Wondering why your groceries are costing so much more? Read and Learn

Or because the stores keep getting robbed blind and the store owners are tired of the loss.
And they moved to neighborhoods where people don't feel the need to steal everything that isn't bolted down

 

Then why don't you give a definition?

 

And is everyone in that neighborhood a criminal? What about the people that aren't robbing the stores? When that store closes down what are THOSE people, who are stuck in these areas through no fault of their own, what are they supposed to do?

 

The word "capitalism" has been thrown around but there has never been any definition of the term.

I haven't thrown the word around. You have. Perhaps you can define your terms.

 

No link?

2021 budget was signed by trump, D House and R Senate.

 

That's not the fault of the people trying to run a profitable business is it?
It's really unfortunate for those individuals but the store is not a Catholic charity.

Maybe the government can subsidize them?

 

I never said it was the fault of the people running the business.

My only question is what can be done for the people that have been failed by capitalism?

Capitalism, as a system, places profits over people. That's just the fact.

Those people that have been left behind because it isn't "profitable" to help them, what can be done for them?

 

You have been responding to my posts so apparently you know what you've been responding to.

 

It has nothing to do with capitalism that certain stores in certain areas are so hard hit by theft that they cannot afford to run a profitable business.

I live under the same capitalist system and I wake my ass up and go to work even when I don't feel like it and I pay for my groceries.

 

You say it has "nothing to do with capitalism" but in the very same sentence say "so hard hit by theft that they cannot afford to run a profitable business"

Isn't a "profitable business" the very backbone of Capitalism? So, obviously, it has SOMETHING to do with Capitalism.

And there are people who "wake their ass up and go to work even when they don't feel like it" and they also "pay for their groceries" and yet, through no fault of their own, find themselves stuck living in an area where capitalism has failed them. They have no access to affordable food. They can't afford better housing (or sometimes any housing at all), they can't afford medical care.

What can (and should) be done for those people?

 

Biden does not feed the poor. He uses our tax dollars to redistribute our wealth.

 

There are two problems with this thread and so far no one from the anti Biden side of things has been able to address it.

1. The original post claimed that the increase in SNAP benefits was "unconstitutional" because it was not "approved by Congress". I (and other posters here) have shown that this increase was, most assuredly, approved by Congress but no one from the right has bothered to even acknowledge that the OP was wrong.

2. Thread drift has led me to ask a simple question. For people who have been failed by capitalism, what is the next step? There are areas of this country where there are no stores that sell affordable food. This is because these areas have been deemed as "unprofitable" or the cost of doing business in these areas is "too high". Even granting that the reason for this is high crime rates...not everyone who lives there is a criminal. Yet they now find themselves, through no fault of their own, in an area where there is no convenient source of affordable food. There are people in this country who, again through no fault of their own, cannot afford housing, or health care or food (all basic necessities) because our society has decided to treat these things as commodities to be bought and sold for a profit. If a profit cannot be made by selling to these people then capitalism dictates that we just don't provide access to these things. Do you think that is how we should be treating members of our society? What are the options? And obviously "voluntary charity" is NOT the answer because we have voluntary charity and we still have people who cannot afford basic necessities.

 

Capitalism didn't put a gun to anyone's head and force them to go and shoplift to the extent that stores move out of their area.

What can and should be done? The people who are obviously raising those people in that community need to do a better job

 

I don't believe food prices are higher because of higher spending on the SNAP program. Generally speaking we are blessed to be a nation that can not only feed itself, but we can and do export food that is produced here. In 2021, for example, we exported $177 billion worth of food. So whatever the demand may be domestically, we can meet it without shortages that cause price increases.

What I think is that food prices have been hit with a double whammy. (1) Higher fuel costs. This makes production and transport more expensive. (2) Excessive deficit spending by the government. These unearned dollars that are thrown into the economy have the effect of devaluing the dollar, and we have done a ton of deficit spending in recent years. And when the dollar has less value, it takes more dollars to buy that same pound of butter.

Even giving my opinion here cost more because of inflation.

My two cents ... er ... three cents because of inflation.

 

Well, considering 'food desert' is apparently defined as 'more than a mile away from a place to buy fresh fruits and vegetables', my house, which is in an urban area in the most densely populated county in the State of Florida is in a 'food desert'. So, that's a pretty dumb definition. I've been giving strong consideration to moving a bit more into the sticks, as it will allow me to buy a new home more suited to my need to use a wheelchair, and for less money than I can get from this 65-year-ish old home I'm in now. One of the downsides of that plan is that we may be 10, 15, even 20+ miles away from the nearest large grocery store, but that's a choice we have to decide if it's balanced out by the plusses. It seems to me that such places exist either because of low population density (who in their right mind is going to build a large grocery store in an area where there are only 100 people within say a 5-mile radius?) or due to the crime that someone else mentioned. Given how it's defined, it also occurs to me that many of them are actually within a reasonable distance to a store, but with a 1-mile limit, that creates all kinds of holes.

We also may be that far away from a hospital, do you suppose someone is supposed to put in a multi-billion dollar one of those just for me? What if it's me and 50 others? 100? 1,000? I had a friend who needed (and ultimately got) a new liver, as his was blowing up on him, but the hospital was so far away he had to get on a plane to get there in a reasonable amount of time. Do you suppose Duke Uni should have built a surgery facility within a mile of his house to accommodate him?

It's about 11% which is more than double what it was 3 years ago. When you pump that much extra money into a limited market (people can only eat so much food, and SNAP cards can only be used for food, and the amount is about an extra $5.5 BILLION per month) that will, all by itself, cause a large amount of inflation. Simple economics.

Why, then, haven't you opened up a grocery store in one of those areas? If you perceive a problem, why haven't you personally done something to fix it??

 

Yes, there was a link. You are the second person to claim to know where the Congressional authority came from, and one thing is certain... While you might both be wrong, you are certainly not both right. One of you may be, our government is so huge and out of control most of the time they don't have a clue where their Constitutional and/or Congressional authority came from either, or if it exists or not. That said, if this was done by EO or agency action, per W. Va. v. EPA, it's Unconstitutional.

However, even if the original publisher(s) of this story and myself happen to be wrong about that, it doesn't change the fact that this reckless government spending is not only the proximate cause of inflation in general, but now that this has been reported, their increased spending on food alone explains why it has gone up in price at roughly double the overall rate of inflation.

 

I'm still absolutely amazed at the balance I see on some people's EBT cards.

As many of you know I work in a gas station and we do accept EBT. The machine prints out the merchant copy and the customers copy. The balance is printed on the customer copy and it's clearly visible while it is printing.

And I am not lying or exaggerating when I tell you that I have seen balances of slightly over $3,000.

How in the world does anyone have that much on an EBT card?

 

There is already a thread for that Newsmax story, which is repeated in NY Post and Fox, and elsewhere.

I suppose the argument is that people eat more food because they have EBT. It doesn't make much sense to me but whatever.

Average balance in FL is $180, and they are issued by the State, not Biden.

 

I'm aware of that because most balances I see are 200 or less.

It makes me wonder if they have seven kids they can't support or something.

 

.

 

You have been shown the actual bill that requires this increase signed in 2018 by Trump, and a R congress. Why you continue to pretend that Congress didn’t authorize it baffling. You’re also switching to another argument. Whether Congress has the authority to tax and spend. You have hijacked your own thread.

 

Again, your saying that companies raised their prices without any cost increases. So what your saying is that it was corporate greed that increased prices….ok…thanks

You also leave out that Biden didnt increase SNAP by 27%, the market increased SNAP by 27% because Biden didnt lay everyone off, he just made sure they got to eat…

 

I'm not sold on the claim that people eat more just because they receive food stamps, and the entity who made the 'study' is a severely biases RW source (Foundation for Government Accountability), so the whole thing should be taken with a grain of salt, but it seems many posters are taking it for gospel/

 

You seem to be confusing private businesses with government social services.
While it's true business is profit-driven, that is also competition-driven, keeping prices as low as possible.
The absence of capitalism does just the opposite; there is little motivation to control pricing at all.
Nothing government controls is as efficiently done as it is in private enterprise.

Businesses have no consistent subsidies. They don't own their customers; they compete for their business. Nor do they own their employees, who can quit at anytime if anyone else is willing to pay them more, and can't be sued for it. Employees are generally not responsible for what they do- no matter how much damage they do to their employer's business. The government protects them too, requires the employer to pay for half their retirement and more.

Employees actually are people in business too; selling their services to a customer at an agreed price- except their customers are expected to give them a long list of benefits and perks, insure them in several ways- and allow them to make their personal problems their customers problems. The concept of "customer service" is virtually non existent if your customer is classified as your employer; all the obligations conveniently reverse.

Imagine what things would be like if businesses expected those things from you, as their customer. They could unionize, so other businesses wouldn't sell to you if you refused to pay their prices, things like that.
You would pay extra on each thing you buy to contribute to their retirement fund, guarantee them a minimum profit, and insure them against going out of business. Sounds fair, doesn't it?

 

Blah blah blah…..”capitalism” is broken at this point. When people cant afford to eat, then they system is broken. When wealth becomes so concentrated, it ceases to be “capitalism” and becomes greed. greed is bad for any system. The problem with our system is that many on the right believe they will at some point be the beneficiary of that greed, when in reality they are just part of source, and will be rubed in….