In reply to frenchyd :
The thing you left out, is how bad that is for Americans. I believe the governments fiirst responsibility is to its citizens, and making them all poorer seems like a bad move
In reply to frenchyd :
The thing you left out, is how bad that is for Americans. I believe the governments fiirst responsibility is to its citizens, and making them all poorer seems like a bad move
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
Yes America is both reactionary and progressive and I'm not talking about just politically.
Elon Musk is the Henry Ford of space travel and EV's ( with all the bad and good that represents)
America is still forward looking. Perfectly willing to step on the feet of the oil industry and protecting it at the same time. Look at the oil companies profits lately. Yet we are spending money like crazy to make them obsolete.
Yet we allow one segment of religion to attempt to control virtually everything done in the bedroom. Returning America back to the 1950's
Okay, NOW this thread is dumb enough to deserve a lock lmao
Opti said:I didnt know it was my job to educate someone, on historical fact, that wants to participate in a debate when they are using the tool to post here that allows them access to the summation of human knowledge.
That's how I know you really don't have any proof or evidence of this at all- smart people want to share knowledge as much as they can. If roles were reversed and you were asking me about medications or medical procedures, I would have pulled my textbooks like Davis's Drug Guide 16th Edition Or LeMone and Burke's Medical-Surgical Nursing 7th Ed. and quoted from them, or at least tried, because you deserve to have good information. Seriously dude, it's berkeleying economics, this isn't some coffee table reading! This is heady dense E36 M3, and I might need to pre-read information beforehand just to understand it better!
No. Im not saying its both, thats why I recommended you look up tangible. Tangible: perceptible by touch. Valuable and tangible are not the same thing.
Like how I can touch the missiles on a ship? Or touch the hulls of aircraft carriers? This is going in circles.
Im not saying the dollar is going to fail tomorrow, and I think we might even have time to turn it around and maintain its dominance (which is great for us), but sticking our head in the ground and saying its impossible to be replaced while major powers are working against it and we are implementing policies that undermine it is a recipe to expedite it.
Had you ever listened to any point I was making- or asked- you would have found that I've been speaking about the who and why could ever replace the US dollar for several pages.
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
When I mention the Sterling was replaced by the Dollar at the Bretton Woods Conference, its pretty easy to go to wikipedia search Sterling, Reserve Currency, and Bretton Woods Conference. This will get a basic understanding and a starting point. It will also explain to you my point, that a larger currency has been replaced by a smaller currency in recent history, because thats a very trivial fact. I wasnt talking about economics. It all started as a response to you saying they couldnt replace the Dollar because its the largest. I only pointed out it had been done in the past. The Dollar was smaller when it took over as the reserve currency. Instead you can keep posting how no one has educated you on the topic. Its not a heady indepth point, just a quick historical datapoint that what you were saying couldnt be done, had been done.
Macro Economics is much like business ownership. It's easy to act like you know it all, but only a few actually have the ability to put it into practise, and even then, success can be measured in various ways.
Opti said:In reply to frenchyd :
The thing you left out, is how bad that is for Americans. I believe the governments fiirst responsibility is to its citizens, and making them all poorer seems like a bad move
If you are headed straight into a wall I would think exploring options to avoid hitting that wall is worthy of consideration.
Looking over my shoulder here comes China. Now what we don't know about China is how much debt they have.
"Experts" Claim China is much worse off than America. If that is the case then delay is our friend and to do that well we need all the friends we can get.
If that isn't the case then making the dollar available gets us closer and at a faster collision speed.
So is the Fed brilliant or stupid?
Ran across a relevant article, we've already seen oil company profits suspiciously skyrocket while prices were "inflated" and the same has been happening with food companies:
https://www.vox.com/money/23641875/food-grocery-inflation-prices-billionaires
GameboyRMH said:Ran across a relevant article, we've already seen oil company profits suspiciously skyrocket while prices were "inflated" and the same has been happening with food companies:
https://www.vox.com/money/23641875/food-grocery-inflation-prices-billionaires
I've been seeing stuff like that for weeks re: egg prices, it's not the farmers running up the price of eggs. Maybe the Kroger-Albertsons merger will allow them to consolidate supply chain logistics and pass that savings on to customer*.
*Customer is defined as shareholder value. ;)
In reply to GameboyRMH :
That article can me read multiple ways. The obvious way would be to follow where the author is leading you- which is understandable, because that's how it is written.
Or you could look at the info and draw your own conclusion. Or can you? Is there enough data to draw a conclusion? Let's take a closer look.
Things we know- There have been large price increases in the last year. Food companies had record profits last year. The revenue ($165 billion) and net margin ($6.7 billion) figures are provided, which works out to 4% net margin. And we know the net margin was double what it was in 2020.
Is this enough info to draw an informed conclusion? How do we know which number is "correct?" It's possible that 2020 was normal, and 2022 profits were inflated due to price gouging. Or it's just as possible that 2020 was low due to market pressures/disruptions and 2022 was a correction. Or both could be true- 2020 was low and 2022 was high. Companies might have seized the opportunity to raise margin to maximize profits over already acceptable levels. Or they may have taken the opportunity to make an adjustment to years of eroded margin. With the info provided in the article, we don't know.
In reply to Boost_Crazy :
Now Boost, you know you aren't supposed to think about what you read. You are supposed to be led around by the nose ring and believe everything the media spoon-feeds you. Don't think, just feel what they want you to.
Turn off your brain and behave like a good peon.
Instead of hand-waving away the article based on a theory held up by suppositions, try to find data to prove or disprove the theory. That's what I did, and found this graph comparing pre-pandemic to post-pandemic profit margin growth:
It's from this article (which is paywalled, there are ways around it) which also gets into some fine distinctions between profiteering and price gouging:
https://fortune.com/2022/02/19/inflation-profits-prices-companies-pandemic/
So from this we can see that today's profit margins are well beyond a return to normal.
It's not my responsibility to find facts that support your news links.
It's yours.
Here are historic profit margins for the grocery industry from a food industry trade organization.
2020 and 2021 were the highest profit margins by far, with margins after taxes around 3%.
The next highest margins were 1.8-1.9% from 2006-2009.
The data goes back to the mid 80s, and if we average the years that aren't '06-'09, or '20-'21 we get average profit after taxes of 1.11%.
So the 2020-2021 profits are nearly triple their historic average profit margin, and over 1.5 times their previous high margins from 2006-2009.
STM317 said:Here are historic profit margins for the grocery industry from a food industry trade organization.
2020 and 2021 were the highest profit margins by far, with margins after taxes around 3%.
The next highest margins were 1.8-1.9% from 2006-2009.
The data goes back to the mid 80s, and if we average the years that aren't '06-'09, or '20-'21 we get average profit after taxes of 1.11%.
So the 2020-2021 profits are nearly triple their historic average profit margin, and over 1.5 times their previous high margins from 2006-2009.
I'm trying to think anywhere I've worked where a 3% profit margin would be acceptable. Yes, they doubled their profit margin. But doubling 1 is still only 2, not quite like doubling 15% to 30%, or 40 to 80.
In reply to bobzilla :
It's hard to make tons of profit when many of their products have a shelf life measured in days. There are literal tons of their inventory that gets thrown out on a regular basis which eats into their profit margin.
It's not like they only make 3% on each loaf of bread they sell. They make more than 3% per item sold it just gets erased by tons of overhead. It seems like it's always been that way for pretty much everybody in the grocery game.
In reply to bobzilla :
No but it's 3% each and every week..
Our weekly grocery bill is $300 or close enough the store we shop at has 5-10 cashiers ringing that up as fast as they can by waving the item in front of a scanner.
Plus there are 4 rows of the DIY scanners going full time. I'm guessing that my $15,000 annual food budget is duplicated 100 times an hour on the weekends and 30 times an hour during the week. That's around 22 million dollars per store. Times the 6 store that particular owner has. That's 137 million dollars. Or over $4 million dollars profit a year after expenses etc.
One family gets 4 million dollars a year? Mind you that's net profit. After everything.
It's 0.03 of each dollar. When you total it up doesn't make a difference.
Anything less than a 10% profit margin is asking for bankruptcy in pretty much any industry.
Lack of retained earnings in the business is a recipe for disaster if anything goes wrong. That is how the little guy gets cut out of a job. But hell, let's keep demonizing capitalism.
Let's keep in mind that this site is dedicated to the wasting of "capitalist pig, ill gotten" gains on hobbies. 
In reply to GameboyRMH :
Instead of hand-waving away the article based on a theory held up by suppositions, try to find data to prove or disprove the theory. That's what I did, and found this graph comparing pre-pandemic to post-pandemic profit margin growth:
It's from this article (which is paywalled, there are ways around it) which also gets into some fine distinctions between profiteering and price gouging:
https://fortune.com/2022/02/19/inflation-profits-prices-companies-pandemic/
So from this we can see that today's profit margins are well beyond a return to normal.
Why were those limited, largely unrelated companies chosen? Are they representatives of their markets, or are the outliers? What about 2020? Is 2019 a representative year? Again, at best, this is just a poor sample size. At worst, these examples were chosen because they fall well beyond the norm of their markets.
I looked at Coors since it was at the top of the list. The graph is not showing the change in net revenue, but change in the margin percentage. Which is very misleading. Looking at the graph, you would think they were doing well. In reality, it was just an average year being compared to a poor year. Here are the real numbers going back to 2015. 2016-2018 were all better than any year since. They had a poor 2019, lost money in 2020, rebounded in 2021, lost again in 2022. So we chose to highlight the increase from 2019-2021?
Full info here, sorry for the formatting of the data below...
Molson Coors Beverage Annual Net Income
(Millions of US $)
2022$-175
2021$1,006
2020$-949
2019$242
2018$1,117
2017$1,566
2016$1,594
2015$395
I may have found better info, quarter by quarter for the last 20 years or so. I haven't had time go through it yet. If it looks applicable, I'll post the link. But I'm not the one that posted a link to a very biased article that mischaracterized the data it presented. And it's not hand waiving, it's math.
In reply to Boost_Crazy :
Don't bring details to a feelings argument.
PROFIT IS BAD
frenchyd said:In reply to bobzilla :
No but it's 3% each and every week..
Our weekly grocery bill is $300 or close enough the store we shop at has 5-10 cashiers ringing that up as fast as they can by waving the item in front of a scanner.
Plus there are 4 rows of the DIY scanners going full time. I'm guessing that my $15,000 annual food budget is duplicated 100 times an hour on the weekends and 30 times an hour during the week. That's around 22 million dollars per store. Times the 6 store that particular owner has. That's 137 million dollars. Or over $4 million dollars profit a year after expenses etc.One family gets 4 million dollars a year? Mind you that's net profit. After everything.
If those number are true, then yes, one family gets $4M per year. They take the risk, they get the reward.
Steve_Jones said:frenchyd said:In reply to bobzilla :
No but it's 3% each and every week..
Our weekly grocery bill is $300 or close enough the store we shop at has 5-10 cashiers ringing that up as fast as they can by waving the item in front of a scanner.
Plus there are 4 rows of the DIY scanners going full time. I'm guessing that my $15,000 annual food budget is duplicated 100 times an hour on the weekends and 30 times an hour during the week. That's around 22 million dollars per store. Times the 6 store that particular owner has. That's 137 million dollars. Or over $4 million dollars profit a year after expenses etc.One family gets 4 million dollars a year? Mind you that's net profit. After everything.
If those number are true, then yes, one family gets $4M per year. They take the risk, they get the reward.
What risk? That people will stop eating food?
Edit: Sorry y'all, I came in hot from some other, more reactionary, parts of the internet and showed my hiney a bit.
In reply to frenchyd :
Stop being obtuse. They built the buildings, purchased the equipment, hired the people, etc. Did that stuff magically happen? If it's no risk, why didn't you do it?
In reply to Error404 :
What's stopping you from opening up your grocery store?
In reply to Error404 :
In reply to frenchyd :
Probably the risk that people will go to another grocery store. Under the same management umbrella. Sending profits to the same corporate HQ out of state and registered in the Bahamas. I think this is the part where we all say the pledge of allegiance out of sheer pride at their business savvy.
We're pretty far off the rails so I'll just say it and see myself out. Monopolies area good chunk of the problem and we got the Roaring Twenties back, we just forgot that it was also called the Gilded Age with the robber barons sitting at the top of the heap.
Ironically, we are in this situation because the vast majority of us have voted for it with our dollars. The fact some people in this thread now are calling 3% net margin excessive- what kind of crazy person would try to go into that kind of business? There is a reason why smaller stores and chains are gobbled up by the larger ones. Because they fail. They don't have the scale to operate at the margins that customers demand. If you don't like it, blame the customers, not the stores.
This topic is locked. No further posts are being accepted.
