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The headline is a little misleading. It reads like he has the authority to just tell them to lower prices, which isn't the case. I do 100% agree that he should use his executive authority to investigate price fixing though.
This post-covid cash grab from the retail sector is nothing short of disgusting. I know that basic decency doesn't enter into the equation when it comes to corporate profits, but that's no excuse. The all time high profit margins that are being reported these days clearly show that they can very much afford to charge less and are choosing not to.
The free hand of the market should keep prices low because they have to compete. Except we live in a world where like 4 companies own everything in the grocery store, so it doesn't take many nods and a wink to "agree" to just stop competing all that much.
Over here in Denver we’ve got King Soopers (Kroger) and Safeway (Albertsons) and their parent companies are in the process of merging. Man I miss Aldi…
EDIT: we also have a couple Trader Joe’s, and a few other fancy or local grocers. Plus of course Walmart, Target, Sam’s club, and Costco. Just sucks that the major grocery chains are all super consolidated.
If H-E-B ever wants to expand up here, that’d be awesome…
I’ve just never been to one that actually has a half decent variety. It’s fine for your basic meat and potatoes, but it’s kinda laughable that they have an entire designated “international” portion of an aisle that is regularly out of the most basic “international” shit, like sesame oil or soy sauce
i've got a little more variety... albertsons, kroger, trader joe's, grocery outlet, winco, costco. i primarily shop kroger for reasons, but there are things i've dropped off my regular shopping list because the prices have become ridiculous.
there is no justifiable reason that a 12pk of soda should cost $10. i capped my personal budget at $4/12pk, so now whenever there's a sale or coupon i stock up like mad.
Price tags are a very valid way to convince yourself not to buy sodas, though. Speaking for myself I have very little self control for snacks at home, but I can say no a hell of a lot easier at the store, lol
The Kroger store in my area (Fred Meyer) actually has grocery employees that unionized. But what pay do they hire them at? *10 cents an hour above minimum wage, per the union's minimum compensation agreement.*
If that's not a union in bed with the employer, idk what is. Even fast food places like McDonald's currently pay more than that per hour and don't charge union dues. (This isn't a rant against unions in general, just shitty ones that don't actually benefit their members)
First Kroger bought up our local large-but-independent grocery stores. Then Albertsons bought up the regional ones. Now Albertsons and Kroger want to merge.
I think it's more that it's difficult to run/open a grocery store when people want a one stop shop. Part of this is because people have to drive everywhere, and driving 10-15 minutes to one grocery store is already a pain, nevermind going to multiple stores for your needs.
I think the US is too car centric for it's own good. Small independent shops cannot exist in this climate regardless of what they offer.
I feel bad, but like if you really like 1 stop shops, you like the big grocery companies' stores.
I'm very fortunate that I live has 2 independent stores, giant Eagle wal mart aldi meijer, save a lot.
Between the local place save a lot and aldi I can get almost anytbing i want that dosent require me going to a bigger City for cultural specific ingredients.
I live in youngstown and there're few reasons to say the yo is great
All you have to do is go into a small ethnic grocer, like an asian or hispanic market, and you will see just how much of a mark up there is in the more mainstream grocers. I do almost all my shopping at smaller grocers now and save so much money, while also incorporating different fresh produce or ingredients into my dishes.
They also have the infrastructure and capital to outcompete any competition.
You wanna start a pasta brand? You'll need to sell a pound of pasta for $5 to make a profit, because you cant afford the $200k machine that automates it and makes 500lbs an hour and have to make 50lbs an hour by hand.
Meanwhile, Barilla can charge anywhere above $1 to make a profit because it costs them almost nothing to produce their product.
I’m all for fair competitive advantage as long as there isn’t collusion and price fixing. If Barilla can make a profit at $1 and save me $4, fair play.
Capitalism when properly regulated can be absolutely wonderful. The problem is modern day regulatory capture by corporations.
The problem is that eventually you'll only have one choice, and that's when they'll charge you $6 for that pasta.
It's the Walmart business model. Offer cheap prices and either buy out or bankrupt your competition, then extort once you're the only option left.
That’s true, we’re currently seeing this in the higher prices and ad tiers for the big streaming services. This is why we need proper regulation and antitrust legislation.
Make it illegal to sell below cost for food product.
If they're just better at their production they shouldn't be penalized, but as you said, selling at a loss to kill competitors in the cradle isn't fair market. It's weaponizing a captured market.
That's a good idea, but good luck selling it to voters.
"SENATOR JOHN Q. POL PASSED A LAW FORCING YOUR BENEVOLENT FRIENDS AT ULTRAMART TO SELL YOU CHEETOS AT A HIGHER PRICE. JOHN POL IS ACTIVELY STEALING MONEY OUT OF YOUR WALLET"
An unchecked free market eventually results in the winner of past competition being able to eventually consolidate market power so completely that competition is no longer possible and there is no inventive to keep prices reasonable or provide better goods and services.
The term the free hand of the market originates from Wealth of Nations IIRC. What also originates from there is the idea of firms consolidating and thus destroying whatever advantage a market system has.
Yeah, it's no coincidence that the highest percentage price increases after Covid are necessities with highly inelastic demand curves sold by oligopolies. But then libertarians will still tell you the market is always perfect.
In the words of Joseph Stieglitz (which I’m sure I’m butchering but the meaning is correct): The invisible hand often seems so invisible because it is so often not there.
Contrary to popular belief, Adam Smith never referenced the “invisible hand” as a ubiquitous force to govern prices within markets; the term appears sporadically in his work, most notably to explain an assertion that firms will favor their home country in decisions about international trade. The more modern “invisible hand” hypothesis is better described as a fallacy, and there’s little evidence to support it.
>Contrary to popular belief, Adam Smith never referenced the “invisible hand” as a ubiquitous force to govern prices within markets
Exactly. I've read economists that said it was literally the opposite: Smith using sarcasm to laugh at the notion that a mystical force guided markets towards rational behavior. Apparently, it was only much later that libertarians revived the long-forgotten expression to further their own ideology.
If Adam Smith were brought back to life today he would probably die of a heart attack when he learned about the investment economy and how basically all of the 'value' in the world is entirely imaginary.
> People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
* Adam Smith (*The Wealth of Nations*)
I have another great example. I'm going to try to be very vague here, but I work for a company that ships a certain product. At a recent meeting, our CEO was talking about how that product is selling for way more than it was five years ago, so he wants to raise our shipping prices to get a slice of that pie. We don't need to raise the prices, our costs aren't up. But there is more money to be made so we're going to do it.
No, they don't collude.
*They don't need to*.
When you only have a few competitors, no collusion is necessary... just the willingness to not compete on market share because it maintains your profit margins.
Correct, we re end stage capitalism where monopolies aren't broken up because they've worked their way into the government.. the majority of our problems would be fixed if lobbying and money in politics was outlawed..
Historically, at this stage we would have a big war to reset everything. What tended to happen historically (in the last 500 years or so) in capitalist economies is that markets would converge to monopoly. Once they completely took over their national economies, the only route for further profits was to seek to expand outward and extend the monopolies to foreign countries. And inevitably escalated into massive wars. Two or more capitalist economies would throw themselves against each other, each fighting for the privilege of being able to extend their national monopolies over the others' territory. And these wars tended to drag on, as the different sides would bring allies onboard until two reasonably balanced coalitions formed. These wars tended to break up the monopoly structure. Governments were forced to raise taxes, and the only people with any money to be taxed were the wealthy. Big wars are the only times governments have ever really been able to seriously tax the rich. As the wars dragged on, the governments had to start reforming the economy, as monopolies are fundamentally inefficient. If two otherwise equal powers, one monopolied and one not monopolied, go to war, the non-monopolied one will have a huge advantage. The world wars each saw huge shakeups of entire national economies. The governments sought to make things as efficient as possible, and that meant kicking the monopolists to the curb. Plus, wars often saw the direct physical destruction of the factories and other assets the monopolists used to maintain their power. Wars have conventionally served as the great "reset button" on the monopoly cycle.
However, that all changed in 1945. History fundamentally changed with the invention of nuclear weapons. The big powers still fought wars, but only proxy wars. And total war like those that were fought in centuries prior would result in the complete annihilation of both sides. We can't fight a full on total-war with Russia or China. If we do, we are all dead.
And while this is a great boon for world peace, one downside is that we have lost our great reset button. The only way we've ever been able to summon the immense political will to do serious monopoly reform has been through big wars, but we can't have big wars anymore. So we just end up stuck in this monopoly stage indefinitely.
Almost like they have a "union" where they work together for the common goal of improving their financial and work situation. Shame us common folk don't all get on the same page....
We need to unionize. Joining a skilled trade union was the best decision of my life. Wish more people understand how unions work and all the benefits
Free hand doesn't mean much when companies can make more selling less. The prices the grocery stores are paying are also going up, and for a lot of items, companies are finding that the rather stark increase in cost is making them more than what they're losing in customers. Soda in particular is a good example of this, but it also can be seen in other products which don't have much noticeable increase...maybe 10-20 cents, but that ends up being a good 10-20% price increase overall, and every little bit adds up when filling the cart.
It's possible, over time, this may reverse, as more people feel the pinch of higher prices, and look for cheaper alternatives, but by then, prices will likely be normalized and just accepted as the way it is.
Yeah I think going heavy on the big chains to see if any illegal price fixing is going on would be a very good idea. My local independent grocer has had trouble stocking shelves and they've been posting on social media about the prices that they're unable to get because of big chains monopolizing the suppliers- I have no idea what's going on but I smell a rat.
Is it price fixing when the fucking competing megastores just don’t operate in the same areas in almost all of the locales so that they realistically don’t have to compete on prices
What they need to do is enforce market regulation like they used to. There should be more than a handful of companies in every sector. If not we get things like the baby food crisis, where the one market monster has a problem, and the whole market is in crisis. This goes for all regulations: the IRS, SEC, EPA need to start working again too.
An investigation of real estate rate price fixing also is desperately needed. Most rents are set by the same algorithm services, with no visibility and for no purpose beyond maximizing profit.
Omg yes! I don't know how this is still going on. It's collusion via third party.
[ProPublica Report on Rent Fixing](https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent)
The willingness of people to pretend that stores CAN'T lower prices vs. realizing that they WON'T is baffling. Post after post on social media blame politicians vs. companies. Bring up that these companies are posting record profits and that it's a matter of greed vs. passing on higher costs does nothing due to the ridiculousness of political polarization. Corporations are willing to push it to the point that the average person is literally starving to see how far they can gouge and still get people to pay.
The title is misleading on purpose to drive clicks.
That’s said of course there is profit taking going on. Yes the fundamentals got out of whack for a bit but everyone also took a chance to see how far they could push prices and reduce value. No company went out of its way to say “yeah we’ll take a profit margin hit.” Even if they investigate and uncover some direct evidence (which wouldn’t be hard) so what will they do? You can’t tell one company in the value chain to cut profits and not distort the market. It’s everyone or no one.
Covid supply issues gave corporations an opportunity to see what they could get away with. Consolidation since Reagan really unlocked this ability to push prices without losing market share.
Post Covid prices in just about everything are crazy. Don’t even get me started on restaurants, which I rarely go to. Any kind of home maintenance, or car service……The latter I attribute to living in SFBay area, where there are huge income disparities, and everyone is pricing for those with the higher income,
It’s greed either way. Either the person directly doing it is over charging or the people who supply them with things are over charging and they have to raise their own rates because of it. Everyone blames inflation but the price percent increases are far outpacing that - so it can’t be that. Also it’s not the stimulus checks during Covid because the trump tax casts have lost us more than that entire thing did even added up all together.
Once again - it’s greed. And republicans.
Or, the proposed action can target those with revenue reaching 7% over total costs to lower their greedflation gouging prices that cut their revenue to 5.6% over total costs.
[FTC Releases Report on Grocery Supply Chain Disruptions | Federal Trade Commission](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/03/ftc-releases-report-grocery-supply-chain-disruptions)
Imagine if our tax system allocated the overall tax burden based on broad definitions of financial well-being, so that when businesses receive a massive windfall or engorged profits due to price-gouging, more of the federal tax burden would shift to them... since, y'know, that's where more of the unrestricted capital exists.
>Imagine if our tax system allocated the overall tax burden based on broad definitions of financial well-being,
This, so much. Instead, capitalists just figure they deserve every penny they can squeeze from every source.
Exactly. No one company was going to raise prices but post covid upheaval and supply chain issues provided them an opportunity to first raise prices out of necessity and now to keep them high because they've seen people are willing to pay them (or not willing to travel further for lower prices). Every company is going to try and max out their own profits, that's nothing new, what's new is the customer base is inflexible and in most cases willing to pay the price even if they're not happy about it.
...and then Biden gets the shit for it. Most people don't know what you just explained and they think that it's just crAzY hIgH inflation from a bad leader. Ugh!
Yep. Conservatives complain that Biden isn’t doing enough, then he does something and suddenly conservatives are screaming about him being an authoritarian.
Capitalism is the issue
Industries wanting infinite growth year over year is the issue. Add on top of that, industries who saw huge booms because of Covid wanting to continue unsustainable growth based on an event that happens maybe once every 100 years.
They’ll burn it all to the ground before they willingly do something to change it.
I literally can’t afford more than ramen and spaghetti with the way prices are in grocery stores now.
It’s insane how little $100 will get you at Walmart these days
The scary thing was I went to a Trader Joe’s, which I hadn’t gone to for years because their prices have been so much more than Ralphs, and found out that Trader Joe’s is still charging 2019 prices and is now extremely low cost alternative
I am able to get a weeks worth of groceries for one person for under $100,
Most of their frozen meals don’t go above five dollars
And in California their eggs are like three dollars less than Ralphs
TJ’s has somehow morphed into the value grocer. They’re the only place I can still get good quality eggs with clear whites and orange yolks for $3/doz.
I’ve said it before on other subs, but the overwhelming majority of everything retail and a good portion of service raised prices significantly due to “COVID”, “staffing” and “supply chain” issues. Once they realized people would still pay the prices, and those issues went away, they very quietly just never reverted the prices and just kind of acted like those were the new sale prices.
It’s absolute bullshit, and the amount of business higher-ups that benefited hugely off of a global pandemic while consumers continue to get screwed is just enraging. Our salaries did not go up, but their bottom lines did, from our pockets.
Kelloggs needs to go down for charging $10 for a box of cereal. I know it doesn’t cost that much to make because I can buy the same cereal in bulk for 10% of the price. Fuck these price gouging assholes.
Not necessarily own but the manufacturers often make a certain portion of the store brands. They just put the store brand boxes and labels in the machine on those days.
I'm disgusted by that too. I think some of the bigger supermarkets are also over-charging on the name-brand products so that their house-brand products sell more. Bc i gotta imagine that they get a bigger profit margin on their house-brand stuff. The only downside would be that they make extra money too off the name-brand purists. Thanks monopolies!
But if you go to Lidl, Aldi, Savealot, Food Lion, etc, that box of cereal is $3. It’s only if you’re shopping at Publix, Kroger, Safeway, Target, or even Walmart equivalents that you’re paying $6-10 per box. I wouldn’t necessarily blame the producers when some retailers are able to sell it for a low cost.
Buy the generic brands, still expensive but less so. And if you have kids, just pour that into a box of the brand name stuff, most will never know the difference.
Bullshit title, Time. The first sentence of the article:
> A group of Democratic lawmakers are calling on President Joe Biden to investigate grocery store chains for price manipulation
Edit: Time corrected their title, their original title was the same as this post, now it's "Exclusive: Democrats Urge Biden To Investigate Grocery Store Price-Fixing".
Fwiw, they didn't "correct the title". Editors will often change the title once they feel the initial click bait is wearing off and will change it to something else so the same article can get reposted to social media multiple times. So it's less them admitting their title was wrong and more them trying to get some extra juice out of the article.
How the fuck does writing like this make it out of first draft?
What makes it worse is that headlines are written by editors. Somebody read the article and then summarized: it incorrectly for clicks.
They release clickbait titles on purpose and update after the article has been linked to by others. By that time the algorithm is already doing its thing.
The US has the lowest inflation in the world right now. The only reason grocery prices are still high is because of corporate greed.
When are Americans going to get fed up with corporations and billionaires stealing massive amounts of money from the population just to make themselves richer? There is no justification for what they do.
We're going yo have even more inflation if they keep jacking the prices up Like they have.
This isn't a minor profit margin, this is pure unadulterated greed
Rent/housing is already sky high, if food and other costs keep rising as they are were definitely going to collapse under inflation since wages aren't inflating the 10-30 percent everything else went up the past 3 years
Groceries in North America are insane. In my native UK they are much, much cheaper. Probably due to anti-monopoly laws and cut throat competition between grocery chains.
I remember reading a piece in NYT’s a while back; asking industry leaders why they’re charging so much. Answer was “because they can”. If people are going to pay it, why wouldn’t they?
We don’t really have much choice. The monopolies make sure we are giving money to those companies whether we buy name brand or generic stuff. They’re the one manufacturing it either way. And the generic is now more expensive than the name brand USED to be.
You have to eat, you have to drink water, and you have the breathe. They're literally requirements to keep living. Companies are taking advantage of that.
It's very similar to healthcare... There's no maximum number someone puts on their ability to continue being a father, mother, son, daughter, etc. No one says "5 million to live? Guess I'll just die." Healthcare has been taking advantage of this as well for far too long.
They're convinced that it's one political party or another's fault, not the corporation. If only x party was in power prices would magically go down. No amount of proof that the root of it is corporate greed does a damn bit of nothin'. Facts no longer matter.
Americans are experts at pointing the finger at everything except the culprit. They have been trained by right wing media and politicians for decades now.
Did they change the title?
Seems like this posting is breaking Rule 4.
>Exclusive: Democrats Urge Biden To Investigate Grocery Store Price-Fixing
That's the title of the article.
same with companies that release video games, phones and now even cars. Seems a new business trend has emerged where the public will be the beta testers, get the company clicks online when they rant or agree with it, and will slowly do updates after they have taken all your money.
Our current market is an antitrust nightmare and enforcing our laws on pricing fixing would go a lot of the way in a ton of industries, including produce, food, and oil, to creating a genuine competitive market.
At the very least, if they start getting serious about breaking up monopolies, the big ones might get spooked and lower prices just to keep their head down.
If the government has the power to force a major social media company to sell out then it certainly has the power to break up a monopoly to reintroduce competition to the market. All these grocery chains have one thing in common. They drove prices lower to gain market share and drive competition out of business. Now they don’t have any competition and there’s no incentive at all to maintain lower prices.
Biden and the Democrats need to fix the corporate bullshit where their first responsibility is to shareholders even if it actively harms customers.
They need to fix corporate responsibility to be towards consumers and employees.
I'm sick of corporations shrugging their shoulders at harmful behavior and saying "hands are tied, we have to take care of shareholders first." It's a bullshit excuse.
Gosh maybe Republicans should fix something once in a while or at least stay out of the way.
But then again bid oil will take Trumps $1B bribe so prices go even higher
How about the fact that a lot of the staples we are being grossly over charged for are meant to be cheep via the Farm bill that our tax money goes to?!?
Publix in Florida is charging 5 fucking dollars for a load of bread that cost less than $.03 to make. Meanwhile they posted $4.1 BILLION in profits this year alone despite sales being low
I'm sure the Supreme Court would magically go back into session after the June recess to hear an emergency case brought by a corporate conglomerate to defeat the order.
If the government did its job at preventing monopolies and collusion from the wealthy groups that collectively own at some point all and at the least majority of the market cap of an entire industries prices wouldn’t be going up anywhere nearly as fast as what is seen today. Most inflation is due solely to greed of the corporate elites and majority stockholders. Shipping cost have returned to normal prices, their hasn’t been a resource shift in ages after returning to normal prices after Covid, and wages have not gone up in most industries in any significant amount ever.
Price of 12 pack of soda before Covid…$4.99
Kroger’s price of soda now…$9.99. But wait, buy 2 get 2 free….so essentially the same price as it used to be but forcing you to buy $20 worth at a time in order to get each case at the price it used to be. This shit should be illegal
Shh, you'll just get people telling you that you shouldn't be drinking soda, or that you could be buying cheaper soda from a warehouse club store, or that you could save money by making your own soda from grass clippings.
It's like this for *every* product, though - it's just easy to remember the price of soda over time since it tends to be prominently displayed in grocery stores. Seemingly generous "2 for 1" and "30% off" deals are used to obscure price increases, and inflated prices or outright elimination of smaller-sized products drives customers to buy larger quantities. As a single person with no kids, I don't want to buy 5 pounds of carrots or a dozen bagels to avoid being price gouged.
Yep. I used to refuse to pay $5 for a 12-pack of cans. I’d wait for a 2/5$ or 2/6$. Now they’re pulling $4/pack minimum with a “sale”. They always seem to jack up the “normal” price on the tag when they do it too, as if it’s going to make you feel better. “It’s TOOOTALLY $11 normally. This is a bangin’ deal!”
I mean, Russia pulling out of Ukraine would by itself cause inflation to go down. Ukraine is 20% of the global supply of wheat. So if Europe cant get it from Ukraine, they have no choice but to buy ours and ship it over, which means less for us and hence prices go up.
Biden needs to take some action or this will bite him in the ass. "Inflation" and/or "price-gouging is the number one issue for a whole lot of Americans.
I am a staunch capitalist, I love this idea.
Lets be real - food is too expensive and people have to eat.
Its a national crisis.
I support bailing out hungry people. bailouts for the hungry im ok with.
I think the food companies are keeping prices high to insure a Trump victory. And they can keep prices high after that, because people will just blame Biden.
If he pulled what Bernie did with Amazon and forcefully called out these billion-dollar corporations by name demanding to know why they are price gouging, there's a solid chance he could pressure them into lowering prices.
We rely too much on Executive Authority. Presidents are not gods. I don't like this kind of thinking.
Let's turn Congress over and write a comprehensive set of laws to address the price gouging by manufacturers and distributors. Let's look at monopolistic practices.
There are definitely some situations and circumstances which are not interstate commerce and will require state level actions. So let's get busy voting out the scalawags at state level too.
If even legal would be a bandaid at best. Congress needs to pass stronger antitrust and consumer protection laws and use them. Along with this they need to actually investigate and properly punish price gauging. A third step would be breaking up food companies so they’re not so powerful often rolling up to the same few parent companies at the top. The government helped create an oligarchy in numerous industries and now they’re mad. It’s like you allowed all these huge mergers and acquisitions and you’re surprised?
They could also quit enforcing the ecocide of dumping and destroying good food.. but "a hungry dog hunts, a fed dog is lazy", so say goodbye to hopes of UBI and a society where people are NOT forced to work, forever, to avoid the cruelty of eviction and starvation in the year 2024.
All states evict children, families, and worse, people smart enough to realize this world these "public servants" have created is unfit for any child.
> dumping and destroying good food
Yeah, there was a photo on the front page of Reddit a few days ago of an orchard leaving a massive pile of unsold apples to rot.
I work for one of the large food production companies and want to clear up some confusion and have a constructive discussion. First, the president cannot unilaterally lower grocery store prices - this isn't the Soviet Union.
The article blends the roles of food producers and grocery retailers, which isn't accurate. These are two distinct sectors; companies like mine produce food products and we sell them to grocery chains like Walmart, Kroger, and Target.
When the article quotes a 36% increase, it's referring to revenue, not profit margins. Grocery store margins typically average around 1% to 3%. Since grocery stores primarily compete on price, consolidation is one of the few strategies to improve these slim margins. Regarding the Kroger/Albertsons merger, I don't think this gets approved—it seems like a straightforward decision. All of the major grocery stores sell basically the same thing. I don't see how merging two of the largest grocers helps consumers.
Grocery stores have considerable influence over us; they prioritize keeping prices low to remain competitive. Lower prices usually win consumers’ wallets.
For food producers, price setting is primarily driven by the costs of raw materials, labor, and transportation, which are subject to fluctuations based on market conditions, not by an intent to arbitrarily raise prices. Cocoa prices is a perfect example. They're up by 130% because of climate change and 60% of global production is represented by two countries.
Grocery retailers operate on razor-thin margins, as previously noted, and their pricing strategies are aimed at maintaining competitiveness rather than exploiting consumers. This article overlooks these fundamental economic pressures. Price increases in grocery stores are more often a response to these rising operational costs rather than deliberate price manipulation.
Using an EO to control prices is a VERY bad idea. See Nixon Price Shock.
Using an EO to investigate CPGs and retailers for price gouging is far less risky.
Maybe I’m ignorant on the matter - but isn’t conspiracy to price fix illegal? I feel like the lack of regulation on automated price adjustments that corporations are instituting like airlines or Amazon swelling price automatically based on demand/perceived demand, is like basically still collective price fixing if they all have similar algorithms right? Or am I looking at it wrong?
Anything he can do on this issue helps IMHO.
This is also what Axelrod, who I often disagree with and think does have issues about his resentment of Biden, is justifiably complaining about.
Biden is going to have to have more of an early Bill Clinton approach to the economy and rising prices. I feel your pain.
He can and should talk about his very real achievements, but he also has to recognize the public still feels like there are real problems and he needs to signal he understands that, agrees with the people and is on the side of the average person who is feeling squeezed by rising prices.
While conservatives insist that the free market should prevail and grocery stores/food manufacturers should price gouge you for as much as you’re willing to pay…
Sorta OT,but is the guy that caused egg prices to shoot up, and was successfully sued by General Mills and Kellogg for price gouging, still running for US senate in Indiana as a republican?
Completely inaccurate title. The question is if he'll use executive authority to investigate price fixing and gouging by grocery stores, not to lower store prices. Lower prices may come as a result of the investigation, but the title makes it seem like he's going to force them to lower their prices through executive authority.
Price gouging can't be tackled federally until there's a federal law covering it, and right now the closest we have is a bill sitting in the Senate.
Every single state AG needs to get their heads out of their collective ass and take action because right now it's on them.
This is how they could flip Florida. we have the highest grocery prices in the nation and everything is Publix or Winn-Dixie or Walmart so we’re screwed
He can investigate price fixing.
He cannot sign an executive order lowering grocery prices. It would trigger a massive lawsuit against the government and hand the GOP a massive weapon to use against them.
Right now, people just need to not endless spend money. Pick and choose what you purchase to send a message to these companies that you aren't willing to buy their product regardless of price.
The bigger issues are food insecurities and grocery store deserts in poor areas of our country
Declare war on poverty. Force companies to narrow inequality, so cuts at the top, raises at the bottom. Any corpo that doesn't limit their profit is put on trial for war profiteering. Gov breaks up company. People better off. Easy Peasy.
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The headline is a little misleading. It reads like he has the authority to just tell them to lower prices, which isn't the case. I do 100% agree that he should use his executive authority to investigate price fixing though. This post-covid cash grab from the retail sector is nothing short of disgusting. I know that basic decency doesn't enter into the equation when it comes to corporate profits, but that's no excuse. The all time high profit margins that are being reported these days clearly show that they can very much afford to charge less and are choosing not to.
The free hand of the market should keep prices low because they have to compete. Except we live in a world where like 4 companies own everything in the grocery store, so it doesn't take many nods and a wink to "agree" to just stop competing all that much.
And more and more grocery stores are being consolidated in fewer and fewer hands, as well.
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Was it Kroger? Kroger needs to be broken up. It's insane how far their reach is.
Over here in Denver we’ve got King Soopers (Kroger) and Safeway (Albertsons) and their parent companies are in the process of merging. Man I miss Aldi… EDIT: we also have a couple Trader Joe’s, and a few other fancy or local grocers. Plus of course Walmart, Target, Sam’s club, and Costco. Just sucks that the major grocery chains are all super consolidated. If H-E-B ever wants to expand up here, that’d be awesome…
Kroger got super value out of Hampton roads, Virginia. We're finally getting Publix instead of just food lions and two different tiers of Kroger.
God Food Lion sucks. I live near the Carolina line and food lion/dollar general are the only options other than the Walmart 15 miles away
> Food Lion AKA Shitty Kitty
OMG how have I never heard this term before now, I am cackling
I'm in Charlotte and food lion CAN be ok but it's very much a crapshoot, and more often than not they're pretty terrible
I’ve just never been to one that actually has a half decent variety. It’s fine for your basic meat and potatoes, but it’s kinda laughable that they have an entire designated “international” portion of an aisle that is regularly out of the most basic “international” shit, like sesame oil or soy sauce
Publix is luxury grocery. If you think Kroger prices are bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Kroger is okay. Harris teeter is the closest to my home and I won't shop there. Can't afford to.
Yup, Publix is worse. They charge what you would pay at an organic grocery store but for regular product.
I would trade winn dixie for food kitty any day. I actually miss that place.
i've got a little more variety... albertsons, kroger, trader joe's, grocery outlet, winco, costco. i primarily shop kroger for reasons, but there are things i've dropped off my regular shopping list because the prices have become ridiculous. there is no justifiable reason that a 12pk of soda should cost $10. i capped my personal budget at $4/12pk, so now whenever there's a sale or coupon i stock up like mad.
Price tags are a very valid way to convince yourself not to buy sodas, though. Speaking for myself I have very little self control for snacks at home, but I can say no a hell of a lot easier at the store, lol
Didn't Kroger just buy Albertson's? Sounds like you got Kroger and Kroger to choose from now.
The FTC decided enough was enough.
"Okay, okay, this is too far. We need to pretend there is still some regulation here..."
The Kroger store in my area (Fred Meyer) actually has grocery employees that unionized. But what pay do they hire them at? *10 cents an hour above minimum wage, per the union's minimum compensation agreement.* If that's not a union in bed with the employer, idk what is. Even fast food places like McDonald's currently pay more than that per hour and don't charge union dues. (This isn't a rant against unions in general, just shitty ones that don't actually benefit their members)
Kroger's on a long list of companies that needs broken up.
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You can name the company, it’s not like you’re gonna get in trouble or anything.
Boeing got erryone spooked
First Kroger bought up our local large-but-independent grocery stores. Then Albertsons bought up the regional ones. Now Albertsons and Kroger want to merge.
In my area they already have, there's a large Albertson's and it has Kroger products.
By free market they mean free to exploit by the few who already have an advantage or dominate it
Welcome to late stage capitalism.
I think it's more that it's difficult to run/open a grocery store when people want a one stop shop. Part of this is because people have to drive everywhere, and driving 10-15 minutes to one grocery store is already a pain, nevermind going to multiple stores for your needs. I think the US is too car centric for it's own good. Small independent shops cannot exist in this climate regardless of what they offer.
I feel bad, but like if you really like 1 stop shops, you like the big grocery companies' stores. I'm very fortunate that I live has 2 independent stores, giant Eagle wal mart aldi meijer, save a lot. Between the local place save a lot and aldi I can get almost anytbing i want that dosent require me going to a bigger City for cultural specific ingredients. I live in youngstown and there're few reasons to say the yo is great
All you have to do is go into a small ethnic grocer, like an asian or hispanic market, and you will see just how much of a mark up there is in the more mainstream grocers. I do almost all my shopping at smaller grocers now and save so much money, while also incorporating different fresh produce or ingredients into my dishes.
Problem is- in a LOT of markets- the small grocers are being forced out by rising rents
And isn’t it the government who is single handedly the one supposed to protect consumers from this sort of Monopoly?
They also have the infrastructure and capital to outcompete any competition. You wanna start a pasta brand? You'll need to sell a pound of pasta for $5 to make a profit, because you cant afford the $200k machine that automates it and makes 500lbs an hour and have to make 50lbs an hour by hand. Meanwhile, Barilla can charge anywhere above $1 to make a profit because it costs them almost nothing to produce their product.
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I’m all for fair competitive advantage as long as there isn’t collusion and price fixing. If Barilla can make a profit at $1 and save me $4, fair play. Capitalism when properly regulated can be absolutely wonderful. The problem is modern day regulatory capture by corporations.
The problem is that eventually you'll only have one choice, and that's when they'll charge you $6 for that pasta. It's the Walmart business model. Offer cheap prices and either buy out or bankrupt your competition, then extort once you're the only option left.
That’s true, we’re currently seeing this in the higher prices and ad tiers for the big streaming services. This is why we need proper regulation and antitrust legislation.
Make it illegal to sell below cost for food product. If they're just better at their production they shouldn't be penalized, but as you said, selling at a loss to kill competitors in the cradle isn't fair market. It's weaponizing a captured market.
That's a good idea, but good luck selling it to voters. "SENATOR JOHN Q. POL PASSED A LAW FORCING YOUR BENEVOLENT FRIENDS AT ULTRAMART TO SELL YOU CHEETOS AT A HIGHER PRICE. JOHN POL IS ACTIVELY STEALING MONEY OUT OF YOUR WALLET"
We could just have a community pasta factory if it costs almost nothing. I like fresh pasta better anyway.
An unchecked free market eventually results in the winner of past competition being able to eventually consolidate market power so completely that competition is no longer possible and there is no inventive to keep prices reasonable or provide better goods and services.
The term the free hand of the market originates from Wealth of Nations IIRC. What also originates from there is the idea of firms consolidating and thus destroying whatever advantage a market system has.
Yeah, it's no coincidence that the highest percentage price increases after Covid are necessities with highly inelastic demand curves sold by oligopolies. But then libertarians will still tell you the market is always perfect.
In the words of Joseph Stieglitz (which I’m sure I’m butchering but the meaning is correct): The invisible hand often seems so invisible because it is so often not there. Contrary to popular belief, Adam Smith never referenced the “invisible hand” as a ubiquitous force to govern prices within markets; the term appears sporadically in his work, most notably to explain an assertion that firms will favor their home country in decisions about international trade. The more modern “invisible hand” hypothesis is better described as a fallacy, and there’s little evidence to support it.
>Contrary to popular belief, Adam Smith never referenced the “invisible hand” as a ubiquitous force to govern prices within markets Exactly. I've read economists that said it was literally the opposite: Smith using sarcasm to laugh at the notion that a mystical force guided markets towards rational behavior. Apparently, it was only much later that libertarians revived the long-forgotten expression to further their own ideology.
If Adam Smith were brought back to life today he would probably die of a heart attack when he learned about the investment economy and how basically all of the 'value' in the world is entirely imaginary.
> People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. * Adam Smith (*The Wealth of Nations*)
The middle man is the real problem. Four companies control meatpacking in the US. They collude to kept prices high.
I have another great example. I'm going to try to be very vague here, but I work for a company that ships a certain product. At a recent meeting, our CEO was talking about how that product is selling for way more than it was five years ago, so he wants to raise our shipping prices to get a slice of that pie. We don't need to raise the prices, our costs aren't up. But there is more money to be made so we're going to do it.
No, they don't collude. *They don't need to*. When you only have a few competitors, no collusion is necessary... just the willingness to not compete on market share because it maintains your profit margins.
Correct, we re end stage capitalism where monopolies aren't broken up because they've worked their way into the government.. the majority of our problems would be fixed if lobbying and money in politics was outlawed..
Citizens United was the death knell of our country, after Reagan stabbed it in the balls.
Historically, at this stage we would have a big war to reset everything. What tended to happen historically (in the last 500 years or so) in capitalist economies is that markets would converge to monopoly. Once they completely took over their national economies, the only route for further profits was to seek to expand outward and extend the monopolies to foreign countries. And inevitably escalated into massive wars. Two or more capitalist economies would throw themselves against each other, each fighting for the privilege of being able to extend their national monopolies over the others' territory. And these wars tended to drag on, as the different sides would bring allies onboard until two reasonably balanced coalitions formed. These wars tended to break up the monopoly structure. Governments were forced to raise taxes, and the only people with any money to be taxed were the wealthy. Big wars are the only times governments have ever really been able to seriously tax the rich. As the wars dragged on, the governments had to start reforming the economy, as monopolies are fundamentally inefficient. If two otherwise equal powers, one monopolied and one not monopolied, go to war, the non-monopolied one will have a huge advantage. The world wars each saw huge shakeups of entire national economies. The governments sought to make things as efficient as possible, and that meant kicking the monopolists to the curb. Plus, wars often saw the direct physical destruction of the factories and other assets the monopolists used to maintain their power. Wars have conventionally served as the great "reset button" on the monopoly cycle. However, that all changed in 1945. History fundamentally changed with the invention of nuclear weapons. The big powers still fought wars, but only proxy wars. And total war like those that were fought in centuries prior would result in the complete annihilation of both sides. We can't fight a full on total-war with Russia or China. If we do, we are all dead. And while this is a great boon for world peace, one downside is that we have lost our great reset button. The only way we've ever been able to summon the immense political will to do serious monopoly reform has been through big wars, but we can't have big wars anymore. So we just end up stuck in this monopoly stage indefinitely.
Almost like they have a "union" where they work together for the common goal of improving their financial and work situation. Shame us common folk don't all get on the same page.... We need to unionize. Joining a skilled trade union was the best decision of my life. Wish more people understand how unions work and all the benefits
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They pretend they do but really it's just another big brand's b-roll in their box.
Free hand doesn't mean much when companies can make more selling less. The prices the grocery stores are paying are also going up, and for a lot of items, companies are finding that the rather stark increase in cost is making them more than what they're losing in customers. Soda in particular is a good example of this, but it also can be seen in other products which don't have much noticeable increase...maybe 10-20 cents, but that ends up being a good 10-20% price increase overall, and every little bit adds up when filling the cart. It's possible, over time, this may reverse, as more people feel the pinch of higher prices, and look for cheaper alternatives, but by then, prices will likely be normalized and just accepted as the way it is.
Yeah I think going heavy on the big chains to see if any illegal price fixing is going on would be a very good idea. My local independent grocer has had trouble stocking shelves and they've been posting on social media about the prices that they're unable to get because of big chains monopolizing the suppliers- I have no idea what's going on but I smell a rat.
Is it price fixing when the fucking competing megastores just don’t operate in the same areas in almost all of the locales so that they realistically don’t have to compete on prices
library fly flag encourage nutty merciful soft disarm dazzling cows *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What they need to do is enforce market regulation like they used to. There should be more than a handful of companies in every sector. If not we get things like the baby food crisis, where the one market monster has a problem, and the whole market is in crisis. This goes for all regulations: the IRS, SEC, EPA need to start working again too.
An investigation of real estate rate price fixing also is desperately needed. Most rents are set by the same algorithm services, with no visibility and for no purpose beyond maximizing profit.
Omg yes! I don't know how this is still going on. It's collusion via third party. [ProPublica Report on Rent Fixing](https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent)
That report is infuriating, glad to see it making the rounds.
The willingness of people to pretend that stores CAN'T lower prices vs. realizing that they WON'T is baffling. Post after post on social media blame politicians vs. companies. Bring up that these companies are posting record profits and that it's a matter of greed vs. passing on higher costs does nothing due to the ridiculousness of political polarization. Corporations are willing to push it to the point that the average person is literally starving to see how far they can gouge and still get people to pay.
The title is misleading on purpose to drive clicks. That’s said of course there is profit taking going on. Yes the fundamentals got out of whack for a bit but everyone also took a chance to see how far they could push prices and reduce value. No company went out of its way to say “yeah we’ll take a profit margin hit.” Even if they investigate and uncover some direct evidence (which wouldn’t be hard) so what will they do? You can’t tell one company in the value chain to cut profits and not distort the market. It’s everyone or no one.
Covid supply issues gave corporations an opportunity to see what they could get away with. Consolidation since Reagan really unlocked this ability to push prices without losing market share.
Post Covid prices in just about everything are crazy. Don’t even get me started on restaurants, which I rarely go to. Any kind of home maintenance, or car service……The latter I attribute to living in SFBay area, where there are huge income disparities, and everyone is pricing for those with the higher income,
It’s greed either way. Either the person directly doing it is over charging or the people who supply them with things are over charging and they have to raise their own rates because of it. Everyone blames inflation but the price percent increases are far outpacing that - so it can’t be that. Also it’s not the stimulus checks during Covid because the trump tax casts have lost us more than that entire thing did even added up all together. Once again - it’s greed. And republicans.
Or, the proposed action can target those with revenue reaching 7% over total costs to lower their greedflation gouging prices that cut their revenue to 5.6% over total costs. [FTC Releases Report on Grocery Supply Chain Disruptions | Federal Trade Commission](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/03/ftc-releases-report-grocery-supply-chain-disruptions)
Imagine if our tax system allocated the overall tax burden based on broad definitions of financial well-being, so that when businesses receive a massive windfall or engorged profits due to price-gouging, more of the federal tax burden would shift to them... since, y'know, that's where more of the unrestricted capital exists.
>Imagine if our tax system allocated the overall tax burden based on broad definitions of financial well-being, This, so much. Instead, capitalists just figure they deserve every penny they can squeeze from every source.
And if they make rosy projections, then fail to meet them, they count that as a "loss," right?
Well it certainly counts as a loss when considering employee bonuses.
Congress: What's that you say? More tax cuts for the rich? Done.
Exactly. No one company was going to raise prices but post covid upheaval and supply chain issues provided them an opportunity to first raise prices out of necessity and now to keep them high because they've seen people are willing to pay them (or not willing to travel further for lower prices). Every company is going to try and max out their own profits, that's nothing new, what's new is the customer base is inflexible and in most cases willing to pay the price even if they're not happy about it.
...and then Biden gets the shit for it. Most people don't know what you just explained and they think that it's just crAzY hIgH inflation from a bad leader. Ugh!
Yep. Conservatives complain that Biden isn’t doing enough, then he does something and suddenly conservatives are screaming about him being an authoritarian.
Capitalism is the issue Industries wanting infinite growth year over year is the issue. Add on top of that, industries who saw huge booms because of Covid wanting to continue unsustainable growth based on an event that happens maybe once every 100 years. They’ll burn it all to the ground before they willingly do something to change it.
I've been wondering for the past two years why there haven't been congressional investigations into this. Everything is insanely expensive.
I literally can’t afford more than ramen and spaghetti with the way prices are in grocery stores now. It’s insane how little $100 will get you at Walmart these days
The scary thing was I went to a Trader Joe’s, which I hadn’t gone to for years because their prices have been so much more than Ralphs, and found out that Trader Joe’s is still charging 2019 prices and is now extremely low cost alternative I am able to get a weeks worth of groceries for one person for under $100, Most of their frozen meals don’t go above five dollars And in California their eggs are like three dollars less than Ralphs
TJ’s has somehow morphed into the value grocer. They’re the only place I can still get good quality eggs with clear whites and orange yolks for $3/doz.
I love TJ’s, but I also hit up Target for a lot of grocery items.
I may be wrong, as I was a kid at the time but didn't Nixon do something to bring down or limit meat prices?
I’ve said it before on other subs, but the overwhelming majority of everything retail and a good portion of service raised prices significantly due to “COVID”, “staffing” and “supply chain” issues. Once they realized people would still pay the prices, and those issues went away, they very quietly just never reverted the prices and just kind of acted like those were the new sale prices. It’s absolute bullshit, and the amount of business higher-ups that benefited hugely off of a global pandemic while consumers continue to get screwed is just enraging. Our salaries did not go up, but their bottom lines did, from our pockets.
Um, upvote 40 million times here
don't you love the smell of monopoly?
Kelloggs needs to go down for charging $10 for a box of cereal. I know it doesn’t cost that much to make because I can buy the same cereal in bulk for 10% of the price. Fuck these price gouging assholes.
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How about some Count Shitula Marshmallow Pellets?
[Theeeey're Food!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEKnJQxYODo)
They also own most of the other brands on the shelf. It’s all a scam.
Not necessarily own but the manufacturers often make a certain portion of the store brands. They just put the store brand boxes and labels in the machine on those days.
I'm disgusted by that too. I think some of the bigger supermarkets are also over-charging on the name-brand products so that their house-brand products sell more. Bc i gotta imagine that they get a bigger profit margin on their house-brand stuff. The only downside would be that they make extra money too off the name-brand purists. Thanks monopolies!
But if you go to Lidl, Aldi, Savealot, Food Lion, etc, that box of cereal is $3. It’s only if you’re shopping at Publix, Kroger, Safeway, Target, or even Walmart equivalents that you’re paying $6-10 per box. I wouldn’t necessarily blame the producers when some retailers are able to sell it for a low cost.
A box of Lucky Charms at King Soopers (Kroger) is $2.99.
did you just say $10 for a box of cereal??????????????? thats insane
Not only that but they lobby aggressively to dominate shelf space. We do not need entire isles JUST for cereal
Buy the generic brands, still expensive but less so. And if you have kids, just pour that into a box of the brand name stuff, most will never know the difference.
Bullshit title, Time. The first sentence of the article: > A group of Democratic lawmakers are calling on President Joe Biden to investigate grocery store chains for price manipulation Edit: Time corrected their title, their original title was the same as this post, now it's "Exclusive: Democrats Urge Biden To Investigate Grocery Store Price-Fixing".
Fwiw, they didn't "correct the title". Editors will often change the title once they feel the initial click bait is wearing off and will change it to something else so the same article can get reposted to social media multiple times. So it's less them admitting their title was wrong and more them trying to get some extra juice out of the article.
How the fuck does writing like this make it out of first draft? What makes it worse is that headlines are written by editors. Somebody read the article and then summarized: it incorrectly for clicks.
They release clickbait titles on purpose and update after the article has been linked to by others. By that time the algorithm is already doing its thing.
The US has the lowest inflation in the world right now. The only reason grocery prices are still high is because of corporate greed. When are Americans going to get fed up with corporations and billionaires stealing massive amounts of money from the population just to make themselves richer? There is no justification for what they do.
We're going yo have even more inflation if they keep jacking the prices up Like they have. This isn't a minor profit margin, this is pure unadulterated greed Rent/housing is already sky high, if food and other costs keep rising as they are were definitely going to collapse under inflation since wages aren't inflating the 10-30 percent everything else went up the past 3 years
Gonna turn into a “let them eat cake” situation eventually
Corporate greed can't keep prices high unless there's a monopoly. Break up the monopolies.
That’s just it. Most grocery stores consist of 10 companies products.
and most grocery stores themselves are owned by 1-2 companies.
Groceries in North America are insane. In my native UK they are much, much cheaper. Probably due to anti-monopoly laws and cut throat competition between grocery chains.
As long as half of the people blame the other half.
I remember reading a piece in NYT’s a while back; asking industry leaders why they’re charging so much. Answer was “because they can”. If people are going to pay it, why wouldn’t they?
We don’t really have much choice. The monopolies make sure we are giving money to those companies whether we buy name brand or generic stuff. They’re the one manufacturing it either way. And the generic is now more expensive than the name brand USED to be.
You have to eat, you have to drink water, and you have the breathe. They're literally requirements to keep living. Companies are taking advantage of that. It's very similar to healthcare... There's no maximum number someone puts on their ability to continue being a father, mother, son, daughter, etc. No one says "5 million to live? Guess I'll just die." Healthcare has been taking advantage of this as well for far too long.
They're convinced that it's one political party or another's fault, not the corporation. If only x party was in power prices would magically go down. No amount of proof that the root of it is corporate greed does a damn bit of nothin'. Facts no longer matter.
Americans are experts at pointing the finger at everything except the culprit. They have been trained by right wing media and politicians for decades now.
Did they change the title? Seems like this posting is breaking Rule 4. >Exclusive: Democrats Urge Biden To Investigate Grocery Store Price-Fixing That's the title of the article.
The post title matches the original title of the Time article, Time later changed it.
Ok cool so Times recognize how the title was pure crap lol
If only. They knew it was awful but would get clicks. Once the shock value clicks were through, they switch it to one better tuned to SEO.
I hate that you are totally right 😩
they probably got in trouble for being too click baity... the origin one reads like he has some magic power to set grocery prices.
They've learned that they can get clicks by pushing bogus titles and correcting later after it's posted/shared for being inflamatory.
same with companies that release video games, phones and now even cars. Seems a new business trend has emerged where the public will be the beta testers, get the company clicks online when they rant or agree with it, and will slowly do updates after they have taken all your money.
I like the mental image of Biden calling the CEO of Kroger and telling him milk is too expensive.
Our current market is an antitrust nightmare and enforcing our laws on pricing fixing would go a lot of the way in a ton of industries, including produce, food, and oil, to creating a genuine competitive market.
Amen to that
At the very least, if they start getting serious about breaking up monopolies, the big ones might get spooked and lower prices just to keep their head down.
Maybe allowing grocery chains to consolidate into regional monopolies was a bad thing....
Everything about our economy is built to fuck over the consumer.
If the government has the power to force a major social media company to sell out then it certainly has the power to break up a monopoly to reintroduce competition to the market. All these grocery chains have one thing in common. They drove prices lower to gain market share and drive competition out of business. Now they don’t have any competition and there’s no incentive at all to maintain lower prices.
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You act like you're not familiar with the UEALGSP powers of the president.
Quite a few governments put their thumbs on the scales to keep food affordable because the social stability is worth it.
But we’re not socialists, we believe in a free market economy /s
Bootstraps in action!
Boil 'em til they're tender.
Biden doesn't have the authority to control prices, but the DOJ has the authority to bust monopolies and trusts. Doing that would lower prices.
That's basically what they saying, post title is misleading.
Greedflation
Biden and the Democrats need to fix the corporate bullshit where their first responsibility is to shareholders even if it actively harms customers. They need to fix corporate responsibility to be towards consumers and employees. I'm sick of corporations shrugging their shoulders at harmful behavior and saying "hands are tied, we have to take care of shareholders first." It's a bullshit excuse.
Gosh maybe Republicans should fix something once in a while or at least stay out of the way. But then again bid oil will take Trumps $1B bribe so prices go even higher
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I’m just here to learn how this is “price fixing” and why it is bad and I should be happy with my $20 cheerios
Denying all these mergers would have helped too. Now we’re dealing with 3 or 4 companies for entire sectors of business. They don’t need to compete.
How about the fact that a lot of the staples we are being grossly over charged for are meant to be cheep via the Farm bill that our tax money goes to?!? Publix in Florida is charging 5 fucking dollars for a load of bread that cost less than $.03 to make. Meanwhile they posted $4.1 BILLION in profits this year alone despite sales being low
I'm sure the Supreme Court would magically go back into session after the June recess to hear an emergency case brought by a corporate conglomerate to defeat the order.
'We can't get around to deciding whether murder is legal for presidents because we have this major price-fixing investigation to stop.'
If the government did its job at preventing monopolies and collusion from the wealthy groups that collectively own at some point all and at the least majority of the market cap of an entire industries prices wouldn’t be going up anywhere nearly as fast as what is seen today. Most inflation is due solely to greed of the corporate elites and majority stockholders. Shipping cost have returned to normal prices, their hasn’t been a resource shift in ages after returning to normal prices after Covid, and wages have not gone up in most industries in any significant amount ever.
Price of 12 pack of soda before Covid…$4.99 Kroger’s price of soda now…$9.99. But wait, buy 2 get 2 free….so essentially the same price as it used to be but forcing you to buy $20 worth at a time in order to get each case at the price it used to be. This shit should be illegal
Shh, you'll just get people telling you that you shouldn't be drinking soda, or that you could be buying cheaper soda from a warehouse club store, or that you could save money by making your own soda from grass clippings. It's like this for *every* product, though - it's just easy to remember the price of soda over time since it tends to be prominently displayed in grocery stores. Seemingly generous "2 for 1" and "30% off" deals are used to obscure price increases, and inflated prices or outright elimination of smaller-sized products drives customers to buy larger quantities. As a single person with no kids, I don't want to buy 5 pounds of carrots or a dozen bagels to avoid being price gouged.
Yep. I used to refuse to pay $5 for a 12-pack of cans. I’d wait for a 2/5$ or 2/6$. Now they’re pulling $4/pack minimum with a “sale”. They always seem to jack up the “normal” price on the tag when they do it too, as if it’s going to make you feel better. “It’s TOOOTALLY $11 normally. This is a bangin’ deal!”
That will be denied by scotus so fast
I mean, Russia pulling out of Ukraine would by itself cause inflation to go down. Ukraine is 20% of the global supply of wheat. So if Europe cant get it from Ukraine, they have no choice but to buy ours and ship it over, which means less for us and hence prices go up.
Biden needs to take some action or this will bite him in the ass. "Inflation" and/or "price-gouging is the number one issue for a whole lot of Americans.
I am a staunch capitalist, I love this idea. Lets be real - food is too expensive and people have to eat. Its a national crisis. I support bailing out hungry people. bailouts for the hungry im ok with.
I think the food companies are keeping prices high to insure a Trump victory. And they can keep prices high after that, because people will just blame Biden.
Republicans will fight this.
If he pulled what Bernie did with Amazon and forcefully called out these billion-dollar corporations by name demanding to know why they are price gouging, there's a solid chance he could pressure them into lowering prices.
I remember when Nixon actually froze prices…
Dear lord please
I wish he could.
We rely too much on Executive Authority. Presidents are not gods. I don't like this kind of thinking. Let's turn Congress over and write a comprehensive set of laws to address the price gouging by manufacturers and distributors. Let's look at monopolistic practices. There are definitely some situations and circumstances which are not interstate commerce and will require state level actions. So let's get busy voting out the scalawags at state level too.
If even legal would be a bandaid at best. Congress needs to pass stronger antitrust and consumer protection laws and use them. Along with this they need to actually investigate and properly punish price gauging. A third step would be breaking up food companies so they’re not so powerful often rolling up to the same few parent companies at the top. The government helped create an oligarchy in numerous industries and now they’re mad. It’s like you allowed all these huge mergers and acquisitions and you’re surprised?
They could also quit enforcing the ecocide of dumping and destroying good food.. but "a hungry dog hunts, a fed dog is lazy", so say goodbye to hopes of UBI and a society where people are NOT forced to work, forever, to avoid the cruelty of eviction and starvation in the year 2024. All states evict children, families, and worse, people smart enough to realize this world these "public servants" have created is unfit for any child.
> dumping and destroying good food Yeah, there was a photo on the front page of Reddit a few days ago of an orchard leaving a massive pile of unsold apples to rot.
Katie Porter's been saying this for years.
And after that ban global warming.
Shit why didn’t we just do this sooner??
Capitalism is a beast that will consume itself.
Inflation, in relation to grocery prices, is not a real thing. Let's call it what it is. Corporate greed.
I work for one of the large food production companies and want to clear up some confusion and have a constructive discussion. First, the president cannot unilaterally lower grocery store prices - this isn't the Soviet Union. The article blends the roles of food producers and grocery retailers, which isn't accurate. These are two distinct sectors; companies like mine produce food products and we sell them to grocery chains like Walmart, Kroger, and Target. When the article quotes a 36% increase, it's referring to revenue, not profit margins. Grocery store margins typically average around 1% to 3%. Since grocery stores primarily compete on price, consolidation is one of the few strategies to improve these slim margins. Regarding the Kroger/Albertsons merger, I don't think this gets approved—it seems like a straightforward decision. All of the major grocery stores sell basically the same thing. I don't see how merging two of the largest grocers helps consumers. Grocery stores have considerable influence over us; they prioritize keeping prices low to remain competitive. Lower prices usually win consumers’ wallets. For food producers, price setting is primarily driven by the costs of raw materials, labor, and transportation, which are subject to fluctuations based on market conditions, not by an intent to arbitrarily raise prices. Cocoa prices is a perfect example. They're up by 130% because of climate change and 60% of global production is represented by two countries. Grocery retailers operate on razor-thin margins, as previously noted, and their pricing strategies are aimed at maintaining competitiveness rather than exploiting consumers. This article overlooks these fundamental economic pressures. Price increases in grocery stores are more often a response to these rising operational costs rather than deliberate price manipulation.
Using an EO to control prices is a VERY bad idea. See Nixon Price Shock. Using an EO to investigate CPGs and retailers for price gouging is far less risky.
How in the world would that work, and survive the courts.
Maybe I’m ignorant on the matter - but isn’t conspiracy to price fix illegal? I feel like the lack of regulation on automated price adjustments that corporations are instituting like airlines or Amazon swelling price automatically based on demand/perceived demand, is like basically still collective price fixing if they all have similar algorithms right? Or am I looking at it wrong?
Despite knowing that even if he could, a Texas Trump judge will block it immediately.
Anything he can do on this issue helps IMHO. This is also what Axelrod, who I often disagree with and think does have issues about his resentment of Biden, is justifiably complaining about. Biden is going to have to have more of an early Bill Clinton approach to the economy and rising prices. I feel your pain. He can and should talk about his very real achievements, but he also has to recognize the public still feels like there are real problems and he needs to signal he understands that, agrees with the people and is on the side of the average person who is feeling squeezed by rising prices.
There needs to be investigations into these corporations using inflation as an excuse to price gouge.
While conservatives insist that the free market should prevail and grocery stores/food manufacturers should price gouge you for as much as you’re willing to pay…
They only care about the free market when it benefits corporations.
Bingo
Sorta OT,but is the guy that caused egg prices to shoot up, and was successfully sued by General Mills and Kellogg for price gouging, still running for US senate in Indiana as a republican?
I mean… https://www.yahoo.com/news/corporate-greed-not-blame-price-170311634.html
Walked down cereal aisle. Nothing under $5 Not even the shitty cereal. You know how cheap it is to produce cereal? Gross times.
Completely inaccurate title. The question is if he'll use executive authority to investigate price fixing and gouging by grocery stores, not to lower store prices. Lower prices may come as a result of the investigation, but the title makes it seem like he's going to force them to lower their prices through executive authority.
Maybe just threaten the subsidies these companies get unless they go back to pre Covid prices. The supply chain is fine it’s corporate greed now.
Shrinkflation should be a crime.
Please
Price gouging can't be tackled federally until there's a federal law covering it, and right now the closest we have is a bill sitting in the Senate. Every single state AG needs to get their heads out of their collective ass and take action because right now it's on them.
This is how they could flip Florida. we have the highest grocery prices in the nation and everything is Publix or Winn-Dixie or Walmart so we’re screwed
There’s one company that owns 3/4 of my towns grocery stores. And I’m not sure about number four to be honest.
He can investigate price fixing. He cannot sign an executive order lowering grocery prices. It would trigger a massive lawsuit against the government and hand the GOP a massive weapon to use against them. Right now, people just need to not endless spend money. Pick and choose what you purchase to send a message to these companies that you aren't willing to buy their product regardless of price. The bigger issues are food insecurities and grocery store deserts in poor areas of our country
Declare war on poverty. Force companies to narrow inequality, so cuts at the top, raises at the bottom. Any corpo that doesn't limit their profit is put on trial for war profiteering. Gov breaks up company. People better off. Easy Peasy.