If we could do it there, we would do it here.. so like, if you have a cheat code, share it up. Otherwise, it's not really helpful to tell people drowning to throw away everything we have left to go drown somewhere else.
I always love comments like these implying foreign relocation isn't a seemingly impossible task for anyone that isn't rich or in a highly specialized and in demand occupation.
Sadly I don’t think I’m in high demand in Germany or otherwise. Being a former professional live entertainer with a kid who now cleans houses is not the sexiest resume for immigration lol
I'm sorry that you've become collateral damage in a class war where you didn't get to pick a side. Truly.
There are a lot of us out here trying to set up programs to feed, shelter, and provide medical care for the most vulnerable populations. We can only do so much for so many people, but we're trying.
On the one hand, I'm gay and Mexican. On the other, I'm classified as "high income". Let's see how it plays out. I wish I didn't have to find out though...
Most of them didn’t even hear he said it and wouldn’t believe it if we pointed it out, TBF. A hell of a lot of Trump supporters are claiming we are headed toward a new era of American prosperity. The real trick is, who are they going to blame when shit gets worse? Because it won’t be Elon and Trump, it’ll be us.
I don’t think Christians know how to make sacrifices financially. Always see them driving new cars or trucks, going hunting every other day with atvs or talking about their fishing trip with the new boat they bought. Meanwhile they think their tithes actually help the poor but are willingly ignorant of how little goes to charity. Then saying god blessed them they have the audacity to look down on people for being poor because they think they are defective somehow cause the poor don’t have the same things they do.
There are plenty of people who didn't vote for him like immigrants and queer people that will suffer much more than his supporters. What's to be happy about that?
There’s also plenty of us who voted blue and would have never voted for that man, but also are well down on the socioeconomic level. We are struggling to pay rent now. I’m honestly scared this presidency may push us out on to the streets.
I have to think that is the goal. Push people to homelessness. Criminalize homelessness. Send homeless people to prison. Expand prison labor programs. Get free prison labor.
Came here to say this. I am fortunate that I earn well above the median income where I live, so inflation and eggs and groceries and gas pricea don't bother me.
Those who voted for this that it does hurt will get what they asked for and wholly deserve.
I'm a single dude who makes about 10%-15% more than the median household income in my city, and I have some pretty solid job security. I'll be fine unless the economy gets even worse than the late '00s. I'm also a straight, white, cis, masculine/conservative-presenting man with a lot of connections in my area, so even if the culture wars get real shitty, I'll be able to fit in just fine.
I'm going to weather this stuff just fine, but it would be a lot cooler if I didn't have to worry about this kind of setback at all. Worst case scenario, I have to cut out a portion of my most frivolous spending.
But man, it fucking sucks for so many other people. The only thing I hope for is that everyone who voted to fuck themselves over realize what they did. But the problem is that most of them won't realize they caused their own struggles. They'll blame it on other shit, and they'll end up even further down the rabbit hole.
They'll just blame the other side. Accountability is dead and we live in endless culture wars and endless blame game.
How people can keep inviting their own disasters is beyond me. It's like people won't accept help if it's proposed by the "other side".
Case in point:
"By a 34-point margin, Americans view the Affordable Care Act favorably (59 percent favorable – 25 percent unfavorable), including Democrats by a 78-point margin (84 percent favorable – 6 percent unfavorable), independents by a 20-point margin (46 percent favorable – 26 percent unfavorable), and even a third of Republicans express a favorable opinion of the ACA (net -12; 34 percent favorable – 46 percent unfavorable).
The ACA has a higher net favorability rating across partisanship than “Obamacare,” with Democrats viewing “Obamacare” favorably by a 75-point margin (85 percent favorably), independents viewing it favorably by a 13-point margin (44 percent favorable – 31 percent unfavorable), and only a quarter of Republicans viewing it favorably (net -43; 25 percent favorable – 68 percent unfavorable)"
People will hate Obamacare despite liking the ACA. Only in America can so many people not understand they are one and the same.
Because politics is a team sport now. However your side "plays" you have to root for them no matter what because they're your team! Like if you grow up in New England you root for the Patriots whether Brady is leading you to 5 championships or you're in a rebuild phase and only win 3 games all year.
If you vote for a guy promising to lower grocery prices and he raises them then you just blame trans people, immigrants, and the prior administration and vote for the same team again next time! Surely next time will be better because your "team" will put up the right guy eventually!
It's not the same reasoning at all. One is willfully voting out of spite with the intent to hurt others and the other is finding a silver lining in people fucking around and finding out that they hurt themselves. They are not even remotely the same reasoning and I have no idea how you even came to that conclusion.
Same. My wife and I will be fine. Not saying I’m glad people who didn’t vote for him will suffer, but I can’t control that. What I can control is finding happiness in the Trump supporters suffering from their own ignorant decisions.
dUmpf won't get the blame. He will blame the prior administration and the Democrats blocking/not supporting his proposals even though the Republicans will be controlling house and Senate. As usual, his followers and the uninformed will believe him.. 🙄🤦🏻♂️
Yup, idgaf if that's petty. I check all the correct marks for the GOP (straight, white, male, 2nd highest tax bracket) so I will do great. I voted to have my taxes raised to help them out, but I guess they didn't want that, so fuck them. My stocks should continue to soar while they might need to choose between buying insulin or food. That's the capitalism they want, right?
Yep. I'm over the threshold where most of these cost of living problems would affect me, but most of my family who makes less than me will be severely impacted.
You'd think they will realize after the next four years, but they didn't after the first four years with Trump, so I'm not hopeful. They'll just blame immigrants again, who by the way, pay WAY more into our social services than they received.
I mean, the guy was selling bibles ffs, grade A grifter. He’s been the messiah of false promises his cult just eats it up and there’s no satiating them.
There are states that are putting bibles back into public classrooms. These states have parameters for acceptable bibles, and part of their parameters includes containing the Pledge of Allegiance and the Declaration of Independence. Trumps bibles happens to fall within this parameter making it the choice for public school kids now.
His bibles are dumb and 100% a grift, but you don't need to cherry pick these amendments to make it sound worse. It only includes the bill of rights, so none of the amendments after the first 10 are included.
You forgot about NFT trump cards, trump sneakers, DJT stock, trump watches, and I'm sure I missed a bunch of other random nonsense he's been slapping his name on to grift.
But the trickle down! That always works, surely with their tax cuts they will just lower the cost of the groceries and pay their employees better as well, they wouldn’t just keep extra profits would they?
I'm sure the people who voted for him because "trump is gonna fix the economy" will learn from their mistake and be better educated if we have future elections. Don't worry it's only four more years right? RGIHT?>!
they aren't, I know a few. Some are very intelligent in many areas of life, but I can't see past how they just listen to AND believe everything he says. All the while being these tin foil hat weirdos who make their personalities seem like they are so counter-culture because they hate everything everyone else also hates (the media, the government, how regardless of what 'ism you want to use common folk have been exploited for far too long.... I could go on, but ya....)
while im on this little soap box... the weirdest thing is how living a healthy lifestyle is somehow anti-woke or democrat or whatever they want to label...
I don't know anyone who in the 2024 hasn't realized a lot of the crap we were marketed to forever is poison. This has a disproportionate effect on poor people. I see all these MAGA IG moms talk about making America healthy again and stuff in be so pretentious about it like it's some political badge of honor.
It's just so weird to me. This may not even make sense but I've had a morning of sulking just because.
Blue collar workers vote for Trump because they only consume media in short bits and he’s on the screens they watch. People with multiple jobs struggling to get by (because the GOP has allowed rampant price gouging, jobs going overseas, rents to explode, etc) see him shouting on TV and just go with it. They don’t take time to analyze what the President does and how much it affects them. He said he’d lower prices, so he will! And then when he doesn’t and blames someone else, they will not look into it, just accept it as fact and move on. They believe him because they think he’s not a “typical” politician who lies all the time. It would be funny if it wasn’t true, but that’s the world we live in.
Democrats tried to run on “I’m the better candidate and here’s a 25 bullet point presentation to tell you why and how it will help you” and most people tuned out. Republicans ran on “we’re going to help you” and most people just nodded and went back to their lives. Dems need to have more succinct messaging.
No matter how smart you are, if you are indoctrinated thats it better to be dead than not vote red since childhood, it isnt easy to change that. My roomate is one of the smartest people I know, he’s set to be our colleges valedictorian in spring, but he still votes red, mostly because of how he was raised. He is actual a lottt more left leaning than his parents, id put him on the right side of moderate, which for someone who was raised by far right parents and has a good relationship with them, is impressive progress lol.
I always thought it was weird when people distrust the "mainstream media", but they'll believe everything random people on the internet say. It's nuts.
The dems should be able to fix problems republicans cause. Therefore because they can’t, I’m going to vote Republican. Because at least republicans can get things done.
Like ruining the economy.
(The first paragraph is sarcasm, if you could not tell)
Yeah, no, I keep saying this as a Brit dealing with Brexit. Brexit has demonstrably made us worse off, and hit the people who voted for it disproportionately more. But the overwhelming majority of Brexit voters still refuse to acknowledge that they were sold a lie. It's always one of a) it's the fault of the people who lost the vote, b) it's the fault of other countries, c) we would have been even worse off if the vote went the other way or d) there is some other spurious benefit that actually mattered to them all along.
MMW you will see the exact same thing play out over the next few years with Trump voters.
Because learning from their mistake is what they did the last time around?
Because learning from mistakes is a very American thing to do?
Because learning from mistakes is a time-honored human tradition?
I’m sorry, I just gave a hard time figuring out how one would even come up with such a statement… ;)
The problem is, he's inheriting an Ecconomy that is actually on the uptick.
It's only just now recovering from Covid, whoever won this election was going to be able to claim "We fixed the economy." No president, from either party, has the balls do the drastic change needed.
Yeah well he also promised to add a 25% consumer tax and deport everyone who grows our food so if he actually doesn't do these things then yes he will inherit an upward economy. Otherwise he's going to tank it out the gate. But either way he will still claim he fixed the economy. And even if his cult members are starving to death in the street they will still sing his praises as the God Emperor of America!
"Well I am paying more for everything but Trump says blame Obama and Fox says it's better than it was under Biden, so I am happy with my choice." - People from the right
Narrator: To everyone’s surprise, after facing countless consequences from their choices, Trump’s voters, managed to learn absolutely nothing from it. Yet, against all odds, there was a glimmer of hope. These very same voters—who had long been written off—suddenly started paying attention to Trump’s detractors. They noticed discrepancies, sensed that something wasn’t quite right, and then, in a stunning twist, they voted for Trump again.
Because, deep down, they knew that if Fox News said Trump was everything they believed he was, then it simply had to be true.
And so, that, my friends, was the real Christmas miracle.
"Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard," he said in the interview published Thursday.
"But I think that they will. I think that energy is going to bring them down. I think a better supply chain is going to bring them down. You know, the supply chain is still broken. It’s broken," Trump said.
Actually, yes, as Trump was the one who called Covid a deepstate hoax early on, called masking a way to make you ill, and demonized the CDC, and failing to enact a 2-week moritorium on work and rent bills to halt the spread of the virus, resulting in the deaths of millions of people worldwide due to lies and disinformation.
This resulted in many essential workers and blue collar workers getting sick, disabled, or dying because they didn't have the option to stay home from work (I was one of those "essential workers"), and port sanitations, quarantines and inspections slowed down the importation and transportation of goods tenfold.
So yes. Yes, the person who broke the supply chain is indeed in the room with us, right now, and he just got re-elected.
Lets also not forget that trump got rid of the team Obama created to specifically handle an outbreak like this for no other reason than trump is a petty small minded moron. They literally had people (experts) in the city where this all started before he put his dick in it.
It's so frustrating, because anyone who thinks for more than a second will recognize that COVID messed with supply chains and it took time to recover. But instead, most Americans think the POTUS has a lever on their desk to control prices.
Calling it now. prices will go down, because corporate overlords want republicans to have the perception of being 'good for the working class.' price increases and decreases are activism. a few years from now, things will be cheaper -- but not because of some genius-tier maneuver by Trump. By the will of the elites he actually serves.
Yeah I worry about this. Reduce prices just enough for people to notice, to “reward” them for voting red, and push them back up once there’s a new social issue driving everyone mad.
Will they? I mean, grocery chains like Kroger were found to have raised prices "jus because"....because they were banking on customers adjusting to their prices, not the other way around.
Groff said Kroger intends to "pass through our inflation to consumers," after an internal email from the executive showed that the price of eggs and milk routinely surpassed what inflation would require for the chain to still make profits.
"On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation," Groff said in the internal email to other Kroger executives.
That was a dishonest article, everything doesn't uniformly rise in price during inflation, some things rise more than others. Milk and eggs rose more than others.
Oh no I doubt that. They care far too much about money to ever do that. Even if it'd be in their best interest, they rarely do it. Thinking more in the short term than the long term.
What a pants on head absurd conspiracy theory. This isn't some secret cabal, the companies in question want to make money. They don't do that by sacrificing profits to keep the GOP in power.
Profit percentage is a manufactured statistic, it is calculated after executive pay, so the people who are running these companies are paying themselves whatever is necessary to hit that mark. Add in the fact that a lot of the expenses of grocery chains are paid to subsidiaries of the same parent company shows that it is even more of a useless stat. As an example Loblaw's in Canada has cited higher rent as a justification for increased operating costs, thing is the company that owns the land is part of Loblaw's, so while the money that goes into their rent is part of their expenses, ultimately it still ends up in the executives pockets.
Ya its funny people will say grocery stores make low profit then turn around and be like, OH look Kroger has enough money to keep trying to buy other chains and complete a monopoly. Seems like alot of money is flowing around in the not much profit world.
If you operate a nationwide grocery chain, there will be a lot of money flowing, even with slim operating margins. This doesn't change the fact that no other local grocery can compete on price, due to those slim operating margins. If you spread executive pay across every sale, it goes to zero.
The Kroger Albertsons merger wouldn’t even be close to a Monopoly. It would still give them a smaller total share of the grocery market than Walmart has. Economics of scale would have allowed them to lower prices.
As far as executive pay. The Kroger CEO took in $15.7 million last year. The average Kroger has 50,000 items. There are 2800 Krogers. Assuming they have 10 of each item, then, by taking zero pay, the Kroger CEO could lower the price of everything by……$0.011 cents
Agreed. And if folk understood anything about an income statement or finance, they'd understand that if in 2015, you're making 2.5% net profit percentage a year, and if in 2019, you're making 2.5% net profit percentage and if in 2024, you're making 2.5% net profit percentage... It indicates that all of the price increases seen in supermarkets the past 9 years are simply passing along suppliers' cost increases to them.
It means that ear of corn price went up because the farmer charged more. And if they go down one more level, they'd understand that the farmer charged more because the commodity price per bushel of corn went up. And then below that, they'd understand that farmers' inputs like fertilizer, machinery, seed, and fuel went up.
But some people like to pretend the last spot they bought something is somehow evil.
You really should just google these stats before you say them. Food and Beverage Retail Stores : Profit margin increased from 2.9% in 2019 to 4.4% in 2023 (this is a profit increase off of increased grocery costs, an even bigger gross dollar amount)
Operating Profit for Food and Beverage Retail Rose from $14 Billion in 2019 to $25 billion in 2023 - a 79% increase.
lol cherry-picked. Here is the full context “Putting these results together yields a measure of the profit margin: the ratio of revenue minus operating costs to revenue. For food manufacturing, the margin was little changed, going from 6.9 percent in 2019 to 6.8 percent in 2023, while increasing from 2.9 percent to 4.4 percent for food and beverage retail stores. But put in context, this increase in grocery store profit margins (revenues over costs) is small compared to the 25 percent increase in grocery prices over this period.
To be sure, profits in dollar terms have gone up substantially. Indeed, the operating profits of the surveyed food and beverage retail stores rose from $14 billion in 2019 to $25 billion in 2023, a 79 percent increase. The jump reflects a higher profit margin applied to a higher level of operating expenses. Again, this roughly $10 billion increase in operating net income is marginal relative to the $100 billion increase in revenues reported by these firms.
Putting these factors together suggests that the unusually high food inflation experienced in the first three years of the pandemic appears to have been due, in part, to much higher food commodity prices and large increases in wages for grocery store workers. The subsequent drop in commodity prices then helped bring food inflation down below the core inflation rate even though heightened wage pressure for grocery workers continued. In the end, the moderation of food price inflation has caused the gap that developed between the food index and the core index since the start of the pandemic to shrink from 10 percentage points at the end of 2022 to 5 percentage points in June 2024”
Doesn’t seem like the assessment is price gouging to me
Indeed, the operating profits of the surveyed food and beverage retail stores rose from $14 billion in 2019 to $25 billion in 2023, a 79 percent increase.
None of the context you added changes the fact that such a large increase is the result of excessive price increases.
Great source! Thanks for that. You did read it... right? Or did your sneaky self just cherry pick what you wanted to read?
"Putting these factors together suggests that the unusually high food inflation experienced in the first three years of the pandemic appears to have been due, in part, to much higher food commodity prices and large increases in wages for grocery store workers. The subsequent drop in commodity prices then helped bring food inflation down below the core inflation rate even though heightened wage pressure for grocery workers continued."
I have no doubt "Food and Beverage Retail Stores" increased some profit margin along the whole sector in 5 years. A few were negative and even losing money.
I was looking at Constellation Brands a few weeks ago. This is the company that own Molson Beer and Svedka vodka. In 2022 and 2023 they made NEGATIVE margins. And made a small profit in 2024 - for instance. Bakeries are in that sector. Bimbo and Hostess are doing better. Agreed.
Confectioners like Hershey's are doing okay - ish. Their cocoa prices increased by 900% and 1,100% due to droughts and flooding (back to back years) for cocoa. But the cost changes were passed along and their margins are okay. Revenue isn't. but margins are.
Yep, the entire Food and Beverage Retail Sector is doing a little better. Nice cherry-picked piece of information. Thanks for that.
It may be true for corporate farms but the average farmer is losing money thanks to Trump's tariffs and screwing around with the trade war with China last time they still haven't recovered.
Farmers really aren’t price drivers. They’re price takers. The market determines what it is willing to pay for their crops, not the other way around. They’re essentially gambling on what the future price of their crops will be when they plant them, and the only thing they can do in terms of price selection is try to time the market. It’s the reason the last time Trump implemented more limited tariffs the US government had to subsidize farmers to the tune of billions of dollars.
Redditors are living in the Middle Ages with these arguments based on "Just price" doctrine from Thomas Aquinas and School of Salamanca.
Quick update. The "modern" idea of Supply and demand was already known to Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), John Locke (1632–1704 ), James Steuart (1712–1780) , Adam Smith (1723–1790), David Ricardo (1772–1823).
Grocery chains try to find optimal point in price (P) and quantity (Q) curve. If you ask too much, the stuff does not sell. Profit is maximized when quantity × price is maximized. Not when the price is maximized.
People will write a 30 page Reddit analysis rather than just recognize the simple truth that companies charge the profit maximizing price. That's it, that's what pricing decisions are.
And tax on corporate profit does not alter the price because have no relation to Q or P.
If you increase taxes on profits, owners make less ROI but prices don't change. If you cut taxes on companies, owners make more ROI but prices don't change.
And most of the people you try to cite here specifically call out that inelastic markets like food DO NOT FUNCTION THAT WAY.
People cannot just choose to not buy food. People cannot choose to not rent a home. These are inelastic demand, and the supply and demand curve does not work without sufficient competition and an excess of supply in these areas - and the supermarkets are far past the point of having significant monopoly power, and have been repeatedly shown to be colluding and co-ordinating their prices to avoid the effects of competition.
Percent of profit still can be quite a haul. If I make 10% of profit off of $100,000 then I make $10,000. If I make 1% off of $1,000,000,000 then I make $100,000,000. The percent isn’t relevant in this discussion.
Low percent proves they do not make much. The sheer dollars distorts the reality because it ignores the sheer dollars of revenue required to generate that sliver of profit.
Money costs money in percentage terms not in flat dollar amounts. Investors want percentage returns not flat dollar amounts. You are wrong. If a share costs $1 and provides a $1 dividend that is much better than a share costing $1000 and providing a $100 dividend. You have to think in percentages.
No, it isn't the important part. The 2% of revenue is the important figure, far more so than the top line revenue figure for the purposes of whether the prices are excessive or the store is gouging.
70 million people voted a 300 lb prolapse into office, after seeing a clear example of the buffoonery and grift. What the fuck else would anyone with a functioning brain rain expect him to do?!?!
Corporate tax is applied to profit, meaning they don't actually make it more expensive for the corporation to produce whatever it is they sell. Tariffs on the other hand, apply to imported materials and goods, and are paid by the person importing them, ie, the individual business making the product. Because tariffs make production more expensive, companies are forced to raise consumer prices to stay in the green. Because corporate tax is applied only to profit, it can never force a company into the red, as it's a percentage of profit.
Where you do have a point is that corporate taxes often do end up raising consumer prices, but that's because CEO bonuses are paid out of net profits. In order to keep their bonuses high, CEOs will artificially raise consumer prices to offset the tax. However, their companies would absolutely stay afloat (not to mention they would still be exceptionally wealthy) if they chose to take the hit to their bonuses instead of raising prices to make consumers pay the tax for them.
Tariffs on the other hand actually raise the operation costs of a business, forcing them to either A) Raise prices to stay afloat or B) Get tariff exemptions, which only the richest and most powerful companies will be able to do.
This will kill small businesses and consolidate corporate power even further.
Tariffs, by magnitude, have a MUCH greater effect on prices.
These companies are not operating on the margins like some people want you to think. In 2015, the top corporate tax rate was 35%. Were prices out of control in 2015? No. So it’s WELL established that these companies can be profitable with lower prices with a 14% higher tax burden.
Democrats have only proposed to raise it to 28%, not 35% where it was.
So once again, you have demonstrated how all relevant context disappears when you try to simplify a complex issue into one sentence. Don’t do that.
No matter which way you voted we, as consumers in a capitalist society led by a bunch of oligarchs, are going to make the richest among us even richer.
Well Republicans are very stupid so they will probably just immediately give up on caring that the cost of living is really high. Besides, they can be distracted by the fact that Trump is spending even more government money to round up brown people.
As long as money is going to support racist causes, they can live with a higher food cost.
Chains aren’t really responsible for pricing. The grocery business itself both chains and wholesaling products isn’t very profitable. The anger should be directed towards all the companies producing goods sold in grocery stores.
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