81–90 of 123 posts
Consumers vote with their wallets that they prefer the big box stores. Reagan removed bargaining restrictions on big box stores, which lowered prices. Bad or good for consumers? Does it matter if you need to drive 8 or 11 miles (non-desert vs. desert) to buy boxed cereals and processed food? CostCo rides the same dynamic, at scale. CostCo deserts? Want to fix it, HN-style? Create a startup! But more regulation? Ffs.
Isn't this a roundabout way of saying that, absent government coercion, consumer preference tends to be towards buying cheaper groceries at a big consolidated store a drive away, than a more expensive nearby store? Isn't the real boogieman here rules (zoning, parking requirements, etc) and subsidies (oil industry) than mean we all live in diffuse single-use residential communities and have to have cars to get to work…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is very silly, and the evidence for it is in the world all around you. Walmart is cheaper for most things. If they did not in fact pass the cost on, then there is the idea for your startup business: a grocery supplier to small neighborhood retailers.
Walmart is cheaper for the customer (modulo the expense of driving to a Walmart). But Walmart is also a lot cheaper for Walmart. One delta is larger than the other.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope you enjoy the next 40 years, becuae they will be the same as the last 40 years with people like you making the same excuses election after election.
What "making excuses"? The Republicans have literally stated over and over[1] that their goal is to make government not work and make Democrats look bad - not to make life better for their constituents. Meanwhile the Democrats have to spend every term fixing the things the GOP broke, only for voters to reward them by saying "you didn't fix everything and this dude promises the magical tax fairy will build a wall and…
Like NAFTA.
When it comes to making people lives worse the democrats are just as capable as the republicans.
It's just that when it comes to helping people. Oh no. Woe is us we can't do anything with the presidency, and a super majority in every branch of government.
This happens once every 20 years.
But democratic cultists always come out of the wood work to explain why this is actually ~Reagans~ ~Bushs~ ~Bush2s~ Trumps fault.
Isn't this a roundabout way of saying that, absent government coercion, consumer preference tends to be towards buying cheaper groceries at a big consolidated store a drive away, than a more expensive nearby store? Isn't the real boogieman here rules (zoning, parking requirements, etc) and subsidies (oil industry) than mean we all live in diffuse single-use residential communities and have to have cars to get to work…
There was no substantial change in zoning, parking requirements, etc or oil subsidies between the when local stores were competing quite well with the big consolidated stores and the time when the local stores started disappearing and the big consolidated stores become dominant, so those cannot be the explanation.
Once again, much of the state of America can be summarized as "this awful experience is a direct result of the Reagan administration, but most people don't realize it".
The problem is that about half the country still sees him as some sort of hero.
I'm going to need more meat than this. Was there a memo that went out detailing that this statutory law will no longer be enforced? Did no succeeding FTC Chair or Attorney General think to pick up the torch?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What "making excuses"? The Republicans have literally stated over and over[1] that their goal is to make government not work and make Democrats look bad - not to make life better for their constituents. Meanwhile the Democrats have to spend every term fixing the things the GOP broke, only for voters to reward them by saying "you didn't fix everything and this dude promises the magical tax fairy will build a wall and…
>Meanwhile the Democrats have to spend every term fixing the things the GOP broke Like NAFTA. When it comes to making people lives worse the democrats are just as capable as the republicans. It's just that when it comes to helping people. Oh no. Woe is us we can't do anything with the presidency, and a super majority in every branch of government. This happens once every 20 years. But democratic cultists always come…
Reagan, Clinton, and Bush Jr are the 3 presidents that have obliterated the working class. Unrestrained capitalism creates monopolies and those 3 presidents created an environment for monopolies to flourish. Reagan started things off by deregulating businesses and rewarding big business for "efficiency". Which really just translated into big businesses buying out the competition and jacking up the prices. Clinton con…
You are probably overlooking a lot of complexity in the ACA marketplace software. It needed to exchange information with a bunch of different state systems and the systems of several different federal agencies, and most of those systems had not been designed to exchange information with systems outside of their state or agency.
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> Isn't this a roundabout way of saying that, absent government coercion, consumer preference tends to be towards buying cheaper groceries at a big consolidated store a drive away, than a more expensive nearby store? This seems to be missing the point, which has nothing to do with consumer preference. When Robinson-Patman was enforced, suppliers had to offer the same deal to all grocers, so prices were the same at th…
> When Robinson-Patman was enforced, suppliers had to offer the same deal to all grocers The law made it so no one had the position to squeeze suppliers for lower prices and as a result, consumers paid more for groceries. If the suppliers were shifting their costs unduly to small retailers, then there was a market for new suppliers. If retailers were a monopoly they would have raised prices, and that hasn't happened.…
Not quite. The law made it so that suppliers couldn't offer better deals to one of its customers over another. But retailers could still squeeze suppliers by going with another supplier if another supplier had better prices.
In other words, the law didn't make suppliers a monopoly, there was still competition between suppliers, it just prevented suppliers from shifting a disadvantage onto their smallest customers.