381–390 of 566 posts
The US announces retreat
It's a bit higher in Denmark and I have a little too much stored as fiat in the bank. What is a safe asset to store value while inflation is >10% in a developed country?
Thankfully you're no longer earning negative interest on your bank account.
Anyone notice that brand name soda (looking at you Coke) has increased almost 100% while the generic/house brand has had slight increases. I feel like Coke is testing the pricing limits of its customers especially with the smaller packaging and these prices will not come back down.
I’m not sure how much they’ve increased as I don’t remember the old price of crackers but I remember them being really cheap.
It seems odd that the inputs vary substantially between the two so is it just that Nabisco has very different labor costs? Or are they just jacking up the price because they can?
I suspect store brand have a very fixed cost-plus style of pricing where they just sell for a fixed markup over whatever their costs are and don’t really do market research for price points.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coke’s advertising isn’t “hey this is what Coke is” it’s “hey aren’t you thirsty and don’t you remember how much fun you’ve had in the past while drinking Coke?”
I've never once grabbed a coke because of seeing a commercial. And I barely drink it because I have enough sugar in my life and don't want my kids chugging soda all day long like I did as a kid. So I do see your point, I just don't get how that influences people. But again, I recognize it must to enough of a degree- I just don't feel like I'm one of them so it's hard to personally understand. Maybe I am, but I think…
Do you think you’re immune to ads? Or that ads don’t work at all?
I think it’s reasonable that you’ve never seen an ad and consciously bought a coke, but that’s rarely the point of coke.
We’re not aware of all our subconscious motivations. I’d like to be, but it’s usually pretty hard for me to understand why I do things at a deep level.
Looking at the macro picture is so misleading. The only categories that are really down are natural gas, used cars & trucks, and apparel. Everything else is up but it is being masked by the huge drop in natural gas prices (which is due to the situation in Europe).
Weird that gas prices dropped, I would have thought they'd be up. Any insight?
However currently temperatures are moderate and demand is pretty low. There's optimism for a mild winter and users have done a good job of reducing demand.
So at the moment there's a situation where Europe has too much gas in anticipation of future bad things which is driving a slump in prices.
This will probably change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you check Coke's financial statements, you'll see that although revenue has risen quickly, cost of revenue has risen about as fast, leading to relatively unchanged gross profit margins (36% so far in 2022, compared with 40%+ in every year from 1985-2014 and between 33%-39% from 2015 to 2021). Word from industry press is that the rising price of aluminum has been a major driver of the increased costs. I don't know…
Generic brands often don't come in aluminum cans, assuming the industry rumours are true.
Also, prices for coke in plastic bottles are also up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may be - but to the above poster's point - if gas went up 20% in Jan of this year and then stays flat... is it helpful to think of prices as "going up" ? It seems misleading.
"is it helpful to think of prices as "going up" ? It seems misleading." Here you are encountering a common human cognitive failing, which is the belief that there is some sort of objective answer to the question "are prices going up?" that we should all be able to totally agree on, somehow floating in Platonic space without reference to any particular measure of "prices increasing". The problem is that if you drill d…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which businessman in their right mind will decrease the price of their products because of cost decrease? Not unless there is intense competition. Because of that for large scale monopoly business like commodities once the prices go up it may not come down again.
I may be missing something, but if there is no competitive pressure/monopolistic market, why would these businesses need the excuse of inflation/cost increases to increase their prices? Wouldn't we expect prices to have gone up before inflation? Or is this a specific criticism of a regulatory blind spot for reigning in market power? Monopolies can get away with price increases now, but they wouldn't normally?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course they are. There was a much-watched video that went around a few weeks ago that composed quite a few CEOs talking about pushing the pricing envelope to take advantage of inflation news (effectively saying: "People now expect price increases, we can leverage that to our gain!"). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psYyiu9j1VI
There's not really much we can do about this. Artificial price ceilings were tried in Venezuela and it only contributed significantly to their massive food shortages they experienced. Most notably it resulted in a big reduction in the variety of food available because while some of the biggest companies could survive with the new lower prices (and work with the gov directly to set those prices) the bulk of small/medi…
Price controls are a pretty big deal though. Especially in a low margin industry you run the real risk of putting firms out of business and damaging supply. They're very dangerous when done wrong.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably too strong of a statement. I don't view this as a huge miss (.2%), and ask anyone you know on a fixed income what this is doing to their retirement. Ulitmately, it's the glut of cash out there (IMHO) that is going to need to resolve itself before inflation gets back to a normal level.
>anyone you know on a fixed income what this is doing to their retirement I don't know any retireees on a fixed income. They all get Social Security, which is not fixed. And if they have any signifcant savings, those interest rates are also not fixed, and have been rising a lot recently (recently advertised CD rates at 3-4% are common where I live).
It’s been fixed since the last cost of living adjustment almost a year ago. Trailing adjustments really hurt when inflation rises this fast.