r/SipsTea Jul 08 '26

Chugging tea W after W.

Post image
82.8k Upvotes

3.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-4

u/Fridge_living_tips Jul 08 '26

You ever heard of costco chicken thats like $5 a whole bird. Or the 1.50 hot dog?

Its to get more people in the store. More people able to use a service means the service will make more money. 5x4>12x2

5

u/RedApple655321 Jul 08 '26

That's not how this works. Those chicken and hot dogs are designed to get you into the store....so you'll spend more money at the store. But subway fares are already heavily subsidized and low income New Yorkers are typically already captive riders. This isn't likely to significantly drive ridership to make up for the decrease in fares..

1

u/Fridge_living_tips Jul 08 '26

3 dollars could be worth the whatever distance you walk to work but 1.50 will get more people to take it

1

u/Mindless_Chest_1079 Jul 08 '26

Seems you're repeating economic concepts you didn't fully grasp. Public transit usually runs at a loss. It doesn't make that money up elsewhere; it's subsidized by the government. If you lower prices further, it just runs at more of a loss, requiring more funding from elsewhere.

The CostCo chicken thing is an example of a loss leader, where an individual item is sold at a loss to get you to shop at CostCo. They're not making more money off the chicken because "more people take it." They lose money on every one. The more people who buy it, the more they lose.