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Comment by aga98mtl | Hacker News Reader

I believe it is an elaborate psyop to shift the blame of inflation away from the government and toward a boogeyman, the "evil" grocery chains. As you point out the margins are super tight in food retail, it is impossible for it to be the cause of inflation.

From the point of view of the average man however, the grocery store is exactly where he is facing inflation daily! This makes it the ideal scapegoat.

The average man will never ever realize that the monetary mass surged during covid while real world production slowed down. More dollars chasing fewer goods & services equals rising prices. That monetary policy smoothed out the COVID downturn and it was a great success, but it was not a free lunch.

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>I believe it is an elaborate psyop to shift the blame of inflation away from the government and toward a boogeyman, the "evil" grocery chains

In Canada, the grocery stores were caught colluding. Recently. Is it still a "boogeyman" when they were caught in a 15 year long collusion scheme?

As mentioned in the government report linked in the OP[1], grocery profits have only went up 1-2 percentage points. It's totally fair and justified to attribute that to evil grocery stores, but the rhetoric coming from politicians, journalists, or voters? Or is it something less nuanced like "greed grocery stores are driving inflation"?

[1] https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/how-we-foster-competiti...

What does “caught colluding” mean? If it is some of Trudeau’s stooges said so, I would not believe it for a second.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada

>If it is some of Trudeau’s stooges said so, I would not believe it for a second.

What a silly statement. But no, there were confessions and fines and everything!

Yes, it's still a boogeyman. The bread price increases still amounted to only an extra 1.50 per load of bread over the 15 year period.

For reference, a dozen eggs shot up by a 1.50 since 2022 alone.

Go after the collusion yes but that's not where inflation is coming from.

>Go after the collusion yes but that's not where inflation is coming from.

The title of the article is "reduce collusion in the Canadian grocery sector", not "blame grocery for inflation".

Ctrl+f for inflation in the article doesn't even turn up a result.

Recently??

Yes.

Investigation started in 2017 and there was a guilty plea and $50M fine issued in 2023.

And Canada is already lowering interest rates.

Isn't it funny how large companies always get greedy at exactly the same time governments print a lot of money?

Or when there is a govt scandal terrorists strike...

>The average man will never ever realize that the monetary mass surged during covid while real world production slowed down.

To add insult to injury, the average Canadian will still brags how effective the COV lockdowns were compared to rest of the world especially big brother USA.

Inflation is caused by companies deciding to raise prices. It has nothing to do with government. Whether there's more or less money out there it's still the decision of the people running the company to raise prices or not.

"Inflation" is really the magical bogeyman invented to make people not ask questions about the companies actually raising prices and to instead think everything is controlled by the government. Pay no attention to the CEO and shareholders on their yachts.

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