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How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

npr.org

31–40 of 94 posts

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#31
post #7

the 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.

What do you mean too specific? How can you reasonably track the price of something less specific than a product?

NPR 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.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#32
post #15

Yet somehow our consumer price index shows inflation rising at only 2%

As the article notes, some things like consumer electronics are still getting cheaper.

File 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.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#33

> 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…

Why would garlic prices rise 53% if the tariffs are only 30%? Are there really no other factors at play?

I am quite certain the tariffs went from 10% to 25%, so only actually a 15% in crease.

The real reason for the remaining increases are probably a combination of domestic Chinese pressures and the inflation machine Obama started and Trump has only continued both starting to grip and people are starting to notice as articles like this point out things that have been going on for a decade now.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#34
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is 55% higher though - from $0.50 to $0.76 per bulb? Garlic doesn't seem like an elastic enough good where $0.25 would make a difference. It's a staple food in almost every American household. With that being said it's sad to hear that so many people purchase Chinese produce.

Why is it sad?

Shipping foreign produce is not good for the environment at all. Easy to harvest and low maintenance produce such as garlic should not need to be imported. The margins over garlic may be low, but local producers can still benefit from being able to sell without too many intermediaries.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#35
post #15

Yet somehow our consumer price index shows inflation rising at only 2%

Once you look at the revised numbers and you then start unpacking all the lies contained in the CPI you start understanding that it's a literal con job, a trick of confidence.

There are some people who try to provide alternative accurate information to the government's data, and it consistently shows far less rosy numbers that also match the historical record far closer.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#38

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. 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 wor…

It'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 mo…

The 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.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#40

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. 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 wor…

> 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…

I’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.
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