the use of money saving coupons.
Awhile back, I noticed restaurants and coffee shops had started to advertise that you could download (or is that upload?) money saving coupons onto your smart phone or some other such digital device. That did not help me because I have no such device; I do so as a matter of choice. So, because of my choice not to have these farshtunkene technological devices that cost money to obtain and then maintain, I lose out on those potential savings. Gee, I wonder how many digital coupons it would take to pay for the cost of the digital device. I am now reminded of the people who assert one can never really recoup the cost of a hybrid vehicle through the cost savings on fuel. But, I digress. Back to topic.
Well, it now seems that even grocery stores have gone digital with their coupons. Judy, my wife, a coupon diva in her own right, was looking over a very fancy, colorful, probably costly, printed Kroger advertisement and noticed that rather than having a coupon appear in their print advertising, they had this digital stuff.
That which Judy saw and read in the Kroger advertisement infuriated her to the point that she wrote the Judy Hansen Commentary Digital coupons (click on over and read it).
I share Judy's consternation. For goodness sake, the powers that be over at Kroger, not only did not put a print version of the coupons in their high-priced ad, they informed people to "Download digital coupons at Kroger.com" as if everyone in the world had the ability and the wherewithal to do so! How the heck does Kroger (and other grocery stores and retailers) expect low-income persons to benefit from their darn digital coupons???
The people who can best benefit and who need to buy products at a lower price cannot afford the technological digital devices and supporting technological paraphernalia required to realize the cost savings from those freaking digital coupons. That is what leads me to shout out:
Retail Businesses Shaft Low-income Persons
1 comment:
As Laurie would say after having worked checkout at Wal-Mart the last few months, the people who can't afford the computer or smartphone to get the digital coupons are paying by EBT anyway.
Post a Comment