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Biden Takes Aim at Grocery Chains Over Food Prices
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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Eggs are again steadily rising in price. Wal-Mart "great value" prices isn't all that 'great' to begin with, with most of it's products.
But can we stop calling things inflation? Call it for what it really has been - G-R-E-E-D
Greedflation
I call it increasing motivation to start fires.
Let me preach about the holy sites known as Costco stores.
Also look for locally sourced eggs and meat, dairy, etc. You can probably find some small farms that sell direct to consumer.
Costco is great... But not everything works best when bought in bulk, and not everything freezes well. Eggs for instance, most people probably aren't going to go through 72 eggs in a reasonable timeframe. But it's great for shelf stable items and things you use a lot of.
Yes it is cheaper per unit because you're buying a larger quantity, but nearly every item is going to be $20+. This also assumes that you can afford the membership cost and the up front budget to be able to start to build that bulk stock, and that you have room for holding that bulk stock at home,
These are things that many people take for granted with so many more people living paycheck to paycheck now with increases in so many other costs now as well.
You can freeze eggs, but you have to separate them first
I bought a giant can of powdered eggs, i love it; you just have to add water, no dealing with shells or fluctuating prices
After hearing so many people singing their praises, I finally got a membership.
I used it precisely once. Their prices really were not very good on 90% of what I looked at. Plus they really encourage overconsumption.
Aldi ends up being more convenient and generally cheaper for groceries for me.
I'm not trying to yuck your yum, I just wanted to express an unimpressed opinion for other fencesitters.
If you're not buying in bulk a lot, it's not worth it. I've been tailgating on my mom's membership for years and I don't think I'd have one if it weren't for that.
The optical department is worth the price of admission alone. I recently bought 2 sets of glasses, 1 regular with transition and 1 sunglasses with the bells and the whistles. Costco doesn't charge extra or up sell for most of the add-ons, they are just part of the package. I paid $287 for those 2 pairs before my insurance reimbursed me. Not even accounting for the higher end frames, I would have probably paid $500+ for those 2 with all of the extras.
The pharmacy is worth it as well if you have meds that can be expensive. They can't get everything cheaper but the ones they do are way less expensive than most other places.
Also for those who happen to live in states where ABC doesn't control everything, Costco has Kirkland brand vodka and other alcohol that I've heard great things about (my state is an ABC state). For the alcohol and maybe the pharmacy you don't have to have a membership, they escort you to the alcohol and then through checkout.
If you are willing and able to put out the extra cash to front load your food needs for awhile and are capable and willing to do the work to repack and freeze the large amount of food you get, you can find yourself with a lot of extra cash on hand with fewer visits to the store. These days Aldi, Lidl, Teeter, etc are mainly about little things we need day to day and Costco is our big shopping trip once every couple of weeks.
Costco has other services that definitely more than pay for the membership fee. I won't go into detail because I have covered it in two other comments but optical is worth it alone, their pharmacy is usually a lot cheaper than elsewhere and their tires are top quality at the price of mid tier at other shops.
I'm not meaning to shill for Costco. I was a skeptic until I started comparing their offers to others and realized that for almost anything you need, Costco is usually the best option. My wife has been a member for something like 20+years, I'm more recent convert but now we check Costco first for things like appliances, coffee makers, etc.
For individuals it's not necessarily the best choice. As for their prices. You were likely comparing them 1:1 with elsewhere and didn't account for the larger quantities being not only less per ounce than other stores but usually being a much much higher quality. You have to be smart about what you buy and if you buy the huge packs of sandwich meat, split it up and possibly freeze some, you'll still end up saving money.
I do argue with your assessment about over consumption. The larger quantities are how they roll and they are most definitely cheaper than most other places for food. They do have a limited selection in brands but they make up for that with either larger quantities for the same or less than elsewhere or if the manufacturer won't let them price cut too low, they have said manufacturer add more value than the same product elsewhere.
Costco was never meant to be used by individuals feeding themselves, but, if you have a family or roommates you can save a shit ton of money and if you spend enough annually you can spend an extra $30/year (iirc) that gives you 2% back in cash. Most years the cash back covers the upgrade cost but when we are ready to drop $2k+ on appliances or a new couch or a storage shed, that cashback will end up paying for more than the upgrade and whatever we buy will be a better deal than elsewhere.
Costco is like 15 miles from us, we do large shopping there but smaller trips and/or when Lidl, Aldi, Teeter, etc have deals, that's where we go.
One last note and I'm done here. If you wear glasses, Costco optical is worth the price of admission alone. Before insurance refunded me, I paid just shy of $300 for 2 sets of glasses that would have run me $500+ elsewhere.
Agreed. But they do have a generous return policy - they will refund your membership fee if you just tell them you didn't get value from it.
I have yet to find one that was not substantially more expensive than any local supermarket.
Large farms have economies of scale the small ones can't match. I raised four pigs and had to sell them for $5 a pound just to break even, which is a lot more than pork chops at the grocery store.
Granted, they were an heirloom breed and at least 5x better than the dry pink things most hog farmers raise, but even if I had 40 pigs I don't think I could match that price.
I guess it depends on where you are and what you need. I'm in an area surrounded by farms and agriculture. We didnt do a csa this year but we have done them in the past. My wife found a farm not far from us that let's you order online and then go pick it up on the day they designate.
As far as prices. Depending on the product, I'm happy to pay a bit more for meat, milk, etc because you get a better quality product plus you really are supporting your local community. You can also look for farmers markets that I see all over the damn place several times a year.
Considering this is about eggs in supermarkets being too expensive for many people, I don't know that telling people how to pay even more for eggs is the best advice.
Where did I say that people had to pay more? I mentioned it as a me thing.
Oh and I see this about eggs being too expensive but the last time I checked, they went up but they aren't actually out of reach for most people. In fact, eggs are only as cheap as they are because of the way we raise and process chickens and their eggs. Eggs from chickens that are raised in better conditions are not only tastier, they don't need refrigeration and will last a lot longer than store bought (assuming they haven't been washed).
Here is an article I literally just found because I was curious about the highs and lows. I haven't bought eggs in a long time. A couple of years ago we were flooded by free ones from a neighbor and now my wife usually gets them from a local farm.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/why-are-eggs-so-expensive#:~:text=The%20price%20of%20eggs%20more,egg%20costs%20get%20so%20high%3F
This one can still be pinned on poultry farming greed, but it’s not a pure price gouge.
Avian flu devastates California’s poultry farms as new wave of outbreaks roils industry
Jobs are starting to dry up in some industries because interest rates are so high that larger companies can no longer borrow cheaply to take a chance on side projects. The rates are high to combat this "inflation", and of course it won't work, because we aren't seeing real inflation. We're just seeing companies charging more because every industry is now an oligarchy. It's a bit of a death spiral.
I hate to be that guy, but actually it's not just "greed" this time. There was millions of chickens that had to be culled due to a viral outbreak of Avian flu last season and we are just now seeing the effects of that. Don't get me wrong greed does play a part, but the major contributing factor this time around for eggs is not greed, but the system rebounding from the outbreak. I know it's trendy to say greed ruins everything (it can and does), but in this case it helps to have actual context to know what's going on with the overall picture of things. The more you know, ya know.
https://www.gro-intelligence.com/insights/us-egg-prices-jump-amid-deadly-surge-in-avian-flu
I love to be this guy, but egg production barely dipped in comparison to the MASSIVE jumps in price. They pulled the exact same excuse a couple years back when prices jumped 6x or so. Tell me where on this chart was that price jump ever justified by anything other than greed: https://www.statista.com/statistics/196094/us-total-egg-production-since-2001/
Wonder what it will be next year.
Inflation literally means prices going up. Calling it as greed isn't useful, because greed can lead to both price increases or decreases, depending on the context. For example, firms that are greedy for market share can drive prices down (a phenomenon that American consumers have benefited from greatly, over decades).
No, inflation means purchasing power decreasing. Prices going up is an effect of that rate but they are not directly tied. Not everything goes up by a flat percentage every month or year.
The food price increases were never at the rate of inflation. The worst inflation the US saw was 9% in June 2022, but that was just for that month period.the overall rate for 2022 as a whole was 8%. For 2023 the annual inflation rate was back to almost normal, at 3.5%, just above the 3.2% long term inflation rate.
So even if we assume costs jumped immediately, if a price went up more than 9% it was bullshit.
Picking out one price rise, and calling it out because it's higher than the average inflation rate, is silly. Since inflation is the rise in the price level, averaged over all goods, almost by definition there will be some prices rising by more than average (and others less than average).
In fact, it's well known that inflation hits very unevenly across different prices in an economy. The 1970s inflationary episode, for example, started with gas prices going up due to the oil embargo, before bleeding through into other prices. There are entire fields of economics dedicated to looking at inflation through different segments of the economy, precisely because price rises can be so uneven.
The bigger issue is that inflation is a problem of monetary and fiscal policy, which means pointing to greed is totally beside the point. Inflation was quiescent during the 2010s, and it's not like people and companies were magically non-greedy during that period.
But it was greed, not just monetary policy.
https://truthout.org/articles/greedflation-accounts-for-53-cents-of-every-dollar-of-inflation-in-past-6-months
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/07/greedflation-corporate-profiteering-boosted-global-prices-study