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Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

theguardian.com

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Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#281

Post by mytailorisrich »

tyingq wrote: post #114
mytailorisrich wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a cynical move because, as the article mentions right at the top, this is just to apply pressure on suppliers before contracts renegotiations. Tesco in the Uk does not sort of stunt as well and for the same reasons. > In the UK many people rely on Food banks and parents skip meals to feed their children. A small minority, not 'many'...

If this[1] is correct, one part stands out to me: "2.1 million people in the UK lived in household which had used a food bank in the previous 12 months, a rate of 3%. This includes 6% of children, 3% of working-age adults, and around 0% of pensioners." 6% of children feels not great, though other stats say the US is much worse, with 6+% of all households, not just children...and I've seen higher estimates. [1] https:…

That's a small minority that has used a food bank at least once in 12 months. The number of people 'relying' on them has to be even lower. We also can't discount that some people could have bought food but chose the food bank instead because it is free.

My point was that writing 'many' suggests something common and widespread like if there were breadlines everywhere. It is not (but The Guardian likes to dramatise on this).

In fact, I suspect that poorer people in the UK have a much higher chance of being obese than of being actually hungry.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#282

Post by thfuran »

hansvm wrote: post #267
thfuran wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't even have standardization on the nutrition labels. The serving size is different for everything.

It's worse than that. The serving size changes the resulting label. A lot of the high-protein breads have the same composition and are sliced slightly thicker to hit the 3.5g mark so they can round up to 4g per slice and appear to be more protein rich in composition.

I've seen oil with zero calories and over 1,500 servings per container.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#285

Post by effingwewt »

astrange wrote: post #263
yoyohello13 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not irrational to be mad. All the poor see is that they are getting screwed and the rich are doing fine (sometime thriving) no platitudes about “economics” are going to make them feel better.

Wages by definition also increase with inflation. (Inflation is a general increase in prices and wages are a price.) Though you can have both unemployment and inflation at once, called stagflation. Also in the US, the lowest 10% of real wages has grown significantly since 2020, lowering income inequality vs the middle class.

I'll need some citations on those numbers.

In states like Texas minimum wage is still $7.25/hr and many places pay just that.

How do you reconcile your numbers with that?

Bills have outpaced wages to the point nearly a whole generation of young adults have given up on home ownership and have had to move back home.

Mortgages are increasing in years and rates, even new cars have.

Income inequality has never been higher and you're seriously saying it's gotten better since the greatest wealth transfer in history?!

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#286

Post by jahewson »

NickM wrote: post #106
h1fra wrote: post #69

For those wondering if it's truly representative, it's estimated that 50% of the inflation in Europe is due to margin increase not bc of the inflation itself. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/06/26/europes-inf...

Supply constraints typically lead to higher prices and higher margins. The fact that the margins have gone up does not somehow imply that the higher prices are something other than inflation.

From the original article:

> consumer goods companies are not cooperating in efforts to cut the price of thousands of staples despite a fall in the cost of raw materials.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#287

Post by Brybry »

MostlyStable wrote: post #201
Brybry wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if there's a natural disaster, and the people in power aren't dumb, they'll let prices float instead of putting caps in place I think most states that experience natural disasters have price gouging laws that make it illegal to raise prices, during a declared emergency, beyond the level required by increased costs. Or at least I know Louisiana[1] and California[2] do. And here in Louisiana we've had a lot of disast…

"Works" in the sense that it keeps prices from going to high. Fails in that it prevents people from preparing adequately for forseeable disasters and bringing in more of the things people need in a disaster. In my opinion, disasters that have some level of predictability (hurricanes are the best example) shouldn't have price gouging laws. If you were allowed to raise your prices arbitrarily high, and you knew a hurri…

I think implying people aren't able to adequately prepare for hurricanes in Louisiana is begging the question. I've lived here for almost 40 years, through a lot of hurricanes, and that is not my experience.

Sure, some shelves might be bare the day before the storm but that doesn't mean people aren't prepared, that they aren't able to get the things they need, or that the current method does not work.

And when the power is out for a week+ for a whole region (goes beyond the supplies urban locals typically prepare) then government uses the national guard to hand out MREs and/or bottled water in commercial parking lots. This is very rare.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#288

Post by Manuel_D »

justinclift wrote: post #216
Manuel_D wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Record profits in a period of inflation is not surprising. If the value of the Australian dollar halves, then a company doubling it's raw profit figures is really just staying maintaining the same profits in real value.

If the value of the Australian dollar halves, and a company manages to double its raw profit figures... doesn't that still sound like price gouging? Why would their "maintaining the same profits in real value" be acceptable when no-one else in the end to end chain (producers, customers, etc) managed to in the situation.

It's not price gouging: the value of currencies are almost certainly never going to return to their pre-pandemic levels. Price gouging typically refers to raising prices in a specific exceptional situation like a disaster. Inflation is not exceptional, it's happening worldwide (though more in some countries than others). It's also not a temporary. It's lasted years and even if inflation returns to 2% the prices are going to stay high.

Again, if the value of currency halves and profits in raw curry terms doubles then profit in terms of real value has remained the same. If a company pays it's employees $30 and the value of currency halves, and it raises wages to $45 did they really raise wages? In raw terms, yes, but in real terms no. The value of wages has actually gone down.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#289

Post by arcticbull »

enoch_r wrote: post #250
h1fra wrote: post #69

For those wondering if it's truly representative, it's estimated that 50% of the inflation in Europe is due to margin increase not bc of the inflation itself. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/06/26/europes-inf...

This argument is completely incoherent. You can't study the cause of inflation by looking at the distributional effects of inflation. For example, in 2020 there was a huge increase in demand for used cars, and the price of used cars increased by ~40% within a few months. But people who sold used cars did not have their costs increase - they were, after all, selling an already completed product. The IMF would therefor…

That's not necessarily true, over the last few years we saw that companies were able to begin pushing prices to increase margins and profits on the same volume of goods instead of manufacturing more goods and making the profit on volume. Some of the margin increase was due to real supply constraints, but not all of it. For instance, when Coke and Pepsi lost ~4% of their global sales by abandoning the Russian market, they just raised prices everywhere else to compensate, because they could, and people were willing to pay. Now moving forward, they seem to be losing their ability to push prices. My point is not all cost increases were due to real constraints - they were in the auto sector, but that's not true of all sectors.

If I know this, I suspect the IMF does too, and incorporated that into the report.

Re: Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands

#290

Post by orev »

secretsatan wrote: post #161
mortenjorck wrote: post #64

A brand of laundry detergent I use recently decreased the size of its 36oz bottle to 28oz. The kicker, however, is the approximate number of loads listed on the bottle changed from 27… to 28. The instructions on the back now recommend filling the cap to a lower bar for “medium” loads. I’ve been meaning to write to the manufacturer to ask if they’ve quietly changed their formulation to something more concentrated, tho…

I recently discovered detergents and powders regularly overstate how much is required for a wash, and it even leads to worse results, I'm normally sceptical (or just ignorant) of such articles but I halved how much I used and it seemed to be pretty much true for day to day washing (Don't know about massively dirty clothes, but talking weekly wash here) https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/stop-using-so-much-l...

Not to defend the recommendation as they clearly have an interest in trying to get people to use as much as possible, there is a potentially valid reason for this, which is that it depends on the type of water you have.

Water from a municipal supply is generally well-treated and usually soft, in which case you can get by using less detergent. However with hard water (often sourced from wells), more detergent is needed to get the same cleaning effect.

Maybe they could try to explain this, or maybe they just ignore it for the sake of simplicity (of the instructions on the bottle), and the increased sales is just a nice side effect.

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