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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

#321

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Brybry wrote: post #316
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some shelves might be bare the day before the storm but that doesn't mean people aren't prepared I remember a study on New York following Hurricane Sandy. Fuel was out. Drugs were supplied. Because nobody was incentivised to bring in extra fuel before the hurricane hit; there was no margin to incentivise it. But there was an incentive to bring in drugs, because dealers could make a killing selling at a premium. Pri…

Gas stations can't pump if they don't have power. That's generally why there's a lack of fuel. Sometimes they have backup power or power companies prioritize them. In the south, local media will help notify which gas stations are operable. More fuel won't solve that problem. For Sandy they had more issues than just pumps without power. 40% of their supply was reduced before the storm even hit from shutting down refin…

> stations can't pump if they don't have power. That's generally why there's a lack of fuel.

They’re a gas station. They’re sitting on a fuel source. Why do you think it isn’t economical to install a generator? (Or even lease one.)

> why would there even need to be extra fuel over normal supply

Emergency vehicles. Trucks bringing supplies for repairs. People checking in on each other. People coming back from evacuation or leaving to find peace of mind. Also returning to normal life.

And it’s not about extra fuel. It’s about maintaining supplies. New shipments aren’t coming in, which means supplies need to be rationed. New shipments come in slower than they would if prices could rise; nobody serving the general population is incentivised to rush.

> increases would probably decrease hoarders but it wouldn't turn refineries back on and magically make more gas

Emergency shortages are all about distribution, not production. There is plenty of gas in the world in a disaster. It just isn’t making it to disaster victims. (Well, it is. But you have the pay the cab driver cash to pay the guy by Riverside Park for a can at $20/gallon.)

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

#322

Post by enoch_r »

anigbrowl wrote: post #300
enoch_r wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's the same with corporate profits. LMAO no. It's foolish to equate an individual selling a single asset like a car with businesses that can range from little niche supply workshops up to dominating whole industries. Pure laws of supply and demand only hold true under conditions of perfect competition , and much of what we call 'business' is about playing the meta-game - out maneuvering competitors financially, cre…

My claim is that we can't determine what caused a price change by looking at the distributional effects of that price change.

I demonstrated this with an example, where we know what caused a price change (supply chain issues for a substitute product plus increased demand) and know the distributional effect (higher margins for sellers of used cars). If we naively try to explain the price change based on the distributional effect, we would claim that higher prices were purely caused by increased greed. We know this to be false.

Look, perhaps companies really did become more greedy in 2020 and that's what has really caused inflation. Or maybe large amounts of stimulus caused increased demand. Or perhaps the war in Ukraine has caused supply chain issues which drives up prices. My point is that looking at the distributional effects of inflation is just completely disconnected from the question of what caused inflation in the first place.

At the very least, if you're claiming that we can figure out what caused inflation by looking at the distributional effects, can you provide some evidence, or some argument, to support that claim? Because I think my example demonstrates that common sense ("X benefitted from inflation, therefore X caused inflation") is not a good guide here, and if anything, the additional complexity of real markets works against you here - if we can't even explain inflation based on distributional effects in a toy market, what makes you so confident we can do so in the market as a whole?

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

#323

Post by mcphage »

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…

> But people who sold used cars did not have their costs increase - they were, after all, selling an already completed product.

Didn't they? Increased demand for used cars should mean that used car buyers are forced to pay more for the same car than they would previously. Maybe it's lagging by a bit, but I would absolutely expect that their costs would go up.

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

#324

Post by 2devnull »

kergonath wrote: post #277
2devnull wrote: post #117

Great idea but there’s a slippery slope problem. Report on shrinkflation packaging and companies will switch to other less transparent means (ie changing ingredients) and so this adds a bit of perverse incentive. I suppose companies already do the cost cutting, adding filler, etc… I’m a fan of just mandating price per ounce labels on everything. Stores could show current price per ounce and last year’s, no calling ou…

> Great idea but there’s a slippery slope problem. Report on shrinkflation packaging and companies will switch to other less transparent means (ie changing ingredients) and so this adds a bit of perverse incentive. What makes you think that they are not changing ingredients as well, at the same time? It’s just another button they can tweak to increase margins. If we follow that kind of logic, then we never put in pla…

Yeah and it’s still not very useful for certain things. Like I was shopping for toilet paper the other day. The prices seemed outrageous but trying to compare price per square foot is meaningless when some paper is thick, some extra soft, some 1ply, etc. I like the price per weight unit, without packaging to compare not across products, but for the same product over time.

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

#325

Post by vineyardmike »

feoren wrote: post #311
vineyardmike wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. If the people in power are really smart though they’ll protect their constituents against greedy opportunists and fund the water transportation at cost. Maybe even paid for by taxpayers.

> If the people in power are really smart though they’ll protect their constituents They have no incentive to do so. If they were actual human beings with functioning consciences maybe, but we often see people use the word "smart" to mean "ruthless asshole without a functioning moral compass". Those people assume everyone else would torture their own grandmother for an extra dollar just like they would, and so everyo…

Many US states actually have price gouging laws. In the US, during a natural disaster, many places deploy emergency personnel employed by the government (eg national guard) to pass out water and aid. I’d say the US ranks highly among developed nations as “politicians who are assholes due to bad incentives”.

Thankfully not everyone behaves like an economics textbook.

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

#326

Post by hedora »

dustincoates wrote: post #212
hedora wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expecting people to memorize the per-unit price of everything they buy and compare week to week is unrealistic. Also, at least in the US, the price/weight for the same type of item is often in different units. ($/oz for brand A; $/lb for brand B, etc)

This isn't my experience, so I went looking and found this: > Uniform Unit Pricing Regulations apply only when stores voluntarily provide unit pricing information. The unit of measure chosen must be consistent across like items within the category. So if a store offers unit pricing it must be consistent within a category. https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/laws-and-regulations/us-retail-...

Strange. I've never seen a store in California (which they list as requiring such things) that uses consistent units of measure.

Too bad there's not an obvious way to report violations.

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

#327

Post by jabradoodle »

vineyardmike wrote: post #302
enoch_r wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the increase in prices was because there were too many buyers and too few cars, not because the owners of used cars suddenly because significantly more greedy overnight. No it’s literally greed. You can choose to not raise the price of your used car when you sell it. “Market price” is a hallucination that you can ignore. You’re not forced to go along with it. As you said, sellers of used cars didn’t have their cost…

So what price do you sell it for and who do you choose to sell to at your below market price?

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

#328

Post by jabradoodle »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #299
Brybry wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 po…

> some shelves might be bare the day before the storm but that doesn't mean people aren't prepared I remember a study on New York following Hurricane Sandy. Fuel was out. Drugs were supplied. Because nobody was incentivised to bring in extra fuel before the hurricane hit; there was no margin to incentivise it. But there was an incentive to bring in drugs, because dealers could make a killing selling at a premium. Pri…

Government had to provide basic services during a time of emergency and there are regulations in place to stop people taking advantage of vulnerable people.

Sounds good, I'd pay tax money toward it.

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

#329

Post by vineyardmike »

enoch_r wrote: post #317
vineyardmike wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the increase in prices was because there were too many buyers and too few cars, not because the owners of used cars suddenly because significantly more greedy overnight. No it’s literally greed. You can choose to not raise the price of your used car when you sell it. “Market price” is a hallucination that you can ignore. You’re not forced to go along with it. As you said, sellers of used cars didn’t have their cost…

> “Market price” is a hallucination that you can ignore. You’re not forced to go along with it. It's a powerful signal containing important information! You don't have to go along with it, but it may be beneficial to others if you do. As an example, we bought a new car in 2019. We were planning to sell our old car but every time we were about to sell it, it came in handy - family came to town and we needed two cars,…

> Someone who valued it more than us got to use the vehicle. Was that greed?

You sold it because you could get more money for it. That’s what greed is - you chose more money. You could make the case that you weren’t behaving immorally -not everything in life has to be a charity- but you acted out of a selfish desire for more money.

I’d also argue that “value it more” is pretty flimsy. Yes in a shortage the buyer clearly needed a car and was willing to spend more to acquire it instead of waiting for prices to drop. But you clearly didn’t value it beyond the 2019 price based on your stated desire to sell then, it was just an inconvenient transaction.

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

#330

Post by joe91 »

tech-historian wrote: post #93
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #10

It seems somewhat out of linguistic character for them to use the English-"shrink"-based portmanteau, but hopefully there's a universal commonality (especially coupled with the hashtag format) that makes this move more effective.

This phenomenon generally cracks me up, where you see random (to me) english phrases sprinkled throughout foreign languages. SNL leaned into this, in a skit with Pedro Pascal speaking spanish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkmlfHi9Ll4

My Russian girlfriend did not even know that кринж (cringe) was an English word. Not only that, it has been imported as an adjective just like its use in English internet slang (e.g. that's cringe). Then a verb was formed from that: кринжевать.
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