(NEW YORK) — From books to clothing to electronics, back-to-school shopping is around the corner for many families.
According to new survey data from the National Retail Federation, American families are expected to spend over $860 this year on school supplies. But with inflation hitting hard, parents are likely looking for a break wherever they can.
“We feel the squeeze like everybody else,” Lindsay Chamberlin, a mother of three in Florida, told Good Morning America. “Everything seems to be going up, but really the back-to-school deals have been really good.”
Seventeen states are now offering tax-free holidays for school supplies, cutting sales tax ahead of the start of school. In Florida, where many schools begin in August, the sales tax holiday kicks off Monday and runs until Aug. 7.
“This week is my Olympics,” Chamberlin said. “The savings really stack up, definitely with the tax advantage in the stores stacking their sales on top of it. We’ll definitely be finishing up our shopping by Friday.”
Which states are offering tax-free holidays for back-to-school supplies in 2022?
Alabama (already passed; ran from July 15-17)
Arkansas (Aug. 6-7)
Connecticut (Aug. 21-27)
Florida (July 25-Aug. 7)
Iowa (Aug. 5-6)
Maryland (Aug. 14-20)
Massachusetts (Aug. 13-14)
Mississippi (July 29-30)
Missouri (Aug. 5-7)
New Mexico (Aug. 5-7)
Ohio (Aug. 5-6)
Oklahoma (Aug. 5-7; only clothing items are exempt from sales tax)
South Carolina (Aug. 5-7)
Tennessee (July 29-31)
Texas (Aug. 5-7)
Virginia (Aug. 5-7)
West Virginia (Aug. 5-8)
In addition, Illinois is offering a reduced sales tax of 1.25% on school supplies from Aug. 5 to 14.
For other ways to save, check cash-back apps such as Ibotta and Rakuten for deals and for computers and electronics, look for refurbished models, buy from certified sellers, check return policies and comparison shop.
The estimated jackpot for Friday night’s Mega Millions drawing is now $660 million — making it the game’s third-largest prize ever.
At that amount, Friday’s jackpot would be the ninth-largest in U.S. history, including top Powerball winners.
The Mega Millions jackpot was last won on April 15, with a winning ticket in Tennessee claiming $20 million.
There have been no jackpot winners in the 27 consecutive drawings since then, with the grand prize growing from $20 million to an estimated $555 million as of Tuesday. Interest in the lotto has driven Friday’s grand prize up to an estimated $660 million, pre-tax.
The winner could choose to be paid out in one immediate payment and then 29 annual payments. Or, the lump-sum cash option for the drawing is estimated to be $376.9 million.
The largest jackpots in the history of the game were $1.537 billion, won in South Carolina in 2018, and $1.05 billion, won in Michigan in 2021.
The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350, according to the lottery game.
Mega Millions is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets cost $2.
(NEW YORK) — It’s been a pressure cooker of a summer for economies in both the U.S. and Europe, and experts say the extreme heat is making it increasingly difficult for workers to do their jobs — especially those who work outdoors.
A historic and deadly heat wave has been scorching western Europe, killing more than 1,000 people in Spain and Portugal and displacing thousands in France, Greece and Italy. In Britain and Germany, the excessive heat is unprecedented. At the same time, much of the U.S. is baking under oppressive heat, as temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma topped 113 degrees.
A video this week of a UPS delivery driver collapsing in the triple-digit heat of Scottsdale, Arizona, went viral. A UPS spokesperson confirmed the incident in a statement to Phoenix ABC affiliate KNXV-TV, saying in part: “We appreciate the concern for our employee and can report that he is fine… Our employee used his training to be aware of his situation and contact his manager for assistance, who immediately provided assistance.”
Worker productivity losses due to heat cost the U.S. an estimated $100 billion a year, according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. As days of extreme heat become more frequent, the report claims that figure is projected to double to $200 billion by 2030, or about 0.5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the average temperatures of several major U.S. cities have increased over the last 120 years, with Los Angeles County getting 3.4 degrees hotter and New York County experiencing a rise of 3.2 degrees in the average temperature. In Dallas County, Texas, the average temperature rose 1.2 degrees in the past 60 years, according to NOAA, and experts say the Southeast and Midwest are projected to face the highest economic toll from extreme heat.
Texas loses an average of $30 billion a year due to its climate and the large number of people working outdoors, according to the think-tank’s report. That number is projected to jump to $110 billion a year by 2050, amounting to 2.5% of Texas’ total economic output.
That same report found that industries most affected by extreme heat are construction and agriculture, where workers are most exposed to the elements. By 2050, construction is projected to lose 3.5% of its total annual economic activity to heat, or $1.2 billion per year, while agriculture is estimated to lose 3.7%, or nearly $131 million a year.
President Joe Biden this week announced new executive steps to combat climate change but fell short of declaring a climate emergency. The move comes after a major legislative package with more than $300 billion in clean-energy tax breaks stalled on Capitol Hill.
“Since Congress is not acting as it should… This is an emergency and I will look at it that way,” Biden said.
The initiatives include $2.3 billion in funding for a program that helps communities prepare for disasters by expanding flood control and retrofitting buildings, as well as funding to help low-income families cover heating and cooling costs.
Americans’ electric bills are expected to increase by 20% to an average of $540 for this summer, compared to the same period last year, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. It comes at a time when consumers are already battling the highest inflation in 40 years with soaring prices for food, gas and other essentials.
But not all of that increase in energy bills is due to a rise in usage. The rise is partly fueled by a jump in the price of natural gas, which is used to generate electricity. Natural gas prices have surged this year following a production slump during the pandemic, as well as shortages due to the war in Ukraine.
Europe’s heat wave is adding pressure to the continent’s energy crunch. Electricity prices are already on the rise as Russia chokes off Europe’s natural gas supply. One of Germany’s largest power producers, Uniper, is asking for a government bailout after higher energy prices and rising demand for power amid soaring temperatures depleted the company’s cash.
The mercury reached a record 104 F in the U.K. this week, a country not accustomed to such extreme temperatures. The average temperature in the U.K. in July is 75 F so far, and most homes and businesses don’t have air conditioners. The Met Office, the country’s national weather service, warned that the heat will have “widespread impacts on people and infrastructure.” Luton Airport, north of London, suspended flights Monday after record heat caused a surface defect on the runway, while the country’s main rail network urged people to travel only if “absolutely necessary.”
Analysts say the sweltering heat comes at the height of tourism season for Europe and threatens foot traffic at retailers as shoppers choose to stay indoors.
Record high temperatures and wildfires in France, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy, which is suffering through one of its worst droughts on record, are destroying crops, pushing already high food prices even higher. More than half of the 27 countries in the European Union now face the threat of drought, made worse by extreme heat, according to a report from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.
According to a study last year by European economists and climate experts published in the journal Nature Communications, heat waves on average had lowered overall annual economic growth across Europe by as much as 0.5% in the past decade.
Italian Authorities in the northern region of Lombardy said 70% of crops are gone in the Po River delta and warn that water supplies for agriculture could run out by the end of July. The Italian farmers’ association, Coldiretti, said that each fire costs Italians about $25,000 an acre to rebuild, and the group estimates that wheat production in Italy will decline by 15% because of an increase in production costs and the drought.
“We’re working carefully, alongside different associations,” Lombardy President Attilio Fontana told a press conference in Milan on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, the only thing we can hope for is that it starts to rain again.”
(NEW YORK) — As recession forecasts have grown dire in recent months, they’ve faced one complication: Strong economic data.
The U.S. showed robust job growth last month, defying expectations of a slowdown and keeping the unemployment rate at a near-historic low of 3.6%. Meanwhile, retail spending, a key indicator of economic health that reflects consumer appetite, rose 1% in June, outpacing gloomier predictions — even if some of that increase can be attributed to rising prices due to inflation.
The positive signs have fueled caution about the rush to pessimism.
“While sentiment has shifted, little of the data I see tells me the U.S. is on the cusp of a recession,” Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser said during the company’s earnings call on Friday.
The trend raises the question of whether the U.S. could avoid a recession altogether.
In a sense, the answer is an unequivocal no, economists told ABC News. Ultimately, a recession is inevitable, since it makes up a natural part of an economic cycle marked by alternating periods of growth and contraction.
But the continued strength of the economy meaningfully challenges expectations that a recession will come to pass anytime soon, as robust hiring and healthy household and business balance sheets provide a buffer for a potential slowdown, they added. One economist, Jeremy Swartz of Credit Suisse, said it’s more likely that the economy will avoid a recession right now than undergo one.
Inflation
A stark imbalance between supply and demand poses a daunting challenge over the mid- and long-term, some less-optimistic economists said. In light of that imbalance, economic strength becomes a liability, since a supply bottleneck can’t keep up with hiring and spending, resulting in crippling inflation.
Safely navigating that predicament over the coming years — without triggering a recession — will require an unlikely but possible series of events, Aneta Markowska, chief economist at New York City-based financial services company Jefferies, told ABC News..
“There’s a consensus view right now that a recession is imminent — that, I think, is premature,” Markowska said. “We have an economy that’s already overheated, like a plane that has overshot the runway, which makes it incredibly difficult to land it softly. There’s certainly a scenario for how we could achieve that. But I think that scenario involves a lot of things going very, very well.”
Supply and demand
At the crux of current economic risk stands a glaring asymmetry between traditional supply and demand, according to Markowska and Lindsey Piegza, the chief economist at Stifel, a St. Louis-based investment bank.
A surge in demand followed a pandemic-induced flood of economic stimulus that combined with a widespread shift toward goods instead of services, as hundreds of millions across the globe facing lockdowns replaced restaurant expenditures with couches and exercise bikes. Meanwhile, that stimulus brought about a speedy economic recovery from the March 2020 downturn, triggering a hiring blitz.
But the surge in demand for goods and labor far outpaced supply, as COVID-related bottlenecks slowed delivery times and infection fears kept workers on the sidelines. In turn, prices and wages skyrocketed, ultimately prompting sky-high inflation that has not only endured for many months but gotten worse, Markowska and Piegza said.
The consumer price index, or CPI, stood at 9.1% last month, a significant increase from 8.6% in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the largest 12-month increase since December 1981.
To avert a recession, the U.S. will need to slow demand while increasing supply, in turn bringing the two into balance, Markowska and Piegza said. But both sides of that task pose thorny problems, they added.
Interest rates
To weaken demand, the Federal Reserve has embarked on a series of hikes to its benchmark interest rate, which raises borrowing costs for consumers and businesses alike. That should slow the economy and slash demand.
Since U.S. households have stockpiled savings and the economy has accumulated millions more job openings than job seekers, in theory, the rate hikes could weaken the high demand without harming economic output, Markowska, the chief economist at Jefferies, said.
“The idea is that we can destroy that excess demand without actually destroying activity,” she said.
In reality, the task is much more difficult, Markowska said. The persistently strong economic conditions will prompt the Fed to take more aggressive action, which increases the risk of an abrupt economic slowdown that brings about a recession, she explained. For instance, in order to slow down a hot economy enough that healthy companies will abandon hiring and ease labor demand, Fed actions will likely trigger significant layoffs at other companies in a more precarious financial position, which could bring about a decline in demand that goes too far and pushes the economy toward a recession, she added.
Policymakers
Swartz, the economist at Credit Suisse, contested the view that strong economic performance raises the risk of recession. Instead, positive indicators like robust hiring show that the economy is healthier than many people think, he said.
“It’s not fully a situation where good news is bad news and bad news is good news,” he said. “All things being equal, we still like to see stronger growth.”
While demand weakens, supply will need to grow, economists said. That will require a set of outcomes that extends well beyond the control of U.S. economic policymakers, Piegza, the chief economist at Stifel, said. In order to relieve COVID-induced supply bottlenecks, countries like China will need to relax ongoing lockdowns. Moreover, a fix for global oil and agricultural shortages depends on an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, Piegza said.
“It’s out of the Fed’s control and the federal government’s,” she said. “You would need the dominos to line up with a certain level of precision.”
“That scenario has a very low probability but it’s not a zero probability,” she added.
While possible, the rosy outcome is far less likely than a downturn, Piegza said.
“Essentially, there’s a good chance, or a heightened probability, of a recession by the end of the year,” she said.
Markowska offered a slightly more optimistic forecast for the chances of a recession.
“In the next six months, I’d put it at 10%; in the next 12 months, I’d put it at 30% or 40%; in the next 24 months, I’d put it at 70%,” she said.
But she isn’t ruling out the possibility that the U.S. will avoid a recession altogether.
“We basically have to get really lucky,” she said.
Swartz, the economist at Credit Suisse who thinks the U.S. is more likely to avoid a recession than experience one, said the overall negative mood about the economy risks hurting consumer and business sentiment while helping induce a recession.
One place where that gloomy outlook can be found is on Wall Street, which saw a historic plunge in the stock market over the first half of the year. The S&P 500 — a popular index to which many 401(k) accounts are pegged — plummeted 20.6%, marking its worst first-half performance of any year since 1970.
“The general mood is obviously extremely poor,” he said. “There’s a question of whether that can become self-fulfilling.”
“That’s something we’re concerned about and contributes to heightened recession risk,” he added. “But there’s nothing automatic about it.”
(NEW YORK) — Even near some of the busiest cities in the United States, nearly 54 million people have a tough time accessing fresh and healthy food, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
One company based in a Denver suburb said they have a solution.
Farmbox Foods in Sedalia, Colorado, turns upcycled shipping containers into vertical hydroponic farms. The company claims the containers can create as much as two football fields worth of traditional agriculture. They grow more than 400-lbs of mushrooms a week.
Rusty Walker, the CEO of Farmbox Foods, called his container boxes “modern farming spaceships.”
“This is a 40 foot high cubed, insulated container that has been repurposed and then engineered to [with] three grow walls,” Walker told ABC News’ Ginger Zee. “[We can grow] right around two and a half acres to three acres of farmland in this container.”
The United States Department of Agriculture defines “food deserts” as areas where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food. There are approximately 6,500 food deserts in the United States based on 2002 and 2006 census data on locations of supermarkets, supercents and large grocery stores.
Often areas with a higher percentage of poverty and minority population are more likely to be food deserts, the USDA found in a 2012 study.
Walker said his moveable, temperature-controlled, farmland can be shipped and used anywhere.
“So we can be sitting or standing in this container here today and have a truck show up tomorrow and we can put it on a flatbed truck and ship it to Chicago in 48 hours later. Plug it in and it’s growing,” said Walker.
In the United States, more than 40% of the country’s freshwater is used to irrigate crops. Agriculture alone makes up at least 11% of the greenhouse gas emission in the United States, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Walker said that his system of farming only uses the freshwater equivalent of about two loads of laundry a day.
“I think the biggest thing that we have going for us is we use 3 to 5 gallons of water a day. That’s it,” said Walker. “We find that our plants are growing 3 to 4 times faster than they would in an ordinary environment. So we like to say we’re farming without harming.”
Michael Boardman is a natural grocer in Lakewood, Colorado. His grocery store uses a Farmbox Foods container and he said it gives them control over their produce supply chain.
“We’ll be harvesting, taking it directly into our store [and it’s ready] for our customers,” said Boardman, who added that the produce is fresher than traditional grocery supply chains. “[The produce is] much more nutrient dense because it hasn’t been sitting on a shelf in a warehouse. It hasn’t been shipped across the country.”
Local grocers are not the only ones who have bought into Farmbox Foods. One of the company’s biggest clients is Centura Health, a local hospital system in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Patrick Gaughan, the senior vice president and chief values integration officer at Centura Health, said they’re growing fresh produce for their patients, associates and community members who come to the hospital.
“As we grow and develop in the foods [we grow], then we’re also giving this food to the communities through local food banks, farmer’s markets, so that people can get access and the food will be available for them,” said Gaughan.
Vertical farming, like Farmbox Foods, is often criticized due to the limited amount of foods that can be produced. But Farmbox Foods told ABC News that they are expanding quickly and have been testing carrots, potatoes and radishes.
Gaughan said the ready access to fresh food will only make a stronger and healthier community — all year round.
“We can tie food insecurity and poor nutrition to things like diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, even mental health,” he said. “We can introduce people to a whole different way of getting their food, tasting their food, using their food in a culturally respective way, but also in a way that’s affordable and available year round.”
(NEW YORK) — Are you looking for ways to take control of your budget or save for the future?
According to a viral hashtag with more than 376 million views on TikTok, you can accomplish both and all you need is some old-fashioned cash and a set of envelopes.
TikTokers swear by the concept of cash stuffing. It’s a technology-free way to budget and plan out your finances that’s similar to the “developing” method.
How to cash stuff
You can start by dividing up your set of envelopes into categories and labeling them. For example, date night, bills, utilities, etc.
From there, you then divide up your hard-earned cash into the respective category or envelope it will be allotted to.
“I swiped my card way too much,” TikTok cash stuffer Stephanie Garcia told ABC News’ Good Morning America.
Since she began stuffing, Garcia said she managed to keep her debt low and also saved over $10,000 for the future.
(NEW YORK) — A Wisconsin family is suing TikTok after their 9-year-old daughter died attempting the so-called “blackout challenge” popularized on social media.
Arriani Jaileen Arroyo died by asphyxiation on Feb. 26, 2021. Now, her family, along with the parents of 8-year-old Lalani Walton of Texas, who also died of asphyxiation by strangulation on July 15, 2021, have come together with the Social Media Victims Law Center to file a lawsuit against TikTok on behalf of their daughters.
“This is not easy, to wake up every day and know that your little girl is never coming back,” Arriani’s mother Christal Arroyo Roman told ABC News’ Good Morning America on Saturday. “You’re never gonna hear her voice, you’re never gonna see her smile or hear her say ‘I love you.'”
Arriani was everything to her family. Her mother said she was an intelligent and stylish little diva who loved doing nails, dancing, and would give the coat off her back to those she loved. Like many children across the country, she also enjoyed following social media trends, including food challenges and learning new dances.
“We just never thought that there was a darker side to what TikTok allows on its platform,” Roman said.
In the wake of the two girls’ deaths, the Arroyos and Walton’s family are calling on TikTok for answers. The Arroyos told ABC News the families are speaking out in hopes of preventing other children from falling victim to the same crushing fates as their daughters.
“We just want people to be aware, because we don’t want no other children out there to be a statistic of this situation again,” Arriani’s father Heriberto Arroyo Roman said. “We want to make sure that we can save other kids.”
According to the June 30 lawsuit filed by the Social Media Victims Law Center on behalf of the families, multiple children from different states and countries died last year by asphyxiation after attempting the same “blackout challenge” — in which children choke themselves until they pass out — allegedly suggested to them on their TikTok “For You” pages.
The lawsuit specifically claims that “at all times relevant, TikTok’s algorithm was designed to promote ‘TikTok Challenges’ to young users to increase their engagement and maximize TikTok’s profits.”
It also claims the company was aware that some of the challenges allegedly being promoted to young people could be deadly, but that it did not act to correct the problem.
“TikTok outrageously took no and/or completely inadequate action to extinguish and prevent the spread of the Blackout Challenge and specifically to prevent its algorithm from directing children to the Blackout Challenge, despite notice and/or foreseeability that such a failure would inevitably lead to more injuries and deaths, including those of children,” the lawsuit reads.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, different versions of the challenge — sometimes referred to as the “choking game” — have existed for years and predate social media. But the lawsuit claims TikTok’s endless timeline algorithm has exposed children to those trends with deadly results.
Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and the lead attorney on the case, told ABC News that the lawsuit is focused on TikTok’s concerns for profitability, allegedly without regard for the harmful effects its engineering may have on the platform’s youngest users.
“This is a case about saving kids,” Bergman said. “Let’s be clear, children are sent to these challenges by the TikTok algorithms. This is not an accident and it’s not a coincidence.”
Bergman and the Arroyo family claim tragic events like Arriani’s and Lalani’s deaths were predictable and preventable by TikTok, which they claim promotes “engineered addiction,” according to the lawsuit complaint.
“Engineered addiction,” as defined by the lawsuit, is a familiar feature across many popular social media platforms and includes “bottomless scrolling, tagging, notifications, and live stories.”
“TikTok engineers its social media product to keep users, and particularly young users, engaged longer and coming back for more,” the complaint alleges.
Reached for comment, a TikTok spokesperson pointed ABC News to a statement the company released last year about the challenge but did not address allegations that the platform algorithms directed children to dangerous content.
“This disturbing ‘challenge,’ which people seem to learn about from sources other than TikTok, long predates our platform and has never been a TikTok trend. We remain vigilant in our commitment to user safety and would immediately remove related content if found. Our deepest sympathies go out to the family for their tragic loss,” the previous statement read.
Currently, searching the “blackout challenge” hashtag on TikTok redirects users to the application’s community guidelines, which is typically done when certain hashtags are related to harmful activities.
Experts warn of danger of gamification of disturbing trends online
Dr. Dave Anderson, a clinical psychologist from the Child Mind Institute, warned parents about risks to talk about with young kids who are on social media.
“If you see something online and you see people framing it as fun or a challenge or something interesting, you’re sort of gamifying the particular thing and decreasing people’s perception of the risks,” Anderson said, speaking with GMA on Saturday. “So calling it a ‘blackout’ challenge is branding.”
Linda Charmaraman, Ph. D., a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women and director of the Youth, Media & Wellbeing Lab, specializes in the research of early childhood adolescence and said monitoring is not enough because even the most “carefully watching parent” can miss a crucial moment in which a young child may be influenced to harm themselves by social media.
“[Children] have this trust that nothing bad’s gonna happen to them,” Charmaraman told ABC News. “And they don’t think as carefully as somebody who’s two years older or four years older, that there could be consequences not just on their physical health but their mental health, on their spiritual health.”
Charmaraman suggested parents “keep having dialogues and enlist their village” to engage in conversations with children about the content they consume on social media platforms to help keep them safe.
“It’s not a one big talk kind of situation,” Charmaraman said. “It’s an ongoing kind of exploration and partnership.”
(NEW YORK) — Trader Joe’s announced this week that it is recalling its popular soft-baked snickerdoodle cookies, citing possible plastic contamination.
“We have been alerted by our supplier of Trader Joe’s Soft-Baked Snickerdoodles (SKU# 94075, BB (Best By) Date 02/03/2023) that product with the aforementioned Best By Date may contain hard plastic pieces,” the retailer said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.
According to the store, there have been no injuries reported so far, and all of the potentially affected product was removed from sale.
“If you purchased any Soft-Baked Snickerdoodles, please do not eat them. We urge you to discard the product or return it to any Trader Joe’s for a full refund,” the company added. “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”
Questions may be directed to Trader Joe’s Customer Relations by phone at(626) 599-3817, Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Customers can also send an email using the form on the Trader Joe’s website.
As Mashed reported on Thursday, the snickerdoodles are made by the manufacturer Enjoy Life Natural Brands and sold under the Trader Joe’s label.
Enjoy Life issued a separate voluntary recall on June 30 for “a limited quantity of a select list of baked snacks products due to the potential presence of hard plastic pieces.”
Those items include the company’s Soft Baked Snickerdoodle, Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Brownie, Sunseed Butter Chocolate Chip and Monster Cookies. The company’s Sunseed Crunch and Caramel Blondie Chewy Bars were recalled as well, along with the brand’s Rich Chocolate and Salted Caramel Life Brownie Bites.
Enjoy Life Soft Baked Fruit & Oat Breakfast Ovals in flavors Apple Cinnamon, Chocolate Chip Banana and Berry Medley were affected by the recall, as were the company’s Soft Baked Cookies – Amazon Variety Packs.
Full product codes, photos and “Best By” dates for the recalled Enjoy Life products can be found on the Food and Drug Administration’s website.
“There have been no reports of injury or illness received by Enjoy Life Foods to date related to these products,” the company said in a press release. “Consumers who have this product should not eat it and should discard any product they may have but should keep any available packaging and contact the company at 1 (855) 543-5335, 24 hours a day to get more information about the recall and how to receive a refund.”
(NEW YORK) — It’s 2022, and Victoria’s Secret is coming in hot with its first fine fragrance in five years.
“Bare,” the brand’s latest scent, launched this week. According to the company, “Bare” celebrates individuality and self-expression.
“This soft, warm scent transforms on skin, creating a signature that’s uniquely yours,” the company captioned the video revealing the launch.
“Bare Eau de Parfum” includes an alluring blend of musky mandarin, floral Egyptian violet petals and warm Australian sandalwood. Victoria’s Secret says the fragrance was formulated to adapt to every person’s body chemistry to create a unique scent for anyone who wears it.
The packaging for the latest fragrance is created with upcycled materials and responsibly sourced ingredients. Additionally, it uses a new cryptosym technology — created and trademarked by Symrise, a German chemicals company based in Holzminden — which has the capability to encrypt scent formulations to preserve its novelty and protect it from future replication.
“Bare Eau de Parfum is our most intimate fragrance yet. It’s about a quiet confidence that comes from knowing your authentic self, and celebrates individuality in its most natural form,” Kristen Lagoa, Victoria’s Secret vice president of merchandising, beauty and accessories, said in a statement.
The ad campaign for the new fragrance features a diverse lineup of women, ranging from social advocates and herbalists to artists and creatives — all with different backgrounds and body types.
Throughout the imagery, models are seen alongside inspiring quotes such as “Comparison is the thief of joy” and “It’s really the simple things that hold the most space for our healing.”
The latest campaign marks a major transformation from Victoria’s Secret’s past branding. In 2018, the company faced criticism after Ed Razek, the former chief marketing officer for L Brands — Victoria’s Secret’s parent company — told Vogue he didn’t think the brand should add plus-size or transgender models to its annual fashion show “because the show is a fantasy.”
Razek later apologized for his comments and resigned from the company.
The brand ultimately said farewell to its famed “Angel” models last year and launched The VS Collective to revamp its image, featuring a diverse lineup of “ambassadors,” including Valentina Sampaio, who is transgender, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and LGBTQIA+ activist and professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, along with several others.
“Bare” is available nationwide now online and in-stores. It’s also slated to launch worldwide starting Aug. 23.
(NEW YORK) — As prices for goods are on the rise, there has been a debate over how much control consumers have at the cash register.
Some economists, like Rakeen Mabud of the Groundwork Collaborative, an economic policy think tank, say there isn’t much attention being paid to companies that are charging these prices.
Mabud spoke with ABC News’ “START HERE” to discuss the role of corporations during the current economic climate.
START HERE: I think the usual way this economic story is being told is that the economy is, you know, it’s worse for everyone. Everyone’s taking a hit, but you’ve said that’s not necessarily the case. Why is that?
MABUD: If you look at the data, we see that corporate profits are at 70-year record highs. So even as consumers are struggling to send their kids to school and put gas in the tank and put food on the table, there are some people who are making a lot of money off this crisis.
Essentially what’s going on is that big corporations are using the cover of inflation to jack up their prices beyond what their input costs would justify and rake in those profits, and consumers are paying the price. Some of the most egregious examples are credit card companies. Visa and MasterCard, for example, are a massive duopoly in their space, and so they have a huge amount of market share. And what we saw is that these companies make money by taking a fixed percentage cut of each transaction. So with inflation, as prices are rising, they’re inherently going to be pulling in more money, and yet these companies are also increasing that transaction fee.
If you’re going from 10% of the price of an apple to 15% of a price of an apple, you’re going to be making more money. And critically I think a lot of companies have been blaming supply chain issues. Visa and MasterCard don’t have that excuse. There are no supply chain issues to be seen here. It is just straight-up corporate profiteering.
START HERE: But if people were being charged super unfairly for certain, like kind of expendable, not necessity items, when do they stop spending the money? Isn’t the issue is people have more money to spend? You’ve heard conservative economists say, “Well, duh, we sent out large stimulus checks to people for simply living through a pandemic.” Wages have been going up. And so, when stuff gets more expensive, people are still paying it. We haven’t seen in the data a lot of reticence from people to completely shift their spending habits simply because of inflation. So isn’t the issue yeah, people have more money, they should spend more money. They’ve got it.
MABUD: Yeah. There’s a lot of research and evidence to suggest that two things are not driving up prices. Increase worker wages and money in people’s pockets. I think the critical thing to remember here is we are coming out of a wild time in our economy. We just went through a pandemic, [an] unprecedented sort of economic forces and disruptions. At Groundwork Collaborative, where I work, we often like to say we are the economy. It’s this idea that when all of us do well, that’s when the economy does well.
And that’s really what these stimulus payments and our attention to workers and families throughout this crisis have gotten us. It’s gotten us a recovery that’s been pretty healthy. I think the other thing to remember here is that corporations are making a lot of money and they also have a lot more information about where price increases are coming from. So if you think about it, if you’re a CEO, you have a good sense of how much of the price increase that you’re passing off to a consumer is because of actual input costs going up. Some, something that you use in their manufacturing process.
START HERE: Like supply chain issues like that. That creates a real need to raise costs, perhaps.
MABUD: Absolutely. For example. If you’re a bicycle producer and the cost of steel goes up, the price of that bike is going to go up a little bit. And, as a CEO, you can also gild the lily a little bit more. Take another spoonful of sugar and the consumer has no idea. So I think we really see executives exploiting that information asymmetry.
And the key thing here is that we have listened to hundreds and hundreds of earnings calls. These are the calls where CEOs and business executives are telling their investors what happened last quarter and what to expect in the coming quarters. And they’re saying the quiet part out loud. So when it comes down to it, I think the easiest way to understand what’s going on here is to follow the money. What we see is consumers are paying more and more out of their own pockets and shareholders are getting richer and corporate profits are increasing.
We have dozens of quotes from CEOs on these earnings calls that essentially say, “Hey, is the great strategy for us to be raising prices on consumers right now?” And so just by way of example, the CEO of 3M, which makes masks and medical equipment, bragged on the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call that the team, “Did an amazing job driving higher prices,” which have, “more than offset the amount of inflation.”
3M also said that they’re already working on higher prices to expand its profit margins even further. The CEO of Constellation Brands, which produces Modelo and Corona, has said on an earnings call, that we want to take as much as we can when it comes to pricing.
These CEOs are not shy about what they’re doing and it’s borne out in the data. So recent research shows that corporate profit comprises most of the inflation that we’re seeing in price hikes that we’re seeing. I think that’s probably changing a little bit, but it’s undeniably true that this is outside of historical norms.
START HERE: But what do you do to combat any of these issues? Because you’ve been on record saying the Fed has been raising interest rates to try to get inflation under control. You’ve said they shouldn’t do that. Continuing to raise interest rates will actually hurt regular people more as they try to live their lives. So what are the other options? Is it like you just ask these companies to volunteer to charge last year? Do you want to have laws that dictate how companies can make and spend their money? What do you do?
MABUD: The way to address the current price hikes is not to make people poorer and to take away their jobs. Because when we talk about the Fed raising interest rates, what we’re talking about is them jacking up unemployment.
The way to address the supply side issues that we’re facing is really to expand our toolbox, and that means making big investments and functional supply chains. It means tackling pandemic profiteering when we see it happen. Three-quarters of states have a price gouging law. We could do that at the federal level. It means taxing companies, [and] decreasing the incentives to jack up profits to sky-high astronomical levels.
There are a lot of tools in our toolbox. And I think once we start to really unpack where some of these current price hikes are coming from, those tools become a lot more available to us.
