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How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

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Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#51

Post by [deleted] »

cco wrote: post #32
tom_mellior wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

[deleted]

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#52

Post by logfromblammo »

rubber_duck wrote: post #22
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>Why would garlic prices rise 53% if the tariffs are only 30%? One purely theoretical explanation is demand elasticity - if you can sell 20 items at 3$ now your costs increase to 5$ - you can sell 10 items at 5$ but 8 at 10$ it makes sense to sell at 10$ - not saying that's the case with garlic - but it explains how a 30% cost increase could cause higher price increase.

Percentage-based taxes stretch the supply curve upward along the price axis.

Adding a 30% tax means that if you draw a line down from the new equilibrium point to zero price, that line will cross the original supply curve at 30% of the way down. But the new equilibrium point may also be at a different (likely lower) quantity, where the demand curve could have a different slope.

For a perfect commodity, where the supply curve is nearly flat, the percentage tax has the effect of raising that flat line higher. A 30% tax raises prices 30% higher. The shape of the demand curve only determines the reduction in trade volume.

For a fixed-supply good, where the supply curve is completely vertical, the price remains exactly the same, and the tax is paid entirely by the supplier. The shape of the demand curve isn't very relevant.

If the demand curve is perfectly vertical, consumers pay all the tax, and quantity remains the same.

In order for an x% tax to produce an x+y% increase in price, there has to be some other effect in play. The demand curve has a positive slope, as with a Veblen good. The demand curve shifts upward or rightward, as though the tax serves as advertising. A 30% tariff on similar goods or general inflation produced a substitution effect that drove more people to demand garlic.

Pure demand elasticity can't account for it all.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#53

Post by refurb »

corodra wrote: post #41
ahmedalsudani wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it sad?

It's sad that food has to travel long distances to be purchased at reasonable prices when it's grown relatively nearby. To put the shoe on a different foot. The Dominican Republic produces a lot of tomatoes. But they lack a lot of the infrastructure and machinery that both the US and Mexico have. Shops there sell Mexico and US tomatoes when there's a tomato field ten or twenty miles away. Those fields truly can't com…

Just because the tomato is coming from the Dominican Republic doesn’t mean more CO2 was produced.

Farmer Jack driving a few hundred pounds of tomatoes to the farmer’s market might be spewing more CO2 per tomato than the hundreds of tons coming by ship from the Dominican Republic. Scale of efficiency definitely applies to transportation.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#55

Post by mindslight »

dragonwriter wrote: post #50
lonelappde wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the evil of fiscal policy. Inflation is targeted not at 2%, but 2% plus erasing all the non-fiscal economoc gains of improved technology.

> This is the evil of fiscal policy. Inflation is targeted not at 2%, but 2% plus erasing all the non-fiscal economoc gains of improved technology. This is a very confused comment. The part that's coherent enough to clearly identify what is wrong is that it refers to “fiscal policy” when it means “monetary policy”, which is the policy targeted at particular inflation rates. But even aside from that, the whole claim i…

The comment may be poorly worded, but the point is sound. Every bit of technological progress or economic optimization should result in naturally decreasing prices, just as we've come to expect in the technology sector. This goes for both offshoring in general as well as Walmart's replacement of locally-run businesses.

Lower consumer prices would help make up for the reduced demand for labor. But rather than this being allowed to just happen, the overt policy is to keep labor from realizing these gains so that everyone keeps working "full time".

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#56

Post by thatfrenchguy »

refurb wrote: post #53
corodra wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad that food has to travel long distances to be purchased at reasonable prices when it's grown relatively nearby. To put the shoe on a different foot. The Dominican Republic produces a lot of tomatoes. But they lack a lot of the infrastructure and machinery that both the US and Mexico have. Shops there sell Mexico and US tomatoes when there's a tomato field ten or twenty miles away. Those fields truly can't com…

Just because the tomato is coming from the Dominican Republic doesn’t mean more CO2 was produced. Farmer Jack driving a few hundred pounds of tomatoes to the farmer’s market might be spewing more CO2 per tomato than the hundreds of tons coming by ship from the Dominican Republic. Scale of efficiency definitely applies to transportation.

No way the potentially higher CO2 emissions per km/kg is higher than the 1000x factor from having tomatoes come from the US instead of locally.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#57

Post by thekevan »

As someone who has done buying and selling of used furniture, I wonder how much of the variance had to do with increasing or waning popularity of an item.

When I heard this on the radio, one of the first items they listed was a Better Homes and Gardens lamp. My impression of their research on that one was immediately to discount what they found because they are particularly subject to fad and fashion, especially with the proliferation of " XX stylish lamps that make you look like you have an interior designer for under $YY!!" type of blog posts.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#58

Post by [deleted] »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #56
refurb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because the tomato is coming from the Dominican Republic doesn’t mean more CO2 was produced. Farmer Jack driving a few hundred pounds of tomatoes to the farmer’s market might be spewing more CO2 per tomato than the hundreds of tons coming by ship from the Dominican Republic. Scale of efficiency definitely applies to transportation.

No way the potentially higher CO2 emissions per km/kg is higher than the 1000x factor from having tomatoes come from the US instead of locally.

[deleted]

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#59

Post by tom_mellior »

cco wrote: post #32
tom_mellior wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I agree that you don't need a TV and I don't have one either. But other people keep buying them anyway, so it makes sense to include them in a statistical measure of average households.

Re: How prices changed at a Walmart in a year

#60

Post by zwieback »

corodra wrote: post #48
mfoy_ wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly my parents live in a rural community and practically everyone grows garlic, but farm-stands have trouble competing with grocery store (read: Chinese) garlic.

Florida has a fuckton of strawberry fields. I'm about 1-3 counties away from the major producers. In major grocery chains around me, it's all California and Mexico strawberries. You have no idea how angry that makes me.

Who eats the Floridian strawberries?
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