Unregulated capitalism will be the death of us all.
Capitalism will be the death of us all.
The death of us all will be the death of us all.
Only once there’s no longer a profit in keeping us alive.
So we’ve got a couple good years left in us!
I’ll take it one step further: currency was a bad idea that turned resource allocation into a number-go-up game.
Disagree. Currency allowed the flourishing of civilization. You can’t effectively trade between cultures or at long distances on the barter system.
What we’ve done with currency since then, yeah, maybe we’re on the same side there. But currency, created as an abstract for value, was a great invention. Civilization as we know it would not have been possible without it.
Though, now that I mention that… maybe civilization “as we know it” isn’t so hot after all.
Don’t you love when you end up talking yourself out of your own argument?
Did someone say “greedflation”?
When I can go to a sit down restaurant and have a fresh cooked meal for less than going to mcdonalds, something is wrong. I will never eat there again. Pay more for less, and it’s absolute trash.
Isn’t that wild? My favorite mom and pop shops are at least 33% less expensive and made with solid ingredients (especially real ice cream milk shakes lol)
I wouldn’t recommend making this into a sticker and putting it on the door of these places so people can see. Don’t do that, it would be vandalism.
Collusion
Isn’t the next step more shrinkflation? Lower sticker prices, but also reduced size products to keep profits right where they’re at now.
True. I’m sure the part they’re not reporting is they reduced prices by 5% but didn’t mention they also reduced per product quantity by 10%.
Just enough for customers to not notice but think they’re getting it for cheaper, while actually paying more per unit of quantity.
They are already doing this. Aldi raised their Elevation protein bars by a few pennies, compared to the competition raising prices by dollars; BUT they dropped in size by a THIRD. So people think they’re getting a great deal, but are only getting 2/3 of the product they used to.
There is one way you can vote everyday, and that is with your wallet. If I see you buying a Tesla… I’m going to assume you want Trump to win. Where you spend your money matters.
Greedflation. Call it what it is.
I don’t think there should be price caps, but, I think we could get somewhere having a maximum amount you’re allowed to raise your prices by in a single year and how long you have to take to get there.
I think this rate should be tied to federal interest rates to create a competing class interest to the owner class wanting interest rates to stay low forever even if it breaks the bank for everyone else.
I mean, just break up the massive corporations. Capitalism requires seller competition in the marketplace in order to provide an incentive to drive down prices. If there are too few players, they can easily make unspoken agreements to fuck over consumers.
The problem is we have historical evidence to show that that doesn’t exactly work. Standard Oil’s broken up parts have mostly been able to informally collude with one another on “turf” and in some cases even defy having been broken up to reacquire each other.
Honestly, I was never a fan of theft, but these big corporations deserve it after these past 3-4 years.
I root for everyone stealing clothes and food from Macy’s, walgreens, etc.
Just DON’T steal from your local mom and pops store!
Remember: If you see someone stealing food from a large company store… No you didn’t.
Y’all have local mom and pop stores?
Just a reminder from a very price sensitive shopper that ALDI barely raised any prices through all of this bullshit.
My weekly grocery bill rose from about $80/wk at Aldi to about $110/wk at Aldi in the last 3 years while my shopping has largely remained almost identical. That’s an increase largely in line with overall inflation during the same period.
Also during that same period my house nearly doubled in value for…reasons I guess? I seriously cannot afford to buy a new house in the current housing market so something is going to give at some point…any decade now…
I started shopping at Aldi almost exclusively and it’s been fantastic.
My only complaints about Aldi are that the selection is a bit limited (though they often have some interesting stuff in the “aldi finds” section) and the produce can be a bit hit or miss, but I always do the bulk of my groceries there, then get the rest at Kroger. (Their prices aren’t great, but they’re the cheapest in my area beside Aldi.)
Same with Winco
I love WinCo! They have such great prices and so many options. They even sell this pre seasoned carne asada taco beef that is fucking amazing! I’ve never found it anywhere else. It tastes like legit Mexican carne asada tacos.
Has their produce improved any? A few years ago it was pretty sketchy at the Aldi here.
That probably depends a lot on your locale. It’s always been pretty ok at the one I shop at. Their fruit is usually good. The biggest difference is that for stuff with short fridge life, like salad kits, you usually only have a few days to use what you get vs. maybe a week or more at a larger store.
News reads more and more as advertisement. “Walgreens just lowered prices!” is what I’d expect to see between news stories not in them.
Marxists: inflation isn’t caused by increase in wages that drive up demand, its caused by companies conspiring to increase prices. This was proven 125 years ago in Value, Price and Profit…
Non-Marxists: god can’t you ideologues just stop repeating the same outdated theories? There’s no conspiracy, class isn’t real
Inflation: happens
Workers: I think there’s a conspiracy to raise the prices of things because wages went up
Corporate and government overlords: no, you see increase of wages creates increase in demand of goods which increases prices, I went to Yale
Workers: i just got a raise and yet I can’t afford to eat anymore
Pretty sure laws exist that are supposed to prevent price gouging, but they require a government that actually enforces said laws…
“Laws” are not the only method humanity has come up with for defending each other against fraudulent and predatory behaviors. Where law has proven incapable of preventing victimization, the guillotine has a proven track record of convincing the ultra rich to stop thinking about their wallets and to start thinking about the needs of the people.
You are obsessed with the idea that you’re going to set up a guillotine to punish the wicked. You are an impotent nerd that gets off on violent fantasy online.
Calm. Down. You can’t even organize effective action against your own diminishing dreams. Stop advocating for violence. You’re in no position to handle it.
Go stroke your gun and fantasize about how it makes you strong and important; meanwhile, the world will, much to your confusion, continue not caring about your opinions.
You’ve read a lot of angry context into that that I did not provide. I think you protest too much.
One interesting aspect of a true democracy is that once the people have sufficient, collective justification to engage in violent revolution, peaceful reform suddenly becomes not just feasible, but the preferred resolution for everyone involved. It’s a bit of a paradox.
si vis pacem, para bellum.
No, I read a lot of context from your angry, impotent, and violent-fantasizing post history.
Your cute little performative Latin phrase is precisely my point.
No one cares about your violent fantasia.
I know, I know, “yer gonna regret saying that to me when they bring out the guillotines!”
Dude. It’s just awkward.
Canadians will force our grocers to do the same by crushing loblaws.
Obligatory fuck Loblaw’s.
So the market works. What’s the issue then
I mean isn‘t what‘s described here also just basic supply/demand?
Unfortunately, the demand for things like food doesn’t go down just because you don’t have money
Exactly! In economics there’s a concept called price elasticity (Incorporating two related principles, elasticity of supply and elasticity of demand).
Elasticity of demand is the more relevant one here. Products with elastic demand are those that consumers are quicker to change their buying habits around. For instance, luxury items. Products with inelastic demand are generally actual necessities (like groceries), where you’re gonna have to buy them one way or another. You can look to alternate suppliers with better prices, but when they’re all gouging you have no choice but to buy from one of them.
In the long run this can indirectly be forced to change. If it gets bad enough that people en-mass started growing their own food at home, this could cause the suppliers to reconsider their prices. (I know that’s a far-fetched example. I’m just using it to broadly illustrate my point.)
Sure, at the basic level, everyone needs food. But you can get a lot more granular about it. For example, a lot of people buy things they may not need to survive, like snacks/desserts. Or perhaps they do buy items they need, but they usually get versions that cost more (whether that be because the particular store is more expensive overall, or simply because they’re buying items that are more costly than things at the lowest end that still allow you to survive like beans and rice).
The point is, most (not ALL) people can buckle down their food spending in some way or another, and I think that’s what we’re seeing here.
What’s your argument here? That we should sacrifice in the name of corporate profits?
I personally am not interested in giving up the few luxury food items I buy so that the CEO of Kroger can buy another fucking yacht.
Have you tried eating dog food to help the shareholders yet?
Kibble only. If they catch you with some of that fancy wet dog food you’re going to get a lengthy lecture about financial responsibility.
Yeah, but I balance it out by feeding my dog avocado toast.
This reminds me. I’m out of fresh fish for the dog.
I’m not saying that, I’m going back and saying it IS a sort of supply and demand effect we’re seeing. People aren’t spending in ways the corporations wanted, so now they’re finally lowering some prices. That’s all.
It sounds like you’re blaming the consumer. As if we could avoid the current cost of living crisis if we just buckled down our spending.
I’m not blaming anyone but the corporations here. My post was simply an observation of what’s happened, but for some reason people are taking it wrong I think.
Yeah… People just need to start slurping down gruel for every meal and be happy about it. How dare someone complain about grocery store prices when I know for a fact they splurged on a bag of name brand potato chips last week! The poors are not just entitled but completely irresponsible. Don’t they realize simple luxuries like snacks are for rich people?
That’s what a lot of people here and on reddit tell you when you say it’s expensive to cook. Rice and beans, rice and beans, eat your rice and beans every day.
Thanks, I enjoy some occasional rice and beans, but I prefer having a will to live over eating beans every day.
You are not brasilian
I think you misinterpreted what I wrote? I’m not saying people SHOULD reduce their food spending, i’m saying they’ve been kind of forced to, and so in effect that’s why prices are going down. So it IS a supply and demand effect of some kind.
I was going to say the same. Of course there is always a base demand, but there is a reason why 300 years ago fat people were considered wealthy simply because they could buy whatever they wanted for food.
But this discussion is all besides the point. The post says „as soon as we stop buying shit prices go down“, and that is a simple principle of supply demand. I also never stated that this was the sole reason for massively inflated prices, because it‘s not. Again, i was just referring to a thing that was said in the post itself.
The community on here isn‘t really better than on reddit, it‘s all an echochamber as well, which i‘m fine with.
It is. It’s partly walking back price gouging (which happened because there was no government there to stop them) and partly a correction for the loss in buying power overly greedy price gouging during high inflation has caused.
No, it’s greed. They aren’t hurting for supply, so there’s no other reason to raise costs other than greed.
But the post says „they stopped buying and price goes down“ reduced demand makes price go down. I‘m not defending corpos or claiming that they‘re not greedy. I‘m just discussing what is stated in this post because it‘s a bad example of greed.
Yeah, lowering prices by itself isn’t evidence that it was just greed all along, they conceivably could be lowering prices to the point that sales on those items are no longer profitable in order to shed inventory because some money (at a loss) is better than no money (at an even bigger loss)
“Supply and demand” refers to the two-way street of scarcity wherein the less “supply” there is, and the more “demand” for the product, the higher the price will be. The point is, if you want to attribute it to “supply and demand”, you need both ends - the scarcity of supply, and a rise in demand. If you have one or the other, but not both, and prices increase, it’s due to other causes.
