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?

nostr:note1sgpg02v7djya5j20vw34zathfs82xvutktwp7zlspctzhp4kg8pq8q0pcv

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.

Yeah, last I checked the Mag 7 were all Big Grocery.

Now do Trump’s retarded and weird import tariffs.

1.4% margin 😬

Who extorts whom

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.

The amount of shrink at my local grocery is insane, literally watching people walk out without paying constantly

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

Ancient Rome also tried to do price controls, they didn't work. This is why teaching history is important to a prosperous society!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices

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.

then how to explain all supermarket chains having such higher profits now than 4 years ago? like hundreds of millions of dollars more?

“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

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

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.