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Did narcissistic sociopaths use a crisis to pursue personal gain?
Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
-Milton Friedman
Obviously yes. Their production costs barely rose but their prices skyrocketed. Here's a Forbes article from 2022 pointing out that it was increased profit margins causing most of the inflation:
yeah, its not like 90% of the chickens in the country died, so there was no reason for eggs to go from 2 bucks a dozen to 12 bucks a dozen but pure corporate exploitation and greed.
So are they going to have to pay it back or did the FTC make a report for nothing?
Of course they did. We know they did. All you have to do is go back and read their quarterly earnings calls from 2020 to basically now and they told their shareholders clearly that they were using the pandemic as an excuse to increase profits.
... you can't seriously build a system that is meant to take advantage of every situation, praise if for taking advantage of every situation, align it's interests in taking advantage of every situation and then be surprised it took advantage of a situation. We should be better than Pikachu.
It's ethical to steal from these grocery chains.
Why are people acting surprised? That is just the invisible hand of the market. Isn’t this the unfettered capitalism we asked for?
It's the unfettered capitalism Reagan delivered to his cronies, which ofc trickled down to the whole fucking world.
Next: sky is blue
Followed by: water is wet
For now. But soon it will just depend on what brand wants to advertise using the whole of the sky.
After these words from our sponsor. Do bears really shit in the woods? The answer may surprise you.
Everyone keeps saying this is capitalism and its true. Companies squeezing everyone when they're vulnerable for more profits.
Consumers need protections for things like basic needs so we don't struggle just to survive.
Food and housing should be protected. Luxury brands can get all the profit they want.
Don't touch my fucking groceries and rent!
Are you saying human quality of life is more important than (strictly financial) profits?? I'm thought that is blasphemy and that I must shame you for it. How dare.
This is why giant supermarkets are bad. When you have a choice of several places to buy, they compete.
Rent though has been captured by optimisation software. Your rent goes up because a computer predicted you (or someone else) would pay more.
Is this even news, ofc they did, give them an inch and they always take a mile, war, recessions and sickness are always a profiteering venture for business.
Don't think of your death as failure; think of it as fun! Don't think of Wal-Mart's price hikes as war profiteering, think of them as war... fun!
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Nothing happens to Corporations around here. It was pretty clear it was greed even before the data hit.
See, it's very simple. You create a massive monopoly/duopoly/triopoly, to undercut, out compete and otherwise dominate small businesses, until they've been fazed out.... then once it's only you, and you decide the pricing, then you start screwing around with prices while politicians twiddle their thumbs.
Enshittification in a nutshell.
Split them up. We did it to the phone companies
You fucking bet and it sure as hell isn't limited to grocery stores.
It's fair, though. They raised the salaries of the people who worked there.
Right?
They did at least where i worked but 3 years into covid and its was only a temporary bonus
The exhalation proves the roost. Or something like that
Fuck you talking about? They haven’t come down!
edit: actually I thought you were replying to the folks who were talking about inflation, but now I'm not sure what you're replying to, so maybe disregard the rest of this comment
Inflation dropping just refers to the rate at which prices increase slowing down, not prices themselves going down. Unless regional and federal governments do something, lowered inflation only means relative stability at current price levels.
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I love all the headlines that declare [report about thing you already figured out years ago] was in fact true, like it's a fucking surprise. Some would say it's good to have corroborating data, but it never seems to help and I'm just exhausted being right so dammed often.
Okay? Now fucking do something about it.
I’m sure this will result in swift, appropriate actions to hold them accountable. Just let me start holding my breath
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Of course, but they didn't lower the prices after. Fucking awful evil companies.
I think the FTC is the only one surprised about this. I bet they're getting their most severe finger wagging ready to go.
Shouldn't we blame this on the food monopolies rather than grocery stores?
Plenty of blame to go around here.
They both posted record profits.
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We need experts to explain and study what ordinary people fucking experience first hand
Anyone got a link to the actual report?
Is anyone going to do anything about it? No
No way!
We all knew they did.
Has been in the news for months. Welcome to last week USAtoday.
Pikachu, I choose you ... to get here and make that face.
You expect prices to decrease when demand increases? I would expect the FTC to have taken an economics 101 class.
I was hoping for a little better reporting in this story, like why does "the FTC report suggest the grocery companies were also price-gouging consumers", but this turd is to be expected from a Gannett-owned organization.
Here's the report.
And here's the why ...
Notably, consumers are still facing the negative impact of the pandemic’s price hikes, as the Commission’s report finds that some in the grocery retail industry seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today. Source
I appreciate the link to the report.
This just further enforces my belief that the FTC doesn't know much about economics. When there's a high demand and limited supply, prices increase. The increase in retail costs, inflation, is used to limit consumer demand. Of course their profits are going to increase; that's how economics works. There's nothing in this report that seems inappropriate.
I think they'd have better luck attacking the CEOs who are pocketing increasingly inflated salaries and bonuses.
This comment just enforces the belief that you don't understand the economy. A temporary small bump in cost during covid due to supply chain issues would be a supply and demand issue but if you've noticed, the bump was not small and it has continued ever since.
You don't get to make record profits and then blame prices on the pandemic. If it was solely due to natural inflation, profits would be similar to past years.
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Duh!
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this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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