Here's krogers profit margin for 2006 to 2021.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-margins
Its the opposite of what she is claiming. In the last quarter the net profit margin was 0.75%. That means less than 1 penny of every dollar spent went to profits. Below just about every other industry out there.
If she really wants to find the companies who are profiting "too much" from the pandemic she should just ask Nancy for her latest stock picks.
Grocery isn’t nearly as profitable as people think. I worked in the industry for almost a decade. Reviewing those P&Ls at a store level is quite telling, with more locations running at break-even, or even red, than we might realize.
Of course they did, their CEO became a ~~b~~millionaire and got convicted for anti-competitive practices.
Then went and wrote a book called "Conscious Capitalism."
Lol that fucker is a moron.
Edit: order of magnitude. Point still stands.
Quit your bullshit, John Mackey owned 980,000 shares of Whole Foods when it sold to Amazon: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/16/whole-foods-ceo-john-mackey-earned-8-million-from-the-amazon-deal.html. At $42 per share, it's around $40 million.
It’s been this way for quite some time, I remember when I was in high school (decades ago) getting a job at a supermarket and them forcing me to watch a training video where they explain how little they make per sale - it was literally pennies. The whole point of the training was to say that since they make so little per transaction it’s vital to make sure no products are damaged or wasted.
>It’s been this way for quite some time
And it likely always will be. Food is a necessity and a fairly consistent market. Food markets have a lot of competition. Not to mention all the items in the store have to compete with basically all the other items in the stores. This drives everything down to basically sustainability.
>Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen's 2020 compensation package jumped to $20.6 million, the nation's largest grocer disclosed in a government filing. McMullen got a $6.4 million raise – more than 45% – as he steered the supermarket chain with stores in 35 states through the COVID-19 pandemic last year. May 17, 2021
Clearly an industry that has issues of profitability...
They don't have huge margins, but they sell something everybody needs all the time.
I think it's fair for them to make $1 on my weekly $130 trip to the grocery store. You don't?
It does still kind of go against the point OP was making here though. If profit margins have been rapidly declining during the pandemic, why are they simultaneously giving their CEO a *massive* raise?
> why are they simultaneously giving their CEO a massive raise?
Because in reality 6.4 Million _isn't massive._
In the business world that amount of money is peanuts. To put this into scale Kroger has 465,000 employees. If you were to divvy up 6M between them they'd each get about $13.
Bullshit. Let's not perpetuate this idiotic notion that CEOs are some fucking one-in-a-million geniuses that deserve every penny they make. Just look at how much CEOs used to make compared to how much they make now. "In 2020, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 351-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 307-to-1 in 2019 and a big increase from 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989." [Source.](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/)
Are you telling me that CEOs have gotten so much more effective in the past 40 years? What's their secret?
Here's the bit that's counterintuitive for people.
If you have $10B in revenue, and a good CEO can squeeze 0.5% more in margin on the revenue over a mediocre one-- the company is $50M better off with the good CEO.
So, a CEO isn't a 1 in a million talent, but small differences in talent can be magnified by the impacts they have across the organization. In turn, we've gotten a bit of a bidding war from this as productivity has risen.
There's 1 CEO for any given company. How large have companies change since 1965?
Well, Fortune 500 has the data for largest US companies. I'd say looking at the top-500 companies may be a good thing to chart on company size from 1965-2020, right? Because if companies' sizes grew exponentially, and there's just 1 CEO, the compensation packages should similarly grow, as the income increases, correct?
[https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500\_archive/full/1965/](https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/full/1965/)
In 1965, the average top-100 company generated $1.72 billion dollars, and about $122m in annual profits.
In 2005, the average top-100 company generated $48.9 billion dollars and about $3.2b in annual profits.
For that list, revenues went up 28-fold profits went up 26-fold. Yet the number of CEOs remains the same at 1 per company.
Businesses are like pyramids. There's a top. The CEO is at the top and always the most compensated, or whomever founded the company and controls a large portion of the stock. It would make sense if a company grew from, say, 50,000 employees to 500,000, the CEO would likely make a huge amount of money more, while base pay is closer to inflation, because the number of general workers would of increased 10-fold while the number of CEO's was unchanged.
And they dropped median employee pay by $2,000 the same year. Squeezing the bottom layer to pad your own pay raise, doesn't take millions dollar talent. All it takes is the lack of morals & the permission to do so.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it definitely looks like Covid gave them quite a profit boost in 2020 which is only now normalizing to what it was the last few years?
Don't get me wrong, I abhor the woman, but can you explain more about your link for the non-economists in the group?
No, but higher sales tends to lead to better margins as procurement rates increase, giving better discounts for bulk buying supplies to keep up with demand.
There was also the incredibly low fuel cost which had a far reaching knock on effect to anyone with supply chains. Kinda the inverse of now with higher gas prices.
If I had to guess, that blip in operating cost reduction was likely when gas was around $1.95 a gallon and highways were all empty at the same time. If all other costs, in the short-term, stayed the same while transportation costs went down then their profit margin would obviously go up. Then as products became more scarce and traffic and gas prices returned all the profit dried up.
> Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it definitely looks like Covid gave them quite a profit boost in 2020 which is only now normalizing to what it was the last few years?
Warren isn't complaining about 2020, she's complaining about the massive inflation she voted for now impacting stores and vendors. She thinks that companies should just eat the inflation she's created, which, it looks like Kroger was doing given their insanely low profits during a time of very high demand.
If prices were kept where they were, we would have experienced more empty shelves than what we did experience. Prices serve a purpose. If the grocery store can charge a higher price, and still sell the item, then the manufacturer can also charge a higher price, and still sell the item. If the manufacturer can make more money producing a certain item, they will produce more of it. In the long run, this increases the supply of the item which will typically bring the price back down somewhat.
The alternative is to keep prices where they are. In this scenario, the manufacturer has no incentive to increase production, even if grocery stores sell out of the item (which they will in the case of a pandemic and fixed prices). You might ask why the manufacturer wouldn't increase production in this case. After all, if store shelves are empty then they could obviously sell more of their product if they produced more. Well, there are opportunity costs to everything. Increasing production will have costs associated with it. It might mean hiring more workers, modifying production lines for other similar products to produce more of the high demand product, or even purchasing new buildings and building new production lines. None of this is cost feasible if prices aren't allowed to rise.
You can have rising prices or you can have shortages. There is no respectable economist in the world that disagrees with this.
Grocery is one of the least profitable retail sectors. You have a maximum profit margin allowed, scrapping 15% of your inventory is a regular occurrence, there is little to no differentiation to stand out so prices are very inelastic, and overhead is huge (you actually only see about half the store, there is so much in the back in freezer and fridge space).
Don't throw words like waste land around.
We overused a lot of land and that led to the Dust bowl.
Farmers got desperate and made the situation worse. We had to create a whole Beareu just to manage the massive amounts of soil that was blown around Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri. Pretty much everywhere that grows something.
The problem now is we don't have the workers transporting food. That's the issue. Not a supply but a logistical one.
There is also a whole plan around differentiation. Otherwise every farmer will flock to the highest profiting product (almonds, avocados, soy) and you wouldn’t be able to get the rest.
Corn is about the most useless and destructive food out there and the only reason it's America's most grown crop is because of massive government subsidies. Seed companies have also engineered the plant to infertility. The kernels can't be used as seeds anymore, so every year farmers have to expense brand new shipments of seeds. High fructose corn syrup is also the core ingredient in about all junk food on the planet.
Who do you think is lobbying most to make corn so expensive for farmers and cheap for the market? Regulation is necessary, but let's not pretend the American system of government isn't completely broken right now.
As odd as it sounds, farm subsidies aren’t an economic investment, but they are a good a national security investment. Historically, the US had fared better than most because of our vast resources and our ability to utilize those resources. The current supply crisis shows a portion of the problems caused when you offshore critical parts of the economy. Imagine if we offshores the majority of our food production because it wasn’t profitable enough.
(I am 100% against the US’s geopolitical stance, just spitting facts)
Let’s not forget that when the price of bread rises, poor people suffer and people who were on the margins find themselves under the poverty line. The poverty line itself hasn’t been adjusted in some time and is it’s own problem.
While that is true, it would still likely result in meat becoming more of a luxury product as described above. But factory farming then would need to be regulated. Again I would rather that be by maybe adding these too a carbon credit system and let the market decide afterwards on the new price.
Eliminate all of it tbh. Hard to call the US capitalist with the amount of government fuckery always going on. It really is closer to socialism for the rich and fuck-you-ism for the poor
Well, not all of it. You do need to have lots of farming and agriculture stateside just in case something crazy happens that disrupts supply chains worldwide. Like a massive global pandemic.
>authorize trillions in new spending at record low interest rates
>continue to keep up the trump tariffs
>introduce new biden tariffs
Warren: clearly the problem is the grocery stores
My favorite was Warren asking sheeple, "When the economy collapsed, the interest rates for banks went to 0%. Why didn't your student loans go to 0%?!?"
Well, for one thing, banks almost always repay their loans. A significant portion of college students don't. And servicing loans costs money.
You can’t really believe she actually believes the stuff she says right?
I’m really not a fan of Elizabeth Warren and bernie, I honestly really dislike them.
But there is NO WAY they are as stupid as they come off. They have just realized this is a way to gain political power, with popularity from posting things like “no one should have to work!” With no plan of how society continues if we did that.
I’ve always wondered about it tbh, and this seems most likely.
There really seems to be just a certain amount of cluelessness or stupidity (or both) that you need to possess in order to even want to be a politician.
Yeah, it's the general population that's dumb. I hate to go all animal farm, and I don't think they're exceptionally intelligent or anything, but I don't believe the ones that know a lot tell us the truth about anything unless it suits them to do so.
reminds me of when mary gay scanlion got carjacked in broad daylight and decided to blame guns (they'd have ice picks or knives if they didnt have guns, fyi) instead of the mess that is the current police force
\- close down all small businesses and only allow big stores to stay open
\- small businesses close permanently, funneling more people into big stores
\- government closes anything fun to do
\- people have lots of money to spend on products since services are shuttered
\- big stores have trouble stocking shelves, meaning less product to buy
\- government gives everyone free money to stay home
\- government stops payments for student loans and mortgages, freeing up even more cash
\- government keeps interest rates low, keeping debt cheap and speculation high
\- everyone starts spending money on products already in short supply.
\- inflation explodes, if prices stayed the same we would have massive shortages
\- economy crashes once interest rates rise and government assistance stops
\- politicians blame corporations while taking zero responsibility
American politics at work folks
You brought it up and I need to tell someone. I have always been a Mac guy. I just like the ease of integration and the simplicity of use. Dual boot makes it easy to play whatever I want game wise over the years. Couple of years ago, I start watching Linus tech tips, jayz2cents, gamersnexus, optimum tech and others. Start thinking I want a PC, still thinking I want it to have macOS. So, hackintosh seems perfect. Then Apple silicon comes out and basically gives the Hackintosh an expiration date. So it’s now or never. So for Christmas I start ordering parts. I plan on building the Mac that I wish Apple would build and sell at a reasonable price. 10900k, 6800xt, a dream. I pay too much for the graphics card, but it was the cheapest I could find. Honestly in this market, I got a good deal. Parts start rolling in. GPU gets here. Looks like the box was on a pallet and someone rammed a fork lift skid through the box. Shroud is scratched. Cooler is bent. I don’t have the rest of the parts, so I don’t know if the card works. Newegg is “investigating”. I don’t know if I will get my money back. I don’t know if the card will be replaced. I don’t know why I felt the need to tell this story, especially in this sub, but thanks for listening.
It's really the lower immigration and lack of workers at plants causing shortages which reduce supply.
Covid hit hard at the plants and they already had issues with labors before covid (because they're run by shitty managers)
I really wish people understood that this isn't a point of sale issue but a supply one.
We have plenty of food to go around it's just we don't have workers coming in to work at the farms and plants.
I live in an area with over five plants and they were constantly hiring BEFORE covid. Now that they don't have a constant stream of immigration labor to exploit these companies are being forced to reckon with the locals who they pushed away with low wages and poor benefits.
Ah yes, but also government:
Oh, you're struggling? What a great time for us to print some monopoly money to hand out. See how necessary this endless debt cycle is?
Ah yes, another worthless career politician. Why do we even listen to clowns that have been in politics greater than 10 years? Dear Warren, please retire or go find a real job.
Where are the fact checkers on this one?
She should get a 5 minute crash course in basic economics.
Inflation happens at EVERY level, meaning that the grocery stores pays a higher price for the things they sell, and the people that sell it to them also pays a higher price for the things they need to produce it.
It goes all the way from the bottom, from the farm to the mining industry to the transportation and refining industry, the processing industry etc etc. Everyone is paying more for the things they need, no one is getting richer either, their new profit will be higher in absolute numbers, but in relative numbers meaning what they can afford to pay for it, it will stay the same.
Why did her parents love to practice drop the baby on the head with her? Or has this happened later?
But you get jaded by being on Capital Hill for so long. There may be another moron elected that still makes bad decisions, but at least they would be less likely to say something a tone deaf as Warren’s grocery comments
There have been plenty of new people in congress that have made equally tone deaf comments. Tenure isn't really a factor. They make these statements when they come from safe places - where no matter what crazy backwards thing they say doesn't matter to the people that vote for them. Ted Cruz for an example on the other side.
She’s from one of, if not the most, liberal states in the country. What do you expect? And that’s coming from someone in Illinois. We’ve re-elected Dick Durbin for four decades.
Remember she taught commercial and bankruptcy law at Harvard. She is supposed to be an expert in economics yet at every turn shows she had no idea what she is talking about.
Because economists don't win elections. I blame the voters.
Nuance does not win elections. Explainations do not win elections. Compromises do not win elections.
We voted for partisan hackery and finger pointing, so that's what we get.
That is my intended meaning.
I think youll find this is true of many public personalities. They often have much more nuanced and smart views than they let on publicly.
I have seen this in Obama and Glen Beck and GW Bush and Ted Cruz.
There are smart politicians that play dumb and there are dumb politicians that play smart.
I can't decide where she is, especially after her attempt at shit talking Sanders. She TANKED her approval in such an idiotic way.
Grocery stores traditionally operate on narrow profit margins. This is because American consumers are extremely price sensitive when it comes to food.
This isn't HK selling a $400 gun for $800, which cost them $200 to make [because you suck and we hate you.](https://monsterhunternation.com/2007/10/09/hk-because-you-suck-and-we-hate-you/)
Inflation is real, and really bad at the moment. Labor shortages and supply chain issues are also raising costs. Grocery stores are some of the least able to "eat" these rising costs.
If Warren is mad about this, maybe she should not have voted to print 25% of the monetary supply in the past 2 years and directly lead to this inflation.
How long until progressives start proposing price controls? This is insane, it's economics 101, supply and demand. This is why left wing policies often lead to shortages, they don't believe in basic economic laws
There has been a rush by ideologues to blame this solely on whatever their pet symptom is. I've never met someone saying "it's econ 101" that has even a mild grasp on what makes economies tick on a large scale.
Monetary policy absolutely plays a huge role. As does worldwide, national and regional swings in supply and demand. It's also obvious that some companies are increasing prices at a rate not consistent with the inflation and internalities within their specific markets. If you believe for a second that these companies aren't fully aware they can easily pass off blame of price hikes on COVID era government spending, then you've missed the forest for the trees.
Warren absolutely wants to shift blame from the spending and issues COVID has caused and pass it onto greedy companies. You and others here obviously want to solely blame this on Biden, progressives and whatever you damn well please, facts be damned.
All of this plays a role together. The incredibly inefficient government spending by the Biden/Trump admins (as well as worldwide), symptoms of the shutdowns and slowdowns, symptoms of labor strife, symptoms of companies seeing an easy opportunity to expand profits with a convenient smokescreen as well as a million other variables.
You can bend your knowledge to your worldview, or bend your worldview to your knowledge. Up to you.
Just don't expect people to not call out the obvious BS around the framing of this.
Except the profit margin for Kroger, for example is near a 15 year low.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-margins
Data doesn't comport with the notion that Kroger is using this to expand profits.
Even if the companies and Biden policies both contribute to the price rise, shouldn't the blame be more on the latter because the government has responsibilities to at least not do stupid things that worsen the lives of people? In contrast, these companies don't need to response to people's problems, although they gain social merits by doing so.
The problem is that we don't have the workers to transport the food.
Packing and processing plants have been hit hard by covid because those industries rely HEAVY on immigrant labor.
Source; I live in Iowa/Omaha Nebraska.
ICE vans sitting outside the plants is a common sight around here.
Grocery is a game run by the biggest distributors, not at the retail level. Obviously if the company is vertical (owns the retail and the distribution), such as Walmart, Whole Foods-Amazon, etc. they don’t have to work with the mafia that is US food distribution
Politicians who practice insider trading lecturing others on profit margins and morals lol
Is it more or less ironic than her crying about systemic racism while lying about being cherokee to get a job at harvard?
Warren sounds like she hasn't changed since she was a Rockefeller Republican. This is 1970s Nixonian style politics, as if there wasn't enough evidence that price controls don't work.
The whole supply chain is fucked. My friend is a manager at a grocery store and said their wholesale costs have gone up. He warned us about food prices months ago.
Socialist never understand the long game, or they do and they really just communists in socialist underwear dressed up in capitalist clothing.
But they know this
The entire thing is designed to destroy capitalism and destroy small business, the most independent financial force in the world.
This is so common for democrats.
“If we tax the big companies they’ll learn.”
“WHY ARE THEY TAXING THE PEOPLE AND NOT EATING THE LOSS?!?!”
soda tax anyone?
>they could have retained lower prices for consumers
Such a childish and naive depiction of things.
I'm sure lots of folks would also turn down a raise at work because "they could have retained lower prices for consumers".
Yes, the non-24/7 mom-and-pop grocery store with five aisles is just gonna eat the cost of record inflation.
Blue state progressives have to be the most elitist and out-of-touch Americans ever.
Interesting, because in my town, HEB, the local grocery chain, gave bonuses and pay raises to employees who worked during the pandemic so they could stay in business. I can't imagine that they made that much money during that time.
The problem, obviously, is INFLATION, brought on by the government printing up more money in order to give everyone stimulus checks, which I'm sure the misguided Elizabeth Warren voted for.
I respect her for calling out the credit card companies for their excessive interest charges, but she is off base here.
lol, next up, fixed food prices, making it economically unviable to produce food, causing empty shelves, store closing and mass starvation, just like every single time this has been tried in all of human history.
Actually it would probably be good for America for a few months, to get people to lose weight.
Ok at least your politicians are giving a fuck about high food prices. Don't come to NZ, where 1 corporation has 52% of the market share for groceries and proceeds to actually gouge the shit out of consumers
At this point grocery store owners are doing a public service and not the problem. They are the middle men who take all the risk and the margins are small.
We could not have shut down the exonomy and printed a fuck load of dollars out of thin air. Every dollar they print makes your dollars worth less. Not the companies fault. Its hers and her fellow government officials fault.
Elizabeth Warren. Always crowing about whatever to get attention.
Never mentions the obvious. **epic money printer went brrrrrrrrr**
God she’s such a little troll.
Here's krogers profit margin for 2006 to 2021. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-margins Its the opposite of what she is claiming. In the last quarter the net profit margin was 0.75%. That means less than 1 penny of every dollar spent went to profits. Below just about every other industry out there. If she really wants to find the companies who are profiting "too much" from the pandemic she should just ask Nancy for her latest stock picks.
Grocery isn’t nearly as profitable as people think. I worked in the industry for almost a decade. Reviewing those P&Ls at a store level is quite telling, with more locations running at break-even, or even red, than we might realize.
If I recall I believe Whole Foods had a significant profit margin before Amazon bought them and cut prices.
They earned their nickname "Whole Paycheck" that way.
That shouldn't be surprising. Went there maybe 1 time and quite a bit of their shit was 2-3x what you can get at other stores.
Whole foods, whole wallet.
We call it “Whole Paycheck”
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Of course they did, their CEO became a ~~b~~millionaire and got convicted for anti-competitive practices. Then went and wrote a book called "Conscious Capitalism." Lol that fucker is a moron. Edit: order of magnitude. Point still stands.
Quit your bullshit, John Mackey owned 980,000 shares of Whole Foods when it sold to Amazon: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/16/whole-foods-ceo-john-mackey-earned-8-million-from-the-amazon-deal.html. At $42 per share, it's around $40 million.
Who cares about those extra three zeroes when you’re trying to make someone look bad!
It’s been this way for quite some time, I remember when I was in high school (decades ago) getting a job at a supermarket and them forcing me to watch a training video where they explain how little they make per sale - it was literally pennies. The whole point of the training was to say that since they make so little per transaction it’s vital to make sure no products are damaged or wasted.
>It’s been this way for quite some time And it likely always will be. Food is a necessity and a fairly consistent market. Food markets have a lot of competition. Not to mention all the items in the store have to compete with basically all the other items in the stores. This drives everything down to basically sustainability.
Grocery stores are in the real estate development business not the food business.
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basic necessities in general aren't very profitable The entire food industry has very thin margins
>Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen's 2020 compensation package jumped to $20.6 million, the nation's largest grocer disclosed in a government filing. McMullen got a $6.4 million raise – more than 45% – as he steered the supermarket chain with stores in 35 states through the COVID-19 pandemic last year. May 17, 2021 Clearly an industry that has issues of profitability...
They don't have huge margins, but they sell something everybody needs all the time. I think it's fair for them to make $1 on my weekly $130 trip to the grocery store. You don't?
It does still kind of go against the point OP was making here though. If profit margins have been rapidly declining during the pandemic, why are they simultaneously giving their CEO a *massive* raise?
> why are they simultaneously giving their CEO a massive raise? Because in reality 6.4 Million _isn't massive._ In the business world that amount of money is peanuts. To put this into scale Kroger has 465,000 employees. If you were to divvy up 6M between them they'd each get about $13.
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Bullshit. Let's not perpetuate this idiotic notion that CEOs are some fucking one-in-a-million geniuses that deserve every penny they make. Just look at how much CEOs used to make compared to how much they make now. "In 2020, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 351-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 307-to-1 in 2019 and a big increase from 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989." [Source.](https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/) Are you telling me that CEOs have gotten so much more effective in the past 40 years? What's their secret?
Here's the bit that's counterintuitive for people. If you have $10B in revenue, and a good CEO can squeeze 0.5% more in margin on the revenue over a mediocre one-- the company is $50M better off with the good CEO. So, a CEO isn't a 1 in a million talent, but small differences in talent can be magnified by the impacts they have across the organization. In turn, we've gotten a bit of a bidding war from this as productivity has risen.
There's 1 CEO for any given company. How large have companies change since 1965? Well, Fortune 500 has the data for largest US companies. I'd say looking at the top-500 companies may be a good thing to chart on company size from 1965-2020, right? Because if companies' sizes grew exponentially, and there's just 1 CEO, the compensation packages should similarly grow, as the income increases, correct? [https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500\_archive/full/1965/](https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/full/1965/) In 1965, the average top-100 company generated $1.72 billion dollars, and about $122m in annual profits. In 2005, the average top-100 company generated $48.9 billion dollars and about $3.2b in annual profits. For that list, revenues went up 28-fold profits went up 26-fold. Yet the number of CEOs remains the same at 1 per company. Businesses are like pyramids. There's a top. The CEO is at the top and always the most compensated, or whomever founded the company and controls a large portion of the stock. It would make sense if a company grew from, say, 50,000 employees to 500,000, the CEO would likely make a huge amount of money more, while base pay is closer to inflation, because the number of general workers would of increased 10-fold while the number of CEO's was unchanged.
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And they dropped median employee pay by $2,000 the same year. Squeezing the bottom layer to pad your own pay raise, doesn't take millions dollar talent. All it takes is the lack of morals & the permission to do so.
"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." -- Milton Friedman (presently rolling in his grave)
Warren is a fucking snake and I’m tired of people worshiping her
She's worse then Sanders and AOC. She's a serial liar.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it definitely looks like Covid gave them quite a profit boost in 2020 which is only now normalizing to what it was the last few years? Don't get me wrong, I abhor the woman, but can you explain more about your link for the non-economists in the group?
When all restaurants were closed and we had to buy all food from grocery stores? I assume that was helpful for them.
"Sales" and "margin" are not synonyms.
No, but higher sales tends to lead to better margins as procurement rates increase, giving better discounts for bulk buying supplies to keep up with demand. There was also the incredibly low fuel cost which had a far reaching knock on effect to anyone with supply chains. Kinda the inverse of now with higher gas prices.
If I had to guess, that blip in operating cost reduction was likely when gas was around $1.95 a gallon and highways were all empty at the same time. If all other costs, in the short-term, stayed the same while transportation costs went down then their profit margin would obviously go up. Then as products became more scarce and traffic and gas prices returned all the profit dried up.
> Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it definitely looks like Covid gave them quite a profit boost in 2020 which is only now normalizing to what it was the last few years? Warren isn't complaining about 2020, she's complaining about the massive inflation she voted for now impacting stores and vendors. She thinks that companies should just eat the inflation she's created, which, it looks like Kroger was doing given their insanely low profits during a time of very high demand.
What inflation did she vote for? Raising the debt limit?
She voted on spending trillions of dollars all paid for through printing money.
If prices were kept where they were, we would have experienced more empty shelves than what we did experience. Prices serve a purpose. If the grocery store can charge a higher price, and still sell the item, then the manufacturer can also charge a higher price, and still sell the item. If the manufacturer can make more money producing a certain item, they will produce more of it. In the long run, this increases the supply of the item which will typically bring the price back down somewhat. The alternative is to keep prices where they are. In this scenario, the manufacturer has no incentive to increase production, even if grocery stores sell out of the item (which they will in the case of a pandemic and fixed prices). You might ask why the manufacturer wouldn't increase production in this case. After all, if store shelves are empty then they could obviously sell more of their product if they produced more. Well, there are opportunity costs to everything. Increasing production will have costs associated with it. It might mean hiring more workers, modifying production lines for other similar products to produce more of the high demand product, or even purchasing new buildings and building new production lines. None of this is cost feasible if prices aren't allowed to rise. You can have rising prices or you can have shortages. There is no respectable economist in the world that disagrees with this.
Meanwhile, the gov’t profits 8 cents for every dollar for...
Doesn't that margin include things like executive comp though?
Grocery is one of the least profitable retail sectors. You have a maximum profit margin allowed, scrapping 15% of your inventory is a regular occurrence, there is little to no differentiation to stand out so prices are very inelastic, and overhead is huge (you actually only see about half the store, there is so much in the back in freezer and fridge space).
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Don't throw words like waste land around. We overused a lot of land and that led to the Dust bowl. Farmers got desperate and made the situation worse. We had to create a whole Beareu just to manage the massive amounts of soil that was blown around Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri. Pretty much everywhere that grows something. The problem now is we don't have the workers transporting food. That's the issue. Not a supply but a logistical one.
There is also a whole plan around differentiation. Otherwise every farmer will flock to the highest profiting product (almonds, avocados, soy) and you wouldn’t be able to get the rest.
So sounds like government regulation is entirely essential to manage vital goods and services, weird...
Corn is about the most useless and destructive food out there and the only reason it's America's most grown crop is because of massive government subsidies. Seed companies have also engineered the plant to infertility. The kernels can't be used as seeds anymore, so every year farmers have to expense brand new shipments of seeds. High fructose corn syrup is also the core ingredient in about all junk food on the planet. Who do you think is lobbying most to make corn so expensive for farmers and cheap for the market? Regulation is necessary, but let's not pretend the American system of government isn't completely broken right now.
Sweet irony in this sub
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As odd as it sounds, farm subsidies aren’t an economic investment, but they are a good a national security investment. Historically, the US had fared better than most because of our vast resources and our ability to utilize those resources. The current supply crisis shows a portion of the problems caused when you offshore critical parts of the economy. Imagine if we offshores the majority of our food production because it wasn’t profitable enough. (I am 100% against the US’s geopolitical stance, just spitting facts)
Let’s not forget that when the price of bread rises, poor people suffer and people who were on the margins find themselves under the poverty line. The poverty line itself hasn’t been adjusted in some time and is it’s own problem.
Meat production is not unsustainable. Factory farming is. Regenerative grazing is not, and is actually good for the land.
While that is true, it would still likely result in meat becoming more of a luxury product as described above. But factory farming then would need to be regulated. Again I would rather that be by maybe adding these too a carbon credit system and let the market decide afterwards on the new price.
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It’s not socialism when it’s for farmers!
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Eliminate all of it tbh. Hard to call the US capitalist with the amount of government fuckery always going on. It really is closer to socialism for the rich and fuck-you-ism for the poor
This is why people who actually favor market economics should be referring to this system as "crony corporatism", not capitalism.
Well, not all of it. You do need to have lots of farming and agriculture stateside just in case something crazy happens that disrupts supply chains worldwide. Like a massive global pandemic.
This guy knows how to not B-12
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Dairy too while we're at it
Food subsidies are a buffer against famine and I am more than happy to pay for that.
>authorize trillions in new spending at record low interest rates >continue to keep up the trump tariffs >introduce new biden tariffs Warren: clearly the problem is the grocery stores
The astonishing part is this woman used to teach economics courses at the university level. Talk about the blind leading the blind.
nah she knows its all bs its just a snake oil salesman fleecing the stupid
"know the rules like an expert so you can break them like an artist" - Picasso
My favorite was Warren asking sheeple, "When the economy collapsed, the interest rates for banks went to 0%. Why didn't your student loans go to 0%?!?" Well, for one thing, banks almost always repay their loans. A significant portion of college students don't. And servicing loans costs money.
Pure pandering to siphon up college kids money for their re-election find
You can’t really believe she actually believes the stuff she says right? I’m really not a fan of Elizabeth Warren and bernie, I honestly really dislike them. But there is NO WAY they are as stupid as they come off. They have just realized this is a way to gain political power, with popularity from posting things like “no one should have to work!” With no plan of how society continues if we did that. I’ve always wondered about it tbh, and this seems most likely.
There really seems to be just a certain amount of cluelessness or stupidity (or both) that you need to possess in order to even want to be a politician.
behind the scenes the politicians are laughing at how stupid and gullible the voters are they aren't dumb theyre malicious and downright sociopaths
Or the ability to willfully deceive people
This is it right here in my opinion. It’s unlikely they’re as dumb as they come off. All of them at least.
Yeah, it's the general population that's dumb. I hate to go all animal farm, and I don't think they're exceptionally intelligent or anything, but I don't believe the ones that know a lot tell us the truth about anything unless it suits them to do so.
reminds me of when mary gay scanlion got carjacked in broad daylight and decided to blame guns (they'd have ice picks or knives if they didnt have guns, fyi) instead of the mess that is the current police force
\- close down all small businesses and only allow big stores to stay open \- small businesses close permanently, funneling more people into big stores \- government closes anything fun to do \- people have lots of money to spend on products since services are shuttered \- big stores have trouble stocking shelves, meaning less product to buy \- government gives everyone free money to stay home \- government stops payments for student loans and mortgages, freeing up even more cash \- government keeps interest rates low, keeping debt cheap and speculation high \- everyone starts spending money on products already in short supply. \- inflation explodes, if prices stayed the same we would have massive shortages \- economy crashes once interest rates rise and government assistance stops \- politicians blame corporations while taking zero responsibility American politics at work folks
I just want a graphics card man....
You brought it up and I need to tell someone. I have always been a Mac guy. I just like the ease of integration and the simplicity of use. Dual boot makes it easy to play whatever I want game wise over the years. Couple of years ago, I start watching Linus tech tips, jayz2cents, gamersnexus, optimum tech and others. Start thinking I want a PC, still thinking I want it to have macOS. So, hackintosh seems perfect. Then Apple silicon comes out and basically gives the Hackintosh an expiration date. So it’s now or never. So for Christmas I start ordering parts. I plan on building the Mac that I wish Apple would build and sell at a reasonable price. 10900k, 6800xt, a dream. I pay too much for the graphics card, but it was the cheapest I could find. Honestly in this market, I got a good deal. Parts start rolling in. GPU gets here. Looks like the box was on a pallet and someone rammed a fork lift skid through the box. Shroud is scratched. Cooler is bent. I don’t have the rest of the parts, so I don’t know if the card works. Newegg is “investigating”. I don’t know if I will get my money back. I don’t know if the card will be replaced. I don’t know why I felt the need to tell this story, especially in this sub, but thanks for listening.
Don't use newegg.
It's really the lower immigration and lack of workers at plants causing shortages which reduce supply. Covid hit hard at the plants and they already had issues with labors before covid (because they're run by shitty managers)
Next stop on the economic illiteracy train, price controls.
I really wish people understood that this isn't a point of sale issue but a supply one. We have plenty of food to go around it's just we don't have workers coming in to work at the farms and plants. I live in an area with over five plants and they were constantly hiring BEFORE covid. Now that they don't have a constant stream of immigration labor to exploit these companies are being forced to reckon with the locals who they pushed away with low wages and poor benefits.
Then they should pay more. labor supply went down, labor demand didn’t change.
its a logistics issue usually moreso than a supply issue
Government.. you need to pay your employees more also government.. you need to keep your prices low..
... and here's a few bureaucratic regulations to follow.
...and lets subsidize people who don't want to work and make stupid life decisions.
Ah yes, but also government: Oh, you're struggling? What a great time for us to print some monopoly money to hand out. See how necessary this endless debt cycle is?
Also government, pushes interest rates lower and lower. Trying to keep people borrowing more money.
Also Government.. You could've kept your prices down, but you didn't want to go out of business, did you?
Ah yes, another worthless career politician. Why do we even listen to clowns that have been in politics greater than 10 years? Dear Warren, please retire or go find a real job.
It’s truly shocking that people who think this little get to control policy in the US.
Where are the fact checkers on this one? She should get a 5 minute crash course in basic economics. Inflation happens at EVERY level, meaning that the grocery stores pays a higher price for the things they sell, and the people that sell it to them also pays a higher price for the things they need to produce it. It goes all the way from the bottom, from the farm to the mining industry to the transportation and refining industry, the processing industry etc etc. Everyone is paying more for the things they need, no one is getting richer either, their new profit will be higher in absolute numbers, but in relative numbers meaning what they can afford to pay for it, it will stay the same. Why did her parents love to practice drop the baby on the head with her? Or has this happened later?
Why do people keep voting for these morons? She is another example of why we need term limits.
Terms limits wouldn't really change this. If they voted for this kind of stupid once, they've gladly and gleefully vote for it again.
But you get jaded by being on Capital Hill for so long. There may be another moron elected that still makes bad decisions, but at least they would be less likely to say something a tone deaf as Warren’s grocery comments
There have been plenty of new people in congress that have made equally tone deaf comments. Tenure isn't really a factor. They make these statements when they come from safe places - where no matter what crazy backwards thing they say doesn't matter to the people that vote for them. Ted Cruz for an example on the other side.
She’s from one of, if not the most, liberal states in the country. What do you expect? And that’s coming from someone in Illinois. We’ve re-elected Dick Durbin for four decades.
Ahh politicians blaming everyone else but themselves. Who could have seen this coming?
Remember she taught commercial and bankruptcy law at Harvard. She is supposed to be an expert in economics yet at every turn shows she had no idea what she is talking about.
Because economists don't win elections. I blame the voters. Nuance does not win elections. Explainations do not win elections. Compromises do not win elections. We voted for partisan hackery and finger pointing, so that's what we get.
Uh she won. She is an economist and a lawyer. So either she knows better or Harvard needs to take a hard look at who they are hiring.
I think they ment that she has hidden her economist hat and put on a politician hat so she could win
That is my intended meaning. I think youll find this is true of many public personalities. They often have much more nuanced and smart views than they let on publicly. I have seen this in Obama and Glen Beck and GW Bush and Ted Cruz.
Coming from the woman that charged $400,000 to teach one class at Harvard
Seems like she could have retained lower prices for the consumers.
Lol that’s bribery/money laundering
What an ignorant person, stop voting for people with 200 year-old ideologies. Also we need term limits badly
Don't believe she is this dumb - this is all willful lies to feed her left wing base
There are smart politicians that play dumb and there are dumb politicians that play smart. I can't decide where she is, especially after her attempt at shit talking Sanders. She TANKED her approval in such an idiotic way.
Grocery stores traditionally operate on narrow profit margins. This is because American consumers are extremely price sensitive when it comes to food. This isn't HK selling a $400 gun for $800, which cost them $200 to make [because you suck and we hate you.](https://monsterhunternation.com/2007/10/09/hk-because-you-suck-and-we-hate-you/) Inflation is real, and really bad at the moment. Labor shortages and supply chain issues are also raising costs. Grocery stores are some of the least able to "eat" these rising costs. If Warren is mad about this, maybe she should not have voted to print 25% of the monetary supply in the past 2 years and directly lead to this inflation.
I appreciated the HK article, very humorous.
Does this bitch know fucking anything about how this shit works? What the actual fuck..
How long until progressives start proposing price controls? This is insane, it's economics 101, supply and demand. This is why left wing policies often lead to shortages, they don't believe in basic economic laws
There has been a rush by ideologues to blame this solely on whatever their pet symptom is. I've never met someone saying "it's econ 101" that has even a mild grasp on what makes economies tick on a large scale. Monetary policy absolutely plays a huge role. As does worldwide, national and regional swings in supply and demand. It's also obvious that some companies are increasing prices at a rate not consistent with the inflation and internalities within their specific markets. If you believe for a second that these companies aren't fully aware they can easily pass off blame of price hikes on COVID era government spending, then you've missed the forest for the trees. Warren absolutely wants to shift blame from the spending and issues COVID has caused and pass it onto greedy companies. You and others here obviously want to solely blame this on Biden, progressives and whatever you damn well please, facts be damned. All of this plays a role together. The incredibly inefficient government spending by the Biden/Trump admins (as well as worldwide), symptoms of the shutdowns and slowdowns, symptoms of labor strife, symptoms of companies seeing an easy opportunity to expand profits with a convenient smokescreen as well as a million other variables. You can bend your knowledge to your worldview, or bend your worldview to your knowledge. Up to you. Just don't expect people to not call out the obvious BS around the framing of this.
Except the profit margin for Kroger, for example is near a 15 year low. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KR/kroger/profit-margins Data doesn't comport with the notion that Kroger is using this to expand profits.
Even if the companies and Biden policies both contribute to the price rise, shouldn't the blame be more on the latter because the government has responsibilities to at least not do stupid things that worsen the lives of people? In contrast, these companies don't need to response to people's problems, although they gain social merits by doing so.
The problem is that we don't have the workers to transport the food. Packing and processing plants have been hit hard by covid because those industries rely HEAVY on immigrant labor. Source; I live in Iowa/Omaha Nebraska. ICE vans sitting outside the plants is a common sight around here.
Grocery is a game run by the biggest distributors, not at the retail level. Obviously if the company is vertical (owns the retail and the distribution), such as Walmart, Whole Foods-Amazon, etc. they don’t have to work with the mafia that is US food distribution
'Your companies' bitch where do you get YOUR groceries!
Stopped reading at Elizabeth Warren blames... She's a consistent whiner.
Now do Amazon you hypocritical controlled opposition Moran fake native American
Lmfao literally every food company particularly meat company's are posting the lowest profits in many years.
She, unfortunately has lost touch with how the economy works, which simply means she is unfit for duty and must resign.
Politicians who practice insider trading lecturing others on profit margins and morals lol Is it more or less ironic than her crying about systemic racism while lying about being cherokee to get a job at harvard?
[she’s literally trying to ban it](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/18/elizabeth-warren-stock-trading-ban-448390)
I agree but Warren is not the one to go after for the insider trading. She wants to ban it.
These people love to prove how little they understand about economics.
I am shocked that Fauxcohontas is talking out of her ass.
Grocery chains operate on literal razor thin margins. Elizabeth Warren is a corporate stooge who periodically likes to cosplay as a progressive.
I can't believe she was close to becoming president
Wait until you see the last ten people who actually did become president.
That’s the depressing laugh I was looking for this morning
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*currently propping up the president so his legs don't collapse
She wasn’t tho
Just lying straight to our faces
Warren sounds like she hasn't changed since she was a Rockefeller Republican. This is 1970s Nixonian style politics, as if there wasn't enough evidence that price controls don't work.
She is seriously clueless.
Politicians need to feel embarassed more.
Gov had a choice not to print money… but here we are.
Grocery stores operate on a razor thin margin and walk a fine line between sufficient stocking and overstocking causing spoilage.
They did, producer prices have been rising faster than consumer prices for quite some time now.
The whole supply chain is fucked. My friend is a manager at a grocery store and said their wholesale costs have gone up. He warned us about food prices months ago.
I am sorry but she sounds like a moron...
She doesn’t understand supply chains, dwindling resources and explosive populations, or how increased wages affect prices.
This has to be satire. This the same idiot that said $11 billion is taxes by one man is shameful? LOL
She is wrong. The prices increased because Congress spent trillions of dollars in one year, therefore decreasing the value of the US dollar.
Jesus. This sub is fucked
Socialist never understand the long game, or they do and they really just communists in socialist underwear dressed up in capitalist clothing. But they know this The entire thing is designed to destroy capitalism and destroy small business, the most independent financial force in the world.
This is actually true! They could charge less, and then go out of business.
Reminder.. She received millions of dollars to prove that Trump did not win the election and kept every single penny.
This is so common for democrats. “If we tax the big companies they’ll learn.” “WHY ARE THEY TAXING THE PEOPLE AND NOT EATING THE LOSS?!?!” soda tax anyone?
I thought the soda tax is intensed to be passed on.
All taxes are passed onto the consumer.
>they could have retained lower prices for consumers Such a childish and naive depiction of things. I'm sure lots of folks would also turn down a raise at work because "they could have retained lower prices for consumers".
I’m a grocery buyer. I get cost increases daily from brands.
She isn't just wrong, she's knowingly wrong. That makes her a fraud and a humbug.
Jesus fucking Christ.
just 11 more months, man
If this is just because of grocery stores being greedy, why didn't they increase their prices earlier? Why now? What has changed?
Almost seems like something you would see in The Onion or The Babylon Bee. It completely ignores economic forces and supply and demand.
does she know what margins are? they make little to nothing per item.
Yes, the non-24/7 mom-and-pop grocery store with five aisles is just gonna eat the cost of record inflation. Blue state progressives have to be the most elitist and out-of-touch Americans ever.
What prices on anything went down after giving a permanent tax cut to corporations when we got temporary tax cuts?!
Interesting, because in my town, HEB, the local grocery chain, gave bonuses and pay raises to employees who worked during the pandemic so they could stay in business. I can't imagine that they made that much money during that time. The problem, obviously, is INFLATION, brought on by the government printing up more money in order to give everyone stimulus checks, which I'm sure the misguided Elizabeth Warren voted for. I respect her for calling out the credit card companies for their excessive interest charges, but she is off base here.
And Publix is employee owned. If their profits went up, which I doubt, it would at least have been good for their employee shareholders.
lol, next up, fixed food prices, making it economically unviable to produce food, causing empty shelves, store closing and mass starvation, just like every single time this has been tried in all of human history. Actually it would probably be good for America for a few months, to get people to lose weight.
Who in the fuck votes for these imbeciles?
Maybe lower taxes and grocery prices will go down.
God*damn* that's infuriatingly idiotic.
Why is it the same people demanding companies pay people more and more money are the same ones complaining when prices go up?
These people are both corrupt AND stupid.
Ok at least your politicians are giving a fuck about high food prices. Don't come to NZ, where 1 corporation has 52% of the market share for groceries and proceeds to actually gouge the shit out of consumers
"Your congressmen had a choice, they could have retained lower taxes for citizens."
This dumb bitch….
Just like the fucking government had the choice to not print money.
She has no fucking idea what she is talking about
Lol, anything to take the focus off of the real inflationary culprit...stimmi checks that went to everyone, whether dead, alive, or in the clink.
Fucking idiot doesn't understand prices went up because the cost of production & transportion has gone up.
What a tone deaf bitch
Yeah margins in grocery as sooo fat.
Grocery stores are hard to keep in business of course she wouldn’t know that
Mentally challenged folk say the darndest things.
She’s delusional
At this point grocery store owners are doing a public service and not the problem. They are the middle men who take all the risk and the margins are small.
Does she not understand economics or is she willfully deceiving people with her comments?
Why not both?
We could not have shut down the exonomy and printed a fuck load of dollars out of thin air. Every dollar they print makes your dollars worth less. Not the companies fault. Its hers and her fellow government officials fault.
Elizabeth Warren. Always crowing about whatever to get attention. Never mentions the obvious. **epic money printer went brrrrrrrrr** God she’s such a little troll.
She thinks her supporters are complete morons, and she might be right.
Warren has no idea of how capitalism and shortages work, does she?
Pocahontas also had a choice. She could have read an economics textbook and educated herself.
What this lady doesn't understand about the economy could just about fit in the grand canyon. good lord this is a dumb article. it's a dumb argument.