Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/21/bill-gates-attempts-to-guess-t.html
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yeah but I would’ve guessed all of those wrong too. I just don’t shop in a grocery store much and when I do it is a quick one like Trader Joe’s and I seldom look at and hardly ever remember the prices.
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I do all the grocery shopping for our household and I couldn’t guess the prices of any of those items either.
I can tell what everything I actually BUY costs though.
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I am on the other side of the pond and I got two (Tide pods and dental floss) by knowing how much they or similar products cost in the UK, then doing some currency and tax conversion. I had no point of reference for the other three items though.
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Hey, at least he’s a good sport about it.
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Based on his answers, it looks like Bill’s charging about twice as much for his products as they should actually sell for.
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Lucky you!
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That’s the benefit of disposable income. I am guilty of this now. But go back far enough, and I was literally looking at quantity vs cost to fit meals into my budget (and supplementing with the food bank). I’d have killed for brand name anything back then, and I learned which of my nearby stores sold which items more cheaply.
Now, I’ve lost those skills. I’ve even lost the pride I used to have in looking at my cart and being happy I could estimate within $20 of the final bill.
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That’s the reality I currently live in, (minus the bit about the food bank, thankfully.)
I actually kinda pity people whose lives are so insulated by privilege that they don’t know (or never knew) that a reasonable price for a single banana should be no more than .30¢; when the grid eventually fails and society as we know it collapses, it’s likely that many won’t be able to adapt.
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I shop at a few stores (3 mostly) and thought I was a bargain finding genius. Zip within a dollar. Think I buy too much fresh food and environmentally safe stuff, have to work on that.
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I didn’t get any of those because I don’t buy those products…
Marie Callender Meals and MtDews and I’d be a winner!
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i admit I’m a contradiction - I totally am a cheapie and need to be practically goaded into paying up for things that many people take for granted (like ta taxi when I could just walk the 15 blocks even though I have a headache) and this behavior greatly affects my online purchasing as I check amazon and ebay and other sites to see how much money I can extract…but then I forget about it usually. to a lesser extent now I’ll do the same at the grocery store too…but these days I pay up for brand and don’t worry about the difference…I waste more money being penny wise pound foolish…
Tee hee hee… it’s so funny when the 0.00000001% can’t guess food prices (and I use the word “food” loosely… I’m lookin’ at you, Totino’s). Just cracks me up.
Geez Bill, do your own shopping once or twice. Or be like Bezos and just buy a fucking grocery store.
some people.
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I honestly think he has better things to do. Like fund and manage an organization bent on eradicating malaria.
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To be fair, there are plenty of subsistence farmers who would probably roll their eyes at the average middle-class American’s attempt to guess how long it takes grain to ripen or how many eggs a chicken can produce every week.
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Ellen Degeneres makes it easy since she’s not mean-spirited about it. And it’s still funny for everyone.
I have disposable income but I still do this. Some of it is practising what I preach (I end up helping people I know who get into financial trouble a lot), some of it is meal planning, and some of it is what we’ll euphemistically call “frugality.” I still buy a lot of store brands, and buy certain items at stores where I know they’re cheaper.
I didn’t have to use the food bank, though – there’s a difference between choice and necessity, which is why food banks are so important.
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yeah, right Ellen knows the prices of these things because she does her own shopping - is that what I’m hearing here?
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Given what Bill and Melinda Gates have done with their money, I never get the impression he likes having made $100B, other than what he can do with it giving it away. Not to say he doesn’t really like being a billionaire – probably loves it – but $5B and $10B would have suited him fine and the rest is a little embarrassing to him. Apparently he has an office of ~25 people just to handle his personal wealth (not the foundation, just his own money); at some point having that much money has got to just be an enormous pain in the ass.
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Every year for my birthday I go grab the stuff I couldn’t afford and donate it to the food bank bin at my local supermarket. Because I don’t know what I’d have done without them when I needed them!
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