Can they go after restaurants adding mandatory 20% fees? I don't mind paying more to pay for ethical pay for employees but adding a mandatory 20% free us just lying about menu prices. It should illegal. Just bake the price into the menu prices.
where do you live that tipping is mandatory? or are you talking about something else?
It is essentially a tip, but it's listed on the bottom of the menu as a mandatory service charge. The restaurant keeps the money (it's not split like case tips) and just pay the employees a good wage without them relying on tips.
It's good in theory but it's dishonest pricing.
Yeah, I'd say the same about any "fees" that get tacked on above any advertised prices. The only time it shouldn't be included in an advertised price is when it doesn't scale with number of things purchased. So a % fee would always be included, but flat fees can be separated (like if they had a table charge or something that didn't change based on how much food was ordered).
Online shop "convenience" fees are at the top of my mind for this. Especially because there's even more convenience on the merchant's side due to how websites scale vs brick and mortar shops. They might have to pay large salaries to developers and IT people (emphasis on "might"), but that'll be much less than the leases and staffing costs to open physical stores to serve the same size of market.
Finally.
I hope it ends with better results than that poor attempt that they did in Canada.
Price fixing is temporary, and doomed to fail in the long term. Nixon tried it with an Executive Order and it was a disaster. It caused supply chain constraints and prices shot well past inflation when the Order expired.
Congressional legislation setting grocery store presentation limits would increase brand variety, foster competitive pricing, and put an end to the corporate control over pricing.
FTC head should be putting a halt on the Kroger+Albertsons merger if he’s really serious.
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But you are correct. My state is suing to prevent that since that would make them a huge percentage of the market and create many areas with no competition.
But didn't you hear? Less competition makes prices go down. The head of Kroger said so!!!!!
How they have gotten around it before is to promise they will keep prices down and then show how things will be much cheaper for them so they can do it. Unsurprisingly they all fail on their promises shortly after but they have already merged by that point and have little fear of being broken up.
You know things are getting bad when even capitalists are arguing against market economics.
"We believe the way to be America's best grocer is to provide great value by consistently lowering prices and offering more choices. When we do this, more customers shop with us and buy more groceries, which allows us to reinvest in even lower prices, a better shopping experience, and higher wages," said Rodney McMullen, chairman and CEO of Kroger.
It's a load of tripe. All these big companies come in with lower prices, drive their local competition out of business, then raise them once they've got a local monopoly. Even if Kroger currently has the best of intentions (I don't believe that), I wouldn't trust the next person or the one after that.
We're already fighting a losing battle with suppliers gouging and creating higher prices or shrinking portions for the same price. I'm scared to see what grocery bills would look like under a store monopoly in addition to that.
My town has a Kroger (city market) and an Albertsons (Safeway). Only other option is Walmart… the proposed merger would be catastrophic to our ability to afford groceries especially since Kroger is already price gouging to the point I can save $10 per 3ish days worth of food going to Walmart.
Crime happens
People notice the crime happening
Journalists report on the crime
Documentarians spend thousands of hours collecting data to illustrate the size and scope of the crime
A national outcry erupts
Politicians finally consider this worth their attention
"We're going to look into it."
Economic collapse occurs because of all the crime
Giant bailouts for all the criminals
"Now is not the time to place blame. Also, blame migrants and poor people and idk, maybe Jimmy Carter or something."
Economy recovers
New Crime happens
I buy almost exactly the same stuff every week except when the odd condiment/coffee runs out. I went from $60-75/week to $90-100, and now more recently $110+ all within roughly 18 months...
So now I cut back everything.. I eat baked/grilled chicken with beans and canned vegetables for lunch and have salads for dinner, only eating twice a day... All that just to get back to $70/week.
Just remember, eggs were 12 bucks a dozen until the fed threatened a RICO investigation.
Hopefully the same happens to the rest of our groceries.
Never saw it get $12 crazy, but at one point farmers had to kill off 100 million chickens because of bird flu. That's nearly 1 chicken for every man, woman and child in the US.
Imagine the disposal cost, let alone the costs for sterilizing monstrous chicken warehouses. Then factor in the costs of keeping operations going while they repopulated.
However, there was something I read and can't remember, about the prices staying jacked beyond what was to be expected.
My dad worked for a private company that was a government contractor for almost 30 years before they were bought out by some international corporation.
I asked my dad if they used to have years where they didn't turn a profit. "Oh absolutely, but we made up for it the next year, or they had money set aside, or..."
None of that happens anymore. Those chickens, I guarantee, caught those diseases because of the practices put in place by the 4 or 5 companies that basically produce all of the poultry for this country. They made poor business decisions, they chose to pinch pennies and not put money aside for unexpected emergencies, they continued to pay out dividends and issue stock buy backs instead of creating an emergency fund like they tell us poors we need to do.
So no, I don't care to imagine any of their costs, because if they were a legitimate business, they would have contingency plans in place beyond "jack the prices up as high as they'll go and keep em there until it starts to hurt our wallets enough." They would take the hit for fucking once instead of passing the cost along to those who can least bare it so they can maintain their lifestyle built on greed and stolen wages.
The egg-laying chickens were not as affected from everything I heard.
Was it just meat birds?
at one point farmers had to kill off 100 million chickens because of bird flu. That’s nearly 1 chicken for every man, woman and child in the US.
Didn't seem to impact egg production all that much: https://www.statista.com/statistics/196094/us-total-egg-production-since-2001/
Best case scenario, what can we hope for?
Forgive my cynicism, but even if they get caught for egregiousness, I can't imagine they won't just get a "cost of doing business" slap on the wrist. I can only hope I'm wrong.
I agree the fines that are issued for these companies is way to low. But on the bright side the FTC is actually doing their job and if it is making C-suite executives even the slightest bit nervous I'm for it. Yep I know that is a low bar but it's something
It's absolutely something and a direct result of Democrats being in power.
Could you ever image a republican even asking about price fixing?? They'd probably be passing tax cuts for the offending corporations instead of fighting for the consumer.
As a consumer, probably not much and definitely not fast.
However, in the context of the Albertson and Kroger merger, it could cast shade on that case and impact the outcome.
So I guess, optimistically, we can hope it slows our capitalistic death march towards monopolistic consolidation of businesses.
does this need investigation? a spike in profit should be rather obvious, if not the spike than increased income and some new mysterious expenses.
Yes it does. Because they need ironclad proof if they're going to take legal action.
Yes, if there's collusion or a lack of competition, there are legal solutions, namely breaking up the offending companies.
But will those solutions be applied? That's always in doubt.
Who knows, but Khan is the best chance we've had of something getting done in a very long time.
We're at an inflection point where Federal government arms actually have to show the citizens they sometimes work. Something may actually happen here. Many government agencies like them, the FCC, DOE, DOT, and FTC are actually being run by people that are trying to make a difference. Did a 4000 mile road trip across the US over the holidays and was impressed to see so many bridges actually being fixed, rebuilt, or replaced. First time I've ever seen that level of progress. (Or at least, level of undoing technical debt.)
Not to fill you with false optimism though. I've not seen our federal government do anything useful my entire life, only take away rights with things like the Patriot Act and making women not be people anymore, so I have a hard time myself believing they will actually do something for the People.
Opposite corollary: They antitrusted Google over search while Google is currently being run by morons and failing at everything, meanwhile ignoring that Apple is becoming an actual monopoly in the US and segregating the population based on the color of a text bubble; owning media production, distribution, and sales; and other bad behavior.
namely breaking up the offending companies.
When was the last time this happened?
Not only inflated prices, start measuring and draining canned vegetables. They're all slacking off with the ratio of food to filling. One can of veggies that allegedly had 425g of vegetable in it ended up only having 200g of vegetable in it after the liquid was drained.
Fresh or frozen vegetables are better for you, and usually cost the same as canned.
Why not just unmerge Kroger?
NIAAS, National Incorporation As A Service, fee is the difference between highest paid employee and lowest each year. What they receive, not what some outsourcer charges for a limpeza.
Alternative is full incorporation required in each state operated in.
Me too.
Anecdotal, but I really feel like it's the restaurants that are jacking up prices this year.
fast food or dine in? it's funny because the less "corporate" the restaurant, the more likely it is that they're getting a lot of their ingredients in the same place that you get yours
Better than nothing I guess.
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