Did grocery chains take advantage of COVID shortages to raise prices? FTC says yes in new report
Did grocery chains take advantage of COVID shortages to raise prices? FTC says yes in new report
Large grocery store chains raised prices well above their costs during the pandemic's supply-chain bottlenecks and product shortages, FTC report says.
Did narcissistic sociopaths use a crisis to pursue personal gain?
Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
-Milton Friedman
Obviously yes. Their production costs barely rose but their prices skyrocketed. Here's a Forbes article from 2022 pointing out that it was increased profit margins causing most of the inflation:
yeah, its not like 90% of the chickens in the country died, so there was no reason for eggs to go from 2 bucks a dozen to 12 bucks a dozen but pure corporate exploitation and greed.
This is just capitalism working as intended. The fact that these price increases are being sold as some kind of abnormality is some real neolib brain in action. It isn't "greedflation," it's literally the same capitalism we've lived with for centuries.
And then go one step further and realize it's always been shit. The only time the world has been great has been when kings and capitalism are on a VERY short leash.
It isn't "greedflation," it's literally the same capitalism we've lived with for centuries.
You're both absolutely right and very wrong: it by definition IS greedflation, inflated prices due to greed.
While it is indeed caused by the same capitalist system we've lived with for centuries, it's getting much worse than it has been now that the billionaires and their corporations have realized that there's no consequences even when their profiteering is so blatant that even the likes of Forbes and WSJ are having to acknowledge what they've been able to distract from before.
There is no penalties for collision. Regulation should prevent but since politicians are owned and there's zero effort at enforcment here we are.
There's no such thing as greed in capitalism, though. Rather, greed is the understood foundation from which capitalism is based on. It only works when there is greed. Companies shouldn't avoid raising their prices because they don't want more money, they're supposed to (in capitlism). The system only works when they raise their prices as much as the market will bear.
My grevience with the term "Greedflation" popping up so much recently is that it feels like a cop-out from the current administration to ease economic anxiety without replacing or criticizing the overall economic model. It paints price hikes as a one-time, circumstantial "quirk" of our times, instead of the logical realization of capitalism that it is.
When you say "neolib" are you referring the Neoliberal economic philosophy, or some slang term for modern political liberals?
I ask because Neoliberal Economics is all about this profit, and share holders first, type values. This is in contrast to the post Great Depression, Classical Economics philosophy where companies valued employees first, and shareholders last.
Of course they did. We know they did. All you have to do is go back and read their quarterly earnings calls from 2020 to basically now and they told their shareholders clearly that they were using the pandemic as an excuse to increase profits.
So are they going to have to pay it back or did the FTC make a report for nothing?
... you can't seriously build a system that is meant to take advantage of every situation, praise if for taking advantage of every situation, align it's interests in taking advantage of every situation and then be surprised it took advantage of a situation. We should be better than Pikachu.
Why are people acting surprised? That is just the invisible hand of the market. Isn’t this the unfettered capitalism we asked for?
It's the unfettered capitalism Reagan delivered to his cronies, which ofc trickled down to the whole fucking world.
It's ethical to steal from these grocery chains.
Isn't that what they call self checkout?
I love self-checkout. I've only gone through a regular checkout line about a dozen times when self-checkout was available at a store but backed up, and haven't had a single fast or good experience. The small talk is depressing, they're so much slower at scanning and keying in produce codes I've memorized by now, their bagging strategy is always abysmal, and unless the line is empty (which, it almost never is), you have not just 1 but 2 people to throw a wrench in the gears of getting checked out. About a quarter of the time the buyer in front doesn't have any basic estimate of how much the stuff they're trying to buy costs, and they end up putting back milk, eggs, and produce but keeping the pack of cigarettes when the card is rejected.
The waiting isn't nearly as bad as the bagging, honestly. I would never put a carton of eggs in its own bag when there are loaves of bread or bags of chips lined up right behind it on the belt. I would never mix refrigerated foods in the same bag as drain cleaner, or go willy nilly mixing pantry items in paper packaging with frozen foods.
... self-care out.
And yes, we definitely should realize how brainwashed we are to always think of the poor extremely rich people.
And that's why self checkout is no more at the closest grocery store to me.
Next: sky is blue
Followed by: water is wet
For now. But soon it will just depend on what brand wants to advertise using the whole of the sky.
After these words from our sponsor. Do bears really shit in the woods? The answer may surprise you.
Everyone keeps saying this is capitalism and its true. Companies squeezing everyone when they're vulnerable for more profits.
Consumers need protections for things like basic needs so we don't struggle just to survive.
Food and housing should be protected. Luxury brands can get all the profit they want.
Don't touch my fucking groceries and rent!
Are you saying human quality of life is more important than (strictly financial) profits?? I'm thought that is blasphemy and that I must shame you for it. How dare.
This is why giant supermarkets are bad. When you have a choice of several places to buy, they compete.
Rent though has been captured by optimisation software. Your rent goes up because a computer predicted you (or someone else) would pay more.
Is this even news, ofc they did, give them an inch and they always take a mile, war, recessions and sickness are always a profiteering venture for business.
Don't think of your death as failure; think of it as fun! Don't think of Wal-Mart's price hikes as war profiteering, think of them as war... fun!
Death is the only thing we’re promised from life and without it, life would have little meaning. Death is simply a contract fulfillment.
Nothing happens to Corporations around here. It was pretty clear it was greed even before the data hit.
See, it's very simple. You create a massive monopoly/duopoly/triopoly, to undercut, out compete and otherwise dominate small businesses, until they've been fazed out.... then once it's only you, and you decide the pricing, then you start screwing around with prices while politicians twiddle their thumbs.
Enshittification in a nutshell.
Split them up. We did it to the phone companies
You fucking bet and it sure as hell isn't limited to grocery stores.
It's fair, though. They raised the salaries of the people who worked there.
Right?
They did at least where i worked but 3 years into covid and its was only a temporary bonus
The exhalation proves the roost. Or something like that
Fuck you talking about? They haven’t come down!
edit: actually I thought you were replying to the folks who were talking about inflation, but now I'm not sure what you're replying to, so maybe disregard the rest of this comment
Inflation dropping just refers to the rate at which prices increase slowing down, not prices themselves going down. Unless regional and federal governments do something, lowered inflation only means relative stability at current price levels.
I was talking to the writers of the article.
I love all the headlines that declare [report about thing you already figured out years ago] was in fact true, like it's a fucking surprise. Some would say it's good to have corroborating data, but it never seems to help and I'm just exhausted being right so dammed often.
Okay? Now fucking do something about it.
Of course, but they didn't lower the prices after. Fucking awful evil companies.
I’m sure this will result in swift, appropriate actions to hold them accountable. Just let me start holding my breath
Is it normal for you be turning purple when holding your breath?
I think the FTC is the only one surprised about this. I bet they're getting their most severe finger wagging ready to go.
We need experts to explain and study what ordinary people fucking experience first hand
Anyone got a link to the actual report?
It's in my comment posted further down. https://lemmy.ca/comment/8135463
Is anyone going to do anything about it? No
Shouldn't we blame this on the food monopolies rather than grocery stores?
Plenty of blame to go around here.
They both posted record profits.
Retail chains actually have a lot of pull over the market, the individual food companies are more beholden to the grocery chains than you might think.
The grocery stores are mostly monopolies too. I am lucky enough to have a couple good small privately owned grocery stores near me. Their prices haven't gone up nearly as much.
We all knew they did.
What stunning observational powers they have over there at the FTC. Too bad they don't have any teeth because the government doesn't fund them even close to adequately.
No way!
Pikachu, I choose you ... to get here and make that face.
Prices were always going to rise, COVID just gave them an excuse to accelerate it in a shorter amount of time. In Capitalism every company with stockholders has to show ever-increasing profits, because it's never enough. Even if you knock it out of the park one year, you're expected to knock it out of the park even further the next year. And so they keep charging as much as they think they can get away with, and it's really not sustainable. We're approaching the limits of it now as everyone is taking so much that the average citizen doesn't have much more to give.
Duh!
Has been in the news for months. Welcome to last week USAtoday.
Permanently Deleted
You expect prices to decrease when demand increases? I would expect the FTC to have taken an economics 101 class.
I was hoping for a little better reporting in this story, like why does "the FTC report suggest the grocery companies were also price-gouging consumers", but this turd is to be expected from a Gannett-owned organization.
Here's the report.
And here's the why ...
Notably, consumers are still facing the negative impact of the pandemic’s price hikes, as the Commission’s report finds that some in the grocery retail industry seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today. Source
I appreciate the link to the report.
This just further enforces my belief that the FTC doesn't know much about economics. When there's a high demand and limited supply, prices increase. The increase in retail costs, inflation, is used to limit consumer demand. Of course their profits are going to increase; that's how economics works. There's nothing in this report that seems inappropriate.
I think they'd have better luck attacking the CEOs who are pocketing increasingly inflated salaries and bonuses.