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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

#331

Post by canucker2016 »

programmertote wrote: post #80

The worse combo is shrinkflation with significantly increased price. I used to buy Arm and Hammer detergent (250 FL OZ) from Costco for ~$11 about a year ago. Last week, I went to Costco and saw that they have reduced the size of the container (in a very subtle way so it is hard to notice) with 200 FL OZ and charges $14.89. That is like double rip-off. My salary did not increase 35% between this and last year. For Ch…

Even worse is the shrinkflation with stealth price increase.

Haagen Dazs recently reduced the size of their ice cream containers from 500ml to 450 ml while keeping the price the same.

Fine. They succumbed to shrinkflation.

But it's only at the checkout counter where you get hit with the stealth price increase.

In Canada, they tax individual items of certain foods but don't tax family-size portions of those foods.

It turns out that 500ml is the limit for family-sized portion of ice cream container. Buying less than 500ml results in the store charging tax on the item (Ontario HST is 13%).

So Haagen Dazs is getting a bit more and the government gets some where before they got nothing.

see https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/shrinkflation-canada-ta...

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

#332

Post by PopAlongKid »

Another form of shrinkflation is related to sales tax.

Something I never used to see, across dozens of U.S. states, is sales tax being added separately to the posted price of beeer. But now, when I pay $8 for a 16-oz. drink, they often add the sales tax to that instead of including it in the price as they used to. I guess few enough people pay cash any more that making change with coins doesn't slow down the process too much.

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

#333

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jabradoodle wrote: post #328
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…

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.

> Government had to provide basic services during a time of emergency

There were widespread fuel shortages.

> regulations in place to stop people taking advantage of vulnerable people

There were no fuel shortages for folks who could buy on the black market.

> Sounds good

In a sense, the system works. The part of the population that feels good with these rules sits out of the market. The part that thinks it’s silly has access, in part thanks to the shortages/forced curtailment caused by regulation in the legal market, albeit at a steeper mark-up (plus the inherent risks to black market trading).

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

#334

Post by selimthegrim »

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…

I think it’s a little more complicated than that. I remember fueling up in Chalmette right before Ida, early in the morning, and by the evening or the next day the gas station was out of fuel. Would no price gouging laws have allowed them to inflate the price so much that people couldn’t afford to buy a day early like I did to be able to evacuate?

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

#336

Post by rottingchris »

vineyardmike wrote: post #329
enoch_r wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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 clea…

No, what you're describing has nothing to do with greed. Self-interest is not the same as greed. There would be nothing between greed and charity using according to your definition. Indeed, keeping the car when they didn't need it would also be greed. The only in-between is selling it for a fair value - but there is no objective fair price.

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

#337

Post by indigo0086 »

tomrod wrote: post #40
indigo0086 wrote: post #16

Everyone but companies can suffer from the effects of inflation, got it.

Basic economics. Consumers pay for products. No matter where you increase costs or taxes, consumers pay the difference.

Businesses fail as profits decrease, one cause of which could be higher cost of inputs. It may lead to those businesses cutting costs elsewhere, or passing it onto the consumer. To shame companies as they find ways to maintain profits when they're the first to be affected by increased cost to inputs is economically illiterate and leads to misguided focus on what the cause of inflation affecting all levels before a consumer gets their smaller chips or soda.

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

#338

Post by marcosdumay »

charles_f wrote: post #315
marcosdumay wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hardly abuse of economical power. Wake me up if they decide to remove some label due to a negotiation. Otherwise, that's the slippery slope fallacy, that is false on practice about as often as it's true.

It is not the slippery slope fallacy, it's the proposition that everything that can be used for nefarious purposes eventually will. Someone who repeatedly abuses their economical power doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt, is my point.

They are doing a good thing, but it's bad because that good thing may allow them to do something bad later?

Sorry, but I'll ask for them to be punished when they try to do the bad thing. Not earlier.

They can do nefarious things whenever they want. They don't need to normalize a good thing first, there are all kinds of anticompetitive actions they can do right now without complex scheming. (And yeah, they constantly do many of those, but still, without any complex scheming.)

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

#339

Post by WalterBright »

lesuorac wrote: post #308
WalterBright wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If inflation is 10% and profits go up 10%, most likely that's inflation's effect.

I don't think you get it yet. If I pour water into a cup and the line says 100 ML there's 100 ML of water. That measurement of 100 ML is a descriptor of how much water that is. Inflation is a descriptor of how much prices have increased. If we measure the line a second time and it says 120 ML then the water level has increased (i.e. inflation occurred). But why inflation occurred is not know _just_ by measuring the w…

> I don't think you get it yet.

Au contraire. Inflation comes from too much money chasing too few goods and services. How does too much money come about? The government prints money to deficit spend. Why does this cause inflation? The Law of Supply and Demand. Too much money means the money is worth less.

Individual companies cannot cause inflation, because they cannot increase the money supply.

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

#340

Post by WalterBright »

effingwewt wrote: post #157
WalterBright wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporate profits are high. Inflation increases profits, too (but not in real dollars). > This is one of the reasons why. The reason why is inflation.

No, the reason why is price gouging. Or as companies like to call it 'not leaving money on the table'. Prices have outpaced inflation. Everything has, except worker pay and minimum wage. Profits are record-breaking while laying off workers. CEO compensation and bonuses are insane. Housing prices are out of control. Gas is still $5/gallon where I'm at. It all boils down to one word: GREED.

> Prices have outpaced inflation.

Or, as many people suspect, the government calculation of inflation is deliberately under representing it. The government doesn't like to admit it is the cause of inflation, hence all the excuses for it coming from the government, like "Putin's Price Hike" and all that other economically illiterate nonsense.

Companies can raise their prices at any time. So why don't they? Why do they do it only after the government dumps trillions of newly printed money into the economy?

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