7 ms·
In supermarkets across Europe, inflation is leading to a surge in food theft
- eur0pa 4y agoIt was inevitable. Whole chickens now cost €7.99/kg, up from €1.99/kg last year. Eggplants are priced at €3.99/kg, compared to €0.99/kg previously. Even basic apples now cost €2.99/kg, up from €0.99/kg. The cause of this increase is not due to war, but rather it is a result of pure speculation driven by greed.
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago> Whole chickens now cost €7.99/kg, up from €1.99/kg last year. Where did you buy a whole chicken last year for €1.99/kg?
- paxys 4y agoIt should be obvious that the numbers are made up. Europe has not had 400% inflation in the last year.
- ljf 4y agoHere in the UK you could by a (cheap) whole chicken for £3 until recently, would be at least 1.5kg. Now a basic chicken is £3.66 at tesco for a 1.2kg chicken But likely the supermarket won't actually have many of these and the only choice will be the 'middle' price chicken for £6
- eur0pa 4y agoEvery major supermarket in Italy.
- nradov 4y agoThat's not how speculation works. Speculation is buying an asset and holding onto it based on the hope that prices will rise, then selling. No one is hoarding a huge supply of whole chickens and eggplants in a warehouse somewhere. There may be some speculation happening with commodity grains because they can be stored for a while. But meat and fresh produce spoil quickly, and cold storage is expensive. As for greed, people were just as greedy a couple years ago. So that's not a plausible explanation.
- gniv 4y agoNot my experience in France. I see some price increases, but nothing outrageous. And €7.99/kg for whole chicken was last year's price in my area (near Paris).
- rfwhyte 4y agoHeadline should in fact read: "In supermarkets across Europe, corporate greed is leading to a surge in food theft." And that theft is entirely justifiable as these corporate grocery chains are effectively stealing from all of us with this greed disguised as inflation bullshit.
- Georgelemental 4y agoWere they somehow not greedy before? What changed?
- g8oz 4y agoOpportunities for price gouging increased due to supply chain disruptions. This article lays out arguments for and against this theory: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/business/economy/price-gouging-inflation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/business/economy/price-go...
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago> supply chain disruptions Government meddling in the market though lockdowns, embargoes, and other limiting of supplies.
- midasuni 4y agoIf not government you mean China, sure. Massive supply chain problems. The Russian government invading a sovereign country didn’t help either.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y agoI can't dictate policy to foreign nations but I can lament my own countries inane policies on these issues. Regarding the coof: No need to go all Papers Please and ban people from working, fine and arrest people traveling more than 1km from home, or repress morally justified protest over those actions. It was the most horrendous expansion of government power I've seen, probably since the patriot act. Regarding russia: No need to harm energy markets more than war normally does with embargoes and destruction of infrastructure. No need to deplete local stockpiles by giving them away to foreign civilians rather than your own. No need steal people's money to give away.
- nerdypirate 4y ago[flagged]
- rs999gti 4y ago> the root causes of inflation https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ecb/ecb-to-print-1-trillion-euro-this-year-to-stem-coronavirus-rout-idUSKBN21543D https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ecb/ec... https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/money-printing-and-inflation%3A-covid-cryptocurrencies-and-more https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/money-printing-and-inflation...
- Der_Einzige 4y agoThis looks like it was GPT generated
- tmnvix 4y agoThe first sentence makes that seem unlikely.
- glonq 4y agoIt's all fun and games until the poor start building guillotines. That's what happens when you push people too far.
- uejfiweun 4y agoNot sure such a thing is possible with the scale and technology of modern society. Instead what I think you’ll see is increasing civil disobedience slowly clawing its way up the class ladder until we either have sufficiently freaked out elites to backpedal on some of these policies, or we go full cyberpunk.
- ryan93 4y agoEvidence of destitution in England? The basics are very cheap, even the "poor" there just want prepackaged food.
- paxys 4y agoHad to start a revolution when the ruling class has ensured that every small town police department is equipped to the teeth with military equipment and everyone is under 24/7 surveillance. The French didn't have this problem in 1789.
- mydogcanpurr 4y agoHard to suppress one when everyone has a gun and knows where you live (from the perspective of the police)
- tshaddox 4y agoWouldn’t the armories of those small police departments then be where such revolutions would begin springing up, either with or without the support of the small town police?
- aimbivalent 4y ago[flagged]
- aschearer 4y agoImpressive of them to execute a plan piece by piece for 15 years, keeping it secret, sticking through the ups and downs, never giving in. For all that persistent scheming, they deserve the fruits of their malfeasence.
- mycall 4y agoTime for a non-destructive world-wide robin-hood revolution? That would be great but if it sounds too good to be true...
- aimbivalent 4y agoI didn't say anything about a conspiracy or even forethought. It's simple incentives and power dynamics. Imagine Lagarde or Powell saying "oops, we shouldn't have printed a gazillion billion dollars, after all so please fire me and Paul Krugman and all the other state-aligned Neo-Keynesians and put Peter Schiff in charge to dismantle the ECB/FED and replace it with free market money". Absurd. Much easier to opportunistically try to pivot this into more state control on the back of inflamed public opinion.
- fauxpause_ 4y agoWhy do you think it’s the “small/medium businesses and farmers” that anyone is claiming is responsible for the gouging? And not the large food megacorps that dominate low cost foods?
- aimbivalent 4y agoThere are so many assumption baked into your comment and most of them, I would say, don't hold up. Let's start with the biggest one which is that measures (let's say regulations) aimed at A (let's say megacorps) have their intended effect on A and most significantly on A. In reality, the most influential and profitable companies will always have an easier way through whatever you throw at the sector then smaller, less profitable companies. The megacorps may even welcome / shape the regulation such that it harms their competitors that don't happen to have 30 lawyers on the payroll anyways.
- cr1895 4y agoGetting “gecontroleerd” in the self-checkout supermarkets in the Netherlands seems to be happening to me way more frequently than it ever did previously (sometimes every visit). I’ve never missed scanning an item, which is something as far as I understand used to be a flag for more frequent checks.
- nebulousthree 4y agoIs that like a pat down search at the supermarket??
- krolley 4y agoIt's a human check after you use the self-scanning checkout, they verify that what's on your receipt is what's in your bag.
- cr1895 4y agoAfter you scan all your items and click to pay, you get a “random” check notification and can’t pay until one of the employees comes over and scans a certain number of items in your bag. It’s pretty frustrating and it used to happen quite infrequently.
- pastacacioepepe 4y agoLess energy available -> less goods produced -> goods and resources diverted from civil to military production -> supply can't keep up with demand -> prices raise -> inflation Raising the interest rates is just dumping the issue on the people in order to keep demand in check. Did I get this completely wrong or does it make sense? (unironically asking) Feels to me like this is largely a consequence of the geopolitical situation + rampant speculation on the markets. The financial autocrats already decided that we are the ones who are going to take the hit.
- piuantiderp 4y agoNever forget, you are the carbon they want to reduce.
- jkepler 4y agoNot disagreeing with your sequence of events, as reduced energy production and wars do send prices higher. But, there's another sequence to consider that I think is simultaneously happening: economic production makes a widget representing 100,000th of overall economy > prices set based on 100,000th of all money in existence > the banking system quadruples existing money in the system > the widget's price (eventually) quadruples as people realize there's a ton more money chasing the same number if goods. And, at least according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank's numbers, the US Dollar money supply has increased some 13x since the 2008 financial crises, and 5x since the beginning of 2020. Ballooning the world's reserve currency like that will have disastrous inflationary effects /at some point/. The fact its happening now, while tragic, seems wholely foreseeable.
- RedComet 4y ago[flagged]
- bojangleslover 4y agoIt’s easy to get away with. Especially with self checkout. Headline should be “human nature driving food theft.”
- jkepler 4y agoBut at least according to La-Croix.com, the supposed 14% increase in food thefts doesn't bear out in the data. https://www.la-croix.com/France/Inflation-vraiment-hausse-vols-letalage-2023-03-30-1201261391 https://www.la-croix.com/France/Inflation-vraiment-hausse-vo...