Did someone say “greedflation”?
When I can go to a sit down restaurant and have a fresh cooked meal for less than going to mcdonalds, something is wrong. I will never eat there again. Pay more for less, and it’s absolute trash.
Isn’t that wild? My favorite mom and pop shops are at least 33% less expensive and made with solid ingredients (especially real ice cream milk shakes lol)
I wouldn’t recommend making this into a sticker and putting it on the door of these places so people can see. Don’t do that, it would be vandalism.
Almost as if in capitalism, a system where companies are free to choose their prices, inflation could be caused by companies choosing to rise their prices…
Leadership at these companies is personally compensated based on how quickly the company grows. They’re trying to maximize growth of the company by absorbing demand from the higher end, but in the process of doing so they end up pricing out the low end of the market, leaving low end consumers under served. They’re growing, they’re leadership is getting compensated better than ever, but now it’s difficult to find affordable places to eat out.
Theoretically what is supposed to happen in such a situation is new companies come in to take advantage of the gap left, but that’s not really happening because investment is all being focused on higher return opportunities. The low end stuff is still profitable and has potential for growth, but it’s not profitable/growing enough to attract investment over stuff that is perceived to be growing more aggressively.
Unregulated capitalism will be the death of us all.
Capitalism will be the death of us all.
Only once there’s no longer a profit in keeping us alive.
So we’ve got a couple good years left in us!
The death of us all will be the death of us all.
The death of death will be the death of death.
The of will be the of
I’ll take it one step further: currency was a bad idea that turned resource allocation into a number-go-up game.
Disagree. Currency allowed the flourishing of civilization. You can’t effectively trade between cultures or at long distances on the barter system.
What we’ve done with currency since then, yeah, maybe we’re on the same side there. But currency, created as an abstract for value, was a great invention. Civilization as we know it would not have been possible without it.
Though, now that I mention that… maybe civilization “as we know it” isn’t so hot after all.
Don’t you love when you end up talking yourself out of your own argument?
Just a reminder from a very price sensitive shopper that ALDI barely raised any prices through all of this bullshit.
My weekly grocery bill rose from about $80/wk at Aldi to about $110/wk at Aldi in the last 3 years while my shopping has largely remained almost identical. That’s an increase largely in line with overall inflation during the same period.
Also during that same period my house nearly doubled in value for…reasons I guess? I seriously cannot afford to buy a new house in the current housing market so something is going to give at some point…any decade now…
I started shopping at Aldi almost exclusively and it’s been fantastic.
My only complaints about Aldi are that the selection is a bit limited (though they often have some interesting stuff in the “aldi finds” section) and the produce can be a bit hit or miss, but I always do the bulk of my groceries there, then get the rest at Kroger. (Their prices aren’t great, but they’re the cheapest in my area beside Aldi.)
Same with Winco
I love WinCo! They have such great prices and so many options. They even sell this pre seasoned carne asada taco beef that is fucking amazing! I’ve never found it anywhere else. It tastes like legit Mexican carne asada tacos.
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Has their produce improved any? A few years ago it was pretty sketchy at the Aldi here.
That probably depends a lot on your locale. It’s always been pretty ok at the one I shop at. Their fruit is usually good. The biggest difference is that for stuff with short fridge life, like salad kits, you usually only have a few days to use what you get vs. maybe a week or more at a larger store.
We stopped buying salad kits a long time ago. If you just buy the components and do it yourself, it takes more time, but they also last a lot longer.
You can also typically extend the shelf-life of produce by giving it a vinegar wash. Produce naturally has mold spores which will bloom over time and cause rot. Vinegar is acidic enough to destroy most mold spores. So just give them a quick dunk in some white vinegar, then rinse in clean water. It’ll destroy the mold spores and extend the shelf life by preventing rot.
That’s good advice, but it won’t fix wilted lettuce, which happens very quickly in those salad kits. Honestly, just pulling leaves off a head of lettuce and chopping them up is going to help a lot more in terms of budgeting.
Collusion
Isn’t the next step more shrinkflation? Lower sticker prices, but also reduced size products to keep profits right where they’re at now.
True. I’m sure the part they’re not reporting is they reduced prices by 5% but didn’t mention they also reduced per product quantity by 10%.
Just enough for customers to not notice but think they’re getting it for cheaper, while actually paying more per unit of quantity.
They are already doing this. Aldi raised their Elevation protein bars by a few pennies, compared to the competition raising prices by dollars; BUT they dropped in size by a THIRD. So people think they’re getting a great deal, but are only getting 2/3 of the product they used to.
News reads more and more as advertisement. “Walgreens just lowered prices!” is what I’d expect to see between news stories not in them.
Greedflation. Call it what it is.
Pretty sure laws exist that are supposed to prevent price gouging, but they require a government that actually enforces said laws…
“Laws” are not the only method humanity has come up with for defending each other against fraudulent and predatory behaviors. Where law has proven incapable of preventing victimization, the guillotine has a proven track record of convincing the ultra rich to stop thinking about their wallets and to start thinking about the needs of the people.
You are obsessed with the idea that you’re going to set up a guillotine to punish the wicked. You are an impotent nerd that gets off on violent fantasy online.
Calm. Down. You can’t even organize effective action against your own diminishing dreams. Stop advocating for violence. You’re in no position to handle it.
Go stroke your gun and fantasize about how it makes you strong and important; meanwhile, the world will, much to your confusion, continue not caring about your opinions.
You’ve read a lot of angry context into that that I did not provide. I think you protest too much.
One interesting aspect of a true democracy is that once the people have sufficient, collective justification to engage in violent revolution, peaceful reform suddenly becomes not just feasible, but the preferred resolution for everyone involved. It’s a bit of a paradox.
si vis pacem, para bellum.
No, I read a lot of context from your angry, impotent, and violent-fantasizing post history.
Your cute little performative Latin phrase is precisely my point.
No one cares about your violent fantasia.
I know, I know, “yer gonna regret saying that to me when they bring out the guillotines!”
Dude. It’s just awkward.
Corporate Greed will lead to humanity’s end.
But won’t you think about the value to shareholders? How dare you be so selfish. /s
Honestly, I was never a fan of theft, but these big corporations deserve it after these past 3-4 years.
I root for everyone stealing clothes and food from Macy’s, walgreens, etc.
Just DON’T steal from your local mom and pops store!
Remember: If you see someone stealing food from a large company store… No you didn’t.
I can see the appeal of stealing something expensive, where the expected payoff relative to the risk and consequences of being caught is quite large, but to risk theft charges for food? I don’t think anyone would steal food.
If they have a choice, that is.
Y’all have local mom and pop stores?
Dont let em sit satisfied on these pitiful reductions either. Make them drop enough to at least undo some of their thievery
Canadians will force our grocers to do the same by crushing loblaws.
Obligatory fuck Loblaw’s.
Businesses reduced prices when people started buying less of their product? HOW COULD IT BE.
Everyone wants a ton of cheap shit and they feel like price is owed to them. You want prices to be lower for shit? Stop buying shit. I assure you, that will really freak them out.
You want to see CEOs lose their jobs? Stop buying shit. You want to see the managerial class shrink? Stop buying shit.
The fact remains, no one is going to stop buying stupid shit. The entire global culture, to varying degrees but with few exceptions, is tilted towards consumerism.
Everyone keep doing what you’re doing. Everything is fine. No cause for panic. You don’t need savings. You don’t need property of any sort. Want a song? I’ll rent it to you. Want to live somewhere? I’ll rent it to you. Movie? I’ll rent it to you. Education? I’ll loan it to you.
There are people with property, and those allowed to use it for a fee. Welcome to neo-feudalism.
Guillotine-themed peaceable assemblies freak out the managerial and executive classes considerably more than an uncoordinated boycott ever could.
Good luck.
I don’t think there should be price caps, but, I think we could get somewhere having a maximum amount you’re allowed to raise your prices by in a single year and how long you have to take to get there.
I think this rate should be tied to federal interest rates to create a competing class interest to the owner class wanting interest rates to stay low forever even if it breaks the bank for everyone else.
I mean, just break up the massive corporations. Capitalism requires seller competition in the marketplace in order to provide an incentive to drive down prices. If there are too few players, they can easily make unspoken agreements to fuck over consumers.
The problem is we have historical evidence to show that that doesn’t exactly work. Standard Oil’s broken up parts have mostly been able to informally collude with one another on “turf” and in some cases even defy having been broken up to reacquire each other.
So in the 113 years since they broke up Standard Oil, some of the beneficial effects have worn off?
Darn only a century of benefit. Guess it was a failure because the benefits weren’t eternal.
When exactly did the commenter above you claim that it’s a recent phenomenon? It’s not.
And it becomes increasingly hard to legislate against companies who hold such immense economic power, to the point of being able to buy your private media and ruin your campaign for elections if you threaten them
The oil companies reconglomerated, in part, because we stopped enforcing anti-trust nearly as much as originally intended when we started using the stupid-ass Chicago school of thought from the 1970s onwards. It’s only in the last ten years or so that’s it’s become legally reasonable to say “hey actually the Chicago school of though kinda sucks.” Standard Oil in particular is a bad anti-trust example because Rockefeller was such a personality cult that everyone around him was completely wrapped around his finger. In any case, you can still punish companies for price fixing if you’ve force them to be legally separate, which you can’t do if it’s all one legal organization.
The telecom industry is another example where anti-trust break-ups didn’t lead to more competition, for somewhat similar reasons. They were broken up by geographic regions and each region made gentlemen’s agreements not to expand into each other’s territory. When we stopped enforcing anti-trust as much, they bought each other out.
In general, however, breaking up monopolies is effective, so long as doing so actually creates competition in the marketplace. This is most effective in markets with low barriers to entry or ones where there’s already a large number of smaller companies that are simply too small for meaningful competition with mega-corp. It’s least effective in markets with extremely high barriers to entry or ones where it’s easy to collude and get away with it. In any case, it’s still worth it to break up monopolistic companies because it still reduces their power, even if it does so more effectively in some markets than others. Among other benefits, it makes it easier for new competitors to establish themselves in the market, since their competitors have a harder time utilizing unfair practices the smaller they are.
but, I think we could get somewhere having a maximum amount you’re allowed to raise your prices by in a single year and how long you have to take to get there
We already have this. It’s called a free market and when you raise prices too high your competition takes all your business. It’s beautiful and everybody hates it due to multiple decades of anti-free-market propaganda.
Found the libertarian
I like how he keeps commenting the same nonsense and people are just ignoring it. Like obviously the “free market” prices for lots of goods were wrong. That’s why people are pissed and companies are being forced to lower them.
Supply and demand do balance out… in the long run. The problem with that is (and what Libertarians never understand) in the long run we are all dead.
Libertarians are all fucking morons. They think humanity will react with good intentions only. It’s a mental disorder.
when you raise prices too high your competition takes all your business
The theory works beautifully… For the first 30 years of capitalism. After a few decades, the more profitable and most competitive companies grow so much through consolidation of the market, that due to sheer economy of scale it becomes impossible to compete with them if you’re not an equally well-established company in the same sector. Oligopolies and monopolies form, and it gets to a point where you can’t outcompete them because the capital investment to be competitive would be so bonkers, and the presence of the two companies creating the same product at such humongous scales would saturate the market so much, that it makes absolutely no sense to try and outcompete them. And even if competition started to really appear, the bigger company buys it and competition is undone again.
You guys live in a parallel world, your axioms of “free market” simply don’t hold up to the slightest scrutiny.
Marxists: inflation isn’t caused by increase in wages that drive up demand, its caused by companies conspiring to increase prices. This was proven 125 years ago in Value, Price and Profit…
Non-Marxists: god can’t you ideologues just stop repeating the same outdated theories? There’s no conspiracy, class isn’t real
Inflation: happens
Workers: I think there’s a conspiracy to raise the prices of things because wages went up
Corporate and government overlords: no, you see increase of wages creates increase in demand of goods which increases prices, I went to Yale
Workers: i just got a raise and yet I can’t afford to eat anymore
