Not only that, the companies used the tariff excuse to raise prices which will not come back down even if tariffs are fully off the table. Just like the price inflation during COVID.
Depends on how sticky the prices are. Some things are volatile as hell and swing wildly from week to week, some things are stable until adjusted and then they stay that price for another decade.
Most things are never going to be cheaper than they are today. Some things may be cheaper this time next year but not by more than a few percent at the most.
"Prices take the elevator up and the stairs down" - yes, over time the market pushes no-longer-justified prices back down, but this is much slower than the price increase happens.
You won't get the money back that you overpaid in the meantime.
I just love this idea that corporations just discovered greed during the pandemic and before that had been selflessly dedicated to selling goods for the benefit of mankind at the lowest price they possibly could. Companies always try to maximize prices, and they do that by trying to optimize the price they sell things at to sell as much as they possibly can at the highest price they can get away with. Sometimes you can get more profits by lowering prices and selling more stuff, sometimes by raising prices and selling less stuff. It's a trade off. Prices went up because of a series of demand and supply shocks enabled companies to raise prices. If they had not raised prices, there would have been shortages everywhere.
I think there actually was a lot of surprise from executives coming out of COVID that they could raise prices so high without it impacting consumer demand in the ways they had previously predicted.
The Chipotle earnings calls were pretty much the prime example of this. CEO more or less expressing amazement at how elastic consumers were on pricing, and that due to the increases not impacting sales volume they planned to continue ramping until it did.
I think plenty of companies were operating off the idea that price competition was far more important than it turned out to be. I note the baskets of those shopping next to me in the grocery store and this rings true. Due to a myriad of reasons - consumer behavior being a large one of those - buying behavior based on price just isn’t as much of a thing as it was 30 years ago. Almost no one is shopping multiple supermarkets, buying cheaper alternatives, buying in-season veggies and fruit when it’s cheap, waiting for sales to stock up, buying in bulk and freezing, using coupons, meal planning based on the latest supermarket Sunday circular, etc. only a tiny minority of people have been doing so.
Couple that learned helplessness with the monopoly situation for many (most?) markets in the US and it’s no surprise to me that once the dam broke there is no going back. The price discovery moving forward is going to be much more aggressive. It will take a generation or three to get back to thrifty consumer behavior unless we see something actually painful to the average person on a scale of the Great Depression.
> Almost no one is shopping multiple supermarkets, buying cheaper alternatives, buying in-season veggies and fruit when it’s cheap, waiting for sales to stock up, buying in bulk and freezing, using coupons, meal planning based on the latest supermarket Sunday circular, etc. only a tiny minority of people have been doing so.
I don‘t know where this observation comes from, but here in Austria a majority of people in lower income sectors than IT do all of this?
> I don‘t know where this observation comes from, but here in Austria a majority of people in lower income sectors than IT do all of this?
The observation comes from myself, from a medium to low income background. Think mechanics, janitors, construction laborers, etc. family background. Along with most of my peers and extended family members.
The "old" generation - e.g. my grandparents did all those things. Their kids (for the most parts, exceptions do exist) and my generation (and my kids) do basically none of them. They go to whatever supermarket they go to every week or two, stock up on whatever they usually buy, and that's it. Zero consideration for anything else. It is very surprising to me.
> CEO more or less expressing amazement at how elastic consumers were on pricing
That is because the extra money in the economy also inflated salaries. Inflation is annoying but it basically has no impact on affordability over the long run. Everyone just assumed that their increases in salary were a well earned recognition of their contributions, but the increases in prices was pure corporate greed and corruption. They were both the same thing. People got more money and prices went up.
I think you're mistaking what's happening here. Companies are not discovering greed. People are finally recognizing that greed, and the greed inherent in the system, and recognizing that just because it's "part of the system", it's not OK.
This is what the government should really look into. Are prices being held at inflated levels to sustain profits? And if so why is capitalism not working? Why are competing companies not undercutting each other to bring them back down?
Can we have small watchdog programs that deeply study market conditions for critical resources (like peanut butter/eggs/milk/bread/etc.) and produce detailed data on why prices are what they are and what they estimate prices should be? It would be fascinating to see like detailed breakdowns and raw profit margins on different goods instantly.
I'm shocked you can't see how this is a potential conflict of interest. You don't need to know the exact outcome of the SC decision to have confidence that things will land in your favor. There are certainly all kinds of high level discussions with legal experts in the White House that could have hinted this outcome as likely. The real question is whether there's any personal involvement still with Cantor or this was something launched without influence. If there was influence though, there will of course be denials and bold-face lying (just like with the Epstein involvement).
Been writing my local officials to try to get some attention on this, I encourage others to do the same. Typical Canadian government red tape that we really don't need in this current climate especially.
Very valid points, especially considering a project like the Bruce B reactors (large project just north of this site) were (inflation adjusted) built for around ~6B CAD / GW in the late 1970s. This is 3x the cost of that, and we're 40 years into the future.
Framework 13, 11th Gen Intel, running Fedora 41. I've gone through many Fedora upgrades since buying this in 2021, my unit was I think the 3rd batch of the original laptops.
Everything generally has worked fine over the years, though I did have to replace a broken fan recently. Super easy to repair with a new fan/heatsink unit - cost me about 50$, 10 mins to install.
Trackpad has always been mediocre... workable, but not as good as leading brands. Fingerprint reader always worked well, and no issues with Wifi or Bluetooth. Battery life has always been crap, but I usually have it docked (which also works great with a Dell Thunderbolt unit).
Using electricity to make steel isn't novel - if you consider electric arc furnaces (which can be powered by renewable energy). This does seem to be a fairly novel and cool approach though (eliminates coke), but it still looks quite energy intensive.
That's why I like my Chevy Volt. It has a couple different drive modes selectable with the shifter. Under the normal drive mode the regen braking is controlled by a little paddle on the wheel or during regular braking (hitting brake pedal). In the other mode (I believe they call 'low') the regen is applied when you take your foot off the gas, aka single pedal driving. I normally use the regular drive mode and reserve low for when there's some nasty winter conditions which dictate the sort of subconscious slowdown that the forced regen provides.
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