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“One of the things that you can do with AI is surveillance pricing and algorithmic wage discrimination…your rabbi on this is a woman called Lindsay Owens has got a book coming out, Gouged.”
By the numbers: Parents will spend an average of $173.45 on the 21 most common supply items, up 7.7% in a year, according to Groundwork Collaborative and the Century Foundation, which analyzed transaction data from about 50,000 retailers.
“My friends who aren’t politically engaged — I say, ‘Trump has made $4 billion since he’s been president, he’s getting a jet from Qatar,’” former Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden adviser Alex Jacquez told me at a progressive conference recently. “And they say, ‘Nancy Pelosi is long on Nvidia.’”
This year’s school supplies are estimated to cost an average of $175 more per child compared to last year, according to a July 27 report by progressive think tanks The Century Foundation and Groundwork Collaborative.
Stocking a standard school supply list will cost families nearly 8% more this year than in 2025, more than double the rate of inflation, according to an analysis by the progressive economic policy think tanks Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation (TCF) shared exclusively with Scripps News.
According to one analysis of the 21 most common school supply items by the Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation, two progressive think tanks, prices are up about 7.7 percent with parents paying an average of $173.45 for their school supply haul.
Families face double-digit price increases for index cards, scissors, notebook paper, and lunchbox favorites as school year begins.
“For many Americans, the first place where they’re going to experience some of the head-scratching-at-best and infuriating-at-worst impacts of AI will be in the proverbial checkout line,” said Lindsay Owens, a former adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who’s now the president and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative. “It’s been a little surprising to me that there hasn’t been more conversation about this.”
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Washington-based affordability think tank Groundwork Collaborative, doesn’t agree. “If you get a discount and I don’t, I paid more than you,” she said. “That’s no different than me being charged more than you.”
This prompt was eye-opening for Lindsay Owens, the chief executive of Groundwork Collaborative, a nonprofit focused on economic policy that has been studying the impact of A.I. on consumer privacy. ChatGPT made correct observations about her busy schedule as a frequent traveler and mother of a young child, as well as her shopping behavior.