dog food is about double what it was in 2020. Say what you will about the cost of energy going up during that time: there’s no way to blame ONLY energy costs for that.
It’s greed.
I’m so confused anytime someone blames “greed” for price increases.
First of all, corporations aren’t people. And therefore, they cannot since, and cannot be greedy. They are inhuman profit maximizing machines. They always have been. Blaming “greed” doesn’t make sense because (a) it anthropomorphizes corporations, (b) “greed” has been constant across this time frame.
If greed were to blame for these price increases, then why were prices not rising like this for every other year in living memory? Blaming greed for price increases is like saying a building burned down in a fire because of all the oxygen in the atmosphere. Like… sure? I guess that’s true? But what is the takeaway? Being opposed to oxygen?
Back on topic - if you say the problem is greed, what policy proposals do you have to solve this problem? Greed is literally a biblical sin - what is your proposal to ban what is essentially one of the key components of human nature?
I heard somewhere private equity firms are coming for our pets already, buying up tons of local and regional pet hospitals, dog and pet food suppliers, etc. Basically they know kids are increasingly unaffordable and so they need to capitalize on the fact more millennials are staying childless and treating their pet as their child.
That happened a decade ago. You can’t find many pet supplies anywhere anymore because one company owns the distributors and the stores – and they don’t give a shit because they’re American and Canada is too small of a market to support, so it’s left to wither and die.
The same with Veterinary services. They’ve all be bought up, made into chains, or signed bullshit distribution or service agreements by a single (American) company and now it costs many multiples what it used to for no reason except greed.
100% agree, businesses will charge as much as they can get away with
This isn’t surprising. It is basic economics.
Monopoly capitalism will do that to you.
Canadian grocery stocks have been going up like absolute gangbusters lately.
Where does the money for the investor’s dividends come from?
From overcharging just a little bit for everything, collaboratively. (In that case)
That’s why they’re doing so well.
Inelastic demand. It’s easier to charge more for something if people need it to survive.
If we had competition, the prices would get run down anyway by people trying to expand their market share.
If.
In Canada I assume the vast majority of the increase goes to corporate profits because that’s what our economy seems designed to maximise, but it’s also worth noting that world food prices are back up to levels not seen since the 1970s: https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
Why are groceries so expensive now…
Where does that extra money that we now pay for groceries go?
There was a huge boom in profits starting in 2022 through to today. We’ve never seen profit-taking like this. It was an unbelievably great time for corporate Canada. When you break it down by industry, most of those profits were going to oil and gas. For example, in the supply chain of potato chips there’s diesel used to farm the potatoes, cook them, and move them to stores. A lot of that increase didn’t go to the grocery store selling the chips. It went to energy companies.
There was a graph of food price vs what farmers got paid. Farmer goods prices have been almost flat in comparison to big chain food prices rising continually with a drastic spike for COVID onward
But also remember that the cost of energy is nowhere near 100% of the cost of making pretty much anything.
If you doubled the cost of something because the price of a fraction of it doubled you’re absolutely a thief. That’s what these companies are doing; bad math to steal from stupid people*.
*Anyone can be a stupid person, including those with advanced engineering degrees. Hell, it’s almost more likely for them.
I know what you mean by your wording so I’m not jumping on that, but it’s worth noting that like, eating isn’t a luxury or something that smart people do or rich people or dumb people or whatever. If you have a grocery store in a town/country and it’s the only store (or the vast plurality of realistic options that are all owned by the same company with different faces), you basically don’t have a choice but to submit to this weird “math”, no matter how smart or dumb you are.
It’s not about who’s buying the end product, it’s about who is supporting the people and politicians who use that flawed reasoning to get support.
“The carbon tax will mean that your food price will double” is a massive lie, and should be a major factor is disqualifying whoever says it as being someone to take seriously. Unfortunately, people hear that gas will have an added $0.114/L and believe that that will mean immediate financial ruin for everyone across the country. Politicians that support controlling the rampant greed of companies aren’t getting support while the thieves are and that’s fucked up.
Okay I really don’t understand why this wouldn’t push for electrification?
Is it because the big machines they need is made by monopolies like John deer and they refuse to go electric?
Electrifying farm equipment has huge engineering hurdles. They need a massive amount of power, which would mean very large and incredibly expensive battery packs. Those batteries would take either a long time to charge, or high current charging stations.
During seeding or harvest the machines often run for 16+ hours a day, and are literally out in the middle of a field. Where is the super-fast charging station going to go? They can’t easily travel all the machinery back to home base every night, and there’s no way it makes economical sense for a farm operation to get chargers installed at every field.
These are not necessarily insurmountable problems. There are a number of similarities to trucking, for example, and that’s an industry that’s starting to see electrification now. But the logistical problems are much harder than trucking. The biggest reason that John Deere etc… aren’t making electric tractors right now is that no one would buy one, because no one has any infrastructure in place for it.
Part of the reason is likely that farming equipment is bloody expensive. A new combine harvester can cost nearly a million dollars, and there aren’t a hell of a lot of used electrical machines on the market yet. Each farm will have several machines that currently run on gas or diesel. How many can the average farmer afford to replace how fast?
Are there any electric tractors/combines on the market, let alone used ones? I mean industrial sized, not small yard work equipment.
EDIT: OK, yes, there are some small electrified tractors available now. Fendt has a line available to customers, John Deere has a prototype, etc… But they are the smallest size of industrial tractors, meant for work like greenhouses, feeding livestock, municipal work, etc…
Shouldn’t we be past the asking why phase and more into the solution phase.
Even if things are just gonna be expensive moving forward, the government subsidizes essentials that people need to survive. So even if corporates aren’t being greedy (they are) somethings gotta give, no?
Otherwise people will vote for PP or worse in a few years
We still need to ask why so we can get at the root of the problem. Shrugging and subsidizing is just telling galen weston “keep increasing your prices, and we’ll start throwing tax dollars at you.”
Line has to go up.
Its usually always the money supply
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2024/01/operational-details-government-purchases-canada-mortgage-bonds/
Here they are buying half of all mortgage bonds.
