| ▲ | joshlemer a day ago |
| Prices don’t monotonically go up forever, prices come down all the time Edit: Sorry autocorrect thought I said moronically, |
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| ▲ | CuriouslyC a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| The word you wanted there was probably monotonically |
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| ▲ | DangitBobby a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Did you mean "moronically" or "monotonically"? I'd accept either, just wondering which one you meant. |
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| ▲ | baby_souffle a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Depends on how sticky the prices are. Some things are volatile as hell and swing wildly from week to week, some things are stable until adjusted and then they stay that price for another decade. Most things are never going to be cheaper than they are today. Some things may be cheaper this time next year but not by more than a few percent at the most. |
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| ▲ | tgsovlerkhgsel 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "Prices take the elevator up and the stairs down" - yes, over time the market pushes no-longer-justified prices back down, but this is much slower than the price increase happens. You won't get the money back that you overpaid in the meantime. |
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| ▲ | redeeman a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| it does if you continue to pay |
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| ▲ | empath75 a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I just love this idea that corporations just discovered greed during the pandemic and before that had been selflessly dedicated to selling goods for the benefit of mankind at the lowest price they possibly could. Companies always try to maximize prices, and they do that by trying to optimize the price they sell things at to sell as much as they possibly can at the highest price they can get away with. Sometimes you can get more profits by lowering prices and selling more stuff, sometimes by raising prices and selling less stuff. It's a trade off. Prices went up because of a series of demand and supply shocks enabled companies to raise prices. If they had not raised prices, there would have been shortages everywhere. |
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| ▲ | phil21 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I think there actually was a lot of surprise from executives coming out of COVID that they could raise prices so high without it impacting consumer demand in the ways they had previously predicted. The Chipotle earnings calls were pretty much the prime example of this. CEO more or less expressing amazement at how elastic consumers were on pricing, and that due to the increases not impacting sales volume they planned to continue ramping until it did. I think plenty of companies were operating off the idea that price competition was far more important than it turned out to be. I note the baskets of those shopping next to me in the grocery store and this rings true. Due to a myriad of reasons - consumer behavior being a large one of those - buying behavior based on price just isn’t as much of a thing as it was 30 years ago. Almost no one is shopping multiple supermarkets, buying cheaper alternatives, buying in-season veggies and fruit when it’s cheap, waiting for sales to stock up, buying in bulk and freezing, using coupons, meal planning based on the latest supermarket Sunday circular, etc. only a tiny minority of people have been doing so. Couple that learned helplessness with the monopoly situation for many (most?) markets in the US and it’s no surprise to me that once the dam broke there is no going back. The price discovery moving forward is going to be much more aggressive. It will take a generation or three to get back to thrifty consumer behavior unless we see something actually painful to the average person on a scale of the Great Depression. | | |
| ▲ | fzeindl 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Almost no one is shopping multiple supermarkets, buying cheaper alternatives, buying in-season veggies and fruit when it’s cheap, waiting for sales to stock up, buying in bulk and freezing, using coupons, meal planning based on the latest supermarket Sunday circular, etc. only a tiny minority of people have been doing so. I don‘t know where this observation comes from, but here in Austria a majority of people in lower income sectors than IT do all of this? | |
| ▲ | empath75 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > CEO more or less expressing amazement at how elastic consumers were on pricing That is because the extra money in the economy also inflated salaries. Inflation is annoying but it basically has no impact on affordability over the long run. Everyone just assumed that their increases in salary were a well earned recognition of their contributions, but the increases in prices was pure corporate greed and corruption. They were both the same thing. People got more money and prices went up. |
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| ▲ | Refreeze5224 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think you're mistaking what's happening here. Companies are not discovering greed. People are finally recognizing that greed, and the greed inherent in the system, and recognizing that just because it's "part of the system", it's not OK. |
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