Comment by buildingsramen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by buildingsramen | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I mean, you could have spent 5 minutes Googling the answers to your questions.

Here is some reading on this topic:

https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/07/09/supermarkets-are...

https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/10/24/canadas-competit...

Suggesting that people who can't afford to eat should liaise with their elected official, who should present it to the legislature, empower the Competition Bureau to properly investigate the issue, then wait for the Competition Bureau to audit these companies and win a case through the judicial system (and that's the ideal case) – well, I think that's going to happen too slow to prevent starvation.

I'm personally worried about this because rising food prices predict riots and rebellions through history. Either prices have to come down, wages have to go up, or we're gonna see a greater loss of social cohesion and we'll have a much bigger problem on our hands. Getting the government to act on this on a macro scale is going to be a huge task given who's in power right now.

Counter-point, profit margins have been consistent for the last ~20 years per financial reports:

* https://old.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/xqigdu/profit_marg...

As for "greedflation", see econ professor Trevor Tombe: "Are rising profits fueling inflation?"

> Rising grocery prices—the focus of Mr. Singh’s attention—also does not reflect rising profit margins. In fact, food stores and food manufacturing [both have lower profit margins this year than last][0].

> One can even see this in the financial statements of large food retailers. Loblaws, for example, [reported a net profit margin][1] of 3.04 percent in the second quarter of this year and 3.03 percent in the second quarter of last year. Their rising profits are due entirely to rising sales, not increasingly uncompetitive behaviour as some suggest. > > The entire increase in average markups in Canada are therefore related to rising global energy and commodity prices.

[…]

> There are of course important issues to explore and debate when it comes to the level of competition in certain areas of corporate Canada, and there are also many overlapping causes of rising consumer prices. But when it comes to claims that “greedflation” is a key driver of recently rising inflation rates, the data is very clear: it’s not.

* https://thehub.ca/2022-10-14/trevor-tombe-are-rising-profits...

* https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1580935693672775681

[0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv!recreate.action?p...

[1] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/L:TSE?hl=en

I’m not Canadian, so lack context to find the right sources. I assume that in theory government can act on behalf of voters proactively as our (German) government did with heating prices. Apparently, as you and other commenters say, in Canada things are different and popular uprising in the form of grocery theft seems to be the only option. Sorry to hear that.

I'm happy you have a functioning government in Germany!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com