Replies (86)
Good points. And that’s just the argument for razor thin margins. Take that away with price control and you get failed companies, job losses, and predictably more government intervention. Slippery slope
The profit margins aren't even keeping up with inflation. How long before the charity ends?
View quoted note →I am a huge fan of intermittent fasting. I’m super excited that Kamala has started promoting policy that will lead to calorie restriction. It’s going to do wonders for public health.
People who have never run a profitable business always seem to know how to run them better than those who do.
haha so fucking true
Yeah, last I checked the Mag 7 were all Big Grocery.
Now do Trump’s retarded and weird import tariffs.
Import tariffs don't destroy civilizations. Price controls do.
1.4% margin 😬
Who extorts whom
They will certainly make inflation worse for everything we import.
Egregious
I was reading something somewhere, that grocery stores make their money by renting shelf space "real estate" to the brands that want to sell there... Maybe the razor thin margins are the triple net lease with the shelf owner... 🤣
The day we start doing price controls is the day we HFSP.
Yep, I grew up knowing this. My grandfather at one point owned and ran a small grocery store. He'd talk about how the thin margins were from time to time. People clamoring for price controls are lost on this one. Shortages always follow and loss of businesses.
In his booklet "Infinite Banking" Nelson Nash gives a grocery store analogy for WLI...
LOL. I love it how people go “Checkmate, Alden” without realizing that’s a laughable self-own.
Slay, Queen.
HFSP?
The amount of shrink at my local grocery is insane, literally watching people walk out without paying constantly
Have Fun Staying Poor
Thanks
I’m an importer. I have been shocked at what a non-event section301 tariffs have been. China appears to have absorbed most of it and it hasn’t had an appreciable impact on prices at least in my market. I thought early on it would.
Get ready for 10% more.
My best friends family owned our local IGA store. .8% margins on food items.
Absolutely insanely poor margins.
What the mob has learned (from the communists) to believe without reason, who could demolish it in their eyes with reasons? - Nietzsche
-parentheses my own-
Spot on.
We are living in a time of historical value, it's such an honor to be in a time where we have the power and can dictate the future of the financial system.
One of the biggest pleasures of my life has been homeschooling my 3 kids and teaching about the state of the work and system and having what I can Bitcoin University for several hours a week .
with the chores they do I pay them in SATs and they love it ..... not to mention them talking about stacking SATs all the time ! they have been selling their things for Bitcoin and I'm loving it !
______________________________________
#Bitcoin #ember #DCA #dca #hodl #HODL #sats #stacksats #soundmoney #corruptfed #stayhumble #btc #emberapp #Btc #zaps #zap #coffee #powerlaw
I’m expecting that he will take it to 60% and eventually 100%. But if the dems make it in I think we get an extra 25%. Both parties are moving in the same direction.
The best part was the guy invalidating your data because your logo was embedded on the y charts graphic. Checkmate squared! 😂
We have the same issue in Australia; government blaming the supermarkets for price gouging and “inflating” prices but Aussy supermarkets have razor thin margins too
Surely history suggest it’s more have fun being hungry. I mentioned the price controls to a friend today and explained some history on the triggers of empty shelves, black markets and hyper inflation. Orange pill success. Wallet training next week
Just look at any other country, Argentina for example... I agree, price controls, in fact, any controls are typically artificial (which do not flow with natural progress) which creates a damn, and we all know what happens when a damn gets a crack. Not great for those living underneath it.
A few years back, a friend who ran a successful restaurant in downtown Seattle was telling me their margin was 12% and that was really good compared to the surrounding restaurants running at 6% to 8%. That was pre-covid.
Margins are down at least 30% since “recovery”, whatever that means.
This seems to be mirrored by the development in Europe where overall margins also dropped by 3% despite increasing prices from 2019-2022. interesting and detailed report from McKinsey:
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/state-of-grocery-europe-2023-living-with-and-responding-to-uncertainty
EBITDAs are under pressure that's for sure.
Until the US Federal government balances the budget, and stops borrowing from bond buyers to pay yesterday's bond buyers, none of this is going to get better. And we have a dosfuctional government that REFUSES to have real discussions about how to balance the budget.
I read “the fillings aren’t real” and thought someone was taking you to task on sandwiches and confectionery, something not covered at all in Broken Money…
There is cost of storage and for food products best before date is an issue so they do sales. Also they sometimes buy more than required just to meet the required producer or reseller quota. If they buy 100 of the x product they will get additional discounts. So they buy 50 more to meet the 100 quota and sell you 50% off. Instead of pointing fingers to everyone just check who you voted for.
great article Lyn. thanks. glad i follow you
socialism is a mental illness
Great work, Lyn!
The comment section there is absolutely brutal. It’s a great reminder for all the Bitcoiners that if we don’t patiently educate people, they’re not going to come around to how things really work.
Educating rarely helps. It's not lack of education, it's a worldview that is biased. They will seek "education" from MMT or their local communist friends. They have explanations for everything.
The American people do not have the history knowledge of other countries that they need to understand current American economics.
Price controls that guarantee a loss for producers means that the producer simply shuts down. Now that product is not available to anyone anywhere at any price. At least you aren't overpaying for it.
The concept of inflation is not difficult to grasp. What I cannot comprehend is why the average Joe grasps for any other explanation than the right one. The Matrix is strong.
The last slide shows (I think) that Pepsi and General Mills have profit margins of 10% and 12% , respectively. Is that large or not?
I think a lot of Bitcoiners aren’t effective at it, so in that sense yeah it often doesn’t help.
The government will blame everyone but itself
Great charts and helpful info, Lyn!
price controls seem like a way of deflecting responsibility away from government as much as anything else
Price controls on the horizon should heighten the urgency with which you prioritize self sufficiency. This is like an immune response to a cold.
I like price controls, because they lead to an acute collapse in the standard of living of the Average Joe. This creates the conditions that accelerate the likelihood that the Average Joe will adopt bitcoin. Most won’t, but increases at the margin are valuable.
It’s also not like I’m the one advocating for collective starvation.
I’m just a casual observer noting the positive of the likely eventuality.
Highlighting the positives is key. This is an excellent way to reduce obesity at the margins.
For a couple of years now, we've had a politician, Jagmeet Singh, and his entire political party (NDP) calling for price controls in Canada.
In his latest stunt, he spoke directly to the camera while holding up various grocery items, like a bag of apples, and said, "This is $9. It's completely unacceptable! It shouldn't be this much!"
What are the chances that Jagmeet Singh knows anything about the apple industry? Does he understand how long it takes to grow a tree, how many apples it produces, the timing of the harvest, the costs of picking them, shipping, and distribution, etc.? Probably close to zero, yet he pretends to know what the price should be.
Meanwhile, the media refuses to inform their readers about the low margins of grocery chains. In Canada, the big bad chain is Loblaw, whose margins are around 3.5%-4%. Instead of highlighting these low margins, the media and politicians continuously push the narrative that Loblaw is making record profits.
One must wonder, how can Loblaw be making higher profits while maintaining the same margins? Could it be that inflation is causing the numbers to go up while simultaneously reducing the corporation's purchasing power?
Across the world, we're being led by complete morons, while NPCs gobble it all up. They are so incredibly dogmatic that they refuse to listen to any alternative perspective. We're in a lot of trouble.
Fertilizer prices 3X since Ukraine war
Gas prices 4X
Min wage 2X
Funny money printed 20T since pandemic
That’s why your cost of of eggs is 3X and bacon 4X and fish 2X etc etc etc
Canada has the same problem as Australia - left-wing radicals occupying the third major party position in the liberal democracy which drags the Overton window into psychotic socialism.
Our Greens play that function here, and more recently the renewables lobby have funded “Teals” who are all champagne socialist Karens.
They are poisonous to discourse and show exactly why democracy is doomed to fail.
Sounds like a way to make you eat zee bugz.
Make America Healthy Again 🇺🇸
And it's interesting that they are raising prices at a lower rate than the M2. That means that they are actually doing a good job at keeping prices low.
Dang it! I wish we could get all that money back we dumped on failed scammy banks.
Ancient Rome also tried to do price controls, they didn't work. This is why teaching history is important to a prosperous society!
Edict on Maximum Prices - Wikipedia
The most frustrating is when people demand higher wages for farm workers, but say that the prices of food are too high 🤦♂️
Every time...
I'm so glad that a lot of people can see right through all of the communist propaganda.
it's not effectivity. it's a very important realization, education is rarely a solution, even if it sounds like a good idea
then how to explain all supermarket chains having such higher profits now than 4 years ago? like hundreds of millions of dollars more?
I don’t know the answer but it could be several things.
Some supermarkets may have been able to lower operating costs. How? Maybe layoffs, negotiating buying larger quantities, selling more white label vs brand items, etc.
If someone knows the actual answer it would be good to know.
Yeah, it’s frustrating when complex issues get oversimplified like that. Running a grocery chain isn’t just about setting prices, there’s so much more to it. Inflation and supply chain issues definitely play a big part. It’s important for people to look at the bigger picture before jumping to conclusions. We need more honest conversations about these things.
10-12% profit margins aren’t huge, but they’re decent, especially in big companies like Pepsi and General Mills. It’s all relative to the industry, but in food and beverage I think those numbers are pretty typical. Not too big, not too small.
It’s true, inflation isn’t that complicated, but it’s easy for people to want their team to win regardless of the problems each side causes. It’s like people are looking for answers everywhere except where they should be looking because they want to be blind.
You’re spot on. It’s important to understand how price controls can backfire. If producers can’t cover their costs, they’ll stop making the product, and then nobody gets it. Sometimes, the bigger picture gets overlooked, but it’s crucial to keep in mind.
Nice
Managing inventory and meeting quotas can lead to discounts and sales, which makes sense. It’s good to remember that there are many factors at play. Sometimes, it’s more about understanding the whole system than just placing blame.
“People with no experience in business, no knowledge of history, and utterly ignorant of economics do not hesitate to leap from high prices to greedy profit-makers. Many of these ignorant people are on nationwide television and some are in Congress.” - Thomas Sowell
People here are just throwing up words like socialism and communism.
“It is a mental illness" what does this even mean, what does it teach?
Socialism in its essence is having some good ideas and concepts even for the time we live in. Blaming every bad thing on it that happens in this world just isnt the right stance.
We simply need to acknowledge, that the systems that we have learned have pros and cons. And that we need critical thinking to put the good ideas into new systems and learn from bad ideas.
Simply stating that socialism is a mental illness does nothing for humanity. It merely triggers hate, it provides no solution.
In NZ the commies went after the supermarkets for apparently gouging and the “commission” came back with some enormous profit number which made good headlines.
However, if you take the number divide it by the population it worked out to be ~$1 per person per day to provide the service “supermarkets” to over 5 million people.
I don’t know about y’all but I think a $1 a day to be able to turn up any day of the week between 8am and midnight and purchase anything from steak, broccoli, eggs, milk, lightbulbs, to toilet paper (most of the time 🤣) seems like a pretty frikin good deal eh?
Commies are always looking to sensationalize profits of any business that serves more people than their bureaucracies… monopolies don’t like competition.
#fuckihatecommunists
I think you are wrong, and the way you think is the root cause of the problem!
socialism stands on the idea that a group of a few people can chose what is "good" for the whole of the people, and to me, anybody ylthat thinks the he knows what is better for me better than I do is mentally ill.
socialism is ideologically the opposite of freedom. that is why in practice all socialist experiments ended in transforming countries in prisons.
pandering to socialists is self destruction.
Narcissists gotta narcissist.
We have limited time on our life. As long as we specialize more in our work, less time we have for other things to do. As good as i wish everyone on earth would be sovereign and self reliant, this does not seem to be a relity today.
Maybe bitcoin will change that.
Then isn’t that evidence against the idea that grocery stores make razor thin profit margins?
Ya, I was thinking 2-4% would be considered “razor thin”. I think most successful businesses are near 15% give or take. If you are 30% you are a titan of industry. Ya, I don’t know.
They have higher revenue but the same profit margins. We’d expect their revenue to increase as the value of the dollar decreases - it takes more money to buy the same amount of stuff. If they were gouging then their profit margins would vastly increase. They don’t. That’s the point.
I provided you a link. You can the profit margins have remained level and actually are declining.
What you are seeing are the effects of currency debasement caused by government over spending, deficit spending, and money supply expansion. Their profits appear higher because the money is worth less. Anything measured in dollars will appear higher because it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of goods and services no matter if you are an individual or a business. If you want to be angry about something be angry about this. This is the disease. Inflation is the symptom.
U.S. National Debt Clock : Real Time
US National Debt Clock : Real Time U.S. National Debt Clock : DOGE Clock
As someone just recently exiting the US PR and corporate communications industry, I can attest to the fact that PR is nothing more than modern-day bread and circuses. A vapid distraction designed to obscure the populace from the fact that centralized banking is printing fiat currency at a rampant and uncontrolled pace. The American Comms practice right now is solely focused on maintaining a casino-like atmosphere full of “weirdness,” novelties, and edgy brand mash-ups. The hope is that people will just carry on, oblivious to reason, truth, and fact. To these bad actors, #Nostr and #BTC are dual threats to an illusory view of the world. The numerical realities referenced here represent the objective truths that central banks are so desperate to conceal.
