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Good article from bloomberg today on inflation in the US for things people actually need and buy https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-inflation-economy-cost-of-living/ Some highlights: - Housing prices are up 40% from pre-pandemic, and housing is less affordable for everyone across every demo or housing situation - 25% increase in grocery prices - 35% increase in vehicle prices - 25% increase in utilities
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Nov 27, 2023 17:54
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Its a good article, but they focus mostly on things that have increased in cost more than overall inflation and greatly downplay the overall picture: All-items inflation was 19% and wages have increased 20% (data from article for the same time period). So yes, inflation sucks, and certainly some people are hit harder by it than others. But, overall, wages rose more than inflation.
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Nov 27, 2023 19:06
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Half of those categories (housing and food) are being affected by algorithmic pricing that basically let businesses act like cartels without having to be cartels/monopolies. The rental pricing algorithm companies are pretty well documented at this point. On the retail side it’s come out that Amazon explicitly designed algorithms to do that (though they’ve stopped using the specific ones mentioned in articles). On the grocery side there is less information and it’s not always clear who does price setting for individual goods (often it’s the suppliers, especially when it’s the bigger ones). But going to nearby stores of the same chain in neighborhoods with different demographics it’s clear pricing (and the stocking of generics) varies by store. I’ve been playing around with my purchases of individual items and purchase locations, and it very much seems like I can drag higher prices of individual low volume items from higher priced stores to lower priced ones.
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Nov 27, 2023 19:14
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drk posted:But, overall, wages rose more than inflation. Thing is nobody cares about the aggregate. When you average or assert “overall“ one erases nuance and that specific demographics are disproportionately affected. It’s like the elephant curve (the Lakner-Milanovic graph). Global growth was great on average, it was great over all. But hey it’s not like we have an international fascism problem now, because of all the: on average a rising tide lifts all boats talk.
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Nov 27, 2023 19:21
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A lot of people care about the aggregate, because it informs monetary policy. Given the big dumb hammer of interest rates is the main tool, the FED cannot ignore overall inflation and only target, say, food prices, when it makes adjustments to monetary policy. And those adjustments affect everything: just as a random example, farmers borrow money to fund the planting season and pay back farm loans after the harvest, and the interest rate at which they can borrow affects the prices they must demand for their harvest. Of course, so does the weather and all kinds of other poo poo, so it's just one input. I was listening to NPR on a drive last week and there was a bit on the changes in food prices for "thanksgiving foods" and they mentioned that fresh cranberries are cheaper this year than last, but canned cranberries are more expensive because all canned food is more expensive because the cost of canning went up. What factors go into the costs of canning? Well, steel prices for one, which are impacted by tariffs: also shipping, labor for food processing plants, energy, etc. And also interest rates, because capital expenditures are part of the food canning industry and companies must pay more to borrow to spend on capex. Conversely, though, when overall inflation drops enough that the FED can stop raising and hopefully eventually lower interest rates, that will provide some relief to food prices, but unevenly, and potentially overwhelmed by other inputs (if for example shipping costs rise again, or if the weather is bad next year for major crops, or if there's a bird flu epidemic, etc.) From an individual perspective like "I am poor, my salary hasn't risen to meet my costs" you're right Bar Ran Dun, rent and food and transportation having risen faster than wages means they're suffering. That's important and worth talking about too. But the relief for that kind of thing requires a more nuanced approach than interest rate adjustments, and a lot of the time that more nuanced approach requires action by the federal, state, and local governments w/r/t regulations and tax policy and tariffs and so on. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 19:39
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Thing is nobody cares about the aggregate. When you average or assert “overall“ one erases nuance and that specific demographics are disproportionately affected. Sure it erases nuance, but only focusing on things that have increased in price more than the aggregate ignores the things that increased *less* in price than the aggregate. Personally, as someone who has not been in the market for a new house or vehicle in the past few years, I would say I am much better off than I was in 2020. If I had bought a new house and car, I dont think I would feel the same way. And yes, increases in food and energy prices affect everyone, but my wages have gone up by more than enough to cover the difference. I think a lot of the consumer grumbling about inflation is that people want 2023 wages with 2019 prices.
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Nov 27, 2023 19:56
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This article doesn't cover it, but I believe the Median wage has also increased right around with inflation, which does impact a lot of people. Again, there are definitely people who have been hit harder by raising costs, but there are also "normal" people who are doing better.
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Nov 27, 2023 20:21
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drk posted:Sure it erases nuance, but only focusing on things that have increased in price more than the aggregate ignores the things that increased *less* in price than the aggregate. My wages haven’t and the pandemic caused a move. I think it’s extremely important to ask these questions of: for who? I mean think about it this way: I have 2020 wages and 2023 prices. There is a lot of variation here. Some folks are much worse off and to the ones disproportionately affected. And a lot of it is proximity to price insensitive folks. Where I am bone in whole Turkey was 1.79 to 2.69 a pound (at the same chain) and where my parents are it was .49 a pound. That wide of a variation is well above any transportation costs differences. Pricing has almost completely departed from cost based calculations to “value” / market based. It’s bifurcated, if you live in a rich area some prices are stunningly high. An average doesn’t capture how angry less well off folks who live proximate to well off folks (and thus get the higher prices) are going to be.
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Nov 27, 2023 21:06
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Lockback posted:but there are also "normal" people who are doing better. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2022/04/04/increasing-wages-for-low-income-workers-is-key-for-a-full-economic-recovery/ There is a graph in this link : Figure 1. Average Hourly Real Wage Changes by Occupational Percentile, January and February 2020–2022 50th percentile looks to be about 0% in mean average wage change. For most average or better folks relative wages fell 2020-2022 based on that graph.
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Nov 27, 2023 21:10
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Bar Ran Dun posted:https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2022/04/04/increasing-wages-for-low-income-workers-is-key-for-a-full-economic-recovery/ A lot has happened in 18+ months since that was published.
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Nov 27, 2023 21:30
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drk posted:I think a lot of the consumer grumbling about inflation is that people want 2023 wages with 2019 prices. Never mind that for broad swathes of the population, wages in 2019 were already underpaid compared to the cost of living back then. Fight for $15 was a key policy people were pushing for in 2016. Nowadays I'm finally seeing $15 as the standard entry level wage in my small, lowish COL town -- but we've still experienced huge, inflationary jumps in prices just like everywhere else.
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Nov 27, 2023 21:35
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Pricing has almost completely departed from cost based calculations to “value” / market based. It’s bifurcated, if you live in a rich area some prices are stunningly high. An average doesn’t capture how angry less well off folks who live proximate to well off folks (and thus get the higher prices) are going to be. I think this is a strange thing to say, because pricing has never been based entirely or mostly on cost: costs set a floor, but pricing is far more sensitive to supply and demand, and sellers charge what the market will bear. The cost of a turkey at the grocery store is what that seller believes they can sell those turkeys at; if that's too low to make a profit, they may sell as a loss leader (and I would bet that thanksgiving turkeys are absolutely a loss leader for many grocery stores) so it's likely not a great benchmark anyway. I agree that when poorer people are subjected to the prices that retailers can charge richer people, that really sucks for them, but I don't think that's new or really different now than it was, say, five years ago? "What the market will bear" for food prices is highly relevant though, because as a whole, nationwide, the profit margins tend to be fairly static and the prices thus move based on supply (highly sensitive to costs) and demand (much less flexible, people mostly eat how much they eat and what they eat). Especially when we talk about staples. Food producing companies (e.g. not retailers and not farmers, but the companies that package and wholesale most food Americans eat outside restaurants), the really big ones that trade on the market, are blue chips with names like Kraft, Hormel, General Mills, etc; https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/consumer-defensive/packaged-foods?.tsrc=fin-srch  These companies have significantly underperformed the S&P 500 this year, and in the last five years. Because they've seen essentially flat revenues on rising costs. They're not as profitable as they were before the pandemic, basically. That's not greedy companies sticking it to the people, that's a squeeze from supply costs rising while, despite inflation, profit margins fell because they can only charge what the market will bear. Retailers are another bag. By far the largest food retailer in America is Walmart, and I'm not sure if it's easy to separate out food/groceries from other walmart sales in their reports. But Grocery Stores as a sector has also underperformed the S&P, but by a much less significant margin: https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/consumer-defensive/grocery-stores?.tsrc=fin-srch  Both sectors have standouts in the natural/organic foods areas. Sprouts Farmers Market is up 30% this year, Lifeway Foods (they make probiotic stuff) is up 168%, Nature's Sunshine (herbal and nutritional products) is up 113%. The implication to me is that customers who have extra money to spend on health food products are willing/able to spend a lot more on them. Whereas regular grocers selling normal packaged foods are being squeezed by inflation hitting costs and consumer's inability to spend more to keep up. e. of course I'm looking at stock prices here, which is multiple steps removed from charts showing what people are paying for food, but I feel they are indicative of whether or not the food selling industry is currently gouging customers relative to other industries. I don't think they are. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 21:49
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Do we have more recent figures Lockback? I’ve seen average salary increase data for b this year but not anything that deals with hourly folks.
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Nov 27, 2023 21:49
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Lockback posted:A lot has happened in 18+ months since that was published. Ehh you can argue that middle class to upper middle techbros have been relatively overpaid compared to lower wage workers, but I don't think you can say that we've been getting showered with raises in the last 18 months. I'm pretty sure the graph is gonna still look pretty similar. Wife got a 2% raise, and her boss acted like it was mana from heaven.
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Nov 27, 2023 21:50
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Bar Ran Dun posted:I think it’s extremely important to ask these questions of: for who? I mean think about it this way: I have 2020 wages and 2023 prices. There is a lot of variation here. Some folks are much worse off and to the ones disproportionately affected. And a lot of it is proximity to price insensitive folks. Where I am bone in whole Turkey was 1.79 to 2.69 a pound (at the same chain) and where my parents are it was .49 a pound. That wide of a variation is well above any transportation costs differences. it's perfectly reasonable to point this out, but it isn't really a question about inflation at this point. Monetary policy by its nature can only impact the whole economy; there's no way for the Fed to intervene in the cost of living in specific regions or target specific goods. Consider housing costs, and suppose an increase in rent is driving up average housing costs. The Fed intervenes using the only tool it has, raising the policy rate. That's all well and good, and slows down (not reverses) the increase in rent - but raising the policy rate increases housing costs for homeowners who have variable-rate mortgages, so overall housing costs may not be disinflated as much as the intervention suggests. If we look at non-monetary costs, even homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages may feel worse off because they're now trapped by golden handcuffs; they can't control their housing costs by downsizing, or move for a higher-paying job, because they'd be stuck paying higher mortgage rates wherever they would move. And Leperflesh has already pointed out how interest rate policy can paradoxically increase costs in certain situations. In short, there's no technocratic fix to the inequality in America. It's a political problem which must be addressed by Congress - the Fed simply doesn't have the tools, or the authority, to try and address it. Food and housing security are both problems of poverty, and monetary policy, because it affects everyone who uses money equally, is much too blunt to address inequality. Bar Ran Dun posted:Do we have more recent figures Lockback?  from https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker hypnophant fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 21:53
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Leperflesh posted:Whereas regular grocers selling normal packaged foods are being squeezed by inflation hitting costs and consumer's inability to spend more to keep up. Some of the items that have increased substantially, particularly packaged items think Oreos, chips, canned soups, etc. A lot of that the grocer isn’t the price setter, which I briefly mentioned earlier. They sell the shelf space to manufacturers, manufacturer sets pricing, in some cases stocks the shelves on their own independent of the chain, and the sales money merely passes through the grocery retailer. (My dad used to stock a half shift for Nestle after hours at the SweetBay store he worked at when we needed money) So some of the increases might not show up in the grocers margin, and instead would be in the manufacturers. Or the grocers margin increase could lag the manufacturers increase by a year or two depending on when shelf space contracts came up.
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Nov 27, 2023 22:01
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hypnophant posted:In short, there's no technocratic fix to the inequality in America. It's a political problem which must be addressed by Congress - the Fed simply doesn't have the tools, or the authority, to try and address it. This I agree with. The answer is pretty clearly to tax the rich. I’ll have to play with that Fed page when I’m at a computer to see if I can get it to break out by income percentile.
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Nov 27, 2023 22:05
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Do we have more recent figures Lockback? https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t01.htm Median wages have gone up about 17.5% since 2020 Q1, and against inflation have dipped very slightly according to these numbers (~1%)(which I would take with a very big grain of salt in general) but are actually up against, say, 2016 (again, big grain of salt). So more or less keeping up with inflation. Wages have jumped almost 10% since early 2022 though. So if you're making the same wages you were then, you should probably be looking for a new job unless the wage was corrected earlier. Baddog posted:Ehh you can argue that middle class to upper middle techbros have been relatively overpaid compared to lower wage workers, but I don't think you can say that we've been getting showered with raises in the last 18 months. I'm pretty sure the graph is gonna still look pretty similar. Wife got a 2% raise, and her boss acted like it was mana from heaven. Sure lots of anecdotes, but the median wages corrects for just the high end. Again, anecdotally, but the posted hiring wage of local jobs that are usually on the lower end of the wage scale (fast food, grocery worker, etc) has definitely jumped in the last 18 months. I think in particular white collar jobs corrected earlier than some of the lower paying jobs. The market doesn't move as one entity. Bar Ran Dun posted:So some of the increases might not show up in the grocers margin, and instead would be in the manufacturers. Or the grocers margin increase could lag the manufacturers increase by a year or two depending on when shelf space contracts came up. In the full quote he talked about the supply side too, not just retail. You don't see a massive increase of profit there too, largely due to how much more expensive supply-side issues have made things.
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Nov 27, 2023 22:13
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All that said there are definitely winners and losers over the last few years, and the roller coaster has made it way more abrupt and stark than it ever has before. But its important to realize that what is happening for one group isn't necessarily happening for every group. In the grocery store example, the grocery store by my cabin in the poorest county in MN is WAY more expensive than the one right by the $1m homes in St Paul. That's not due to gouging, the rural store has higher shipping costs, probably higher spoilage due to less dense customer base, etc.
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Nov 27, 2023 22:24
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Skyl3lazer posted:- Housing prices are up 40% from pre-pandemic, and housing is less affordable for everyone across every demo or housing situation I still can't believe this number. It's shocking and we will see the effects for decades to come.
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Nov 27, 2023 23:31
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err posted:I still can't believe this number. When interests rates started going up I predicted the (already stratospheric) home costs would start going down, because I figured too many people wouldn't be able to afford mortgages to buy. Instead, they kept going up. As the saying goes, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
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Nov 28, 2023 00:27
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there are enormous buffering effects from the 30 year fixed rate mortgage. canadians are havin chaos rn cuz they dont have those as much
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Nov 28, 2023 00:33
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Before the pandemic there was already a horrible housing shortage, and new housing construction dipped badly for a few months.  That severe dip April 2020 wasn't that long of an interruption of the general trend, but the general trend merely re-established itself in late 2020, and as you can see, new home starts have actually fallen off the long-term trend rather badly since mid-2022. So yeah costs have skyrocketed, because supply and demand. High rates undoubtedly are a drag on demand, for real: that implies that if we'd had a pandemic but no increased interest rates, things would be even worse. By a lot. What we needed was for this chart to be curving upwards, not flat and especially not downwards. There is no relief for home prices in sight. Rising rates affects new starts because homebuilders borrow to finance construction and their borrowing costs have gone up.
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Nov 28, 2023 00:45
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Leperflesh posted:There is no relief for home prices in sight. Bremen posted:When interests rates started going up I predicted the (already stratospheric) home costs would start going down, because I figured too many people wouldn't be able to afford mortgages to buy. What does the rest of the decade look like then? Is there any comparable time in U.S. history to what is going on now?
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Nov 28, 2023 01:17
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If I knew for sure, I could make hojillions of dollars. New home starts are down because of high rates (both for builders to borrow, and because they anticipate slower sales): but people locked in at sub-3% rates aren't selling, sales of existing homes are at super low lows, 1st-time buyers are looking at new homes more, that could stimulate more construction but from permits to move-in is like a 1 to 2 year process sometimes more, so there's a big lag. If rates plateau next year, maybe inch down a notch or two, that might signal a soft landing and stimulate a housing boom. But it also might signal a belated recession and housing crush. The decrepitude of the boomers and their gradual shift into nursing homes (or worse) may free up housing stock. Maybe we'll get into a new trade war with china, maybe climate change will destroy a few cities, maybe immigration policy will tighten or relax. I don't feel comfortable making big predictions, basically. I can say there's "no relief in sight" because I don't see anything that is an unambiguous, clear signal of a near-term drop in housing, but "in sight" is carrying a lot of weight in that phrase.
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Nov 28, 2023 01:32
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Bar Ran Dun posted:I’ll have to play with that Fed page when I’m at a computer to see if I can get it to break out by income percentile. There was an EPI study that contained this chart (which unfortunately stops at the end of 2022, but gets you some interesting info):  It seems at least anecdotally reasonable. I keep in touch with some people in those lower percentiles and the hot labor market has been boosting wages a lot, though more from quitting and doing something better than staying where you are and getting 5% or whatever.
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Nov 28, 2023 01:46
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quote is not edit
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Nov 28, 2023 01:47
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Lockback posted:This article doesn't cover it, but I believe the Median wage has also increased right around with inflation, which does impact a lot of people. Again, there are definitely people who have been hit harder by raising costs, but there are also "normal" people who are doing better. It covers it on a graphic on the side, average wages haven't kept pace with food inflation (20 vs 25 percent). "Aggregate inflation" isn't useful if it's an aggregate of a bunch of low inflation items people don't need and high inflation ones they do.
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Nov 28, 2023 03:40
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Bremen posted:
Freakonomics recently did an episode about how housing the industry has not increased productivity in tandem with other industries, and interviewed various people about why. There’s also the issue of people not wanting to live in rural areas so actual land costs have probably increased steadily over time. Major cities are increasingly dense but infrastructure investment fell off decades ago. The government could help intervene by incentivizing work from home, but here we are.
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Nov 28, 2023 04:21
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pseudanonymous posted:Freakonomics recently did an episode about how housing the industry has not increased productivity in tandem with other industries, and interviewed various people about why.
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Nov 28, 2023 04:49
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pseudanonymous posted:The government could help intervene by incentivizing work from home, but here we are. I'm fairly sure there was a huge surge in WFH the past few years and I don't think it did very much. Even with some of it coming back there are many, many more WFH people than late 2019, for example. More likely: Cugel the Clever posted:Or by breaking the many hurdles cities across the country present to any meaningful densification. Some cities are allowing development in isolated areas, but reactionary forces are still mostly winning in blocking any prospect of a broader, bottom-up densification in favor of constricting supply to keep prices sky-high. This has more to do with it. I'd even go as far that building requirements, which were made with the best of intentions in terms of safety and energy efficiency, need to be reviewed. There are requirements that I think are can be relaxed or removed in order to encourage building for less money that won't necessarily mean unsafe or inefficient homes are constructed.
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Nov 28, 2023 05:44
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It's mostly zoning. California is finally doing something about that - forcing every city in the state to permit units, and they have to be permitted in a swath of neighborhoods including the wealthy ones, no shoving all the new construction into the poorest parts. A bunch of cities failed to meet the requirements on time and the punishment is the city loses control entirely and developers get to completely bypass the zoning laws until they get into compliance. Which has happened! San Francisco met the requirements on paper but hasn't been permitting the construction at a reasonable pace and now the state is hitting them on that, too. There's been a host of new laws and reforms.... https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/10/11/governor-newsom-signs-package-to-streamline-housing-and-expand-tenant-protections-in-california/ but IMO the ones that have the most effect are the "you must allow ADU" and "you must plan for and actually permit X more units, immediately, and you cannot drag your feet on them". I hope a lot more states follow suit. It won't fix everything but it's significant.
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Nov 28, 2023 18:04
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"Historic districts" are exempt, so, whoops!, it looks like our entire rich neighborhood of relatively new build mansions is historic.
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Nov 28, 2023 18:47
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Cugel the Clever posted:"Historic districts" are exempt, so, whoops!, it looks like our entire rich neighborhood of relatively new build mansions is historic. From February... 
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Nov 28, 2023 19:20
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Lockback posted:That's not due to gouging, the rural store has higher shipping costs, probably higher spoilage due to less dense customer base, etc. Do the math. I’m serious here. You’ll find it’s not. I did the math on the Turkey price per pound difference between my location (Seattle suburbs) and my parents (northern Florida). It’s not transportation. Most grocery frozen warehousing is in the Chicago area. I know the warehouse used for the specific chain. So how much does a reefer rail car hold net? 194,000 lbs. At .49 cents a pound what is that worth? At 1.79 a pound what is that worth? At this point in the math (with a straight face) tell me those costs, that the shipping accounts for that difference. One doesn’t have to get very far at all to see that’s bullshit. Now think about that rural store vs your St. Paul store. Think about a truckload, what’s the relative cost difference in shipping for a truck load to St. Paul vs the rural location. A dry or reefer trailer is going to be 44,000 ish pounds payload. Be generous assume they aren’t going to get a back haul from the rural location. You’re going to find the difference doesn’t make sense. Pricing variation is well above relative transportation and shrink cost differences, because it’s value/market based not cost based. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Nov 28, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 20:04
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You ignored the other factors pretty conveniently.
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Nov 28, 2023 20:07
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Lockback posted:You ignored the other factors pretty conveniently. Present your calculation. Of course I did because I know what they are. I’m a marine guy. I work stock throughput and transportation claims. I know what these costs are and how they vary across the country. A 20-30 cent per pound difference makes sense. A buck or nearly a buck fifty per pound difference very very much does not. Pull some sku prices in person at the stores you want to compare. Call a trucking broker and figure out how much the trucking is. Look up typical shrink rates ( or just outright ask a manager at the stores ) See if the relative price differences makes a goddamn bit of sense.
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Nov 28, 2023 20:30
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Spoilage is a huge factor and is radically different between stores. Some stores can very accurately predict consumption, some cannot. Some stores get better deals from suppliers in return for meeting quota, some can't/don't do that. You're ignoring tons of huge factors and delcaring...I don't even know what. That companies are maximizing profits for the very first time ever? Here's a better way to look at it. You claim some grocery stores are seeing HUGE, UNPRECENDENTED profits. Most are public, so which ones? Kroger, Publix, etc have seen moderate gains as the economic outlook approved, but we're not seeing huge jumps in profitability. We see higher revenue and higher costs and slightly improving margins which is in line with most companies over the past 12-24 months. If you're claiming there are stores out there tripling their margins, they must be putting up huge financials. But..... where are they? You're picking and choosing costs and values at random in an industry you don't really understand and, honestly, it looks like someone's first realization that cost-basis is different than the bubble that you as an individual reside in. Yes, a company prices things so that they make the most money, that's not new. That has literally always been true. But its also not different now, and food prices in particular are very stuck to cost-basis as they are generally elastic (people will go to a different grocery store or buy a different brand of chicken breast if the cost is lower). Basically, if you think the there's a huge margin to be made by your parents grocery store why don't you get a group together and undercut that store? The margins are astronomical, if you cut prices by a third you'd be giving people lower prices and still making tons of money. Maybe there's a reason that hasn't happened yet?
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Nov 28, 2023 20:48
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Lockback posted:Basically, if you think the there's a huge margin to be made by your parents grocery store why don't you get a group together and undercut that store? The margins are astronomical, if you cut prices by a third you'd be giving people lower prices and still making tons of money. Maybe there's a reason that hasn't happened yet? I agree with your overall arguments but there are plenty of reasons outside of margin that small businesses won't be able to supplant a handful of gigantic corporations that have a market fully under their control, many of them unethical or illegal, but hey 
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Nov 28, 2023 20:54
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Do the math. I’m serious here. You’ll find it’s not. there's probably more cost in the last mile than in shipping to a regional warehouse anywhere in the conus your rural stores are getting smaller orders to stores which serve fewer people and are more spaced out. that means more drivers who are on the road longer, putting more miles on their vehicles, to deliver fewer turkeys density is cheap in terms of getting stuff to places. the more people you can cram into a square mile, the fewer stores you need and the bigger those stores can be. that simplifies logistics, saves worker-hours, and saves cost. It also supports competition - if I can get to a wegmans, tops, aldi, and price chopper all within 15 minutes, i can shop around and get the best price at whatever quality I want. If my only options are a dollar general fifteen minutes away and an hour to a walmart i've got to take whatever I can find. Inept posted:I agree with your overall arguments but there are plenty of reasons outside of margin that small businesses won't be able to supplant a handful of gigantic corporations that have a market fully under their control, many of them unethical or illegal, but hey large cities do tend to have a bunch of small markets, which can coexist with the scale of the supermarkets by offering ethnic foods, specialty products, "natural health" products, a bougie shopping experience for upscale whites, etc but small rural communities usually can't support that for the exact same reason they can't support more than one supermarket: too spread out, not enough customers
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Nov 28, 2023 21:08
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