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Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

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Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#61

Post by ActionHank »

motohagiography wrote: post #50

canada's attitude toward competition is different than that of the US though. our agricultural products (dairy, wheat, maple syrup, and to a lesser extent retail beer and alcohols) are controlled by state monopolies who set prices. the reason food is so expensive is because of fuel costs from the last few years, which were further not-helped by both an increase in federal taxes on fuel and the semi-official policy of…

Wild that Costco can be orders of magnitude cheaper than the competition despite your defending of Galen's honour.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#62

Post by gspencley »

motohagiography wrote: post #50

canada's attitude toward competition is different than that of the US though. our agricultural products (dairy, wheat, maple syrup, and to a lesser extent retail beer and alcohols) are controlled by state monopolies who set prices. the reason food is so expensive is because of fuel costs from the last few years, which were further not-helped by both an increase in federal taxes on fuel and the semi-official policy of…

Don't forget "trickle down economics." After collusion, price gougers, speculators, hoarders and bankers you always get to fall on "trickle down economics" as the convenient scapegoat.

Unless of course you're a conservative. Then it's somehow always immigration's fault.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#63

Post by webnrrd2k »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #56
motohagiography wrote: post #50

canada's attitude toward competition is different than that of the US though. our agricultural products (dairy, wheat, maple syrup, and to a lesser extent retail beer and alcohols) are controlled by state monopolies who set prices. the reason food is so expensive is because of fuel costs from the last few years, which were further not-helped by both an increase in federal taxes on fuel and the semi-official policy of…

People generally get the govts they deserve. Canadians are no different. i.e blame Canadians not their overlords.

Can't it be both?

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#64

Post by Marsymars »

coding123 wrote: post #45

It's not the grocery stores creating this environment, it's their suppliers that have been consolidating non stop for 10 years. This is the real story: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2021/...

TBF in Canada grocery stores are also suppliers; about a quarter of sales are of private label items.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#65

Post by cycomanic »

nickff wrote: post #8
juliend2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. But is there an oligopoly in the Canadian real estate market though? I assume the premise of Project Hammer is that transparency applied on the food industry would underline some collusion and invite for a debate on whether there's some legislation to apply against such an oligopoly.

What would demonstrate collusion? Very similar prices could be a sign of close competition, and razor-thin margins. Varying prices could also be a sign of close competition, with grocers choosing loss-leaders to lure customers into the store.

Look at the data for Austria presented in the link in the article. Supermarkets raised and lowered prices on the same day to the exact same amount and lots of other pretty damning evidence.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#66

Post by dopylitty »

aga98mtl wrote: post #16
fallingknife wrote: post #10

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…

Inflation is caused by companies deciding to raise prices. It has nothing to do with government. Whether there's more or less money out there it's still the decision of the people running the company to raise prices or not.

"Inflation" is really the magical bogeyman invented to make people not ask questions about the companies actually raising prices and to instead think everything is controlled by the government. Pay no attention to the CEO and shareholders on their yachts.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#67

Post by dh-g »

ActionHank wrote: post #61
motohagiography wrote: post #50

canada's attitude toward competition is different than that of the US though. our agricultural products (dairy, wheat, maple syrup, and to a lesser extent retail beer and alcohols) are controlled by state monopolies who set prices. the reason food is so expensive is because of fuel costs from the last few years, which were further not-helped by both an increase in federal taxes on fuel and the semi-official policy of…

Wild that Costco can be orders of magnitude cheaper than the competition despite your defending of Galen's honour.

I've never seen Costco be multiple orders of magnitude on any item. That would be a huge difference.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#68

Post by ziddoap »

whycome wrote: post #57
ziddoap wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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?

Recently??

Yes.

Investigation started in 2017 and there was a guilty plea and $50M fine issued in 2023.

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#69

Post by IncreasePosts »

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #4

Not sure if the author is here, but the downloadable SQLite database significantly benefits from applying compression (~75% with gzip). Also, is there a write-up of how they collected the prices? I have wanted to do a similar analysis for years, but immediately gave up realizing I would be spending 95% of my efforts scraping and entity matching. By and large manufacturers seem to go out of their way offer unique SKUs…

I was going to mention that your browser almost certainly sends an Accept-Encoding: gzip header, but it appears the server doesn't care to sent a Content-Encoding: gzip back!

Re: Project Hammer: reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector

#70

Post by 99_00 »

throwaway201606 wrote: post #32
99_00 wrote: post #22

1. Online prices are not the same as in store prices 2. No one, other than random people in messages forums, is alleging collusion or price fixing. No one at any university, not the government, not the media. 3. The government’s investigation, which many of the conspiracy theorists site as evidence, shows a lack of competition led to 1 or 2 % increase in price over 12 years, and the vast majority of the price increas…

Want to give you benefit of the doubt with regards to phrasing but tackling each of these statements as they are all factually incorrect: > 1. Online prices are not the same as in store prices This depends but mostly they match ie online grocer prices in Canada are the same as in-store prices This is because most grocers have use online prices as flyers / ads / sales pricing for stores. Also, in Canada, because of pr…

1. Your response doesn’t seem to contradict my statement. It seems to add context. So my point #1 stands. Tracking online prices doesn’t tell us what people are paying in store.

Regarding the bread price fixing scandal, that ended 14 years ago. It ended when internal executives reported it.

The current anger and activism is over the post Covid price rise in food. No one is saying that that is due to price fixing, or collusion. Except random people in forums or fringe bloggers with phds from unknown institutions.

There is actual price fixing. But it is t the grocery stores. It’s the dairy producers. But politically they apparently aren’t a good target.

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