Brickbat: Low, Low Prices

Following an ultimatum from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to halt rising food prices, the nation's largest grocery store chains have announced prices freezes on many items. Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the government will monitor grocers' efforts and if officials feel those efforts aren't enough, "everything is still on the table."

Comments

[Jerryskids]

'Everything is still on the table' is code for severe spankings in Canada. By Justin. With an erection.

[SQRLSY One]

"Everything is still on the table"... Except for sufficient supplies of food, Dude! Cue the Soviet-style 5-hour wait-lines when the next shitment comes in!

[Public Entelectual]

Stop Stevoing, you silly rodent !
One turdposter is one too many

[B G]

Seems like they should be saying "everything is on the table for now". If they keep on this path, then either the stores will start to need a subsidy to keep selling basic foods at a loss, or if the price controls get pushed back onto producers they'll hit a point at which that fixed sale price won't cover the cost of production and the farms/ranches will shut down, require a subsidy, or just cut production to feed themselves since even though it's cheaper to buy from a store, those shelves will be empty.

How is it possible that this is too complicated for leftists to comprehend? Price controls cause shortages, end of sentence. It doesn't matter what the product or service is, when an imposed price can't cover the cost of making/providing it, the operations which do that will stop doing it becasue it's untenable to keep going. Or maybe that's the whole point, the long game is to destroy the private sector forcibly so they can declare it to have "failed" as justification to nationalize every industry one by one?

[Fist of Etiquette]

...if officials feel those efforts aren't enough, "everything is still on the table."

Nothing will be on the shelves.

[Carey Allison]

Hmm. Let' see how that works. Amounts and measures listed are for example only.
Max price allowable for a loaf of bread = $4.00
Wheat required to make a loaf of bread = 1/2 (0.5) bushel
Current price of wheat (2023 year low) = $5.9762/bushel
Wheat content of a loaf of bread = $2.9881 (round to $2.99)
Baker's expenses in baking one loaf of bread = $0.45/loaf
(exclusive of wheat, inclusive of wastage/spoilage and taxes)
Wrapping for one loaf of bread = $0.02/loaf
Shipping costs for one one loaf of bread = $0.03/loaf

Total costs in one loaf of bread on grocer's shelves = $3.49, leaving grocers with profit of $0.51/loaf (plenty of profit for all but the greediest), BUT $5.9762 was the lowest price wheat has sold for this year. Some bushels were also sold for $8.9471, meaning there was $4.47355 worth of wheat in loaves of bread baked then, yielding total costs of a loaf of bread on grocers shelves of $4.97 (rounding to nearest cent). Whoops!!

Shall we penalize the grocer if he doesn't agree to lose $0.97 on each loaf of bread he sells? Think there may be a "shortage" of bread on the shelves under that regime?

How about price controlling what the wheat farmer gets? Suppose he bins and doesn't sell his wheat? Just send in the government trucks to take if from him? How do you make him plant next years crop, if you do that?

I know! Let's price control diesel fuel so that shipping costs go down from $0.03/loaf to $0.02/loaf. A government economist can explain how that works and make it all come out right!!

[B G]

If the loss is taken at the level of the retailer, it's as likely to become a shortage of shelves for the bread to be on at all as there is a shortage of bread.

A store that sells 200 different products at varying margins can possibly survive taking a loss on a dozen or so items, as long as the customers continue to buy the profitable stuff; part of grocery marketing includes discounting "loss leader" items to use selling a few things cheap as a means of drawing in traffic and making back the difference on all the other sales that came with that traffic. In addition to that, I don't know about Canada, but many supermarkets in the USA make significant profits selling "prime" shelf locations to particular brands where those producers are willing to trade lower margin for higher volume or else raise their wholesale price to cover the cost of the shelf placement.

In a tough overall economy, if customers cut back to a heavier share of just "staple" items which are subjected to retail price controls, and stop buying the "brand name" or other high-margin stuff along with the basics, then the stores will be in for a reckoning where they'll either need a subsidy or consider closing at least temporarily.

[One-Punch_Man]

I don't know. Warren said Big Grocery is price gouging so they won't lose money /sarc

It's always big something but not Big Government is the issue.

[B G]

I thought the principal evidence of "price gouging" by corporations was the increase in the up-charge for oat milk at Starbucks? There is a Starbucks in most of the supermarkets where I live though, so maybe that's also driving the claims around the markets....

All the noise I've heard around the increasing profits by grocery stores always just focused on profit quantities, and never on margins. I've wondered (not enough to do any looking into it, apparently) how much of the increasing profit numbers have to do with just that with currencies being devalued worldwide, total revenues should be increasing for most businesses that are at least holding level in terms of volume of the business they're doing, and if their margins stayed consistent, that increase in revenues would produce a proportionate increase in profits.

It's really amazing how many leftists (probably Warren included) who sincerely believe that inflation happening now can't possibly be connected to the fact that the Federal Reserve printed more new money (in proportion to GDP) from 2008-2019 than the Weimar Republic did between 1920-1930, and then they did it again in 2020-2022. The Fed Balance Sheet value increased from $900Bil in 2008 to $8.5Trilllion in 2022; it takes a religion like degree of ignorance or zeal (or both) to think that such a change isn't going to come with some serious inflation attached to it.

[ElvisIsReal]

Exactly!

https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/the-next-step-in-canadas-descent

"Everything will be on the table in Canada— except food."

[VULGAR MADMAN]

They never learn.

[Stuck in California]

Hey, it worked great for Venezuela, didn't it?

[InsaneTrollLogic]

It worked great in the early 1970s here as well. Just ask people who were in line to buy gasoline in 1973.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Thank god that the people who voted for socialism are coming here!

[Adans smith]

I'll bet he'll come up with some cool name for his solution. Something like The Five Year plan.

[Mickey Rat]

When will the Trudeau regime begin trotting out the guillotine to deal with the reactionaries? This is stupidity that goes to the French Revolution.

Rising prices are a market signal that there is an imbalance between supply and demand of goods or an imbalance between the supply of goods and the supply of money. Dictating that the price cannot change does nothing to address the underlying cause, and will result in other, worse types of market signals.

[Davy C]

You mean signals like "Food isn't profitable to make, so we're going to stop making it"?

[Mickey Rat]

As there is a relatively inelastic demand for food, one has to wonder what conditions imposed on the market have made food production unprofitable and do something about them.

[B G]

Hard price caps on food will, at some point lead to at least the price controlled items eventually costing more to produce than the caps allow them to be sold for, and at that point production becomes unprofitable.

For crops/livestock, the farmers themselves still have to eat, and at that point it'll be the areas which can't feed themselves (urban centers) which will be first to starve while the agrarian areas will likely establish some kind of barter or scrip system. In the typical leftist progression, that's about the point where the government will "nationalize" the farmland on behalf of the urban majority; in many cases this has involved the imprisonment or killing of many farmers since they tend not to be cooperative in large proportions, and in certain situations (Zimbabwe maybe most recently, or maybe China) the seizure will go so far as to uproot or burn crops in the fields which merely exacerbates the starvation. I kind of doubt Trudeau has the stones to carry it that far, but it's hard to gauge how far a true-believing leftist will go in terms of making a bad problem worse with their counter-productive "solutions".

[Inigo Montoya]

They won’t trot it out for fear they’ll be the ones under it. The guy could even lose a popularity contest with Biden despite not being old, incoherent, or challenged by stairs. His base of support in Canada is about as easy to find as palm trees up there.

[flag58]

It's not the producers that are freezing prices it's the retailers.
If the retailers can't make a profit they go out of business.
Is that the end goal?

[Vernon Depner]

It would be an injustice to allow people to eat just because they have money.

[Don't look at me!]

“So it is written, so it shall be done”.

[Crackers Boy]

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - Somebody

CB

[Roberta]

Mel Blanc?

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Eh, what's up doc?

[Longtobefree]

In an unrelated story, rumors begin that grocery stores will be closing as they go broke.

[mad.casual]

In an unrelated, unrelated story, voluntary euthanasia among homeless, mentally unstable Canadians will go up.

In an unrelated^3 story, crime rates will drop, emissions will go down, and Trudeau will be heralded as a champion pioneer (championeer?!) of the WEF’s ESG model.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

We are gonna need a border wall on the north side.

[MatthewSlyfield]

https://www.governor.nh.gov/news-and-media/governor-chris-sununu-announces-northern-border-alliance-task-force

Concord, NH – Governor Christopher T. Sununu, Attorney General John M. Formella, and New Hampshire Department of Safety Commissioner Robert L. Quinn announce today the establishment of the Northern Border Alliance Task Force composed of state, county, and local law enforcement officers. The Task Force will conduct patrols along the northern border to: reduce the instance of crimes and illicit activity; respond to all threats, all crimes, all hazards; and collect, share, and act upon criminal intelligence. The Task Force will also cooperate, as needed, with federal law enforcement officers in the enforcement of federal criminal immigration laws.

[HorseConch]

We all thought Ramaswamy was nuts, but he's probably on to something. We don't need those bread lines bleeding into our country.

[Public Entelectual]

Of what?

The George Mason Dixon Mercatus line?

[Roberta]

So...prices may be low, but are they...Sofa King low?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Castreaux has been playing the long game.

[Idaho-Bob]

Every weekend, there are dozens of BC and Alberta license plates at the local grocery stores and Costco. I'm guessing this trend will increase significantly over the next few months.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

I'm sure Vladimir Poutine enjoys all of his arbitrary powers and predictable outcomes.

[Brandybuck]

Shortages. This is how you get shortages.

Dear gawd, it's like I'm living in the 70s all over again.

[TJJ2000]

No worries. When the food market won't make any money it'll just stop producing food. The government 'guns' will feed us! /s

How do people get so bloody stupid?

[Minadin]

It's an unfortunate reality, but a whole lot of people actually start out that way.

[Vernon Depner]

Reliable surveys show that only half of US adults know that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

But he's "doing something".

[Nazi-Chipping Warlock]

I see no way this can possibly go wrong.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

We don't have a price freeze in America, and yet I'm still staring at mysteriously empty store shelves. When I go to my local Safeway, I feel like Boris Yeltsin returning to the USSR.

[TJJ2000]

What you're seeing is non-working people getting paid to sit and watch TV all day instead of producing anything for anyone else. All thanks to the [Na]tional So[zi]alist[s] public credit card debt.

If you were shopping for lazy, criminal ('guns' make sh*t), self-entitled spoiled rotten people the shelves would be absolutely over flowing.

[Longtobefree]

So far, they are only out of stock for the things I want to buy.
Plenty of brussel sprouts, decaf coffee, and soy protein.

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[Vernon Depner]

It's made of PEOPLE!

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Yeah, it's not totally empty, I don't want to oversell the imagery. But it's a weird mix of "Goya aisle fully stocked" and "Where the fuck is the seran wrap?"

Oh and, "Ok, I admit I don't buy that brand of toilet paper, but whatever brand or brands are normally stocked in that 15 to 20 feet of shelf space sure has been empty these last three years.

[Vernon Depner]

Some products will suddenly disappear from ALL stores in my area, then reappear after a few weeks. I've haven't seen dry milk in the stores for a couple of weeks.

[Brandybuck]

The social pressure not to raise prices is high. Also the threat of legal action. Also Elizabeth Warren putting grocery stores in her target. Threats of congressional action.

So a grocer could choose not to raise prices, buying less of that stuff to stock, and then consumers snatching it up because it's a lower price than it should be. Once the ball starts rolling it keeps rolling.

"Oh look, this store has eggs, lets buy all the eggs!"

[AT]

Price fixing is the first overt step to nationalization.

But Canada is really really hoping that their "Pretty please just kill yourselves" program will come through for them.

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