Shrinkflation is out of control

NarrativeBear@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 869 points –

Up untill a week ago Nofrills carried these "three packs" of salmon for $10. Now the same pack contains two for the same $10. I thought it felt light when I bought it yesterday.

This comes to about $0.02 increase per gram, and a $1.10 price increase overall. Or a 11% increase in price overall. Meanwhile inflation is at 6-7%?

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This is the cost of war.

This is the result of company greed

Literally just copy pasting this places now because so many people are still claiming greedflation is a thing. Not trying to spam but links to comments don't seem to work, and as a literal economist who works on inflation I'm tired of reading political talking points disguised as economic analysis.

I think everyone should probably listen to this great report from NPR that dissects this issue. The Tl;dr: is greedflation is not really a real thing.

The deeper answer to your question of, "can one party increase prices in a market?" is sort of basic economics, and the answer is, "Usually, no." In a competitive market, the answer is no. In a monopolistic market (meaning one company controls most of the market, think like Google with browsers) with no government oversight, the answer is yes. Things get complicated when you add in government regulation or oligopolistic markets (markets where only a few players control the market). In those cases, it depends on how strong government regulations on price-gouging are and any anti-monopoly or anti-anticompetitive practice laws are, and also depends on how oligopolists behave. Sometimes, particularly in industries with few big players, the big players will make the same decisions independently. If they do this cooperating it will usually violate antitrust laws, but if they both decide they'll be better off say, not paying workers as much, or charging super high markups, them that can happen. A lot of economic research shows that kind of "tacit collusion" happens in real life, like in the oil and gas industries. But other times oligopolies will behave very competitively, only uniting through lobbyist trade groups if at all (think Microsoft and Amazon in cloud software).

So that's the facts, but here's my economic musing: The reason it feels like greedflation is a thing is a combination of factors:

  1. Inflation was very real, and very salient.
  2. Corporations (as mentioned in the NPR piece) crowed about their "record profits" in the short term, and also mention them when they are absolute record profits, not just record profit margins (something not mentioned but very real - a company can make twice as much money but also have spent twice as much, making way "more" money but with identical margins)
  3. In the US at least, we are seeing the highest numbers of industry consolidation and monopolies/oligopolies since the Gilded Age, so it feels like companies should be able to raise their prices if they want to.
  4. Media coverage and online spaces have become extremely polarized, so "corporations bad" is a very easy refrain to find if you're watching or reading anything remotely left-wing, and it has been parroted by many democratic politicians as well, because it scores cheap and easy political points (also, and this is just my opinion, it helps vilify corps more in the public eye to help get more support for better antitrust legislation and enforcement, the actual end goal. I don't think senators like Bernie Sanders don't actually understand what's going on with profit margins, I think they're using it to generate political will, but that may be my own bias creeping in).

Greedflation isn't really a thing

describes the mechanisms and reality of greedflation

Why do stating profits vs profit margins matter? On that note, what do you think sounds better in an announcement to the general public - "we made record profits", "we increased our profit margins by shrinkflation and charging more", or both? I'd argue the first - if they cut costs or increased sales that would be worth bragging about, but charging more isn't something you really want to directly call attention to

Why does collusion vs tacit agreements matter? Consolidation of industries and regulation is why it's possible and is very relevant, but doesn't address the core question

Ultimately, groups of humans behave differently than the individuals they're made up of. Sometimes they even do things no individual member wants to happen - market forces are in this category of emergent properties.

You seem to think greedflation is a bunch of cigar smoking men in a room saying "there's a war on boys, what say we jack up prices again?"

It's about what companies are doing, not individuals. Companies are using the little ripples in the supply chain from every global problem to ratchet up prices in sync, and there's not enough regulation or competition to make them lower them back down.

That's what greedflation is - companies being greedy in sync across an industry,

Did you listen to the NPR report? I don't understand how you still have these questions.

If you mean Ru vs Ukraine, the for-profit cost gouging for groceries disguised as 'inflation' began prior to that.

What war?

the war of the roses. very costly.

"I would like for you to do us a favor, though" - Earl of Warwick, probably

the one in Ukraine

Yeah, my grocer has been sold out of Ukrainian Salmon for months, only kind they've had in stock is Hungarian Salmon and that's got way too much paprika on it plus I'm pretty sure it's actually some random lake fish they dyed pink.

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