6 ms·

Grocery stores have smaller margins and more options compared to pretty much any industry, yet politicians seem to think they are the cause of all of our ills.

alex43578 6mo ago
It’s just pandering to voters who don’t know better. See: price of eggs in the last election.
- 0x3f 6mo ago
  Rent control is the canonical populist price control. That one's evergreen. Egg-prices-by-fiat are just a fad!
  - alex43578 6mo ago
    With both parties scrambling to buy non-taxpayer votes with taxpayer money, the list is endless. Free healthcare, free tuition, pork barrel spending, wars on behalf of other nations, lavish benefits for your ethnic group’s immigrants, etc.
    - cbdevidal 6mo ago
      What could possibly go wrong?
    - lkey 6mo ago
      [flagged]
      - subjectsigma 6mo ago
        [flagged]
      - estearum 6mo ago
        I mean it's very likely the MAGAcult literally just writes checks to people with Dear Leader's face/signature on them going into the midterms. That seems bad.
      - alex43578 6mo ago
        >You believe that poor people don't 'pay taxes', even though all of their money and excess labor value is definitionally recirculated into the economy or back to the government? Yes, about 31% of returns in 2022 were for people who didn't pay federal income tax. By a massive, overwhelming majority, they are lower-income levels, who also receive the most direct cash and cash-like benefits from the government. https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-doesnt-pay-income-taxes https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-doesnt-pay-incom... >You believe in the world's most expensive healthcare, the world's most expensive universities(/hedge funds), corrupt spending on corporations, wars on behalf of the empire, and our vassal states, and 'lavish' benefits for only corporations and white people (as has been the case since we invented whiteness)? Surely you realize healthcare and university expense is, in part, driven by all the free money the government pumps into the system, right? How successful would universities be at charging $80K a semester if not for federally subsidized student loans? I'm arguing against all the things you just listed - you seem to be confused. >Am I correctly understanding that this status quo is your preference? The status quo for the last 20 years is a bad thing. Our ballooning debt, as a direct result of profligate spending on all the things I listed, is a problem. Again, you seem to be very confused about my position. >I'm also curious which benefit is specifically 'lavish'. The only social programs I'd describe as such are the programs that create billionaires. What social program do you think creates billionaires? Even being charitable to your position, Walmart's revenue is about 4% driven by foodstamps. Even big bad Walmart isn't successful because of social programs. As for lavish: "The government’s failure to count its largess as recipients’ income allows welfare households to blow past the income level above which a working family no longer qualifies for government help. Take a single parent with two school-age children who earns $11,000 annually from part-time work. The government considers this household in poverty because its income is below $25,273. But this family would qualify for benefits worth $53,128. It would receive Treasury checks of $3,400 in refundable child tax credits and $4,400 in refundable earned-income tax credits. The family would also receive Food Stamp debit cards worth $9,216 a year, $9,476 in housing subsidies, $877 of government payments for utility bills, $16,033 to fund Medicaid, $3,102 in free meals at school and $6,624 in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. All this puts the family’s income at $64,128, or 254% of the poverty level. A hardworking family earning anything like $64,128 in salary wouldn’t be eligible for any of these welfare benefits in four-fifths of the states. Meanwhile, the welfare family would be eligible for another 90 small federal benefits and sundry state and local welfare programs." >Or do you just think that politicians shouldn't talk about rent, fuel, and food prices? Considering politicians from both sides have repeatedly made each of these issues worse through things like rent-control and zoning restrictions or environmental restrictions and the Iran war, yes, I do think politicians should just be quiet and do less: they'd cause less damage. >Or is your contention that the working poor just stupid for believing anything will ever get better in our two party system? Basically any average citizen is silly for thinking their vote has an impact. Per "Testing Theories of American Politics", the preferences of the average citizen have a "near-zero, statistically non-significant impact" on public policy when the preferences of economic elites and organized interest groups are taken into account.
- swaits 6mo ago
  This is the answer.
- ReptileMan 6mo ago
  I think that opaque pricing is bad in that it creates a feeling of helplessness in the customer, is annoying and after every deal it makes you feel like you have been ripped off. Like the - call us to get a quote on some sites instead of direct pricing. To a lesser extent it is the same with loyalty programs - my grocery stores often discount items to 50% and on my receipt it there is usually something like - you saved 20 Euro - which could be 20 to 30% of the bill. A lesser mind than the average consumer's may suspect that they keep all the prices permanently inflated by 20 to 30% and if some schmuck dare to buy their favorite cheese when not discounted - it is on them.
emsign 6mo ago
No, grocery stores will be the weakest entry point to have the customer get used to get individual pricing. It's not the store owners themselves but big data businesses who do the pricing for them. Essentially taking the freedom away from the shops even further while at the same time squeezing even more money out of customers. This totally distorts supply and demand.
- 0x3f 6mo ago
  There is no way Walmart or Target or whoever is giving up their gold dust to some nameless SaaS for pricing. They will do it in-house. Never mind the fact that a similar aggregation attempt for the property rental market was considered actionable by the DoJ already.
elil17 6mo ago
Grocery stores have tiny margins and that's great. Let's keep it that way, it benefits all consumers. One way to prevent them from expanding their margins is to ban so-called "dynamic pricing".
- estearum 6mo ago
  This is hilariously first-order-effects thinking... If any store used dynamic pricing to expand their margins, the others would just do the same and compete away those margins once again, with the marginal gain being handed back to consumers. Dynamic pricing on personal data is bad I think, but temporal dynamic pricing is actually very good for everyone and I hope it doesn't get thrown out by some reckless legislation-writing.
  - Drakim 6mo ago
    That's the ideal dream scenario, but in reality the market isn't that efficient. Lots of markets gouge their customers and due to power imbalances the customers can't really do anything about it. The free market solution to this is just generally to let people suffer.
    - estearum 6mo ago
      I don't see why consumers wouldn't just pick the stores that have better prices for them. Why would they know/care/need to know what the prices are doing for other people?
      - Throaway199999 6mo ago
        You can't see you mean? Consumers pick things that are reasonably convenient, achievable and known to them. These things are all subject to exploitative tactics by grocery stores. There's also price-fixing, which famously occurred in Canada recently. Not to mention cornering a market like Walmart would and removing consumer choice entirely.
        6mo ago
conartist6 6mo ago
I'm always shocked at how much anti-capitalism and anti-competition there is in the US. I was taught that the power of consumer choice could reign in markets, but when I look around I see more and more companies working harder and harder to make themselves completely insulated from consumer choice. Now our darlings are companies that are like massive prisons that promise that everyone will be interned in in the future.
- bostik 6mo ago
  Keep in mind: the only thing a capitalist fears is a truly free market. The highest ROI for any business is to buy their own politician. That allows you to block competition and other inconveniences at a legislative level.
soared 6mo ago
Al major chains in my area use Covid/etc to increase prices beyond what supply dictates to profit off of crises, except for king soopers. https://qz.com/supermarket-prices-grocery-food-inflation-pandemic-1851369826# https://qz.com/supermarket-prices-grocery-food-inflation-pan...

alex43578 6mo ago

It’s just pandering to voters who don’t know better. See: price of eggs in the last election.

0x3f 6mo ago
Rent control is the canonical populist price control. That one's evergreen. Egg-prices-by-fiat are just a fad!
- alex43578 6mo ago
  With both parties scrambling to buy non-taxpayer votes with taxpayer money, the list is endless. Free healthcare, free tuition, pork barrel spending, wars on behalf of other nations, lavish benefits for your ethnic group’s immigrants, etc.
  - cbdevidal 6mo ago
    What could possibly go wrong?
  - lkey 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - subjectsigma 6mo ago
      [flagged]
    - estearum 6mo ago
      I mean it's very likely the MAGAcult literally just writes checks to people with Dear Leader's face/signature on them going into the midterms. That seems bad.
    - alex43578 6mo ago
      >You believe that poor people don't 'pay taxes', even though all of their money and excess labor value is definitionally recirculated into the economy or back to the government? Yes, about 31% of returns in 2022 were for people who didn't pay federal income tax. By a massive, overwhelming majority, they are lower-income levels, who also receive the most direct cash and cash-like benefits from the government. https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-doesnt-pay-income-taxes https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-doesnt-pay-incom... >You believe in the world's most expensive healthcare, the world's most expensive universities(/hedge funds), corrupt spending on corporations, wars on behalf of the empire, and our vassal states, and 'lavish' benefits for only corporations and white people (as has been the case since we invented whiteness)? Surely you realize healthcare and university expense is, in part, driven by all the free money the government pumps into the system, right? How successful would universities be at charging $80K a semester if not for federally subsidized student loans? I'm arguing against all the things you just listed - you seem to be confused. >Am I correctly understanding that this status quo is your preference? The status quo for the last 20 years is a bad thing. Our ballooning debt, as a direct result of profligate spending on all the things I listed, is a problem. Again, you seem to be very confused about my position. >I'm also curious which benefit is specifically 'lavish'. The only social programs I'd describe as such are the programs that create billionaires. What social program do you think creates billionaires? Even being charitable to your position, Walmart's revenue is about 4% driven by foodstamps. Even big bad Walmart isn't successful because of social programs. As for lavish: "The government’s failure to count its largess as recipients’ income allows welfare households to blow past the income level above which a working family no longer qualifies for government help. Take a single parent with two school-age children who earns $11,000 annually from part-time work. The government considers this household in poverty because its income is below $25,273. But this family would qualify for benefits worth $53,128. It would receive Treasury checks of $3,400 in refundable child tax credits and $4,400 in refundable earned-income tax credits. The family would also receive Food Stamp debit cards worth $9,216 a year, $9,476 in housing subsidies, $877 of government payments for utility bills, $16,033 to fund Medicaid, $3,102 in free meals at school and $6,624 in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. All this puts the family’s income at $64,128, or 254% of the poverty level. A hardworking family earning anything like $64,128 in salary wouldn’t be eligible for any of these welfare benefits in four-fifths of the states. Meanwhile, the welfare family would be eligible for another 90 small federal benefits and sundry state and local welfare programs." >Or do you just think that politicians shouldn't talk about rent, fuel, and food prices? Considering politicians from both sides have repeatedly made each of these issues worse through things like rent-control and zoning restrictions or environmental restrictions and the Iran war, yes, I do think politicians should just be quiet and do less: they'd cause less damage. >Or is your contention that the working poor just stupid for believing anything will ever get better in our two party system? Basically any average citizen is silly for thinking their vote has an impact. Per "Testing Theories of American Politics", the preferences of the average citizen have a "near-zero, statistically non-significant impact" on public policy when the preferences of economic elites and organized interest groups are taken into account.
swaits 6mo ago
This is the answer.
ReptileMan 6mo ago
I think that opaque pricing is bad in that it creates a feeling of helplessness in the customer, is annoying and after every deal it makes you feel like you have been ripped off. Like the - call us to get a quote on some sites instead of direct pricing. To a lesser extent it is the same with loyalty programs - my grocery stores often discount items to 50% and on my receipt it there is usually something like - you saved 20 Euro - which could be 20 to 30% of the bill. A lesser mind than the average consumer's may suspect that they keep all the prices permanently inflated by 20 to 30% and if some schmuck dare to buy their favorite cheese when not discounted - it is on them.

emsign 6mo ago

No, grocery stores will be the weakest entry point to have the customer get used to get individual pricing. It's not the store owners themselves but big data businesses who do the pricing for them. Essentially taking the freedom away from the shops even further while at the same time squeezing even more money out of customers. This totally distorts supply and demand.

0x3f 6mo ago
There is no way Walmart or Target or whoever is giving up their gold dust to some nameless SaaS for pricing. They will do it in-house. Never mind the fact that a similar aggregation attempt for the property rental market was considered actionable by the DoJ already.

elil17 6mo ago

Grocery stores have tiny margins and that's great. Let's keep it that way, it benefits all consumers. One way to prevent them from expanding their margins is to ban so-called "dynamic pricing".

estearum 6mo ago
This is hilariously first-order-effects thinking... If any store used dynamic pricing to expand their margins, the others would just do the same and compete away those margins once again, with the marginal gain being handed back to consumers. Dynamic pricing on personal data is bad I think, but temporal dynamic pricing is actually very good for everyone and I hope it doesn't get thrown out by some reckless legislation-writing.
- Drakim 6mo ago
  That's the ideal dream scenario, but in reality the market isn't that efficient. Lots of markets gouge their customers and due to power imbalances the customers can't really do anything about it. The free market solution to this is just generally to let people suffer.
  - estearum 6mo ago
    I don't see why consumers wouldn't just pick the stores that have better prices for them. Why would they know/care/need to know what the prices are doing for other people?
    - Throaway199999 6mo ago
      You can't see you mean? Consumers pick things that are reasonably convenient, achievable and known to them. These things are all subject to exploitative tactics by grocery stores. There's also price-fixing, which famously occurred in Canada recently. Not to mention cornering a market like Walmart would and removing consumer choice entirely.
      - 6mo ago

conartist6 6mo ago

I'm always shocked at how much anti-capitalism and anti-competition there is in the US. I was taught that the power of consumer choice could reign in markets, but when I look around I see more and more companies working harder and harder to make themselves completely insulated from consumer choice. Now our darlings are companies that are like massive prisons that promise that everyone will be interned in in the future.

bostik 6mo ago
Keep in mind: the only thing a capitalist fears is a truly free market. The highest ROI for any business is to buy their own politician. That allows you to block competition and other inconveniences at a legislative level.

soared 6mo ago

Al major chains in my area use Covid/etc to increase prices beyond what supply dictates to profit off of crises, except for king soopers. https://qz.com/supermarket-prices-grocery-food-inflation-pandemic-1851369826# https://qz.com/supermarket-prices-grocery-food-inflation-pan...