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Why on earth are people and government stooges suddenly targeting grocery stores for collusion and price gouging? If there is an industry with a lower profit margin, I'm not aware of it.
Why on earth are people and government stooges suddenly targeting grocery stores for collusion and price gouging? If there is an industry with a lower profit margin, I'm not aware of it.
That said, one of the government reports linked in the article[1] does mention that profit margins have edged up slightly, albeit on the order of 1-2 percentage points.
[1] https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/how-we-foster-competiti...
Why on earth are people and government stooges suddenly targeting grocery stores for collusion and price gouging? If there is an industry with a lower profit margin, I'm not aware of it.
And the same people that colluded on bread just so happen to sell other grocery goods. Some people think: "hey, maybe we should check out the other stuff they sell". Which seems reasonable to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada
From an anecdotal standpoint, when many of the groceries I buy seem to have gone up in price at a rate well outpacing inflation, I can't help but wonder what the hell is going on.
Oh man, we really need this for telecom too. And even more important than their collusion is their political corruption, so the government protects them from competition and funnels endless billions in taxpayer money to them.
There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line.
Manitobans should be absolutely up in arms over the privatization of Manitoba Telecom.
Canada has a ton of land and just not that many people. There's 3 + Videotron major telecom operators servicing a population the size of California spread out over a land area the size of the United States. The Capex and payback period for spinning up a new, competitive, national carrier is wild (there's a pile of bodies there proving my point) which makes this a perfect job for the government.
I'm sure there is a theory of how this would reduce prices - what is it? Real estate markets became infinitely more transparent over the last couple of years, to the extent that the data is used to train data scientist. The result? Speculators entered the market at it's messed up.
That seems like a stretch. What's the casual mechanism behind increased accessibility of data driving up prices? At least with something like stocks you could blame HFT firms piling into the market or whatever. It seems far more plausible that prices rose for other reasons (take your pick of: NIMBYism, immigration, foreign investors, etc.), and the increased accessibility of data happened to coincide with the price rise (ie. similar to https://xkcd.com/925/).
Why on earth are people and government stooges suddenly targeting grocery stores for collusion and price gouging? If there is an industry with a lower profit margin, I'm not aware of it.
From the point of view of the average man however, the grocery store is exactly where he is facing inflation daily! This makes it the ideal scapegoat.
The average man will never ever realize that the monetary mass surged during covid while real world production slowed down. More dollars chasing fewer goods & services equals rising prices. That monetary policy smoothed out the COVID downturn and it was a great success, but it was not a free lunch.
Why on earth are people and government stooges suddenly targeting grocery stores for collusion and price gouging? If there is an industry with a lower profit margin, I'm not aware of it.
I believe it is an elaborate psyop to shift the blame of inflation away from the government and toward a boogeyman, the "evil" grocery chains. As you point out the margins are super tight in food retail, it is impossible for it to be the cause of inflation. From the point of view of the average man however, the grocery store is exactly where he is facing inflation daily! This makes it the ideal scapegoat. The average…
In Canada, the grocery stores were caught colluding. Recently. Is it still a "boogeyman" when they were caught in a 15 year long collusion scheme?
Why on earth are people and government stooges suddenly targeting grocery stores for collusion and price gouging? If there is an industry with a lower profit margin, I'm not aware of it.
Why on earth are people and government stooges suddenly targeting grocery stores for collusion and price gouging? If there is an industry with a lower profit margin, I'm not aware of it.
Well, one reason is that Canada had a ~15 year bread price-fixing scandal come to light somewhat recently. And the same people that colluded on bread just so happen to sell other grocery goods. Some people think: "hey, maybe we should check out the other stuff they sell". Which seems reasonable to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada From an anecdotal standpoint, when many of the groceries I…
Yes, it obviously shouldn't have happened, but there's no piñata of profit just waiting to be smashed apart that would magically drop grocery bills.
Oh man, we really need this for telecom too. And even more important than their collusion is their political corruption, so the government protects them from competition and funnels endless billions in taxpayer money to them.
You know what actually works great for reducing the price of cell plans in Canada is a public option. There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line. Manitobans should be absolutely up in arms over the privatization of Manitoba Telecom. Canada has a ton of land and just not that many p…
Source? Looking at sasktel's website and rogers' website, this claim does not pass the sniff test. Their "basic" plan is $60/month (BYOD) for 15GB of data, whereas rogers gives you 75GB for $65. Even if you don't use 15GB of data and that extra $5 brings you no benefit, the price difference is nowhere near high enough to justify the claim "people pay roughly half the national average".