Ha, hold on, you're doing the math wrong by not counting what you actually get. That $1.79 bag can make a huge pot that feeds you for a week, and you still got half the bag left, while those little cans add up fast when you're eating beans every day. Plus your "2 hours of simmering" is free if you just leave them on the stove while you do laundry or watch TV, you're not standing there stirring the whole time. Add in the gas and it's pennies, not the buck fifty you're implying, so her side still wins on straight cost. The real catch is you have to plan ahead, and canned is for when you forgot, that's the tradeoff. Taste wise though, dry beans blow canned out of the water, no contest there.

My Kroger in Clintonville did the same thing. We went from 4 lanes open on a weeknight to 2 at most, and they added a whole row of those scan-as-you-go handheld things too. What gets me is they still make you wait while one poor person watches 10 machines and runs back and forth to fix errors, so its not even faster. Once the cashiers are gone they know you have no choice, you either deal with the machines or you drive somewhere else. Give it a few more years and there wont be a single register left, just a wall of screens and one teenager standing there looking stressed.