I do not believe the clock is publicly funded.
If money printing presses send money to Central Banks, and CBs buy Amazon stocks, and Jeff Bezos uses that investment money to fund the clock, then....
yes it is. The public is paying for it one way or another.
That can only be partially true, as in whatever percentage of equity is owned by CBs was the percentage of the clock funded by the public. If you tried to argue otherwise you'd imply the argument that everything that has ever been paid for with any of the (fiat) money in circulation was funded by the public.
It's more the timing of it than the actual thing itself. Our world economies are going down the shitter, our nation debts are soaring, wages haven't budged in a decade, they're still printing money by the billions per month, and inflation is settling in... all whist billionaires are erecting needless or inane monuments. Sounds like the years leading up to the fall of empires.
Actually, I'm more annoyed by the fact that Bill Gates doesn't fkn know the going price of bananas. They are so out of touch with reality it isn't even funny.
I can get behind the first point, but the grocery prices thing?
I don't know the going prices of groceries and I still buy my own. The only thing that matters to me when grocery shopping is what I'd like to eat, not the prices (obscene restaurants and kobe beef aside). I'd be surprised if anybody who doesn't live around the poverty line would know prices, and that would only be because they are forced to budget or perish.
At some point groceries become such a small portion of income that it's just not worth the time to think about it.
And a little bit later you can afford somebody to do the shopping for you, so why would you invest time and focus on something if you can create more value by directing yourself elsewhere?
Friday is going to be hard enough for me. 
