It's an uphill battle, but I'm glad to see pushback on this is occurring. The only people who believe price gouging isn't responsible for a decent percentage of this inflation are those who want to blame it entirely on Joe Biden for political purposes. And unless all of these companies are suddenly going to stop price gouging to increase their profits if Trump is elected, I wouldn't expect him to magically fix the problem either.
Used car prices are still very high in our area. A lot of people who buy used are increasingly going out of town to do so. It was why i went out of state to buy my used truck. I was able to find a lower mileage one for a lot less than any of the local places were gouging people with on much higher mile vehicles.
The only people that believe that price gouging has anything to do with the grocery stores prices are the ones who have NOT looked at the financial statements of grocers. Krogers is the 2nd largest grocer in the country and last years profit margin was 1.9%. This is the standard in the business and indicates that these businesses are holding on by the thinnest thread. If they were price gouging, one would expect their profit margins to be above 10% rather than floating a little bit above absolute 0%. The prices are reflective of inflation. The inflation is due to Trump/Biden's insane Covid policy, compounded by Biden's out of control spending. There is absolutely no ambiguity about this at all.
Mondelez has a ROE of 17.96% and PepsiCo has a ROE of 50.9%. There's big money to be made selling several ounces of corn chips for $5. https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/PEP https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/MDLZ
The grocery stores themselves are at the end of the line, they are the least likely to benefit from the price gouging because it's already happened by the producers and distributors before the products even reach them. However, they are the public facing outlet for those products so they bear the brunt of the criticism despite culpability laying with those who came before them in the progression. This is why Joe Biden criticizing gas stations for high gas prices was asinine.
Yet PEP profit margin is 10% and MDLZ is 12%. Why would you use a different number than he did? Are you trying to confuse readers who may not know that much and think the two numbers are the same? Yours is NOT the profit margin. The one that says Net Margin(TTM) is what he used(and is used). This year, Kroger is at 1.27%. https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/KR?qsearchterm=kroger
That's how grocery stores work in general. https://get.doordash.com/en-us/blog/average-profit-margin-by-industry Grocery stores have especially slim profit margins, ranging from 1-3%. Independent grocers will have a different profit margin than major big-box stores. Specialty grocers like Whole Foods that sell high-quality, organic goods and can charge a premium, will be at the top of the range.
Why did you leave out the companies posting record profits each quarter? Economists have put the total inflationary cause of around 60% on these companies. The next largest item is housing and much of that is due to supply (people not selling, investors and not enough inventory) Can you tell us under what president were interest rates plummeted to 2%?
I wasn't trying to confuse. I consider ROE a better metric of profitability than net margin, since it measures the return on shareholder's investment in the company. Low net margin for supermarkets just indicates that they are high revenue/expenses businesses relative to capital investment. But I should have also restated the ROE for Kroger's to be consistent.
