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by colecut 757 days ago
That is what a 50% increase means.
2 comments

Percent increases are kind of a weird metric in a lot of cases. This is one of them. It's not particularly informative.
If you are a stripe user, it tells you exactly by how much you can expect your fees to increase =)
You'd also get that information by showing start and end values.
The goal of a headline is not to tell you everything that you want to know, it's to make you click it.
Kinda. To the degree that the object of increase is also a percentage the statement “increasing X (where x is quantified as a pct) by Y %” could mean that X of 20% is increased to 70% or to 30%. It would be more clear to state “X increases from Y% to Z%.”
No, not kinda. In the example you present, if 20% increased to 70% the appropriate description is either a 250% increase or a 50pp ("percentage point"[0]) increase.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentage_point

Math doesn’t do “kinda”. If you are paying $100 for something, and then it is $150, that’s is a 50% increase and is an undeniable fact.
20% to 70% would be quite the fee increase, but I suppose that is a way of thinking of it.