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Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

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Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#71

Post by K0balt »

pjc50 wrote: post #42
aeblyve wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to learn more about the unit economics of groceries. How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation? [0] If the latter was functioning well in a competitive market, I would expect their play to be on lower margins but higher volume. [0] Mostly I'm referring to offal TBF, which I think most firms are happy to make any money on at all.

The megacorp can provide cheap food, it just doesn't want to. In practice they adjust the margins in a data-driven way on individual goods. UK supermarkets actually provide pretty cheap fresh produce, because the market is pretty competitive. I think the most ridiculous I've seen was a 1kg bag of carrots for 20p. Many countries or locations do not have highly competitive supermarkets. Oh, and there's both volume and…

It’s just price gouging. There is an item I sometimes buy that is about $1.60 at supermarkets, but is consistently $.85 at nearly all rural Colmados. Same brand, same product , shelf stable , mass produced, large volume mover, imported product. Supermarkets have just collectively decided to sell it for 2x the “rational” market price because it went up with Covid and people kept buying it.

Colmados don’t do data driven pricing, and just do a flat markup on the stuff the suplicadoras bring them.

Data driven pricing is just selective price gouging under a different name.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#72

Post by phkahler »

bix6 wrote: post #43
jvanderbot wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fairly well to do/employable person, and so is my wife. Together, we should be all kinds of financially stable. But the two largest costs to our finances are ridiculously outsized: Child Care and Health Care. We pay more for our children and health insurance / care, than our house + cars (+student loans) combined. These seem like two areas where intervention is not only possible but likely to help just about ev…

Curious where you live that healthcare is more than housing?

In the US if you don't own your home free and clear this is likely the case.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#74

Post by kasey_junk »

hansvm wrote: post #53
aeblyve wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to learn more about the unit economics of groceries. How is it that a small grocery store can sometimes provide things (much) more cheaply than a megacorporation? [0] If the latter was functioning well in a competitive market, I would expect their play to be on lower margins but higher volume. [0] Mostly I'm referring to offal TBF, which I think most firms are happy to make any money on at all.

When you control most of the market it works out a little differently. People can only eat so much food, but you can price gouge them relatively easily.

Kroger, the largest grocery in America and one that routinely sets of anti-monopoly interdictions have a profit margin of 1.76%.

What profit margin line would you suggest counts as price gouging?

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#75

Post by v5v3 »

There are times when I have been broke and just meant I ate more plainly.

20kg sack of rice is cheap and lasts a while. Flour is cheap. Eggs are cheap Potatoes Canned tuna

Etc

A lot of those who complain about groceries could swap out what they would rather have until times improve.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#76

Post by phyzix5761 »

I did some math a while ago on this topic:

40 million Americans live below the poverty line of $15,000 per year. [1]

Total U.S. household net worth (excluding real estate) is around $54 trillion. [2]

If every household above the poverty line donated 2.5% of their net worth annually to people living below the poverty line, we could erase poverty instantly.

Here’s the math:

2.5% of $54 trillion = $1.35 trillion

$1.35 trillion ÷ 40 million Americans = $33,750 per person

That’s more than double the poverty threshold.

Sources: [1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/poverty-awareness-mo... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOGZ1FL152090045Q

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#77

Post by thinkingtoilet »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #40
siliconc0w wrote: post #34

Our health system is so amazingly bad. Even if you have insurance, you roll the dice getting even basic care. Very easy to end up with hundreds or thousands of dollars in bills if your provider codes something wrong or your insurance denies payment. Much less an actual medical issue that requires repeated trips to a specialist, an expensive medication (even generic), or hospitalizations.

God forbid we touch Obamacare though.

Where does this come from? People are happy if you want to improve it. However, for literally a decade now the Republicans have tried to repeal it without any sort of replacement.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#78

Post by schrectacular »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #4

Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. I get an entire shopping cart full of food for $60-100 and that lasts for ~2 weeks. When I go to Publix (or any other grocery store), I get like 2-3 bags for $60... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Although I'm not really sure how their prices are so low. If someone could answer, that would be awesome!

My local Asian grocer does one key thing I know of to save/make money: lots of the workers live in a local dorm that he rents and are fed with leftovers from the bakery and nealy spoiled produce.

Re: Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people

#79

Post by mattmaroon »

whatamidoingyo wrote: post #4

Protip: look for an Asian market in your area for food. I get an entire shopping cart full of food for $60-100 and that lasts for ~2 weeks. When I go to Publix (or any other grocery store), I get like 2-3 bags for $60... Discovering the Asian market has been one of the best financial things to happen to me. Although I'm not really sure how their prices are so low. If someone could answer, that would be awesome!

I believe Asian markets are basically an inversion of the regular grocery store pricing model. Regular grocery stores sell all the stuff around the perimeter (meat, dairy, produce, baked goods, etc.) at relatively high margins and all the shelf-stable packaged stuff in the middle at relatively low margins. It makes sense, one store may have better or worse produce or meat or bakery items or deli items etc. than another, but their Heinz Ketchup can only be cheaper or more expensive.

The packaged goods at Asian markets in many cases cannot be purchased anywhere other than an Asian market. No frozen pandan leaves at Costco.

So I think they just mark up the packaged goods more and the produce less.

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