151–160 of 402 posts
“asymmetric information warfare” I think that’s a great term in explaining how “the free market” doesn’t work.
I don't know much about economics but I know, or think I know, that much.)
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The Austrian inflation problem is easily answered: wage inflation (collective bargaining agreements), paired with high gas costs, paired with many inflation linked contracts such as rents. Many of these feed back into the inflation basked and just make inflation quite sticky.
High gas prices are not a thing anymore: It is about EU average: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/bookmark/bef444e2-... Interesting fact when looking at the data: Many countries with a "high" inflation right now have very low gas prices.
[dupe]
This submission caught my eye because of its more descriptive title and the mention of scraping.
This is a great thread, and it shows the power of smart, tech-capable citizens.
>it shows the power of smart, tech-capable citizens Consumers in Austria who travel abroad/to Germany often, already knew they were getting scammed for a long time now, but couldn't prove it and now they can, so the more important question is what will come out of it, as the data shows the big retailers clearly cooperating on price fixing. My guess, nothing, as the government regulators who are supposed to watch over…
I would love a citation for that.
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I guess what he meant was that big retailers colluded to increase prices simultaneously together in lock-step for no reason other than greed and profiteering, and simply blamed it on the Russo-Ukrainian war as being the reason for prices exploding.
I believe the OP was referring to Far-right, pro-Russia parties getting their 'come-uppance' by the rest of the world, but I'd really like to know more details about that. Not that I doubt that big corporations would use the Russia excuse whenever/wherever they can - I mean, who wouldn't - but I'd just like to see the details that tie the inflation to support of Russia a bit more clearly laid out.
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Is there any evidence that Austrian supermarket owners have long reaped outsize profit margins?
There is evidence that the prices they charge in Austria are often significantly higher than in Germany, meaning higher profits per sale, at the expense of the consumer who's wages are lower than those in Germany, so it's a double whammy.
The cost of doing business in Austria is significantly higher for supermarkets. On the one hand because Austria has many more supermarkets to begin with per chain, secondly because of the high cost of labor in the country. Comparing countries that way is not trivial.
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In the US, many times you cannot compare prices between cities much less states due to differences in land price and costs of city and state taxes/regulations such as minimum wages. Surely, Austria and Germany, as two different countries, have at least a few big differences in tax systems/labor laws/local laws/etc that can affect cost of goods sold?
The retailers have been questioned regularly why they overcharge in Austria compared to Germany, and they never cited extra wages(lower than Germany FYI), business or tax overhead as the reason, but rather beat it around the bush saying "we're only charging what the market will bare and this is what the Austrian market bares", basically admitting they're screwing you and getting away with it, especially that they oft…
Specifically on that point:
> extra wages(lower than Germany FYI)
That is incorrect, the cost of an employee in the grocery space per hours worked is still higher in Austria than Germany, quite meaningfully so.
Truly shows how Free Markets are the most efficient
What are the profit margins for Austrian retailers? In the US, all the retailers earn razor thin profit margins (except Home Depot/Lowes), indicating if prices were lower, the businesses would fail, or at best become charities. Edit: for the one Austrian retailer I could find numbers for, they are not pretty. Not sure how the retailer can lower prices without going out of business if they already have sub 1% profit m…
One problem of the Austrian grocery store market is that there's just way too many branches per capita (compared to the otherwise pretty similar market of Germany again), which brings down margins.