[feetsoup]

Fair enough, perhaps I'm bringing some biases into this since I think online discussion has a tendency to be very dismissive of less sensational or impactful topics. I really don't think you're defending the pricing strategy, trivialization of criticism isn't necessarily a defense of the object of criticism, although for how often the two are conflated I could see why you would think that is how your opinions are being seen.

I don't think households need to be spending 8% more of money they don't have (if we're considering rising household debt) when they go out shopping. The issue is probably more evocative than it logically should be for some people because of the aroma of deception around it. Making superficial changes to price to take advantage of human distortions in quantity to get them to spend more has at least a shade of deception to it (I don't say that as a valid argument, just hoping to lend some context for why people would get worked up over it).

If you don't think that's adequate to make it a 'problem'... well, fair enough, I'm not entirely convinced either. But I'm not seeing a very strong case being made for the contrary, besides 'other things are more important' and the interesting claim that consumers must not be impacted because they're still buying these products ("Of course they love their job, wouldn't they quit otherwise?")

Thank you for the thoughtful response.