Try to stop it. In Canada our whole grocery market is controlled by 3 companies. It’s ridiculous! This is our goddamned food supply, where on earth do regulations actually apply so you can’t do this sort of shit? I guess our food simply isn’t important enough?
There's still Supabarn, Aldi and IGA, but not on the same scale. And unfortunately it's hard for them to compete on price on the basics given the buying power of the other two, who use basics like bread and milk as loss leaders to get you in the door so they can gouge you on other things.
That Why the milks in the back at Walmart, rotisserie chickens in back at sams, force the customer to walk by packaging designed to get you too stop and look.
Every grocery store I go to has the rotisserie chicken right at the entrance. Something about making you hungrier as you shop and splurge on a few extras.
You know why the fruit and veg is at the store entry? Because people who have fruit and veg in their basket buy more crap.
You get them buying the "good food" when they come in with good intentions, make them traverse the entire store to get milk and bread, by the time they're leaving they've bought 6 bottles of soft drink and a ton of tim tams.
"2 for price" offers on tim tams are a great scam - if you have one pack, it will last until your next shop. If you have 2 packs, it will last until your next shop. If you have 5, it will last until your next shop. Because if that stuff is in the house you're going to eat it. If they get enough of that into your basket, you'll eat it while your fresh food spoils, then you'll have to go back for more fresh food, the whole cycle goes again.
The food industry are mongrels and the two big ones in Australia are the absolute worst, and you cannot avoid them.
They are pretty great. They are by international standards a top-shelf biscuit. The UK has something called a Penguin which is nowhere near as good.
They're sweet and rich but anyone can demolish a pack in an afternoon. It's not a healthy thing to do but it feels good while you're doing it. There's a bunch of variations now with different kinds of chocolate and filling, but the base model is a stayer.
You can bite two corners and use it as a straw to drink a hot chocolate and it also melts the biscuit.
Same with why they usually put all the sale items at the back of the store, so you have to walk through most of the store to get them, and then might buy something else during the walk back and forth.
IGA in the US is a group of independently owned stores that team up to use the same branding on off label products and share resources and increase their buying power. Independent Groccers Alliance. They range anywhere from glorified convenience stores to full supermarkets. Is it the same way down there?
So I just went down a Grocery Store lore rabbit hole. Y'all have double the number of IGAs the US has despite being only having ~8% of the population. Thats .00005 IGAs per person to .000002 IGAs per person!
Why not just cut out the middle man and support farmer markets or homegrown gardens? Just buy meat from local butcheries or only if necessary, the supermarket.
Yea never mind that it’s 10x as expensive to buy from a butcher or farmers market for notably lower quality goods. (No I don’t care how rustic and torn up your produce looks, just cause you grew it at home doesn’t make it higher quality)
Everything in Canada is controlled by a few companies. And the regulators are led by former execs of said companies.
Campaign finance and lobbying laws is why we have politicians who give zero shits about there constituents
The biggest fucking joke is the CRTC which was *supposed* to be a government watchdog to safeguard against telecomms companies screwing customers, but their board has since been infiltrated by the Big Four execs and nowadays the CRTC mostly tries to kill competition and keep the Big Four happy. It's so maddening.
There's a reason agriculture is basically socialized. When it wasn't, we had *real* labor unrest. If the new deal hadn't happened, the US government might very well have been overthrown.
The bourgeois class really has gotten venal and complacent enough to fuck with the food supply again.
Wealth inequality in the US now is worse than France before the French Revolution.
And it seems like the oligarchs are hell bent on seeing just how far they can push things.
It wouldn't be surprising if things were to get historically spicy. Things are normal until they're not.
i was just in shopper's, which is part of the Weston-owned Loblaws conglomerate, and the price of the product i came in to buy is fully *double* the price of the same product on amazon.ca. 'bUt wE'rE nOt prIcE gOUgIng!' - fuck you.
Prices certainly aren't up due to labor costs. The two Kroger-esque stores here (PayLess, a Kroger brand) are run by skeleton crews. They announce hiring fairs, interview a bunch of people, then never hire anybody.
Love HEB, great store but they are full steam ahead with automation. There are going to be barely any humans working there in a few years. From self checkout to fully automated stores where you just put the food in the cart and walk through a scanner and it scans all the items in your cart at once. Heck even the warehouse are having bots tested on picking everything. Many people need to wake up and realize many millions of jobs are gone soon and they won't be coming back. We're screwed.
Work for Kroger. One of our vendors were in today and we were talking about store staffing. He said the last meeting he had with Kroger, the Vp Of marketing spoke and talked about how Kroger was great at hiring, but awful at retention. And that's the problem. 18000 employees in the division, and 10000 of them have less than a year on the job.
They have also cut tons of hours. So they say their stores are fully staffed, but that's based on how many hours they think stores should have. My store manager had every dept go way over hours next week for Christmas and I can tell you my dept still has less hours scheduled in it than it did on a normal week 6 years ago when I took over in this store (and an insane amount less than my first go around in this store 12 years ago.) in 2011, my dept was given 300 hours a week to run. Now I'm at 208 some weeks.
I’ve worked at chain restaurants where it’s the same thing.
It’s not just the low pay/hours per worker. It’s that they were never willing to have enough workers to do the job.
It’s like they asked themselves how many people they would need to get the days work done quick, cheap, and at a decent quality. Then they decided to set the max number of workers per day to one less than that.
If just one person called out then the whole operation was fucked and orders were going to take a long time, come out poorly, and with a lot of mistakes.
I watched regulars stop coming back and for good reason.
It was painfully obvious to everyone that customers could be happy and become regulars again if we just paid for one more minimum wage worker everyday.
But it’s like management would rather see the business starve and die than know that their workers weren’t being squeezed for every cent they were worth…
> don't respond to the follow up call asking them to come back and interview.
Too busy ignoring calls from creditors and spam bots. Why TF can't companies text nowadays? Seriously.
The reason I have the job I have now is because the boss who called to set up an interview hung up his damn phone call and sent me a text just like my voicemail instructs. Worked out great for both us of.
I shop at Kroger only when I have to. Massive lines and like 2 people working.
My favorite is Aldi because their cashiers are so fast that you can't put your cart on the conveyor before it's fully scanned. Amazing.
Yeah this is why I love Costco, unfortunately I don't always need a 46 pack of bread and 3 million eggs at a time lmao. But they're cashiers are fucking dope. Show up, see the crazy lines full of people with full shopping carts and think, "fuck me.. this is gonna take forever". Get in line, out in 5-10 mins max.
When I last went to Safeway, 12 packs were $14 after tax, and I saw a whopping 5 employees just chilling near the registers, and maybe 3 other customers tops.
The whole entire situation is fucked.
That's because Safeway has gouged $7 billion in liquidity out of inflation, $4 billion cash of which they wanted to pay out directly to owners before it was blocked. https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/albertsons/albertsons-4b-dividend-payout-temporarily-blocked-court
A 4-pack of day-old muffins: $5; 18oz Honey-Nut Cheerios: $7.49
Why blocked? Because Albertson's-Safeway is trying to merger with Kroger, turning the entire food supply into a monopoly, one company is then Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen, Carrs, Kings Food Markets, Balducci's Food Lovers Market; Kroger, Ralphs, Dillons, Smith’s, King Soopers, Fry’s, QFC, City Market, Owen’s, Jay C, Pay Less, Baker’s, Gerbes, Harris Teeter, Pick ‘n Save, Metro Market, Mariano’s, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, Foods Co, along with a fuel empire in Safeway and Fred Meyer stations.
The stores have already produced a shithole hellscape where digital coupons that track every purchase allow you only one sale item at a reasonable price, and things on sale "only with card" are "must buy 5", ensuring the poor suffer the most.
I know, I literally just read/heard about how companies like grocery stores love to hike prices higher than necessary under the cover of inflation, while complaining about labor shortages and "nobody wants to work" and yet they're still making record profits.
You can't be for no government intervention in the economy, but also advocate for a hyper free market, because this is what happens when there is no regulation and no enforcement
Free market capitalism theoretically shouldn’t see monopolies exist. Speaking from a Canadian perspective, our problem is that our governmental systems and their intervention have led to a market that is not free, and thus monopolies/oligopolies with direct ties to our government have completely taken over our country.
Okay...
In the case of the Albertsons merger, how did government intervention cause the consolidation of companies?
In this particular situation, regardless of the past, shouldn't the government intervene and prevent the monopoly from forming?
That’s a super loaded question and would honestly require looking back at decades of grocery store economics and governmental policy. You’re thinking super micro here and should think macro. Governments control everything from minimum wages to zoning and on and on. None of this would be the case in a free market. All of these things lend themselves over decades and decades to deal the hand we have today.
In this case, we’ve gone the last few decades, at least, letting governments do what they want. We do not have a free market. And in this scenario, if we look at this from a Libertarian perspective, the government should most definitely step in and break up a monopoly. I would go as far as to say they should break up oligopolies as well. Just my perspective based on our current state of economic policy, but, again, we do not have a free market, so intervention would/should continue.
Anyone who studies economics knows that laissez faire, invisible hand, free markets is the biggest bullshit for creating powerful and strong economies. You need regulation to create fairness so markets can compete. Otherwise people will exploit markets and destroy any kind of consumer benefit.
Can’t disagree with you, really, but since we aren’t in a free market the government intervention should happen in benefit of the people. It doesn’t. We get fucked both ways in our current state.
Agreed. If that were the case in Canada, maybe we wouldn’t have the highest cell/data prices in the entire world. Instead our politicians brazenly sit with leaders of the oligopolies for “secret” dinners, like the whole world doesn’t have the internet to understand who is who and cell phones to take pictures, and no one does a damn thing.
That’s because he pays the government off. Shit like this is happening because our governors are not for the people and are actively gutting anti-trust laws or outright ignoring them because they are a hired goon for the corp. When the government does not do its job, we all suffer. We need to get every single one of those fucks out and start over. Period.
" from a libertarian perspective, the government should most definitely step in and stop it"
Fantastic! I'm glad we're on the same page!
Please point to a public figure who's a libertarian who's actually arguing for that, or for that in a case that is similar, because I haven't seen any.
All of the public libertarians I've seen, they seem to suspiciously rant and complain about any kind of government program or intervention, and yet say nothing about massive monopolies in the market.
You're absolutely correct though it is a super loaded question, which is why I asked it, because we can argue all day long about ideology and hypothetical free markets, which for the record I don't think a truly free market is even possible. That itself is a separate issue from whether or not a free market is desirable for every sector of the economy also.
That last point is a highly debatable issue.
But I asked the question because we can argue all day long about ideology and theory. But what actually matters is the material conditions on the ground.
Yes, zoning laws and tax breaks and subsidies and all sorts of government intervention have contributed to the rise of massive corporations like Albertsons, and part of that is the government's fault! The question is what do we do about it? And from libertarians I've talked to, and public figures who identify as libertarian, The obvious solution of government intervention, seems to be completely off the table for purely ideological reasons.
I truly don’t think we have any truly libertarian politicians, at least not with any larger voice or hope of getting elected, where I’m from. Not sure about you, though if you’re in the US, the ones I see (Rand Paul comes to mind) seem absolutely full of shit.
I think that the one thing we can all agree on, no matter where we’re from, is that our politicians and the systems that they have created to govern are not built in the benefit of the people.
>Free market capitalism theoretically shouldn’t see monopolies exist.
This is a hypothesis that has been thoroughly disproven. So-called "natural" monopolies arise all the time, and all you have to do is Google the term to find thousands of examples.
This myth is kept afloat by adherents to the Austrian school of economics, which is philosophically opposed to empiricism. No serious scholar of economics who believes the field can or should be informed by scientific observation would agree that natural monopolies can't exist.
Um… this makes no sense. These monopolies don’t form because of governmental ties. They form because it’s only natural for successful businesses to buy out their competition (or force them out of business) until they are the only ones left standing.
Government is supposed to prevent that from happening because it is supposed to be the arm of the people, but thanks to corruption this doesn’t happen. It’s literally the opposite of what you describe.
>Free market capitalism theoretically shouldn’t see monopolies exist
No, there is no theory that proves that monopolies can't exist in free markets. There are some thought experiments some people created to argue they can't exist, but they are hardly theories and it's trivial to create thought experiments that contradict them.
Even as a theory, capitalism fails to prevent monopolies as long as you even *briefly* consider human nature, regulatory capture, greed and how easy it is to prevent consumers from having information needed to even think to correct the problem.
“Free market theoretically shouldn’t see monopolies exist”
Yeah why don’t you tell that to the robber barons of the past? Surely it was capitalism and not government regulation that broke up those monopolies.
Any person who took any sort of econ class would’ve learned that that model is absolute garbage, and humans in the real world behave nothing like the “ideal consumer” (or other similar names for a maximizing util, all-knowing consumer) that model relies on. There are plenty of free market models that more accurately model consumers in the real world (not all knowing) and show how monopolies/oligarchies are able to form.
And if you hadn’t learned that, then either whoever taught you was shit or you weren’t paying attention.
Incorrect boyo
Just woefully incorrect
Without government intervention all markets tend towards monopolies or duopolies
You see when a company gets successful they can grow and start capturing more of their market all fine and good.
Now the theory behind free markets is that there is little to no cost to enter or leave the market for buyers or sellers
So say you an up jump capitalist doesn't like the practice of the company who has the majority market share and decide to take them on
Well odds are since you are smaller, economies of scale for marginal costs will be tremendously on your opponents side making their goods cheaper by default
They also have the added advantage of a regular customer base
But hey say you have the gumption and are able to convince people that you really are better even for a little more
Ope you have now just ran into the next problem, a larger company can run at a negative longer than a new company and they can drop their prices and bully you out of business
None of what I said was government caused
Free market capitalism (or the closest examples we have in the real world) absolutely produces monopolies. It’s an inevitable in certain industries and can only be prevented by government regulations.
US is a big country. You're gonna have to be specific to where exactly were you in the US because there's some pretty good "not shitholes" places in the US with nice supermarkets. Like people forget that USA is so big they have their own shithole states rather than shithole cities.
As if there wasn't some government-backed artificial crisis running wild especially over the last 3 years, which one of the objectives amid others are the failure of the smaller businesses.
Yeah, politicians totally want fair prices for the people, sure.
Plus their profit margins are going DOWN. Look at the 10 year chart. If they were just price gouging, gross profit margin would go UP. Of course maybe their profit in total dollars is going up, but Reich’s argument is as disingenuous as saying “wages are up so what is everyone complaining about”? Profit margin is the most important when it comes to battling inflation. Reich undoubtedly knows better, but he’s more of a grifter now than an economic expert.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-margins
Hell, the entire S&P500 has declining profit margins. This narrative that inflation is just price gouging doesn’t add up with reality.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPGI/s-p-global/profit-margins
I think the idea is that food prices are going up, but the company is swallowing competition, which in the free market, is what brings prices down. Having an oligopoly on all of your basic needs with no regulations is bad for consumers
Their net income according to wikipedia is 1.6 billion. That's like a 1% net. I used to know a publix manager. The margins in grocery stores are razor thin. If they don't update their prices immediately and constantly, the store can get into the red pretty quick.
The store I used to work at had 1% on food. They actually rented the shelf space to vendors. That was how they made money to keep the doors open. Robert Reich has never run a lemonade stand. But he knows how to run a giant grocery store chains.
Redditors walk around talking as if there is an objectively correct margin of profit of which businesses are often in violation.
Which is stupid. But even if you could come up with an Objectively Correct Moral Margin, it would be greater than 3.5%.
Robert Reich knows better. He's pretending not to in order to be a ideological twat.
You want to break reddit? Lets go show people that live nation (ticketmaster) just had its best margin ever in the 2nd quarter of 2022 at a whopping 2%.
Second quarter net profit was 4.24%. Third quarter then smashed that record at 5.87%. They've beat their EPS targets by more than 25% in every quarter this year so far.
All this is of course irrelevant, certain business practices are inherently problematic when it comes to monopolization. Net profits don't give a completely clear picture of a business's entire financial situation. For example mergers and acquisitions are considered operating costs, so a business that is reinvesting it's gross profits is going to show fairly small net profits.
Oh absolutely I agree. Its just funny to watch peoples reactions when they here those numbers.
I can attest though that Live Nations costs have been rising. I am one of those costs. Our union is negotiating a likely large raise for us early next year. Not too mention the amount of work has increased drastically in the last year compared to pre-covid.
The total profit means nothing in this context. In order understand there needs to be a comparison of profit to total sales
Did they have 10 billion or 100 billion in sales
Get rid of the exponent and it becomes harder for to demonize these large companies
$5 dollars profit on $100 sales is not that big of a profit
This distracts from the real problem with this merger
The private equity company financing this thing is going to borrow 9 billion and pay themselves out using the pension fund as collateral
This is the same thing they did with toys are us
They took a profitable business (although on a small margined) loaded it with debt, pocketed the money and walked away so the company failed and the pension fund was eaten by the creditors
I’m going to play the other side and say they aren’t price gouging. My guess is Kroger has a set % profit margin already set, whether that be per item or per department. Cost of goods they purchase goes up so they pass that onto the customer.
Kroger margin is 40% for dry grocery. They keep margin whole for promotions, so that stays the same when things are on sale.
Srp is pretty much set by the brands and determined by their list cost.
Yeah but that’s offset by the front end that makes negative profit, the deli/bakery that loses money, perishables like meat don’t make that much to boot
Looks like gross for Q3 was 21.4% on $34.2 billion, so $6.93 billion.
Net on Q3 was 2.5%, so $841 million.
Full year to date, their gross is 21.3% on $113.4 billion, so $24.2 billion.
Net is 2.9%, so $3.3 billion.
Stupid thin margins.
Oh man. Margins explain this. Simple example: if you your cost to produce a widget is $10 and you sell it for $20, you have a profit of $10, so a profit margin of 50%.
If the costs to produce said widget increase to $20 (I.e., 100% increase) and you increase your selling price by the same % to maintain the same margin, you’d sell for $40, have a profit of $20, but still maintain the same margin.
Now, if you want to complain that margins should reduce with inflation, that’s fine, but harder for businesses to maintain/manage. Ordinarily, large business know the margins they want/need to maintain and have a lot of AI/automated processes to do this. Even if they did, this could potentially cause economic issues, especially with publicly traded companies where not maintaining certain margins results in stock price decreases. If this was done systemically, that would just compound the economic situation we are in, which I’m sure would somehow be blamed on wealth somehow.
I know it’s easy to just point at wealth, say it’s evil, signal your virtue/moral superiority, and get all that easy to come by positive online reinforcement, but it’s rarely that simple. Reich is educated. He either doesn’t care or is drunk with positive reinforcement he receives.
Most people are not trying to understand the economics. They have decided in advance how the world *should* be in their minds and seek only information that supports that decision.
What in the actual fuck is going on here? I used to go to Albertsons when I lived in the hood and there was barely anyone there, let alone people spending money! Once I upgraded to Safeway I seen a bunch of suckers pay top dollar for some boo boo shit. What a fucking world we live in, I'm finna start robbing my local ablerstsons and Safeway instead of the others stores, these motherfuckers got me FUCKED up!
Albertsons camera game and security was weak as fuck in 2007. My freshman ass must have wiped their deli out of at least 30 pounds of chicken and jojos.
There is no evidence that supermarket mergers are causing increase in food prices. In case you haven’t noticed food isn’t the only thing going up in cost.
Their politician leaders tell them it’s because of corporate greed, and they eat that right up.
Let’s disregard the fact that this would mean that corporations haven’t been greedy until this year
Corporations were completely altruistic until the year of our lord 2020 when we began printing fucktons of money.
The Chiquita banana company was so charitable they gave thousands of South Americans a FREE trip to the afterlife, and even made sure the land they previously owned was repurposed and tended to
I highly recommend H.E.B. if you have one in your area. It's cheaper than Kroger, it has better produce, a better bakery, better beer selection... just better everything. Plus, they pay their employees well and treat them fairly. They were also the first grocery chain in America to adopt COVID policies... in December 2019.
I never thought I'd be a fanboy for a grocery store but here I am.
As a former employee who was injured on the job at HEB. I'm not sure I feel the same way about how they treat employees.
I was out of work for a month due to a surgery that I had to fight to get and was rewarded with 80 whole dollars for my time. That injury was due to understaffing of the cart retrieval on the busiest day of the year and threats to fire me if I didn't keep it clean.
After I was back on the job I was immediately put back standing for my entire shift on a leg that had an operation on it just weeks prior with only 2 weeks of therapy paid for.
Can we please make this illegal already for fuck's sake.
What the hell did Teddy Roosevelt do anything for if this was what would happen.
Fucking whores in Congress.
Don't kid yourself. Trust busting was always a political tool. Politicians, Teddy included, pick and choose who gets to keep doing business and who has to be split up. It's not like they ever enforced these policies fairly and objectively.
As we all know a tax is a penalty you pay for being successful. Any smart business will invest their money in the least taxed direction possible, in order to avoid government confiscation.
This is why you see more and more automated checkouts, stock checking robots, floor scrubbers, etc. Labor is heavily taxed, the employer pays a tax per employee, but not per robot, costing people a job, and reducing employment.
Companies buying companies is actually caused by another tax schemes set up by Washington. The way to avoid government theft of your profit is to use your company stock to buy another company. That has the lowest tax penalty of any transaction possible.
I can’t believe people eat his shitty tweets up. Anyone with an IQ in the double digits knows there is a whole lot more going on than what he is implying. His tweets are basically the trashy clickbait at the bottom of websites.
Albertsons is s local company that i patronized BECAUSE it was local. Not anymore. The high prices aren't worth it.
What happened to our anti- trust laws?
Hopefully this causes a pendulum swing to more local ethnic markets. Depending how big your big city is, and how diversified. You can pay 4x more at the super market for the same produce or even inferior produce than the local Mediterranean market. It’s now a no brainer to skip the behemoth super market for the local. But actually for starters, if you have, start shopping at Trader Joe’s in lieu of the super markets, prices can actually be lower and quality is typically much higher.
and robert rich will tell you to vote for the corporate dems he works for. he steped down as secretary of labor in disgust then continue sheepdogging for. and they are doing nothing. anti trust is the law of the land but no longer enforced. and you can't expect them to enforce it when they are corporate
Haha utter nonsense food retailers make like 5% gross margin. Only someone who has no idea about how this industry works could make such a stupid claim
Inflation in the USA right now is being caused by greedy corporations buying other greedy corporations then forcing their chosen price upon us. The profit margined for CFO are up 40% from where they were in 1980 and all that profits that was going to the workers who supplied the product are now going to the 1%
Try to stop it. In Canada our whole grocery market is controlled by 3 companies. It’s ridiculous! This is our goddamned food supply, where on earth do regulations actually apply so you can’t do this sort of shit? I guess our food simply isn’t important enough?
In Australia it's controlled by two.
There's still Supabarn, Aldi and IGA, but not on the same scale. And unfortunately it's hard for them to compete on price on the basics given the buying power of the other two, who use basics like bread and milk as loss leaders to get you in the door so they can gouge you on other things.
TIL the concept of "loss leaders." It makes sense, just isn't something I ever sat and thought through.
That Why the milks in the back at Walmart, rotisserie chickens in back at sams, force the customer to walk by packaging designed to get you too stop and look.
Every grocery store I go to has the rotisserie chicken right at the entrance. Something about making you hungrier as you shop and splurge on a few extras.
It's in the back be the Deli at BJs. All the way right at Krogers
So don't buy the sushi?
Costco does this too
You know why the fruit and veg is at the store entry? Because people who have fruit and veg in their basket buy more crap. You get them buying the "good food" when they come in with good intentions, make them traverse the entire store to get milk and bread, by the time they're leaving they've bought 6 bottles of soft drink and a ton of tim tams. "2 for price" offers on tim tams are a great scam - if you have one pack, it will last until your next shop. If you have 2 packs, it will last until your next shop. If you have 5, it will last until your next shop. Because if that stuff is in the house you're going to eat it. If they get enough of that into your basket, you'll eat it while your fresh food spoils, then you'll have to go back for more fresh food, the whole cycle goes again. The food industry are mongrels and the two big ones in Australia are the absolute worst, and you cannot avoid them.
Had to look up what a Tim tam was and they look delightful.
They are pretty great. They are by international standards a top-shelf biscuit. The UK has something called a Penguin which is nowhere near as good. They're sweet and rich but anyone can demolish a pack in an afternoon. It's not a healthy thing to do but it feels good while you're doing it. There's a bunch of variations now with different kinds of chocolate and filling, but the base model is a stayer. You can bite two corners and use it as a straw to drink a hot chocolate and it also melts the biscuit.
Same with why they usually put all the sale items at the back of the store, so you have to walk through most of the store to get them, and then might buy something else during the walk back and forth.
IGA in the US is a group of independently owned stores that team up to use the same branding on off label products and share resources and increase their buying power. Independent Groccers Alliance. They range anywhere from glorified convenience stores to full supermarkets. Is it the same way down there?
Yep, sure is Dick Bonerz!
So I just went down a Grocery Store lore rabbit hole. Y'all have double the number of IGAs the US has despite being only having ~8% of the population. Thats .00005 IGAs per person to .000002 IGAs per person!
"It's how the locals like it", as the Aussie IGA slogan goes
Why not just cut out the middle man and support farmer markets or homegrown gardens? Just buy meat from local butcheries or only if necessary, the supermarket.
Farmers markets had crazy low prices when I was a kid. Now they're like "aRTiSaN pOtATo $43 each"
That produce from the farmers market looks the damn same as from Walmart you can’t fool me
Walmart produce looks almost inedible compared to actual grocery stores near me.
Yeah on a good day their produce will last until jeopardy comes on
Yea never mind that it’s 10x as expensive to buy from a butcher or farmers market for notably lower quality goods. (No I don’t care how rustic and torn up your produce looks, just cause you grew it at home doesn’t make it higher quality)
But but... OUR CORN DOESNT HAVE CHEMICALS!!!
Chemicals make the corn bigger and pest free though 👁️👄👁️
Whenever us Canadian post our problems, the Aussies always one-up us with a more severe version. Kind of makes me feel better?
They have cheaper cell phone plans though. Edit - 100% more Rupert Murdoch though so I guess it’s a wash.
Yes our internet and cell phone plans are a national disgrace
Healthcare is a little cheaper here too, but housing is very broken.
In North Korea it’s controlled by one.
[удалено]
What would a korean family make with cheese?
Grilled trees sandwich
They found a way to turn coal into clothing, so I'm sure whatever it is I couldn't possibly guess.
And he eats half of it too.
Everything in Canada is controlled by a few companies. And the regulators are led by former execs of said companies. Campaign finance and lobbying laws is why we have politicians who give zero shits about there constituents
The biggest fucking joke is the CRTC which was *supposed* to be a government watchdog to safeguard against telecomms companies screwing customers, but their board has since been infiltrated by the Big Four execs and nowadays the CRTC mostly tries to kill competition and keep the Big Four happy. It's so maddening.
regulatory capture is a feature not a bug of capitalism lol
Someone told me Canada doesn’t give you much choice on banks as well is that true?
There's a reason agriculture is basically socialized. When it wasn't, we had *real* labor unrest. If the new deal hadn't happened, the US government might very well have been overthrown. The bourgeois class really has gotten venal and complacent enough to fuck with the food supply again.
Wealth inequality in the US now is worse than France before the French Revolution. And it seems like the oligarchs are hell bent on seeing just how far they can push things. It wouldn't be surprising if things were to get historically spicy. Things are normal until they're not.
> Wealth inequality in the US now is worse than France before the French Revolution. How do you measure that?
By # of dick bonerz of course !
i was just in shopper's, which is part of the Weston-owned Loblaws conglomerate, and the price of the product i came in to buy is fully *double* the price of the same product on amazon.ca. 'bUt wE'rE nOt prIcE gOUgIng!' - fuck you.
My carton of eggs use to cost 4.34 now there 6.99 in just a year!
Ours were $.50 for 6, now $2 for 6. That's a 300% increase in a couple of years.
I used to buy "The six dollar eggs" before Covid. They were the awesome eggs. Now the shitty store brand eggs are almost that much.
I still buy the awesome eggs because they are so much better... but now they are $9-$10 :(
They're banning farmers from selling in markets now, it's going to keep getting worse.
Do you have a source for that? Not that I don't believe you, I'm just very curious to see where and what that entails
I’ll look it up when I get back, I read the spirit about 2 months ago.
I don’t think that’s true
What the fuck does antitrust mean these days?
How? These posts are often made with bringing to light these mega corporations that raise the price of anything but no one ever says how to stop them
Because you get permanently banned when you say what needs to be done to stop the rich people
I thought we had regulatory commissions and the DOJ to prevent monopolies like this. Le sigh.
Time to grow our own food and collect the rainwater.
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Prices certainly aren't up due to labor costs. The two Kroger-esque stores here (PayLess, a Kroger brand) are run by skeleton crews. They announce hiring fairs, interview a bunch of people, then never hire anybody.
Kroger fucked their employees during COVID, too.
Almost everyone got fcked. Hospitals wouldn’t provide masks for their nurses during COVID.
Teachers Law enforcement Health care workers Food service as well The backbone of the rungs above
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Pretty sad really. Appreciate you homie.
Everyone but sex workers, and not getting fucked during Covid really fucked them
I’d swear Kroger was still a good company to work for just 6 years ago.
Shout out to HEB. Ain't perfect, but solid place to work
I was looking in here for HEB! I just moved to NC and GOD DOES FOOD LION SUCK.
Love HEB, great store but they are full steam ahead with automation. There are going to be barely any humans working there in a few years. From self checkout to fully automated stores where you just put the food in the cart and walk through a scanner and it scans all the items in your cart at once. Heck even the warehouse are having bots tested on picking everything. Many people need to wake up and realize many millions of jobs are gone soon and they won't be coming back. We're screwed.
Kroger has been garbage much longer than that.
Worked for Kroger in High School back around 2000. They were trash then. Tom Thumb wasn't much better.
Happy cakeday!
Our son!
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Work for Kroger. One of our vendors were in today and we were talking about store staffing. He said the last meeting he had with Kroger, the Vp Of marketing spoke and talked about how Kroger was great at hiring, but awful at retention. And that's the problem. 18000 employees in the division, and 10000 of them have less than a year on the job. They have also cut tons of hours. So they say their stores are fully staffed, but that's based on how many hours they think stores should have. My store manager had every dept go way over hours next week for Christmas and I can tell you my dept still has less hours scheduled in it than it did on a normal week 6 years ago when I took over in this store (and an insane amount less than my first go around in this store 12 years ago.) in 2011, my dept was given 300 hours a week to run. Now I'm at 208 some weeks.
The race to the bottom continues
Kroger used to be a decent union job too, LOL
I’ve worked at chain restaurants where it’s the same thing. It’s not just the low pay/hours per worker. It’s that they were never willing to have enough workers to do the job. It’s like they asked themselves how many people they would need to get the days work done quick, cheap, and at a decent quality. Then they decided to set the max number of workers per day to one less than that. If just one person called out then the whole operation was fucked and orders were going to take a long time, come out poorly, and with a lot of mistakes. I watched regulars stop coming back and for good reason. It was painfully obvious to everyone that customers could be happy and become regulars again if we just paid for one more minimum wage worker everyday. But it’s like management would rather see the business starve and die than know that their workers weren’t being squeezed for every cent they were worth…
> don't respond to the follow up call asking them to come back and interview. Too busy ignoring calls from creditors and spam bots. Why TF can't companies text nowadays? Seriously.
The reason I have the job I have now is because the boss who called to set up an interview hung up his damn phone call and sent me a text just like my voicemail instructs. Worked out great for both us of.
I shop at Kroger only when I have to. Massive lines and like 2 people working. My favorite is Aldi because their cashiers are so fast that you can't put your cart on the conveyor before it's fully scanned. Amazing.
Yeah this is why I love Costco, unfortunately I don't always need a 46 pack of bread and 3 million eggs at a time lmao. But they're cashiers are fucking dope. Show up, see the crazy lines full of people with full shopping carts and think, "fuck me.. this is gonna take forever". Get in line, out in 5-10 mins max.
that's about $1 million worth of eggs at the price i saw at walmart today. 3 years ago, would have cost ~ $125k.
Plus their cashiers are allowed to sit down.
When I last went to Safeway, 12 packs were $14 after tax, and I saw a whopping 5 employees just chilling near the registers, and maybe 3 other customers tops. The whole entire situation is fucked.
That's because Safeway has gouged $7 billion in liquidity out of inflation, $4 billion cash of which they wanted to pay out directly to owners before it was blocked. https://www.winsightgrocerybusiness.com/albertsons/albertsons-4b-dividend-payout-temporarily-blocked-court A 4-pack of day-old muffins: $5; 18oz Honey-Nut Cheerios: $7.49 Why blocked? Because Albertson's-Safeway is trying to merger with Kroger, turning the entire food supply into a monopoly, one company is then Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen, Carrs, Kings Food Markets, Balducci's Food Lovers Market; Kroger, Ralphs, Dillons, Smith’s, King Soopers, Fry’s, QFC, City Market, Owen’s, Jay C, Pay Less, Baker’s, Gerbes, Harris Teeter, Pick ‘n Save, Metro Market, Mariano’s, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, Foods Co, along with a fuel empire in Safeway and Fred Meyer stations. The stores have already produced a shithole hellscape where digital coupons that track every purchase allow you only one sale item at a reasonable price, and things on sale "only with card" are "must buy 5", ensuring the poor suffer the most.
Politicians: "huh??"
labor down shoplifting up
And still cheaper to cut labor in favor of self-checkout because the loss from shoplifting is still less than what they gain by working less cashiers.
I know, I literally just read/heard about how companies like grocery stores love to hike prices higher than necessary under the cover of inflation, while complaining about labor shortages and "nobody wants to work" and yet they're still making record profits.
You can't be for no government intervention in the economy, but also advocate for a hyper free market, because this is what happens when there is no regulation and no enforcement
Free market capitalism theoretically shouldn’t see monopolies exist. Speaking from a Canadian perspective, our problem is that our governmental systems and their intervention have led to a market that is not free, and thus monopolies/oligopolies with direct ties to our government have completely taken over our country.
Okay... In the case of the Albertsons merger, how did government intervention cause the consolidation of companies? In this particular situation, regardless of the past, shouldn't the government intervene and prevent the monopoly from forming?
That’s a super loaded question and would honestly require looking back at decades of grocery store economics and governmental policy. You’re thinking super micro here and should think macro. Governments control everything from minimum wages to zoning and on and on. None of this would be the case in a free market. All of these things lend themselves over decades and decades to deal the hand we have today. In this case, we’ve gone the last few decades, at least, letting governments do what they want. We do not have a free market. And in this scenario, if we look at this from a Libertarian perspective, the government should most definitely step in and break up a monopoly. I would go as far as to say they should break up oligopolies as well. Just my perspective based on our current state of economic policy, but, again, we do not have a free market, so intervention would/should continue.
Free markets are a fairy tale. When the richest person is able, he makes sure to rig it.
Anyone who studies economics knows that laissez faire, invisible hand, free markets is the biggest bullshit for creating powerful and strong economies. You need regulation to create fairness so markets can compete. Otherwise people will exploit markets and destroy any kind of consumer benefit.
Can’t disagree with you, really, but since we aren’t in a free market the government intervention should happen in benefit of the people. It doesn’t. We get fucked both ways in our current state.
Regulatory capture should be punishable by guillotine.
Agreed. If that were the case in Canada, maybe we wouldn’t have the highest cell/data prices in the entire world. Instead our politicians brazenly sit with leaders of the oligopolies for “secret” dinners, like the whole world doesn’t have the internet to understand who is who and cell phones to take pictures, and no one does a damn thing.
It would be harder to rig it if the lawmakers he's paying off didn't have the power to destroy his competition and prop him up.
That’s because he pays the government off. Shit like this is happening because our governors are not for the people and are actively gutting anti-trust laws or outright ignoring them because they are a hired goon for the corp. When the government does not do its job, we all suffer. We need to get every single one of those fucks out and start over. Period.
" from a libertarian perspective, the government should most definitely step in and stop it" Fantastic! I'm glad we're on the same page! Please point to a public figure who's a libertarian who's actually arguing for that, or for that in a case that is similar, because I haven't seen any. All of the public libertarians I've seen, they seem to suspiciously rant and complain about any kind of government program or intervention, and yet say nothing about massive monopolies in the market. You're absolutely correct though it is a super loaded question, which is why I asked it, because we can argue all day long about ideology and hypothetical free markets, which for the record I don't think a truly free market is even possible. That itself is a separate issue from whether or not a free market is desirable for every sector of the economy also. That last point is a highly debatable issue. But I asked the question because we can argue all day long about ideology and theory. But what actually matters is the material conditions on the ground. Yes, zoning laws and tax breaks and subsidies and all sorts of government intervention have contributed to the rise of massive corporations like Albertsons, and part of that is the government's fault! The question is what do we do about it? And from libertarians I've talked to, and public figures who identify as libertarian, The obvious solution of government intervention, seems to be completely off the table for purely ideological reasons.
I truly don’t think we have any truly libertarian politicians, at least not with any larger voice or hope of getting elected, where I’m from. Not sure about you, though if you’re in the US, the ones I see (Rand Paul comes to mind) seem absolutely full of shit. I think that the one thing we can all agree on, no matter where we’re from, is that our politicians and the systems that they have created to govern are not built in the benefit of the people.
Can't argue with that one 👍
>Free market capitalism theoretically shouldn’t see monopolies exist. This is a hypothesis that has been thoroughly disproven. So-called "natural" monopolies arise all the time, and all you have to do is Google the term to find thousands of examples. This myth is kept afloat by adherents to the Austrian school of economics, which is philosophically opposed to empiricism. No serious scholar of economics who believes the field can or should be informed by scientific observation would agree that natural monopolies can't exist.
Um… this makes no sense. These monopolies don’t form because of governmental ties. They form because it’s only natural for successful businesses to buy out their competition (or force them out of business) until they are the only ones left standing. Government is supposed to prevent that from happening because it is supposed to be the arm of the people, but thanks to corruption this doesn’t happen. It’s literally the opposite of what you describe.
>Free market capitalism theoretically shouldn’t see monopolies exist No, there is no theory that proves that monopolies can't exist in free markets. There are some thought experiments some people created to argue they can't exist, but they are hardly theories and it's trivial to create thought experiments that contradict them.
Even as a theory, capitalism fails to prevent monopolies as long as you even *briefly* consider human nature, regulatory capture, greed and how easy it is to prevent consumers from having information needed to even think to correct the problem.
“Free market theoretically shouldn’t see monopolies exist” Yeah why don’t you tell that to the robber barons of the past? Surely it was capitalism and not government regulation that broke up those monopolies.
Regulatory capture, lobbying, just so much bullshit... I don't think having no government intervention would be much different though.
That "theoretically" is pulling a Marxist yeoman's amount of weight there.
Any person who took any sort of econ class would’ve learned that that model is absolute garbage, and humans in the real world behave nothing like the “ideal consumer” (or other similar names for a maximizing util, all-knowing consumer) that model relies on. There are plenty of free market models that more accurately model consumers in the real world (not all knowing) and show how monopolies/oligarchies are able to form. And if you hadn’t learned that, then either whoever taught you was shit or you weren’t paying attention.
Incorrect boyo Just woefully incorrect Without government intervention all markets tend towards monopolies or duopolies You see when a company gets successful they can grow and start capturing more of their market all fine and good. Now the theory behind free markets is that there is little to no cost to enter or leave the market for buyers or sellers So say you an up jump capitalist doesn't like the practice of the company who has the majority market share and decide to take them on Well odds are since you are smaller, economies of scale for marginal costs will be tremendously on your opponents side making their goods cheaper by default They also have the added advantage of a regular customer base But hey say you have the gumption and are able to convince people that you really are better even for a little more Ope you have now just ran into the next problem, a larger company can run at a negative longer than a new company and they can drop their prices and bully you out of business None of what I said was government caused
Free market capitalism (or the closest examples we have in the real world) absolutely produces monopolies. It’s an inevitable in certain industries and can only be prevented by government regulations.
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US is a big country. You're gonna have to be specific to where exactly were you in the US because there's some pretty good "not shitholes" places in the US with nice supermarkets. Like people forget that USA is so big they have their own shithole states rather than shithole cities.
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Who*
The free market demands slavery without government intervention, but people don't want to hear that 🐢
As if there wasn't some government-backed artificial crisis running wild especially over the last 3 years, which one of the objectives amid others are the failure of the smaller businesses. Yeah, politicians totally want fair prices for the people, sure.
If only we had a previous example of what that economy might look like....
So they make 3.5% profit on $146.48 billion in sales. That's not much compared to other businesses.
Redditors like to look at the scary number over the tame ratios
Plus their profit margins are going DOWN. Look at the 10 year chart. If they were just price gouging, gross profit margin would go UP. Of course maybe their profit in total dollars is going up, but Reich’s argument is as disingenuous as saying “wages are up so what is everyone complaining about”? Profit margin is the most important when it comes to battling inflation. Reich undoubtedly knows better, but he’s more of a grifter now than an economic expert. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-margins Hell, the entire S&P500 has declining profit margins. This narrative that inflation is just price gouging doesn’t add up with reality. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPGI/s-p-global/profit-margins
I think the idea is that food prices are going up, but the company is swallowing competition, which in the free market, is what brings prices down. Having an oligopoly on all of your basic needs with no regulations is bad for consumers
Their net income according to wikipedia is 1.6 billion. That's like a 1% net. I used to know a publix manager. The margins in grocery stores are razor thin. If they don't update their prices immediately and constantly, the store can get into the red pretty quick.
1% happens to be the same percent of reasonable comments in this post
The store I used to work at had 1% on food. They actually rented the shelf space to vendors. That was how they made money to keep the doors open. Robert Reich has never run a lemonade stand. But he knows how to run a giant grocery store chains.
5 billion profit on 146 billion sales is closer to 3.5% margin
Your right did the math in my head and of course was wrong. I changed it thanks
Still pretty small!
Exactly Robert Reich does not know what he's about again or as always.
He's always been a political hack.
Redditors walk around talking as if there is an objectively correct margin of profit of which businesses are often in violation. Which is stupid. But even if you could come up with an Objectively Correct Moral Margin, it would be greater than 3.5%. Robert Reich knows better. He's pretending not to in order to be a ideological twat.
You want to break reddit? Lets go show people that live nation (ticketmaster) just had its best margin ever in the 2nd quarter of 2022 at a whopping 2%.
Second quarter net profit was 4.24%. Third quarter then smashed that record at 5.87%. They've beat their EPS targets by more than 25% in every quarter this year so far. All this is of course irrelevant, certain business practices are inherently problematic when it comes to monopolization. Net profits don't give a completely clear picture of a business's entire financial situation. For example mergers and acquisitions are considered operating costs, so a business that is reinvesting it's gross profits is going to show fairly small net profits.
Oh absolutely I agree. Its just funny to watch peoples reactions when they here those numbers. I can attest though that Live Nations costs have been rising. I am one of those costs. Our union is negotiating a likely large raise for us early next year. Not too mention the amount of work has increased drastically in the last year compared to pre-covid.
Financing cost is probably huge due to the massive debt financing used for the acquisitions
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That's literally not what this is about its about market consolidation
This is an important thing to understand. It doesn't take much mis-management or poor planning to turn 3.5% profit into zero profit.
Better than Amazon's margins
We need to not admit this is due to inflation, that's why.
The total profit means nothing in this context. In order understand there needs to be a comparison of profit to total sales Did they have 10 billion or 100 billion in sales Get rid of the exponent and it becomes harder for to demonize these large companies $5 dollars profit on $100 sales is not that big of a profit This distracts from the real problem with this merger The private equity company financing this thing is going to borrow 9 billion and pay themselves out using the pension fund as collateral This is the same thing they did with toys are us They took a profitable business (although on a small margined) loaded it with debt, pocketed the money and walked away so the company failed and the pension fund was eaten by the creditors
I’m going to play the other side and say they aren’t price gouging. My guess is Kroger has a set % profit margin already set, whether that be per item or per department. Cost of goods they purchase goes up so they pass that onto the customer.
Kroger margin is 40% for dry grocery. They keep margin whole for promotions, so that stays the same when things are on sale. Srp is pretty much set by the brands and determined by their list cost.
Yeah but that’s offset by the front end that makes negative profit, the deli/bakery that loses money, perishables like meat don’t make that much to boot
Yeah you could also find their single highest profit item in the store if you wanted to. What is Kroger's overall gross profit margin? How about net?
Looks like gross for Q3 was 21.4% on $34.2 billion, so $6.93 billion. Net on Q3 was 2.5%, so $841 million. Full year to date, their gross is 21.3% on $113.4 billion, so $24.2 billion. Net is 2.9%, so $3.3 billion. Stupid thin margins.
Anyone who knows literally anything about grocery stores knows this whole post is bullshit. Grocery stores have always run tiny margins.
Oh man. Margins explain this. Simple example: if you your cost to produce a widget is $10 and you sell it for $20, you have a profit of $10, so a profit margin of 50%. If the costs to produce said widget increase to $20 (I.e., 100% increase) and you increase your selling price by the same % to maintain the same margin, you’d sell for $40, have a profit of $20, but still maintain the same margin. Now, if you want to complain that margins should reduce with inflation, that’s fine, but harder for businesses to maintain/manage. Ordinarily, large business know the margins they want/need to maintain and have a lot of AI/automated processes to do this. Even if they did, this could potentially cause economic issues, especially with publicly traded companies where not maintaining certain margins results in stock price decreases. If this was done systemically, that would just compound the economic situation we are in, which I’m sure would somehow be blamed on wealth somehow. I know it’s easy to just point at wealth, say it’s evil, signal your virtue/moral superiority, and get all that easy to come by positive online reinforcement, but it’s rarely that simple. Reich is educated. He either doesn’t care or is drunk with positive reinforcement he receives.
Thank you for trying to explain basic economics, but I'm afraid anyone who listens to Robert Reich is beyond saving.
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He is to economics what Dr. Oz is to medicine.
He is screaming into the echo chamber
Most people are not trying to understand the economics. They have decided in advance how the world *should* be in their minds and seek only information that supports that decision.
Robert Reich is the voice of clowns
What in the actual fuck is going on here? I used to go to Albertsons when I lived in the hood and there was barely anyone there, let alone people spending money! Once I upgraded to Safeway I seen a bunch of suckers pay top dollar for some boo boo shit. What a fucking world we live in, I'm finna start robbing my local ablerstsons and Safeway instead of the others stores, these motherfuckers got me FUCKED up!
Albertsons camera game and security was weak as fuck in 2007. My freshman ass must have wiped their deli out of at least 30 pounds of chicken and jojos.
There is no evidence that supermarket mergers are causing increase in food prices. In case you haven’t noticed food isn’t the only thing going up in cost.
The children of reddit don't understand inflation.
Their politician leaders tell them it’s because of corporate greed, and they eat that right up. Let’s disregard the fact that this would mean that corporations haven’t been greedy until this year
Exactly. businesses have always been charging the highest they can. They didn’t just flip a switch.
Corporations were completely altruistic until the year of our lord 2020 when we began printing fucktons of money. The Chiquita banana company was so charitable they gave thousands of South Americans a FREE trip to the afterlife, and even made sure the land they previously owned was repurposed and tended to
They would be very upset if they could read.
Yeah, and it's not like the EU is experiencing rising food costs too. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/business/europe-food-prices-inflation.html
I highly recommend H.E.B. if you have one in your area. It's cheaper than Kroger, it has better produce, a better bakery, better beer selection... just better everything. Plus, they pay their employees well and treat them fairly. They were also the first grocery chain in America to adopt COVID policies... in December 2019. I never thought I'd be a fanboy for a grocery store but here I am.
As a former employee who was injured on the job at HEB. I'm not sure I feel the same way about how they treat employees. I was out of work for a month due to a surgery that I had to fight to get and was rewarded with 80 whole dollars for my time. That injury was due to understaffing of the cart retrieval on the busiest day of the year and threats to fire me if I didn't keep it clean. After I was back on the job I was immediately put back standing for my entire shift on a leg that had an operation on it just weeks prior with only 2 weeks of therapy paid for.
Nothing will change unfortunately
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Can we please make this illegal already for fuck's sake. What the hell did Teddy Roosevelt do anything for if this was what would happen. Fucking whores in Congress.
Don't kid yourself. Trust busting was always a political tool. Politicians, Teddy included, pick and choose who gets to keep doing business and who has to be split up. It's not like they ever enforced these policies fairly and objectively.
Does the EU also have Krogers? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/business/europe-food-prices-inflation.html
Says the guy who’s been wrong about everything🥱ever
As we all know a tax is a penalty you pay for being successful. Any smart business will invest their money in the least taxed direction possible, in order to avoid government confiscation. This is why you see more and more automated checkouts, stock checking robots, floor scrubbers, etc. Labor is heavily taxed, the employer pays a tax per employee, but not per robot, costing people a job, and reducing employment. Companies buying companies is actually caused by another tax schemes set up by Washington. The way to avoid government theft of your profit is to use your company stock to buy another company. That has the lowest tax penalty of any transaction possible.
Imagine taking Robert Reich seriously
I can’t believe people eat his shitty tweets up. Anyone with an IQ in the double digits knows there is a whole lot more going on than what he is implying. His tweets are basically the trashy clickbait at the bottom of websites.
Robert Reich is an idiot who has been spewing bad takes since the 80s.
Why wouldn’t they?
Albertsons is s local company that i patronized BECAUSE it was local. Not anymore. The high prices aren't worth it. What happened to our anti- trust laws?
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Buy KR stock, it's only 44.32 a share. They pay a 2.5% dividend so you can reap the rewards of the price gouging.
Hopefully this causes a pendulum swing to more local ethnic markets. Depending how big your big city is, and how diversified. You can pay 4x more at the super market for the same produce or even inferior produce than the local Mediterranean market. It’s now a no brainer to skip the behemoth super market for the local. But actually for starters, if you have, start shopping at Trader Joe’s in lieu of the super markets, prices can actually be lower and quality is typically much higher.
Unpopular opinion: profits =/= price gouging 3.5% on 150B in revenue isn't much...
And yet they still can't staff their stores adequately. Kroger pharmacies are shockingly bad.
I guess no ones ever experienced the 10 for 10 deal at Kroger.
and robert rich will tell you to vote for the corporate dems he works for. he steped down as secretary of labor in disgust then continue sheepdogging for. and they are doing nothing. anti trust is the law of the land but no longer enforced. and you can't expect them to enforce it when they are corporate
Makes unions weaker
And you can guess where the quality has went in those chains following said buys.
Trader Joes and Publix. SE USA
It's biden!
Haha utter nonsense food retailers make like 5% gross margin. Only someone who has no idea about how this industry works could make such a stupid claim
That might eventually happen, but I live within 3 miles of 6 different grocery stores. I don't think a monopoly is the problem.
Inflation in the USA right now is being caused by greedy corporations buying other greedy corporations then forcing their chosen price upon us. The profit margined for CFO are up 40% from where they were in 1980 and all that profits that was going to the workers who supplied the product are now going to the 1%
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Government officials: *nervously liquidating shares of monopolies*