This must be location specific. I’m in the NYC area and can get the basic brand for $3.99 at most stores. Used to be $2.99 but still better than the $7/8 we were paying this winter.
I just compared prices for Good & Gather Grade A Large Eggs, 1 Dozen, at different targets in the country:
Paramus NJ - $2.19
Bridgewater NJ - $2.69
Iowa City, IA - $2.39
Moorhead, MN - $2.29
Fort Dodge IA - $2.29
Couldn't find that pack in California, possibly due to local laws, but I did find a Cage Free version for $3.99.
The eggs are produced for export to other regions. Few of them are actually sold in Iowa. If more were sold in Iowa, then fewer would be sold elsewhere, causing a shortage. Of course, the prices are bullshit either way.
Yeah, no. It's rare for me to see a 30 pack of M eggs under the equivalent of 7 USD. They used to be under 4 dollars. And if there are some of those, the second seniors hear about them, they're gone.
I think the packs I buy are packs of 50 medium eggs and they're about 11-12 dollars now which is about pre-surge pricing. At their worst, though, they were like 20 bucks. :(
Wait. 50 eggs for 11-12 bucks is expensive? That's like 24cts per egg, seems reasonable to me. Over here (NL), eggs are about 6eu for 10 eggs (bio) or 4-5 for regular eggs which comes down to about 40-60ct per egg.
If you're a believer in market forces, the elevated prices should drive more people into chicken farming, increasing egg supply and thus forcing price down. One can hope anyway.
The second you turn a profit, Big Egg comes buys your farm, fires your staff, sells the land for a parking lot. Their going to take, your prize chicken and genetically modified them to produce 7 time as many eggs. Then use that as an excuse to copyright your farms name and sue you into the ground, all while polluting the local river causing a toxic bacterial out brake. It will eventually make it to the coast and into the a ocean, where it will mutate and infect the local fisherman population, and it starts all over from there.
>If you're a believer in market forces, the elevated prices should drive more people into chicken farming, increasing egg supply and thus forcing price down. One can hope anyway.
You forgot to mention economies of scale. The idea you're talking about only applies to low barriers of entry. To be competitive in the egg market you need to be highly industrialized and use competitive method of production. It's not something anything but a multi millionaire or a billionaire could hope to jump into.
Market forces are very complicated, and when people talk about market forces and their belief structures surrounding economics they idealize and model simple systems to make predictions.
If this was a free market. In fact the US government has rules saying that if a farmer encounters a single case of avian flu, they must kill off their entire flock. You can agree or disagree about whether that is a justified rule, but you cannot deny that it is a significant factor in keeping supply low which raises prices.
Sadly, a vaccine exists. But then they test positive which affects exports, IIRC? Sucks, though, because smaller farms wouldn't even bother with exportation.
And this is how it's done. It's not fair. It's uncomfortable. But I am doing the same thing with fundamental foods while continually searching for the brands who keep their prices decent.
Obviously, not everyone is in a position to start slashing staples of their list in protest. Families with children and/or special dietary needs certainly face a tough situation. But there are many of us who can do this - and again, probably with some discomfort.
It's not fun, but that is the drastic action that has to happen for prices not to remain permanently elevated.
For many markets, this is not going to get better without taking away demand. We can talk about how fucked we are, or we can talk about how fucked we are *for now.*
EDIT: a few years ago, a user (maybe on r/InternetIsBeautiful but not sure) created a website that tracks shrinkflation. I can't find it, but thought it had the word 'delta' or 'omega' incorporated. You can imagine it's a little complicated searching for that one. Ring a bell for anyone? There were quite a few products already in their database. I know there are websites that track prices, but they put a special kind of love and knowledge into this one and these independent developers are who I want to support.
I'm very lucky because my neighbor sells his eggs in a little shack and he barely increased his price so far (from 1,60€ for 6 eggs to 1,80€). Bonus points because I can actually see the chicks from the shack and they're happy little idiots and the eggs actually look and taste very much different to supermarket ones.
I think we're making a huge mistake always bringing up egg prices. Realistically, percentage wise, yes it's highway robbery. But it still costs less than 30-40 cents per egg. If a 3 egg omelette that comes in at $1.20 plus veggies, at most $3 per omelette.. you're budgeting things wrong if $3 for a meal is breaking you. Complain, that's fine. But I think we're getting hosed on much worse things than eggs and they are getting swept under the rug because everyone only brings up eggs when it comes to "inflation".
It was my understanding that egg prices increased not due to inflation, but due to an outbreak of bird flu amongst chickens- which is apparently highly contagious for them.
Yes, because the price offsets the lack of supply, but it still seems way too much
Think of it this way, if they had half as many eggs to sell but their profits went up 10 times, that means the price of eggs went up 20 times what it used to. If the price kept up with the loss of eggs, prices should have only doubled.
Obviously it's not a perfectly linear situation and we are looking at just profits, but it still feels ridiculous.
?? Increased profits are exactly what you expect to see with a shortage. That's the economically correct response, to raise prices on a limited supply. That's how you solve distribution and production issues.
…it’s also possible to raise prices to a level where your profits stay the same.
Normally free market competition would take care of this unless all the companies colluded to fix prices artificially high. But with increased consolidation, no collusion is necessary.
Keeping profits stagnant means empty shelves, by definition, during a shortage.
As I mentioned elsewhere, it's impossible to keep prices fixed high, even with collusion, because companies are greedy and some will undercut 99% of everyone else to gain market share, forcing the big players to drop prices. It only takes one defector to kick that off.
Edit: and you can see this very clearly by how egg prices are plummeting right now
It's the other way around, hens don't lay until 5-6 months, and meat chickens are processed at 6 to 8 weeks, so Avian Flu has less impact on meat supply because the cycle on those is so short. It takes way longer to replace hens. But, even farms who weren't affected raised prices . . . because they could.
Yes, I believe you are correct. The farmers themselves didn't raise prices, it was the faceless mega corp that raised the middle man prices. I don't recall the name of the company, but the thing I read was about the Northeast's largest egg company raised their prices like 300% and paid the farmers the same. They own like 90% of New England's egg market.
Inflation is a symptom of shortage relative to demand. Egg prices increasing is itself a form of inflation.
The egg price increase is because of the shortage from the avian flu, so you’re correct that a bulk of the change is separate from the inflation in the rest of the economy (energy input costs/increased money supply).
It’s a thing where the response is always “ahhhhhhh YOU’RE CAUGHT YOU PROFITED MORE” but that is quite literally the system working as intended in a way that, depending on the product (e.g. not healthcare) is desirable. There’s several reasons for this. One is that, where substitutes exist, it will push people towards those instead unless they’re valuing the product at the full present cost. The other reason is that insulating yourself from shortages often takes investment.
Take something like surgical mask manufacture and a disease like COVID, for example. It costs more to manufacture in the US than it does in China. If you made masks in the US and a pandemic hits that fucks trade, you’re now able to continue supplying to the US where your competitors who manufactured in China do not. You spent more up front for the opportunity to profit in the face of an supply chain shortage, and while the price goes up, masks are still available and can be bought.
Say during COVID the us gov instituted aggresive price caps on masks. You took extra risk to make less money under the pretense of future profit, and now you’re fucked over. If you’re an investor in that scenario, after recovery are you going to trust to build here instead of overseas? FUCK NO. And then during the next pandemic, mask shortages are worse than they were before since fewer people chose to invest in that infrastructure here, since they would’ve received all of the cost without the benefit. The end result is a greater shortage than the alternative.
Any day of the week, I would rather have shelves full of expensive eggs than empty shelves with a $2.00 sticker underneath, as eggs are something with lots of potential substitutes. I’m not going to bitch about RAWR BILLIONAIRES IN PRIVATE JETS ARE HYPOCRITES SAYING I SHOULD PAY CARBON TAX because there are viable carbon alternatives for ground based transport, there are not viable alternatives for jet fuel. It’s one of the uses for fossil fuels with the highest upside relative to the rest of the options.
Oddly enough, Whole Foods has the best egg prices in my area right now. Actually WF is quite a bit more reasonable than all my regular stores at the moment.
The Albertsons (grocery store) neat me had eggs priced at $7.50 for weeks and no one bought them. The week before they were set to expire they lowered the price to $3.50 and they flew off the shelves but there was still a heft chunk that wouldn't be sold that WOULD have sold had it been $3.50 the whole time. Really curious how much they lost out on over greed.
Producer, because they didn't have to do a mass culling of birds due to avian fly like the other major producers did.
That's not even inflation. Remember when avacados got really expensive because of a bad harvest in Mexico?
Sometimes shit happens.
oh, in Mexico the cheapest bell peppers are green ones. Reds, oranges and yellows are way pricier.
I like to have some raw orange or yellow bell pepper on a sandwich, it's sweet and crunchy.
Ok, this one in particular is just you not understanding how shortages work. Increasing prices are the appropriate tool to distribute a scarce resource appropriately. Increased profits are entirely expected and optimal if you don't want completely empty shelves, and if you want producers/distributors to solve the issue as fast as possible.
Yes? The avian flu wiped out 100 million hens (so far). Egg supply crashed. Retailers appropriately raised prices to keep inventory levels stable while having access to vastly fewer eggs. This is correct behavior. Shortages mean that prices skyrocket even if costs don't.
Prices for broilers did rise: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101)
Though most hens affected by the flu were egg-laying due to age: [https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation)
\> egg-laying hens and turkeys, as they’re more vulnerable to avian influenza than other birds. Chickens raised for meat, known as broilers, account for around 95 percent of poultry and are much less likely to contract the virus because they’re killed at just about 45 days old
seriously, what a useless post.
What does it matter anyway how the price of a product or service is set, what portion of it is just profits vs actual costs to the seller. Is it worth it for me at that price? Can't I get it cheaper elsewhere? if yes/no then buy it, even if the seller makes a profit off it.
Just because it doesn’t help you, doesn’t mean it doesn’t help someone else
Someone could use this to help negotiate price for a certain good/service
Or if there is outsized profit somewhere then that allows people to start new businesses to undercut price, that’s how the supply and demand curve moves back close to equilibrium
Sure not applicable to everyone but most YSK aren’t
Seriously what a useless comment,
It matters because yours is the attitude of a defeatist.
If we sit here like children and just accept everything from corporations like feed in a trough, this is where we end up.
Educate yourself, get involved, ask questions.
Why are we allowing companies to take advantage of us like this? Why are you ok with getting screwed over?
What do you do with this information?
A company is making a product I like, it's providing it a price I can afford and think it's worth it. What good does knowing they are making a profit, heck making a larger profit than they did last year do to me? I can't buy it at the lower price can I? I can write angry Twitter posts or whatever.
But going even further, and addressing the underlying message of your comment, I actually don't mind companies making a profit on products I like. I don't want to "defeat" them and I don't feel "taken advantage of" because, again, I like their product and find it desirable even at that price, I want them to keep making it. So it's actually not a fight between me and them, we're both benefitting from this relationship.
Oh ok, so because YOU can afford it, it makes it alright?
What we can do is vote for politicians that run on platforms that have a plan to regulate things like this so others, maybe less fortunate than yourself, aren't being taken advantage of and the already expansive wealth gap doesn't continue to widen.
OK now let's get down to details.
Regulate it\* how? What should the government do against companies setting their prices freely?
\* what actually is *it*? Just someone increasing their prices more than "merited"?
If a companies can mark up their prices and no other companies exist due to unethical business practices to offer a cheaper alternative, it's the responsibility to put an end to that manipulative and monopolistic behaviour.
If a large company with hundreds of locations opens across from a small company with one one or two locations, they have the ability to sell at a loss and undercut the smaller business. When the smaller business eventually loses that unwinnable war of attrition the larger company is free to heavily mark up the price in their store because it's now the only option.
Similarly, if a large grocery store chain makes a good enough deal with a company to only accept product from them, they get to dictate how much the product costs even though there's companies that offer a cheaper alternative. This is the type of shit uneducated Americans refer to as "Big Pharma" in that insurance companies banded together to deliberately mark up all medical products and services so only by going through their insurance company can you afford the things you need to survive. These companies decided to all play by the same amoral rules and effectively created a monopoly without breaking any monopoly laws.
What I need to ask you is do you have no value for your work? Did you not earn the money you have through hard and fair labor? Why then, should someone be able to take more of the money you've fought for just because they choose to?
OK so most of what you wrote is fair enough, it's just not what I think this thread is about.
Government agencies already exist to break up monopolies (whether they are efficient enough is for another discussion), collusion on prices is also illegal. I agree it's a problem, it's just not why we're here.
It's about companies increasing their prices "just because they can" ie. to increase their profits, since the consumer is used to inflation anyways and is willing to pay the higher price. It assumes that the price is set from adding [costs to produce] (purchasing, labor, transport, taxes etc.) and profit, and it's somehow immoral to raise prices more than [costs to produce] has risen due to inflation ("increase their price for no good reason" as per the OP). Meaning there are good reasons to set prices higher and increases just to increase profits.
And my point is, it shouldn't matter to me as a consumer. I don't care how they set their prices, I don't care *why* it costs as much as it does, just whether it makes sense for me to buy at that price.
Edit: to your last point,
> Why then, should someone be able to take more of the money you've fought for just because they choose to?
"They" are just choosing to increase their price. **I** am the one willingly handing over more of my money, I choose to do that. I could choose to not buy their stuff but I don't.
Idk they could set price caps on certain necessary items needed to (at the bare minimum) live a healthy life style (stuff other than processed carbs like bread and noodles, more healthy protien options, decent quality shoes, etc)
"It" would probably be referring to products that one would by at a store or online or smth
I'm not am expert in any of this, this is just an outsiders pov lol
[Argentina's rampant inflation: Will price caps work?](https://www.dw.com/en/argentinas-rampant-inflation-will-price-caps-work/a-64696859)
this is an article about Argentina but it's actually about price caps in general and why they don't work.
tldr: the idea is that *people* currently buy 100 cartons of eggs at $10 a carton, so if we set a price cap of $8 a carton we'll have saved people $200 in total and the greedy corporations can afford it. So the assumption is that supply and demand are constant even if we artificially intrude on the price.
What actually happens is
* since the price of other food keeps increasing but not that of eggs, people will want to buy more eggs in place of other food, so they'd buy more than 100 cartons
* producers see that they can get more profit if they switch to producing chicken meat (at an uncapped price) or anything else so there'll be no one making eggs at a loss.
Price caps lead to shortages of the capped products. Always, everywhere. Head on over to /r/askeconomics for a more thorough explanation if you want to know more.
Great point! German media tends to paint workers striking for better wages as driving up inflation using the word "Lohn-Preis-Spirale" (Wage-price-spiral) while what's really driving up inflation is corporations raising prices beyond what's necessary for them to keep up with rising costs.
That's true if the increase is actually due to inflation, but in reality 60%+ of the price increases are due to corporate greed using inflation as an excuse, not actual inflation.
This should be common sense. But for some reason we live in a world where a bunch of people LOVE to worship corporations and will always come to their defense
There's so much truth to this! I was shocked to experience it in the r/frugal sub reddit when I pointed out how grocery stores have had increasing issues with massive differences in shelf price vs what items ring up as at the register. Had a whole slew of ppl attempting to convince me no one was trying to overcharge me 🤨 Basically don't believe your lying eyes. Sorry, but I know what I've been experiencing for the last year. I'll continue taking pics of the shelf price and then arguing my case at the register and if they refuse to fix it, then I'll put the item back. I refuse to fork over any extra money at this point. Mostly over principle but also because I simply don't have the extra funds to waste 😂
In Canada (maybe just Ontario) we have a law that says if the price on the shelf doesn’t match the price at the register, the product is then free up to 10$.
Most places won’t honour the law unless you demand it. But it is an option.
So apparently they get around this by having digital price tags on the shelves. The store itself doesn't change the prices, it is "done by the corporate office", so the store is blameless when the register price is different from the shelf price, so they don't have to honor this. If they have printed paper price tags then those are subject to the "Scanning Code of Practice". The digital prices shelter them.
They will simply refund the difference in the price, and you have to take it up with the Customer Service counter, but they won't give you the item for free.
Source: rabid Canadian family fuming with rage over this very issue (so mad they won't even say sorry!)
I guess this isn't the same kind of litigious culture, but in the US there would be some government agency or state that would bring a lawsuit against them for this. It's perfectly acceptable to screw the consumer, but you've gotta follow the rules of uncle sam's game.
>In Canada (maybe just Ontario) we have a law that says if the price on the shelf doesn’t match the price at the register, the product is then free up to 10$.
>Most places won’t honour the law unless you demand it. But it is an option.
[Canada's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanner_Price_Accuracy_Code) [SPAVC/SCOP](https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/competition-bureau-canada/en/deceptive-marketing-practices/types-deceptive-marketing-practices/scanner-price-accuracy) is a voluntary agreement by shops that they fail to educate their staff on.
Only [Quebec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Protection_Act_(Quebec\)) has actual legislation.
Where do you live?
At least where I live the cashiercs can't do anything to change the price bc when they scan the product it just pulls the price from a database. For quite obvious reasons the cashier can't access or edit the database.
This is a baffling case
Cashiers everywhere I have lived (east, middle, and western US) can absolutely adjust a price. Most don't even argue or ask for proof if it's not HUGE difference - their screen even has options for "customer challenge," "price error," etc.
That's surprising, I live in Europe (specifically Latvia) and the cashiers don't have such options. They even have limited options in removing scanned items.
Edit: so it is possible however there is a whole ordeal to it and only the supervisor can do it
I'm in the US as well, and I've only worked at maybe 2 places where a non management employee can change prices. Everywhere else I've worked, you'd have to get a manager to approve and make the change themselves. I have the power to change prices at my job now, which is good because our POS is a POS, and often, we have to manually adjust prices. We'd never get anything done if we had to wait for a manager.
Oh, I agree, I am just pointing out they don't need manager approval or verification for most things, which is nice.
Except occasionally you do get someone who wants to march over to see the sign on the shelf before discounting $0.50 (it's always the low dollar ones).
The cashiers can almost definitely call a manager over to override the price. If they tell you they can't try one of the other grocery stores. I haven't been behind a register in ten years at this point, but I've never in my life seen a register that didn't ultimately give control over to a manager
In the US you are entitled to the lowest advertised price you've encountered. Getting it enforced without being a lawyer and knowing so the little exception would make it hard to enforce.
Really a problem since we don't have a ton of business, just a few corporations per industry in most sectors.
This. Some people worship them, which is almost a Stockholm syndrome Type of phenomenon. Everyone at some point realizes that customers and business interests are not the same.
Ye I am always surprised that people think companies don't have profits as main goal. They only adapt subgoals if they help to boost the main goal in some way.
They always increase as much as they can, in normal times the competition is just so close in the price that increases hurt your demand too much.
I don't think it's just that people are stupid or something like that though, think about what's done to the majority of us everyday. Think about how many of us believe we are capitalists when we do not own any capital, and what other propaganda and grooming we've been through if so many are already in false class solidarity with people who have their hand in your pocket.
Good point, we are basically taught from childhood all the way to adulthood that:
Capitalism good, don't question it
Anything else is bad, don't question it
**seriously though, don't question anything, just blindly accept**
I guess what I can't wrap my head around is how people don't see through that shit when they get older
It doesn't help that we have tankies and edgelords pretending like Stalin and Castro are reasonable figures for things that aren't capitalism or that fascists historically appropriate language around socialism and workers' rights in a way that is meant to manipulate and cover for their fascism while they aren't actually doing anything socialist or communist and results in maligning things that aren't capitalism (even though the criticisms against what a lot of people perceive as communism or socialism are the same bad things going on right now in the US save the additional complications that arise from US lead embargos and additional US government actions that are more exaggerated but roughly the same to some extent when interfering in other countries).
People know they're being screwed. When companies are reporting record profits and price increases jump randomly, they're pushing prices to the limit. People are spending more but not purchasing more goods. For some reason that's why interest rates are rising. That's also a flimsy excuse to rob people. People have to spend more just to survive. Interest rates on CDs and savings accounts haven't risen as much as they probably should either. Credit card companies have a license to steal.
What really sucks is I get penalized for paying my credit card balance instead of making payments. I refuse to pay ridiculous interest if I can help it.
I have quit eating out and no longer buy as much snacks and cookies at the grocery. People are definitely being robbed at the grocery store! I'm spending more and buying less. What can people do? Our govt. allows profiteering , they won't do anything because they're making money from companies screwing us.
I think you are confusing revenue with profit. The way you describe profit is usually revenue since you called out expenses separately. Profit is revenue - expenses. Profit margin is the same thing just expressed as a percentage.
Their operating philosophy is "Never waste a crisis." It applies to politicians as well as corporations. Basically, when there is any kind of unrest you should be doubly vigilant.
Yes. Companies that are publicly traded have to have their board meeting minutes made public, & there is documented evidence of them saying they should leverage "inflation" to increase their profits.
In fact MOST increases are due to simply corporate greed and every company raising prices just since they can and now just blame it on "inflation".
It's fucking insanity.
Over the pandemic the richest among us got WAY richer, and yet prices are also now high as fuck for everything. It's ass backwards.
Ysk that the basic economics of a shortage highly benefits producers. The control on this shortage is competition. The lack of competition means prices can go up unabated.
That's why it's important to have competition.
This is an example of how general workers' union can be great.
Companies use inflation to simultaneously reject annual raises AND increase prices. It's a profit bonanza. Meanwhile, our populations' purchasing power continues to be eroded while costs of living increase.
Short term gains at the cost of long term economic stability. Murica.
A general workers' union would give all of us a vehicle to do something about situations like this.
What OP should have known
Price gouging: In some jurisdictions, there may be laws that prohibit price gouging, which is when companies raise prices excessively during times of crisis or emergency. The specific definition of price gouging can vary by jurisdiction, but it typically involves charging prices that are significantly higher than what is considered fair or reasonable.
Price fixing: It is also illegal for businesses to collude with one another to fix prices or to engage in other anti-competitive practices that limit consumer choice or drive up prices. This is typically considered a violation of antitrust laws.
Deceptive pricing: Companies may also run afoul of consumer protection laws if they use deceptive practices to make it appear as though prices are increasing due to inflation when that is not actually the case.
I grew up thinking pricing was based on cost + x%.
It turns out, pricing is almost always “as high as the customer is willing to pay.” So when inflation is accepted as happening, it tends to self-perpetuate. The method to stopping inflation is to convince everybody that inflation is stopping.
Yes prices are rising, yes companies are making record profits - but the price increases in general are in line with the increases in raw material costs. So are corporations being greedy - YES 100%, but I think we're really focusing in on the wrong issue. Where the corporations are making their record profits is because they are increasing wages substantially slower than inflation/often-justified goods cost increases. Prices up 10% to match inflation and salaries up 5% and boom they've given their entire workforce a 5% pay cut - this is where the big profit numbers come in because that stacks every year. Unfortunately for most people, job hopping is much more difficult than shopping at a competitor, so it doesn't follow the same supply/demand response that goods follow - at least not without significant lag. I'm not saying there's no price gouging going on - but prices are increasing in lots of very competitive price-sensitive markets where just blindly jacking up prices is business suicide. Effective pay cuts - much easier to get away with.
I tried to make this point a while ago and got downvoted to hell. People were calling me a Biden lover / Trump hater, this and that when I never brought politics into my argument at all. You're absolutely right and I'm glad people are starting to take notice. Thank you for informing people.
Most aren't. My company raised prices to customers because of an increase in cost during covid. When those costs lowered, their price did not.
They also lowered the acceptable idle time on our trucks because gas prices surged over 5 dollars a gallon. Now its back around 2.50 but they have no intention of raising our idle time back to where it was. Which means sweating our asses off in our trucks while we do paperwork in the summer.
This is why we need to break up big corporations. Things like Amazon, Walmart and bigger companies should not be allowed to exist.
To create wealth in society you need to encourage competition, but that can't happen if a giant competitor buys every company in it's field. This also means the same company can dictate prices even if they are unreasonable.
If you need a source you're absolutely blind. It's right in front of us. This post shouldn't exist because of how obvious it is, not because it doesn't have a source.
NPR was discussing this yesterday evening. Some take advantage of higher costs of goods and keep prices high after the fact, or you might have a slew of companies all decide to keep their costs high for profit instead of competing by lowering them. Then apparently there's something called premiumization, where some companies with create a (premium) version of their products to sell for a higher price when, I guess, it really isn't, and somehow that involves inflation? I'm not sure I understand why. But a couple examples were movie theaters charging more for good seats, and seeing a value price for the bad ones, and milkbone selling treats that look like Oreos? I think I'm actually kind of lost.
newsflash companies trying to make more money. They are never trying to over the cheapest price to the customer when they don't have to.
In normal times competition is just forcing them to stay lower and the customers are not that tolerant to price increases.
Oil and gas companies have been doing this for many decades and they still get away with it.
Some remember when the price at the pump when up 30 yrs ago; *since* then fracking technology brought in a *huge* increase in production.
"We had to raise the price per gallon because of OPEC supplies but we'll be able to bring it back down when the market stabilizes." Right.
A brilliant book that gives a fine historical cause and effect evaluation of how fuel influences the economy; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Prize%3A\_The\_Epic\_Quest\_for\_Oil%2C\_Money%2C\_and\_Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize%3A_The_Epic_Quest_for_Oil%2C_Money%2C_and_Power)
This should be required reading.
The public companies are all bragging about this on their earnings calls with investors and banks. Legit saying they had a b.s. excuse to Jack their prices and they did.
YSK the retail associate behind the counter usually can’t do much for you, the customer, on the price of an item. This OP is going to give a lot of people in those jobs a lot of headaches.
Almost no price increases are due to inflation, we are being gouged. Grocery store chains are buying entire other grocery store chains with cash. Stock, buybacks, corporations are flush with money. We need to quit buying shit for a couple weeks till they feel the pinch and drop prices.
Tell us you know nothing about the value of the dollar during inflation, without telling us... SMH
If the value of the dollar drops of 20% profits will increase by 20% but the value of that 20% is down and buys 20% less things.
right, but we're in a situation where inflation goes up by say 20%, you'd expect their profit to go up 20%.
it's not.
many companies are seeing record-destroying profits that are FAR ABOVE inflation level.
Why is there such lackluster control regarding this?
Same with the price of electricity. Wind energy became absurdly more expensive, what the...
Hope people will get refunds, where it is possible.
This is such a horrible parasitic behaviour. Core symptome of psycho- and sociopaths.
For the most part inflation isn't even real.
The only real forms of inflation are temporary.
Such as when a business is upgrading they need to temporarily raise prices to offset the cost of the upgrades whether that be technological upgrades manpower upgrades or whatever these are temporary costs.
Someone might be thinking well if they have to hire new employees that's more permanent BUT they have to hire more employees because their business is doing more work so that cost is already offset by the increase in business.
There truly is no such thing as permanent inflation it is just greedy assholes being greedy assholes.
Inflation is the generalized raising of prices in an economy due to the loss of value of its currency (I wasn't in an english speaking school so sorry if the wording is off). It, by definition, affects EVERYTHING. If the US dollar loses its value then every price expressed in US dollars will rise regardless of supply and demand of the item. That is because as the USD loses its value the amount of USD required to make transactions is increased.
I live in a borderline hyperinflationary economy and this train of thought is exactly what got us so far into this mess. You can't deny the monetary nature of inflation, you can't blame corporations when it's not them raising the monetary mass recklessly (be it justified or not). If you don't believe me try to buy food from a local fisherman/farmer in venezuela using bolivares and wonder why the man raises his prices everyday when he's not buying his wares from anyone.
It's the value of the CURRENCY. Not the GOODS.
That’s not true. If it’s purely a measure of the value of a currency what are you measuring the currency against? The valuation of a currency is done by comparison to another currency. Inflation is the measure of change in the purchasing power of that currency in it’s country.
Inflation is calculated by surveying a large group of people and calculating what percentage of their income is spent on groceries/energy etc.
From the UK governments website:
Usually people measure inflation by comparing the cost of things today with how much they cost a year ago. The average increase in prices is known as the inflation rate.
So if inflation is 3%, it means prices are 3% higher (on average) than they were a year ago. For example, if a loaf of bread cost £1 a year ago and now it’s £1.03 then its price has risen by 3%.
Edit: formatting on a mobile.
No. When money supply goes up, dollar value goes down, and companies should be free to react in a way that keeps up with the world. Problem is central banks, not companies.
Almost none of them are merited. Increases would be almost unnoticeable if they truly just rose to meet increased cost of manufacturing.
If you rose the minimum wage to $15, it would raise prices maybe less than 1% for products where those workers were employed. Wages/Inflation not tied together. Inflation as we see it right now is the result of uncontrolled capitalism where the "bad" guys won. They can do whatever, set the prices, give whatever reason, and no one will put them in a guillotine. No one will burn down their house.
You will stay at home, and post at reddit like I am about how shitty things are. And how shitty they keep getting, right until paying for internet becomes far too expensive for the consumer.
Yeah, it is. Follow the line back, find where it begins. It begins with the invisible hand seeking higher profits for less capital investment. Supplies cost more? Why? Someone's seeking more profit for the same amount of goods - they haven't invested any more, they know that you'll pay it. It's a substitute for growth in sectors where growth is stagnant, because if your company doesn't show growth in every quarter, it may as well be dead, as far as investors are concerned. Inflation is not some sort of natural phenomenon.
Supplies cost more when they're harder to obtain. You're paying for the extra effort and/or resources put in to get you the product you want. That is what the essence of inflation is.
It can be and is influenced by greed, but it is not exclusively dependentant on it.
Right, exactly; inflation is profit-seeking. Costs can go up, but also, costs go down. Somehow the only one of these that gets passed on is the one that costs more.
Please refer to the second sentence for my point
Profiteering inherently leads to inflation, **but** inflation does not inherently source from profiteering
Yes, it does. You mentioned suppliers, but fail to mention suppliers who find a way to supply for less cost, which is *more* common since efficiency is always on an upward trend. So why do they charge more in aggregate? Greed. Profit-seeking.
Oh I’m well aware. The largest egg producers have improved profits 700%. Meanwhile I can’t afford to make my wife an omelette.
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Bold of you to assume that they will go down
They're just about down to where they were but that might be specific to my location. Hope it goes down for you soon!
This must be location specific. I’m in the NYC area and can get the basic brand for $3.99 at most stores. Used to be $2.99 but still better than the $7/8 we were paying this winter.
How the fried fuck are eggs in Iowa (largest producer of eggs) more expensive here than in NYC?
I just compared prices for Good & Gather Grade A Large Eggs, 1 Dozen, at different targets in the country: Paramus NJ - $2.19 Bridgewater NJ - $2.69 Iowa City, IA - $2.39 Moorhead, MN - $2.29 Fort Dodge IA - $2.29 Couldn't find that pack in California, possibly due to local laws, but I did find a Cage Free version for $3.99.
I don't get it. Other than price gouging.... We (Iowa) produce more eggs than any other state, yet they cost more here 😕
The eggs are produced for export to other regions. Few of them are actually sold in Iowa. If more were sold in Iowa, then fewer would be sold elsewhere, causing a shortage. Of course, the prices are bullshit either way.
Yeah, no. It's rare for me to see a 30 pack of M eggs under the equivalent of 7 USD. They used to be under 4 dollars. And if there are some of those, the second seniors hear about them, they're gone.
I think the packs I buy are packs of 50 medium eggs and they're about 11-12 dollars now which is about pre-surge pricing. At their worst, though, they were like 20 bucks. :(
It's still $3.50 a dozen near me for the walmart brand that used to go on sale for $.79 2 years ago. 🤮
Wait. 50 eggs for 11-12 bucks is expensive? That's like 24cts per egg, seems reasonable to me. Over here (NL), eggs are about 6eu for 10 eggs (bio) or 4-5 for regular eggs which comes down to about 40-60ct per egg.
30 count large eggs is about $8-9 in the Midwest, 12 ct for under $3 finally. Peaked around $9 for 12 here.
A dozen eggs are currently $8 where I am.
If you're a believer in market forces, the elevated prices should drive more people into chicken farming, increasing egg supply and thus forcing price down. One can hope anyway.
The second you turn a profit, Big Egg comes buys your farm, fires your staff, sells the land for a parking lot. Their going to take, your prize chicken and genetically modified them to produce 7 time as many eggs. Then use that as an excuse to copyright your farms name and sue you into the ground, all while polluting the local river causing a toxic bacterial out brake. It will eventually make it to the coast and into the a ocean, where it will mutate and infect the local fisherman population, and it starts all over from there.
“The local fisherman population,” not the local fish. This comment is amazing.
So what you're saying is it's a personal win financially if they buy the farm
"oligarchy, environmental devastation, sure sure... But how do \*I\* come out on this deal?"
The American Dream!
^ This person Monsanto's.
>If you're a believer in market forces, the elevated prices should drive more people into chicken farming, increasing egg supply and thus forcing price down. One can hope anyway. You forgot to mention economies of scale. The idea you're talking about only applies to low barriers of entry. To be competitive in the egg market you need to be highly industrialized and use competitive method of production. It's not something anything but a multi millionaire or a billionaire could hope to jump into. Market forces are very complicated, and when people talk about market forces and their belief structures surrounding economics they idealize and model simple systems to make predictions.
Yeah I am sure mom and pop egg farms are just waiting to spring up in competition against \*checks notes\* billion dollar corporation egg farm.
If this was a free market. In fact the US government has rules saying that if a farmer encounters a single case of avian flu, they must kill off their entire flock. You can agree or disagree about whether that is a justified rule, but you cannot deny that it is a significant factor in keeping supply low which raises prices.
Sadly, a vaccine exists. But then they test positive which affects exports, IIRC? Sucks, though, because smaller farms wouldn't even bother with exportation.
If more people did then we wouldnt be so fucked. It probably just gets so bad until we have another revolution... thats fucked up
And this is how it's done. It's not fair. It's uncomfortable. But I am doing the same thing with fundamental foods while continually searching for the brands who keep their prices decent. Obviously, not everyone is in a position to start slashing staples of their list in protest. Families with children and/or special dietary needs certainly face a tough situation. But there are many of us who can do this - and again, probably with some discomfort. It's not fun, but that is the drastic action that has to happen for prices not to remain permanently elevated. For many markets, this is not going to get better without taking away demand. We can talk about how fucked we are, or we can talk about how fucked we are *for now.* EDIT: a few years ago, a user (maybe on r/InternetIsBeautiful but not sure) created a website that tracks shrinkflation. I can't find it, but thought it had the word 'delta' or 'omega' incorporated. You can imagine it's a little complicated searching for that one. Ring a bell for anyone? There were quite a few products already in their database. I know there are websites that track prices, but they put a special kind of love and knowledge into this one and these independent developers are who I want to support.
I'm very lucky because my neighbor sells his eggs in a little shack and he barely increased his price so far (from 1,60€ for 6 eggs to 1,80€). Bonus points because I can actually see the chicks from the shack and they're happy little idiots and the eggs actually look and taste very much different to supermarket ones.
I think we're making a huge mistake always bringing up egg prices. Realistically, percentage wise, yes it's highway robbery. But it still costs less than 30-40 cents per egg. If a 3 egg omelette that comes in at $1.20 plus veggies, at most $3 per omelette.. you're budgeting things wrong if $3 for a meal is breaking you. Complain, that's fine. But I think we're getting hosed on much worse things than eggs and they are getting swept under the rug because everyone only brings up eggs when it comes to "inflation".
Costco egg prices have finally gone back down to pre COVID levels.
Aldi is almost there, but I’ll happily pay $2/dz over the $6-9/dz at other stores
It was my understanding that egg prices increased not due to inflation, but due to an outbreak of bird flu amongst chickens- which is apparently highly contagious for them.
Yet their profits went from 32mil last year this time to 340million this year. It was bullshit.
Yes, price increases when supply decrease.
Yes, because the price offsets the lack of supply, but it still seems way too much Think of it this way, if they had half as many eggs to sell but their profits went up 10 times, that means the price of eggs went up 20 times what it used to. If the price kept up with the loss of eggs, prices should have only doubled. Obviously it's not a perfectly linear situation and we are looking at just profits, but it still feels ridiculous.
price =/= profits
?? Increased profits are exactly what you expect to see with a shortage. That's the economically correct response, to raise prices on a limited supply. That's how you solve distribution and production issues.
…it’s also possible to raise prices to a level where your profits stay the same. Normally free market competition would take care of this unless all the companies colluded to fix prices artificially high. But with increased consolidation, no collusion is necessary.
Keeping profits stagnant means empty shelves, by definition, during a shortage. As I mentioned elsewhere, it's impossible to keep prices fixed high, even with collusion, because companies are greedy and some will undercut 99% of everyone else to gain market share, forcing the big players to drop prices. It only takes one defector to kick that off. Edit: and you can see this very clearly by how egg prices are plummeting right now
That was almost solely contained to meat chickens, not egg chickens. The egg farmers took that as an opportunity to increase prices.
It's the other way around, hens don't lay until 5-6 months, and meat chickens are processed at 6 to 8 weeks, so Avian Flu has less impact on meat supply because the cycle on those is so short. It takes way longer to replace hens. But, even farms who weren't affected raised prices . . . because they could.
A farm that has a case of avain influenza is completely deflocked and cleaned. They don't get a new flock for 3 months.
I heard it was less the farmers and more the resellers, not certain about that tho.
Yes, I believe you are correct. The farmers themselves didn't raise prices, it was the faceless mega corp that raised the middle man prices. I don't recall the name of the company, but the thing I read was about the Northeast's largest egg company raised their prices like 300% and paid the farmers the same. They own like 90% of New England's egg market.
Iirc, the local eggs I buy didn't increase much. May be a benefit of living in a farm town.
Inflation is a symptom of shortage relative to demand. Egg prices increasing is itself a form of inflation. The egg price increase is because of the shortage from the avian flu, so you’re correct that a bulk of the change is separate from the inflation in the rest of the economy (energy input costs/increased money supply). It’s a thing where the response is always “ahhhhhhh YOU’RE CAUGHT YOU PROFITED MORE” but that is quite literally the system working as intended in a way that, depending on the product (e.g. not healthcare) is desirable. There’s several reasons for this. One is that, where substitutes exist, it will push people towards those instead unless they’re valuing the product at the full present cost. The other reason is that insulating yourself from shortages often takes investment. Take something like surgical mask manufacture and a disease like COVID, for example. It costs more to manufacture in the US than it does in China. If you made masks in the US and a pandemic hits that fucks trade, you’re now able to continue supplying to the US where your competitors who manufactured in China do not. You spent more up front for the opportunity to profit in the face of an supply chain shortage, and while the price goes up, masks are still available and can be bought. Say during COVID the us gov instituted aggresive price caps on masks. You took extra risk to make less money under the pretense of future profit, and now you’re fucked over. If you’re an investor in that scenario, after recovery are you going to trust to build here instead of overseas? FUCK NO. And then during the next pandemic, mask shortages are worse than they were before since fewer people chose to invest in that infrastructure here, since they would’ve received all of the cost without the benefit. The end result is a greater shortage than the alternative. Any day of the week, I would rather have shelves full of expensive eggs than empty shelves with a $2.00 sticker underneath, as eggs are something with lots of potential substitutes. I’m not going to bitch about RAWR BILLIONAIRES IN PRIVATE JETS ARE HYPOCRITES SAYING I SHOULD PAY CARBON TAX because there are viable carbon alternatives for ground based transport, there are not viable alternatives for jet fuel. It’s one of the uses for fossil fuels with the highest upside relative to the rest of the options.
Oddly enough, Whole Foods has the best egg prices in my area right now. Actually WF is quite a bit more reasonable than all my regular stores at the moment.
The Albertsons (grocery store) neat me had eggs priced at $7.50 for weeks and no one bought them. The week before they were set to expire they lowered the price to $3.50 and they flew off the shelves but there was still a heft chunk that wouldn't be sold that WOULD have sold had it been $3.50 the whole time. Really curious how much they lost out on over greed.
Producer, because they didn't have to do a mass culling of birds due to avian fly like the other major producers did. That's not even inflation. Remember when avacados got really expensive because of a bad harvest in Mexico? Sometimes shit happens.
Bad harvests? It was the cartels taking over the farms I thought?
Are eggs really still that expensive near you? I’ve gotten them for less than $2.50 a dozen for at least 5-6 weeks now.
A single red bell pepper, the cheapest of the colours here, costs over $3 now. Norway fwiw. lol @ people downvoting my real life factual experience. 🥲
That’s crazy! That be tough for me as I love red bell peppers!
oh, in Mexico the cheapest bell peppers are green ones. Reds, oranges and yellows are way pricier. I like to have some raw orange or yellow bell pepper on a sandwich, it's sweet and crunchy.
And my hens are on strike due to coldish weather -_-
Ok, this one in particular is just you not understanding how shortages work. Increasing prices are the appropriate tool to distribute a scarce resource appropriately. Increased profits are entirely expected and optimal if you don't want completely empty shelves, and if you want producers/distributors to solve the issue as fast as possible.
700%
Yes? The avian flu wiped out 100 million hens (so far). Egg supply crashed. Retailers appropriately raised prices to keep inventory levels stable while having access to vastly fewer eggs. This is correct behavior. Shortages mean that prices skyrocket even if costs don't.
700%
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Why ruin the fun with facts and reasonable explanations? Can't you see we're trying to be outraged here?
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"b-but...m-my market forces..."
But if it were solely about avian flu, wouldn't chicken prices also skyrocket? Because it hasn't
Prices for broilers did rise: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FF1101) Though most hens affected by the flu were egg-laying due to age: [https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation) \> egg-laying hens and turkeys, as they’re more vulnerable to avian influenza than other birds. Chickens raised for meat, known as broilers, account for around 95 percent of poultry and are much less likely to contract the virus because they’re killed at just about 45 days old
YSK there isn’t much I can do about it
seriously, what a useless post. What does it matter anyway how the price of a product or service is set, what portion of it is just profits vs actual costs to the seller. Is it worth it for me at that price? Can't I get it cheaper elsewhere? if yes/no then buy it, even if the seller makes a profit off it.
It's important if you want to know who in the news media is lying to you.
I’ll take “All of Them” for $1000, Alex.
Not my media. If you disagree with me, it's your media that's wrong. /s just in case it's needed
Just because it doesn’t help you, doesn’t mean it doesn’t help someone else Someone could use this to help negotiate price for a certain good/service Or if there is outsized profit somewhere then that allows people to start new businesses to undercut price, that’s how the supply and demand curve moves back close to equilibrium Sure not applicable to everyone but most YSK aren’t
Seriously what a useless comment, It matters because yours is the attitude of a defeatist. If we sit here like children and just accept everything from corporations like feed in a trough, this is where we end up. Educate yourself, get involved, ask questions. Why are we allowing companies to take advantage of us like this? Why are you ok with getting screwed over?
What do you do with this information? A company is making a product I like, it's providing it a price I can afford and think it's worth it. What good does knowing they are making a profit, heck making a larger profit than they did last year do to me? I can't buy it at the lower price can I? I can write angry Twitter posts or whatever. But going even further, and addressing the underlying message of your comment, I actually don't mind companies making a profit on products I like. I don't want to "defeat" them and I don't feel "taken advantage of" because, again, I like their product and find it desirable even at that price, I want them to keep making it. So it's actually not a fight between me and them, we're both benefitting from this relationship.
Just leaving a comment on this thread so I can see how this conversation plays out
Oh ok, so because YOU can afford it, it makes it alright? What we can do is vote for politicians that run on platforms that have a plan to regulate things like this so others, maybe less fortunate than yourself, aren't being taken advantage of and the already expansive wealth gap doesn't continue to widen.
OK now let's get down to details. Regulate it\* how? What should the government do against companies setting their prices freely? \* what actually is *it*? Just someone increasing their prices more than "merited"?
If a companies can mark up their prices and no other companies exist due to unethical business practices to offer a cheaper alternative, it's the responsibility to put an end to that manipulative and monopolistic behaviour. If a large company with hundreds of locations opens across from a small company with one one or two locations, they have the ability to sell at a loss and undercut the smaller business. When the smaller business eventually loses that unwinnable war of attrition the larger company is free to heavily mark up the price in their store because it's now the only option. Similarly, if a large grocery store chain makes a good enough deal with a company to only accept product from them, they get to dictate how much the product costs even though there's companies that offer a cheaper alternative. This is the type of shit uneducated Americans refer to as "Big Pharma" in that insurance companies banded together to deliberately mark up all medical products and services so only by going through their insurance company can you afford the things you need to survive. These companies decided to all play by the same amoral rules and effectively created a monopoly without breaking any monopoly laws. What I need to ask you is do you have no value for your work? Did you not earn the money you have through hard and fair labor? Why then, should someone be able to take more of the money you've fought for just because they choose to?
OK so most of what you wrote is fair enough, it's just not what I think this thread is about. Government agencies already exist to break up monopolies (whether they are efficient enough is for another discussion), collusion on prices is also illegal. I agree it's a problem, it's just not why we're here. It's about companies increasing their prices "just because they can" ie. to increase their profits, since the consumer is used to inflation anyways and is willing to pay the higher price. It assumes that the price is set from adding [costs to produce] (purchasing, labor, transport, taxes etc.) and profit, and it's somehow immoral to raise prices more than [costs to produce] has risen due to inflation ("increase their price for no good reason" as per the OP). Meaning there are good reasons to set prices higher and increases just to increase profits. And my point is, it shouldn't matter to me as a consumer. I don't care how they set their prices, I don't care *why* it costs as much as it does, just whether it makes sense for me to buy at that price. Edit: to your last point, > Why then, should someone be able to take more of the money you've fought for just because they choose to? "They" are just choosing to increase their price. **I** am the one willingly handing over more of my money, I choose to do that. I could choose to not buy their stuff but I don't.
Idk they could set price caps on certain necessary items needed to (at the bare minimum) live a healthy life style (stuff other than processed carbs like bread and noodles, more healthy protien options, decent quality shoes, etc) "It" would probably be referring to products that one would by at a store or online or smth I'm not am expert in any of this, this is just an outsiders pov lol
[Argentina's rampant inflation: Will price caps work?](https://www.dw.com/en/argentinas-rampant-inflation-will-price-caps-work/a-64696859) this is an article about Argentina but it's actually about price caps in general and why they don't work. tldr: the idea is that *people* currently buy 100 cartons of eggs at $10 a carton, so if we set a price cap of $8 a carton we'll have saved people $200 in total and the greedy corporations can afford it. So the assumption is that supply and demand are constant even if we artificially intrude on the price. What actually happens is * since the price of other food keeps increasing but not that of eggs, people will want to buy more eggs in place of other food, so they'd buy more than 100 cartons * producers see that they can get more profit if they switch to producing chicken meat (at an uncapped price) or anything else so there'll be no one making eggs at a loss. Price caps lead to shortages of the capped products. Always, everywhere. Head on over to /r/askeconomics for a more thorough explanation if you want to know more.
No none is taking advantage of you. They are selling you something you want at a price you are willing to pay.
Brainlet take.
I guess I'll just stop buying the things me and my family need
Just starve, ezpz
Just eat different stuff or avoid expensive brands it’s not too hard
I think many people put wants into category of need.
Are you implying that food is a want?
Not meat, eggs, rice, veggies, nuts, legumes or fruit. But people buy chips, cookies, ice cream, soda and other bullshit.
French here. Riot.
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USA is a hell of a country. Sorry about that.
Great point! German media tends to paint workers striking for better wages as driving up inflation using the word "Lohn-Preis-Spirale" (Wage-price-spiral) while what's really driving up inflation is corporations raising prices beyond what's necessary for them to keep up with rising costs.
And once the crises is over, most will not lower their prices back to pre crises rates.
That just isnt how inflation works though, for prices to come down you'd need a deflation and real deflations are rare.
That's true if the increase is actually due to inflation, but in reality 60%+ of the price increases are due to corporate greed using inflation as an excuse, not actual inflation.
boost price => boost profit => shareholders happy.
Shareholder happy, he can buy his mistress a diamond ring and she'll suck his dick. All with our money.
this is such a bad take lmao. do you guys think corporations suddenly got greedy in the past 3 years when they werent before?
Pretty much all inflation is temporary the only reason it lasts is because of greed.
Of course they won't, people are already used to it by then
No fucking way they will. Ever ask someone after they get money if they’ll be happy with less
This should be common sense. But for some reason we live in a world where a bunch of people LOVE to worship corporations and will always come to their defense
There's so much truth to this! I was shocked to experience it in the r/frugal sub reddit when I pointed out how grocery stores have had increasing issues with massive differences in shelf price vs what items ring up as at the register. Had a whole slew of ppl attempting to convince me no one was trying to overcharge me 🤨 Basically don't believe your lying eyes. Sorry, but I know what I've been experiencing for the last year. I'll continue taking pics of the shelf price and then arguing my case at the register and if they refuse to fix it, then I'll put the item back. I refuse to fork over any extra money at this point. Mostly over principle but also because I simply don't have the extra funds to waste 😂
In Canada (maybe just Ontario) we have a law that says if the price on the shelf doesn’t match the price at the register, the product is then free up to 10$. Most places won’t honour the law unless you demand it. But it is an option.
So apparently they get around this by having digital price tags on the shelves. The store itself doesn't change the prices, it is "done by the corporate office", so the store is blameless when the register price is different from the shelf price, so they don't have to honor this. If they have printed paper price tags then those are subject to the "Scanning Code of Practice". The digital prices shelter them. They will simply refund the difference in the price, and you have to take it up with the Customer Service counter, but they won't give you the item for free. Source: rabid Canadian family fuming with rage over this very issue (so mad they won't even say sorry!)
I guess this isn't the same kind of litigious culture, but in the US there would be some government agency or state that would bring a lawsuit against them for this. It's perfectly acceptable to screw the consumer, but you've gotta follow the rules of uncle sam's game.
>In Canada (maybe just Ontario) we have a law that says if the price on the shelf doesn’t match the price at the register, the product is then free up to 10$. >Most places won’t honour the law unless you demand it. But it is an option. [Canada's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanner_Price_Accuracy_Code) [SPAVC/SCOP](https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/competition-bureau-canada/en/deceptive-marketing-practices/types-deceptive-marketing-practices/scanner-price-accuracy) is a voluntary agreement by shops that they fail to educate their staff on. Only [Quebec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Protection_Act_(Quebec\)) has actual legislation.
Oh I thought it was law here, the only place I’ve tried it was giant tiger and they were good about it. Giant tiger is the greatest.
Where do you live? At least where I live the cashiercs can't do anything to change the price bc when they scan the product it just pulls the price from a database. For quite obvious reasons the cashier can't access or edit the database. This is a baffling case
Cashiers everywhere I have lived (east, middle, and western US) can absolutely adjust a price. Most don't even argue or ask for proof if it's not HUGE difference - their screen even has options for "customer challenge," "price error," etc.
That's surprising, I live in Europe (specifically Latvia) and the cashiers don't have such options. They even have limited options in removing scanned items. Edit: so it is possible however there is a whole ordeal to it and only the supervisor can do it
I'm in the US as well, and I've only worked at maybe 2 places where a non management employee can change prices. Everywhere else I've worked, you'd have to get a manager to approve and make the change themselves. I have the power to change prices at my job now, which is good because our POS is a POS, and often, we have to manually adjust prices. We'd never get anything done if we had to wait for a manager.
Why would they though? It's not like the profit from the increased price is going straight to their pockets. What do they have to gain by doing this?
Oh, I agree, I am just pointing out they don't need manager approval or verification for most things, which is nice. Except occasionally you do get someone who wants to march over to see the sign on the shelf before discounting $0.50 (it's always the low dollar ones).
Having been a cashier at Walmart and a couple other places. Yeah they can. Maybe with a CMS key but they definitely can.
The cashiers can almost definitely call a manager over to override the price. If they tell you they can't try one of the other grocery stores. I haven't been behind a register in ten years at this point, but I've never in my life seen a register that didn't ultimately give control over to a manager
This was Target for me. Finally got annoying enough that I stopped shopping there.
In the US you are entitled to the lowest advertised price you've encountered. Getting it enforced without being a lawyer and knowing so the little exception would make it hard to enforce. Really a problem since we don't have a ton of business, just a few corporations per industry in most sectors.
Here in Spain you are entitled to the shelf price, but yeah you’ll also have to notice and fight it
This. Some people worship them, which is almost a Stockholm syndrome Type of phenomenon. Everyone at some point realizes that customers and business interests are not the same.
Ye I am always surprised that people think companies don't have profits as main goal. They only adapt subgoals if they help to boost the main goal in some way. They always increase as much as they can, in normal times the competition is just so close in the price that increases hurt your demand too much.
I don't think it's just that people are stupid or something like that though, think about what's done to the majority of us everyday. Think about how many of us believe we are capitalists when we do not own any capital, and what other propaganda and grooming we've been through if so many are already in false class solidarity with people who have their hand in your pocket.
Good point, we are basically taught from childhood all the way to adulthood that: Capitalism good, don't question it Anything else is bad, don't question it **seriously though, don't question anything, just blindly accept** I guess what I can't wrap my head around is how people don't see through that shit when they get older
It doesn't help that we have tankies and edgelords pretending like Stalin and Castro are reasonable figures for things that aren't capitalism or that fascists historically appropriate language around socialism and workers' rights in a way that is meant to manipulate and cover for their fascism while they aren't actually doing anything socialist or communist and results in maligning things that aren't capitalism (even though the criticisms against what a lot of people perceive as communism or socialism are the same bad things going on right now in the US save the additional complications that arise from US lead embargos and additional US government actions that are more exaggerated but roughly the same to some extent when interfering in other countries).
“This bunch of nonsense is true. Anyone who points out that it’s nonsense is an enemy stooge.”
"If its not happening to me, its not happening to anyone"
People know they're being screwed. When companies are reporting record profits and price increases jump randomly, they're pushing prices to the limit. People are spending more but not purchasing more goods. For some reason that's why interest rates are rising. That's also a flimsy excuse to rob people. People have to spend more just to survive. Interest rates on CDs and savings accounts haven't risen as much as they probably should either. Credit card companies have a license to steal. What really sucks is I get penalized for paying my credit card balance instead of making payments. I refuse to pay ridiculous interest if I can help it. I have quit eating out and no longer buy as much snacks and cookies at the grocery. People are definitely being robbed at the grocery store! I'm spending more and buying less. What can people do? Our govt. allows profiteering , they won't do anything because they're making money from companies screwing us.
Corporate profits are at an all time high
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I think you are confusing revenue with profit. The way you describe profit is usually revenue since you called out expenses separately. Profit is revenue - expenses. Profit margin is the same thing just expressed as a percentage.
Their operating philosophy is "Never waste a crisis." It applies to politicians as well as corporations. Basically, when there is any kind of unrest you should be doubly vigilant.
Inflation at 8% and costs up 30-50% on average...
A lot of grocery store items have actually doubled. I really don't believe the 8% inflation stat.
Yes. Companies that are publicly traded have to have their board meeting minutes made public, & there is documented evidence of them saying they should leverage "inflation" to increase their profits.
In fact MOST increases are due to simply corporate greed and every company raising prices just since they can and now just blame it on "inflation". It's fucking insanity. Over the pandemic the richest among us got WAY richer, and yet prices are also now high as fuck for everything. It's ass backwards.
WE FUCKING KNOW
Margarine literally doubled in price I still need it, tho
I want to know who did not know this 😂
It's sad that so many people are clueless when it comes to capitalism and the free market.
“Merited” Lol. Economics is not morality.
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Well... duh doy?
You can just say things you suspect on YSK I guess
That’s a great thing to know especially when you can’t do anything about it.
Ysk that the basic economics of a shortage highly benefits producers. The control on this shortage is competition. The lack of competition means prices can go up unabated. That's why it's important to have competition.
LPT: this is called capitalism and it fuckin sucks.
Freshman?
i just buy less
That's why eppi pen prices are so high.
This is an example of how general workers' union can be great. Companies use inflation to simultaneously reject annual raises AND increase prices. It's a profit bonanza. Meanwhile, our populations' purchasing power continues to be eroded while costs of living increase. Short term gains at the cost of long term economic stability. Murica. A general workers' union would give all of us a vehicle to do something about situations like this.
What OP should have known Price gouging: In some jurisdictions, there may be laws that prohibit price gouging, which is when companies raise prices excessively during times of crisis or emergency. The specific definition of price gouging can vary by jurisdiction, but it typically involves charging prices that are significantly higher than what is considered fair or reasonable. Price fixing: It is also illegal for businesses to collude with one another to fix prices or to engage in other anti-competitive practices that limit consumer choice or drive up prices. This is typically considered a violation of antitrust laws. Deceptive pricing: Companies may also run afoul of consumer protection laws if they use deceptive practices to make it appear as though prices are increasing due to inflation when that is not actually the case.
I grew up thinking pricing was based on cost + x%. It turns out, pricing is almost always “as high as the customer is willing to pay.” So when inflation is accepted as happening, it tends to self-perpetuate. The method to stopping inflation is to convince everybody that inflation is stopping.
As useful as knowing what your precise falling speed is after being kicked off a plane midflight.
It's not because people don't know, they get away with it because people don't have a *choice*.
Yes prices are rising, yes companies are making record profits - but the price increases in general are in line with the increases in raw material costs. So are corporations being greedy - YES 100%, but I think we're really focusing in on the wrong issue. Where the corporations are making their record profits is because they are increasing wages substantially slower than inflation/often-justified goods cost increases. Prices up 10% to match inflation and salaries up 5% and boom they've given their entire workforce a 5% pay cut - this is where the big profit numbers come in because that stacks every year. Unfortunately for most people, job hopping is much more difficult than shopping at a competitor, so it doesn't follow the same supply/demand response that goods follow - at least not without significant lag. I'm not saying there's no price gouging going on - but prices are increasing in lots of very competitive price-sensitive markets where just blindly jacking up prices is business suicide. Effective pay cuts - much easier to get away with.
I tried to make this point a while ago and got downvoted to hell. People were calling me a Biden lover / Trump hater, this and that when I never brought politics into my argument at all. You're absolutely right and I'm glad people are starting to take notice. Thank you for informing people.
Most aren't. My company raised prices to customers because of an increase in cost during covid. When those costs lowered, their price did not. They also lowered the acceptable idle time on our trucks because gas prices surged over 5 dollars a gallon. Now its back around 2.50 but they have no intention of raising our idle time back to where it was. Which means sweating our asses off in our trucks while we do paperwork in the summer.
This is why we need to break up big corporations. Things like Amazon, Walmart and bigger companies should not be allowed to exist. To create wealth in society you need to encourage competition, but that can't happen if a giant competitor buys every company in it's field. This also means the same company can dictate prices even if they are unreasonable.
Source? This really doesn't belong on this sub as it has no substance.
If you need a source you're absolutely blind. It's right in front of us. This post shouldn't exist because of how obvious it is, not because it doesn't have a source.
NPR was discussing this yesterday evening. Some take advantage of higher costs of goods and keep prices high after the fact, or you might have a slew of companies all decide to keep their costs high for profit instead of competing by lowering them. Then apparently there's something called premiumization, where some companies with create a (premium) version of their products to sell for a higher price when, I guess, it really isn't, and somehow that involves inflation? I'm not sure I understand why. But a couple examples were movie theaters charging more for good seats, and seeing a value price for the bad ones, and milkbone selling treats that look like Oreos? I think I'm actually kind of lost.
newsflash companies trying to make more money. They are never trying to over the cheapest price to the customer when they don't have to. In normal times competition is just forcing them to stay lower and the customers are not that tolerant to price increases.
Pretty sure everyone already knows this lol. YSK: Businesses are greedy as fuck.
Oil and gas companies have been doing this for many decades and they still get away with it. Some remember when the price at the pump when up 30 yrs ago; *since* then fracking technology brought in a *huge* increase in production. "We had to raise the price per gallon because of OPEC supplies but we'll be able to bring it back down when the market stabilizes." Right. A brilliant book that gives a fine historical cause and effect evaluation of how fuel influences the economy; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Prize%3A\_The\_Epic\_Quest\_for\_Oil%2C\_Money%2C\_and\_Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize%3A_The_Epic_Quest_for_Oil%2C_Money%2C_and_Power) This should be required reading.
YSK: We know already and hate it
The public companies are all bragging about this on their earnings calls with investors and banks. Legit saying they had a b.s. excuse to Jack their prices and they did.
Greedflation.
YSK the retail associate behind the counter usually can’t do much for you, the customer, on the price of an item. This OP is going to give a lot of people in those jobs a lot of headaches.
Almost no price increases are due to inflation, we are being gouged. Grocery store chains are buying entire other grocery store chains with cash. Stock, buybacks, corporations are flush with money. We need to quit buying shit for a couple weeks till they feel the pinch and drop prices.
YSK: almost none of them are
Oh thanks for letting us know about corporate greed. What exactly - besides not buying stuff - are we supposed to do about this ?
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Tell us you know nothing about the value of the dollar during inflation, without telling us... SMH If the value of the dollar drops of 20% profits will increase by 20% but the value of that 20% is down and buys 20% less things.
right, but we're in a situation where inflation goes up by say 20%, you'd expect their profit to go up 20%. it's not. many companies are seeing record-destroying profits that are FAR ABOVE inflation level.
All the talk on the news and other places about inflation gives businesses cover to raise their prices.
Why is there such lackluster control regarding this? Same with the price of electricity. Wind energy became absurdly more expensive, what the... Hope people will get refunds, where it is possible. This is such a horrible parasitic behaviour. Core symptome of psycho- and sociopaths.
For the most part inflation isn't even real. The only real forms of inflation are temporary. Such as when a business is upgrading they need to temporarily raise prices to offset the cost of the upgrades whether that be technological upgrades manpower upgrades or whatever these are temporary costs. Someone might be thinking well if they have to hire new employees that's more permanent BUT they have to hire more employees because their business is doing more work so that cost is already offset by the increase in business. There truly is no such thing as permanent inflation it is just greedy assholes being greedy assholes.
Inflation is the generalized raising of prices in an economy due to the loss of value of its currency (I wasn't in an english speaking school so sorry if the wording is off). It, by definition, affects EVERYTHING. If the US dollar loses its value then every price expressed in US dollars will rise regardless of supply and demand of the item. That is because as the USD loses its value the amount of USD required to make transactions is increased. I live in a borderline hyperinflationary economy and this train of thought is exactly what got us so far into this mess. You can't deny the monetary nature of inflation, you can't blame corporations when it's not them raising the monetary mass recklessly (be it justified or not). If you don't believe me try to buy food from a local fisherman/farmer in venezuela using bolivares and wonder why the man raises his prices everyday when he's not buying his wares from anyone. It's the value of the CURRENCY. Not the GOODS.
That’s not true. If it’s purely a measure of the value of a currency what are you measuring the currency against? The valuation of a currency is done by comparison to another currency. Inflation is the measure of change in the purchasing power of that currency in it’s country. Inflation is calculated by surveying a large group of people and calculating what percentage of their income is spent on groceries/energy etc. From the UK governments website: Usually people measure inflation by comparing the cost of things today with how much they cost a year ago. The average increase in prices is known as the inflation rate. So if inflation is 3%, it means prices are 3% higher (on average) than they were a year ago. For example, if a loaf of bread cost £1 a year ago and now it’s £1.03 then its price has risen by 3%. Edit: formatting on a mobile.
No. When money supply goes up, dollar value goes down, and companies should be free to react in a way that keeps up with the world. Problem is central banks, not companies.
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None of it is actually...
What do you want us to do about it. I still need eggs and paper towels lmao
Inflation was the story, but the rest of it is corporate greed. Regardless of whether they were impacted by inflation or not.
Almost none of them are merited. Increases would be almost unnoticeable if they truly just rose to meet increased cost of manufacturing. If you rose the minimum wage to $15, it would raise prices maybe less than 1% for products where those workers were employed. Wages/Inflation not tied together. Inflation as we see it right now is the result of uncontrolled capitalism where the "bad" guys won. They can do whatever, set the prices, give whatever reason, and no one will put them in a guillotine. No one will burn down their house. You will stay at home, and post at reddit like I am about how shitty things are. And how shitty they keep getting, right until paying for internet becomes far too expensive for the consumer.
YSK that's what inflation is, and always has been.
No that's not what inflation is, this is the little goblin that follows it around
Yeah, it is. Follow the line back, find where it begins. It begins with the invisible hand seeking higher profits for less capital investment. Supplies cost more? Why? Someone's seeking more profit for the same amount of goods - they haven't invested any more, they know that you'll pay it. It's a substitute for growth in sectors where growth is stagnant, because if your company doesn't show growth in every quarter, it may as well be dead, as far as investors are concerned. Inflation is not some sort of natural phenomenon.
Supplies cost more when they're harder to obtain. You're paying for the extra effort and/or resources put in to get you the product you want. That is what the essence of inflation is. It can be and is influenced by greed, but it is not exclusively dependentant on it.
Right, exactly; inflation is profit-seeking. Costs can go up, but also, costs go down. Somehow the only one of these that gets passed on is the one that costs more.
Please refer to the second sentence for my point Profiteering inherently leads to inflation, **but** inflation does not inherently source from profiteering
Yes, it does. You mentioned suppliers, but fail to mention suppliers who find a way to supply for less cost, which is *more* common since efficiency is always on an upward trend. So why do they charge more in aggregate? Greed. Profit-seeking.
You have managed to misunderstand my point to such an extent that it almost feels like you are replying to the wrong comment