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How prices changed at a Walmart in a year
- oftenwrong 7y agoHere is the text-only version: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=753712449 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=753712449
- chrischen 7y agoThe goal of the tariffs is to improve the bargaining position of America in getting better trade deals with China... not to move manufacturing back to the US. That might be what’s fed to the average Joe the plumber Trump supporter but common sense easily precludes that motivation. To actually move manufacturing back you’d have to tariff every country with a lower cost of living than the US, and that’s most of the world. You’d have to massively reduce consumption in the US since such a policy will greatly redistribute wealth to domestic the physical laborer. And in the long term, because of the unsustainable labor costs here eventually automation and robotics R&D will catch up to destroy those jobs anyways.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoCommon sense is not a strong suit of this administration.
- chrischen 7y agoI don’t think the administration is deluded by that reality, but many of the supporters are. They just wanted jobs and Trump said yes, but he’s essentially misleading them.
- will4274 7y ago"fed" is the word that is offensive. The notion that Trump supporters repeat lines that are fed to them like an actor on a stage, rather than analyzing different explanations and coming to a conclusion on which one was most accurate. Reinforced by "common sense easily precludes"
- chrischen 7y agoWhen a group indiscriminately accepts the words of someone they are being "fed." This happens for both liberals and conservatives. I'm describing the character of that specific subgroup of Trump supporters which are being fed his words, not that all Trump supporters are being fed.
- mieseratte 7y ago> The goal of the tariffs is to improve the bargaining position of America in getting better trade deals with China... not to move manufacturing back to the US. Alternatively, to decouple US and Chinese trade as China is a major strategic rival to the US. > That might be what’s fed to the average Joe the plumber Trump supporter but common sense easily precludes that motivation. Perhaps one should avoid thinly veiled political insults. Particularly as it blinds one to alternative possibilities.
- chrischen 7y agoI’m not insulting. It’s true blue collar workers flocked to Trump hoping to bring back manufacturing. Joe the Plumber was the epitome of a blue collar Republican.
- Jorge1o1 7y agoYou would have to tariff every country with a comparative advantage in manufacturing cheap goods, not just “the cheapest countries” in general. Otherwise, we’d be moving our production to Pakistan and not India (a country with a comparably low cost of living)
- klingonopera 7y agoSupply chains are another reason, why shifting production to a lower-cost labour country is not done overnight.
- chrischen 7y agoIt’s also why they wouldn’t shift to the US overnight. And for over many nights, it’d still not shift to the US which is my point.
- chrischen 7y agoThe biggest factor in cheap manufacturing is labor cost. Even if the place doesn’t have existing infrastructure it’s better investment there than domestically. The article even says it: most companies have stayed in China or moved to other countries like Vietnam.
- klingonopera 7y agoIt's even more likely that China will switch to a higher level of automation and robotics before the West does. They already have the production, and can incrementally adapt and upgrade, whereas in the West, it would have to be (re-)built from the ground-up with intent to directly compete against low-labor markets (though arguably, in some industries this would probably be an advantage), and that would require far more investments up front, which carries a higher risk.
- chrischen 7y agoThe west is an information and trchnology economy. If it has specialties in anything it’s in high tech. As fast rising and impressive as Chinese tech is, it’s still generally inferior. We’re not not scrambling for Chinese devices because of tariffs, they’re just usually coming in on the low end. Manufacturing is also the low-value end of the supply chain. Building up expertise at the top (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Intel, AMD, Nvidia—level tech) is exponentially harder than building up the bottom end.
- klingonopera 7y agoThe first iPhone rattled the headlines, but I'd argue the third or fourth generation is what really settled it into the mainstream. In other words, the West may the first to have fully automated factories and warehouses, but China is likely to be the first to deploy them on a large-scale.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoUnlikely they have to keep the working and middle class happy
- klingonopera 7y agoAnd if that's no longer possible, it's easier to contain an unhappy populace in an Orwellian than in a "Huxlodian" state.
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- defertoreptar 7y ago> At the same time, higher prices of garlic — they soared 53% — actually illustrate tariffs working as intended. > China had been the biggest exporter of garlic to the U.S. and domestic garlic growers have long argued they were being undercut by cheaper Chinese competition. Now that Chinese garlic faces higher tariffs, domestic companies can charge higher prices. Domestic companies being able to charge higher prices was not the goal of tariffs. Labor is cheaper in other Asian countries, and that also results in their being able to undercut America producers. However, the trade war is against China and not low labor cost countries like Vietnam and Malaysia.
- blisterpeanuts 7y agoWhy would garlic prices rise 53% if the tariffs are only 30%? Are there really no other factors at play?
- defertoreptar 7y ago> Are there really no other factors at play? What factors do you have in mind, and how do they relate to the goal of the trade wars?
- wolco 7y agoCost might be a % of costs + percentage of profit which increases based on the cost and has a multiplier.
- rubber_duck 7y ago>Why would garlic prices rise 53% if the tariffs are only 30%? One purely theoretical explanation is demand elasticity - if you can sell 20 items at 3$ now your costs increase to 5$ - you can sell 10 items at 5$ but 8 at 10$ it makes sense to sell at 10$ - not saying that's the case with garlic - but it explains how a 30% cost increase could cause higher price increase.
- logfromblammo 7y agoPercentage-based taxes stretch the supply curve upward along the price axis. Adding a 30% tax means that if you draw a line down from the new equilibrium point to zero price, that line will cross the original supply curve at 30% of the way down. But the new equilibrium point may also be at a different (likely lower) quantity, where the demand curve could have a different slope. For a perfect commodity, where the supply curve is nearly flat, the percentage tax has the effect of raising that flat line higher. A 30% tax raises prices 30% higher. The shape of the demand curve only determines the reduction in trade volume. For a fixed-supply good, where the supply curve is completely vertical, the price remains exactly the same, and the tax is paid entirely by the supplier. The shape of the demand curve isn't very relevant. If the demand curve is perfectly vertical, consumers pay all the tax, and quantity remains the same. In order for an x% tax to produce an x+y% increase in price, there has to be some other effect in play. The demand curve has a positive slope, as with a Veblen good. The demand curve shifts upward or rightward, as though the tax serves as advertising. A 30% tariff on similar goods or general inflation produced a substitution effect that drove more people to demand garlic. Pure demand elasticity can't account for it all.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- d--b 7y agothe cart doesn't make sense, it's too small and has too specific things in it. cod filet are pricier, shrimps are way cheaper. Great.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoWhat do you mean too specific? How can you reasonably track the price of something less specific than a product?
- sct202 7y agoNPR only tracked 80 items. Walmart has giant analytic teams who determine pricing changes based on demand elasticity, profitability, and other things so there will be a lot of noise when you see price changes to determine the cause.
- zaroth 7y ago> To create NPR's basket, we consulted the lists from 2018 of tariffs the White House imposed on imports from China, but also Mexico and Canada — as well as China's retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-made products. The products were picked not to represent an average shopping cart at Walmart (because we already do that and it’s called the CPI), but to specifically target items which they thought would be hardest hit by tariffs. It’s an entirely unscientific report showing price changes at a single store with an artificial basket of goods with no attempt whatsoever to control for independent variables. In short, it tells us nothing at best, and is misinformation at worst. It’s hard to tell if the effort was even done in good faith. Then again, TFA’s first sentence is “Shoppers beware.” Maybe that tells us all we need to know. I am actually a bit surprised that first sentence made it to print.
- droithomme 7y ago> but to specifically target items which they thought would be hardest hit by tariffs In that case we can draw some conclusions. Even trying to game the basket, most of the items either stayed the same price or went down. So the effect of tariffs on prices appears to be negligible.
- gzu 7y agoYet somehow our consumer price index shows inflation rising at only 2%
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI’ve never paid attention to that number. Housing in desirable areas with economic opportunities, education, and healthcare are all understated. I prefer to use SP500 as my benchmark for what I need to keep up with since I am betting the US government will keep devaluing the USD to keep inflating asset values.
- tom_mellior 7y agoAs the article notes, some things like consumer electronics are still getting cheaper.
- cco 7y agoFile those under "basically irrelevant" in my opinion. Once you have a relatively cheap phone, you're basically satisfied your Maslow hierarchy for technology, i.e. you can accomplish most of the requirements of existing as a digital citizen albeit you may not be as efficient as those with more devices. The real labor saving devices, dishwasher, clothes washer, refrigerator etc. were/are very meaningful but haven't moved much in the last 20 years. Education, housing, food, clothing, etc. are far more important and relevant to what it means to live a decent life in the 21st century.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tom_mellior 7y agoI agree that you don't need a TV and I don't have one either. But other people keep buying them anyway, so it makes sense to include them in a statistical measure of average households.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoWhich is why they are added when new and expensive - it flatters the real inflation measures and saves governments money longer term.
- festivehealer 7y agoKruschev in the 1950s wondered how capitalism worked without a price committee. Looks like NPR forgot about this with this rather pointless article extrapolating prices in one Walmart to the trade war between China and the US.
- mywittyname 7y agoHere's a more comprehensive list: https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/averageretailfoodandenergyprices_usandmidwest_table.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/averageretailf...
- hsnewman 7y agoWhen the recession comes, it will be interesting how it will be spun.
- vibrio 7y agoIt will be, but it not that hard to guess the major themes, depending on who is in the driver seat when it hits.
- RyanAF7 7y agoSweet, keep rising. When people don't have savings, real wages haven't increased materially and debt is wildly out of control... then you want prices to rise to save your ass. RISE! RISE!
- StygiesVIII 7y agoamazing. I live in a world in which progressives are fighting trade tariffs and supporting free markets. lol. bizarro world.
- thekevan 7y agoAs someone who has done buying and selling of used furniture, I wonder how much of the variance had to do with increasing or waning popularity of an item. When I heard this on the radio, one of the first items they listed was a Better Homes and Gardens lamp. My impression of their research on that one was immediately to discount what they found because they are particularly subject to fad and fashion, especially with the proliferation of " XX stylish lamps that make you look like you have an interior designer for under $YY!!" type of blog posts.