What We’re Reading: Whole Foods Cheats; Dream House Demands Sacrifice; & More

+ Behind the earnest, do-gooder veneer of Whole Foods is the leer of a scoundrel:

New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) issued a press release Wednesday detailing “systemic overcharging of pre-packaged foods” at all the city’s Whole Foods locations. …

DCA tested 80 different packages, and 89% failed to to meet federal standards. The most egregious overcharge billed $14.84 (!!!) extra for a package of coconut shrimp. TL;DR: don’t eat coconut shrimp. Unless you’re Donald Trump.

“Our inspectors tell me this is the worst case of mislabeling they have seen in their careers, which DCA and New Yorkers will not tolerate,” DCA Commissioner Julie Menin said. “As a large chain grocery store, Whole Foods has the money and resources to ensure greater accuracy and to correct what appears to be a widespread problem — the city’s shoppers deserve to be correctly charged.”

Lesson: bring your own scale with you anytime you shop. Also probably go to Trader Joe’s instead. There you know exactly what to expect.

+ What sacrifices would you make to live in your dream house (and keep your timeshare)?

We weren’t planning on this change of heart when we purchased our home but we would like to have one more child. My uterus literally aches despite the fact that logic suggests we can’t afford it right now. After talking it over, and trying to adjust the budget, we have come to the conclusion that the decision to buy our dream home last year has eliminated the possibility of having any more children. Unless circumstances suddenly change, in order to have one more child, we would need to downsize. This would mean another move and tearing our two kids away from the house they now call a home. And it would mean that I would need to return to work full-time, taking away from the quality time our two children enjoy having with me and putting them (and the hypothetical third child) in daycare which my teaching salary would probably just barely afford. Our annual vacation would disappear because we would need to sell the timeshare to make up the difference.

Understandably, something has to give and unfortunately, in this case, it’s our mutual dream of having another child.

Uh, okay. People all over my corner of the Internet are shaking their heads and subtweeting about this lady’s wacky logic. Does the house have some kind of power of her? Does it thrive on the blood of the lizards she sacrifices to it in the basement? Or does it know her secrets? Will it blackmail her if she leaves, or send threatening messages to her at her new address until she flees?

How could any house be more important than the kid for which her womb “literally aches”?

It sounds like she — or perhaps, reading between the lines, her husband — would prefer to have two kids and give them a Deluxe childhood than have three and give them something more like the Standard package. That would be fine and dandy if she only wanted two kids, but she doesn’t. Instead she’s already resenting her “dream house” and her meticulously planned yet unfulfilling catalog of a life.

Also, for what it’s worth, if both parents in a two-parent household are working, the cost of day care must be weighed against their salaries combined, since day care makes it possible for them both to work. The idea that the mom’s salary should more than cover childcare or else her working isn’t worthwhile is a pernicious myth and part of a self-perpetuating cycle: Women are undervalued → women are paid less → more women stay home → women are undervalued …. Let’s lay that canard to rest.

+ Speaking of which, more Americans are renting and can’t afford houses at all, let alone Dream Houses.

“My wife and I have been wanting to go on the market to buy a house for years now,” Mr. McDowell, 41, said. “But bills, bills, bills and car notes and car insurance. We haven’t been able to save anything.”

In the past, many families like the McDowells, whose household income is almost $100,000 a year, would already be nestled in a starter home, maybe even on the cusp of upgrading to something bigger and more expensive on the profits from their first house.

+ Yet the Times is going to devote even more resources to the coverage of the super rich.

The beat will not be “isn’t it cool to be rich,” [Baquet] emphasized, but will look at the outsize role of the superrich in areas including philanthropy, art, and politics. It will be, he said, “an anthropological approach.” For example, he said, the beat might examine the way Eli Broad dominates the West Coast art scene, or David Geffen’s enormous influence on entertainment. … “The New York Times does enough about poverty and the middle class,” he said.

+ So, uh, why don’t poor people rise up?

Happy Friday! What are you reading?

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