President Joe Biden is weighing how hard to hammer big food companies over painfully high grocery prices in his upcoming State of the Union Address. But some some aides remain wary of focusing too much on food inflation, given how little power the president has to singlehandedly force down prices.
Biden embraced the concept of “shrinkflation” in a Super Bowl message targeting major snack food corporations — as the president framed it, there are now “fewer chips” in your bag, while companies are “still charging you just as much.”
And the White House has been aggressively testing out the messaging on the airwaves and in internal polling ahead of Biden’s speech, according to two White House officials familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak on the issue and were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. Recent polling circulated within the White House has been favorable to Biden’s push to blast what he’s described on the campaign trail as “corporate greed” driving higher prices across a range of sectors.
What does this have to do with the inflation?
Less competition in the grocery space means higher grocery prices. Then there’s all the layoffs and store closings that come along with megamergers.
Yes, but this happening even before the merger so has nothing to do with what is happening right now. Companies are just being greedy AF and getting away with it.
So? Stopping the second thing that would cause higher prices is also a good thing
That’s faulty logic. We know that mergers tend to lead to higher prices. We also know that there’s already an issue with artificial inflation (=companies colluding to raise prices), as well as actual inflation.
Ultimately it’s just simple addition if/when the merger goes through. It will exacerbate the existing issue.
Well, we know what will make it worse and have an opportunity to stop it, so…
They can get away with it because there’s so little competition. The expectation under capitalism is not that companies won’t be greedy, it’s that regulation and competition will limit their ability to be so.