>So basically the same with some minor, less than half a percent variation?
half a percent in profits can mean millions of dollars, I wouldn't easily discount that, especially if my job is precisely to look into bad price control.
> The (slightly) more interesting figure is that in 2023 (why was no 2022 data point included, did it not fit the narrative?) the rate was ~7% over cost.
probably because it did fall and did in fact raise higher in 2023, which is adding more smoke to a potential fire. I remember a lot of grocers price hikes starting in early 2023.
>But multiple years on from covid I'm not sure what the connection to covid is at that point.
that, " Large Grocers Took Advantage of Pandemic Supply Chain Disruptions"? You say yourself how falling supply works. Well, if supply came back by 2023 and prices kept rising, there's the reason FTC initiated this investigation. Anecdotally, prices did not in fact fall back down in the past 15 months.
>If they really wanted to "take advantage" of the consumer they could have raised prices to make demand drop to match the supply, for example instead of selling out of toilet paper, selling them at $100 a roll, $200 a roll. That's not remotely what happened.
That'd be both a PR and legal disasters. They are looser than other countries. but the US still does have regulations on price fluctuations, if only so companies can be somewhat evil instead of mustache twirling evil. Individuals can scalp on eBay, but WalMart/Vonz/etc. cannot.
> half a percent in profits can mean millions of dollars
You took the right framing and inverted it into the wrong framing. It may be millions of dollars, but it's only half a percent relative to total profits. Variance is relative (see, e.g., the normal distribution).
Eh, lies, damn lies, and statistics. You saying it's the "right" or "wrong" framing is implying any of us had applied statistic rigor to centuries of grocer data, accounting for inflation and other economic factors.
You even say it yourself, variance it relative. We don't know the normal distribution. I'm just explaining the POV that can prompt an investigation. A difference of millions of dollars is a lot to pocket for a business selling a necessary good. It's worth looking into.
> half a percent in profits can mean millions of dollars, I wouldn't easily discount that, especially if my job is precisely to look into bad price control.
I took a statistics class over 30 years ago and can recall very little of it but even I remember that this could easily fall within the margin of error.
One could also reasonably correlate the higher profits with people eating in more (since restaurants were mostly closed) but that doesn't set off the dog whistles.
And, you know, inflation...prices will never fall back down to pre-pandemic levels.
>I took a statistics class over 30 years ago and can recall very little of it but even I remember that this could easily fall within the margin of error.
it could. It could not. I imagine the data is out there to determine it, but not enough of it is in the article nor any of its links to form an analysis.
But this admitedly isn't a statistics 101 problem , between taking into account inflation, local and record fluctuations, expected pandemic impacts, the PPP/interest rates and more affecting the result, etc.
>One could also reasonably correlate the higher profits with people eating in more (since restaurants were mostly closed) but that doesn't set off the dog whistles.
It'd be pretty easy to support/weaken that evidence if we just look at food delivery services. less people eating in doesn't mean less people ordered out.
I don't know why you're being so cynical about the government doing its job for once and investigating potential greed. Worse case, nothing happens and life moves on, best case we get better grocery prices in the future. I don't see the downside as a consumer.
half a percent in profits can mean millions of dollars, I wouldn't easily discount that, especially if my job is precisely to look into bad price control.
> The (slightly) more interesting figure is that in 2023 (why was no 2022 data point included, did it not fit the narrative?) the rate was ~7% over cost.
probably because it did fall and did in fact raise higher in 2023, which is adding more smoke to a potential fire. I remember a lot of grocers price hikes starting in early 2023.
>But multiple years on from covid I'm not sure what the connection to covid is at that point.
that, " Large Grocers Took Advantage of Pandemic Supply Chain Disruptions"? You say yourself how falling supply works. Well, if supply came back by 2023 and prices kept rising, there's the reason FTC initiated this investigation. Anecdotally, prices did not in fact fall back down in the past 15 months.
>If they really wanted to "take advantage" of the consumer they could have raised prices to make demand drop to match the supply, for example instead of selling out of toilet paper, selling them at $100 a roll, $200 a roll. That's not remotely what happened.
That'd be both a PR and legal disasters. They are looser than other countries. but the US still does have regulations on price fluctuations, if only so companies can be somewhat evil instead of mustache twirling evil. Individuals can scalp on eBay, but WalMart/Vonz/etc. cannot.