Every industrialized country in the history of Earth has had a patent system, including Communist countries, because enforcement of intellectual property rights has proven absolutely essential to innovation and a functioning economy, even Marxist ones. Please enlighten us all on the detailed functioning of your better system than no one has ever thought to implement.
Forget for a second that you don't like how the information was provided and simply look at the information.
What are your opinions about it? Do you think it's good that a really small amount of companies control such a large amount of food? Do you think that makes it harder or easier for there to be competition for consumers to seek out? Do you think anyone should try to do anything about the lack of competition?
But here, I will provide a link and Even copy and paste from the link for ya.
Consumer choice is largely an illusion – despite supermarket shelves and fridges brimming with different brands.
Revealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies, and who pays the price
Investigation shows scale of big food corporations’ market dominance and political powerwww.theguardian.com
In fact, a few powerful transnational companies dominate every link of the food supply chain: from seeds and fertilizers to slaughterhouses and supermarkets to cereals and beers.
The size, power and profits of these mega companies have expanded thanks to political lobbying and weak regulation which enabled a wave of unchecked mergers and acquisitions. This matters because the size and influence of these mega-companies enables them to largely dictate what America’s 2 million farmers grow and how much they are paid, as well as what consumers eat and how much our groceries cost.
“It’s a system designed to funnel money into the hands of corporate shareholders and executives while exploiting farmers and workers and deceiving consumers about choice, abundance and efficiency,” said Amanda Starbuck, policy analyst at Food & Water Watch.
For instance, PepsiCo controls 88% of the dip market, as it owns five of the most popular brands including Tostitos, Lay’s and Fritos. Ninety-three per cent of the sodas we drink are owned by just three companies. The same goes for 73% of the breakfast cereals we eat – despite the shelves stacked with different boxes.
So now that you have been provided the information in a different way is ok for you to post your thoughts?
Tons of great information in article.
I know trump wants to get rid of regulation. Getting rid of regulations is what enabled a wave of unchecked mergers and acquisitions and helped create these monopolies.
I wish someone was trying to do something about this issue.
Sent from my CPH2451 using Tapatalk
www.epi.org
Meh. I'm not concerned with your lack of imagination. The arguments against patents are many and compelling.
A little condescending, don't you think? Commodity markets aren't magically exempt from price shenanigans even if the econ101 textbook tells you they are. I'd say they are more resistant to it because of their fungibility and, of course, huge bargaining weight from buyers, something individual consumers don't have. Colloquially, people don't even use the economic definition of commodity anyways. It just means "stuff" to most people. Maybe you could try using "raw materials" or something like that.
It's beside the point since the main issue is on the consumer side. And yes, profit margins have gone up, unreasonably so in comparison to non-labor cost.
Corporate profits have contributed disproportionately to inflation. How should policymakers respond?
The inflation spike of 2021 and 2022 has presented real policy challenges. In order to better understand this policy debate, it is imperative to look at prices and how they are being affected. The price of just about everything in the U.S. economy can be broken down into the three main...
Arguments against patents typically center on corruption of the system, and not the supposed moral virtue of abolishing intellectual property rights you propose. There is a reason no system like you are proposing has ever worked, EVER, for an industrialized economy.
It is funny how people who do not get into the meat of the issue fall back on 2nd year college econ classes to make judgements. Don't get stuck on "a monopoly is a single company controlling everything". If you get into the economics of a few large companies controlling an industry, you would see the greatly reduced competition affects prices, and the ease at which price fixing can occur. Take pepsi and coke, both of whom raised their prices, literally within months of each other, in the past few years, way beyond any cost of materials for their product, and both of whom then saw windfall profits in the following couple of years. Profits on the back of price fixing across an industry dominated by 2 behemoths. Monopolistic practices begin to occur when an industry becomes dominated by a few very large companies. Technically this is an oligopoly, and it tends to follow the same economic forces that a monopoly does. It doesn't take it falling to a single company true "monopoly" to see the same market forces come to bear.
NO PRICE GOUGING AT TARGET NO PRICE GOUGING AT KIMBERLY-CLARK NO PRICE GOUGING AT INT'L PAPER
It is funny how people who do not get into the meat of the issue fall back on 2nd year college econ classes to make judgements. Don't get stuck on "a monopoly is a single company controlling everything". If you get into the economics of a few large companies controlling an industry, you would see the greatly reduced competition affects prices, and the ease at which price fixing can occur. Take pepsi and coke, both of whom raised their prices, literally within months of each other, in the past few years, way beyond any cost of materials for their product, and both of whom then saw windfall profits in the following couple of years. Profits on the back of price fixing across an industry dominated by 2 behemoths. Monopolistic practices begin to occur when an industry becomes dominated by a few very large companies. Technically this is an oligopoly, and it tends to follow the same economic forces that a monopoly does. It doesn't take it falling to a single company true "monopoly" to see the same market forces come to bear.
Damn it, Dan beat me to it again, and this time with more snark! Sonofabitch! +110 internets.
Doing this amount of work to bring actual data to the discussion is appreciated. Thank you.Regarding price gouging and some misconceptions, I saw this online and copied it to post here.
$47.61 for paper towels and TP at Target today.
Absolutely insane example of corporate greed and price gouging.
In fact, it made me so angry, I decided to do some analysis.
Many prices have increased by 50% or more since COVID, so I decided to put on my investment banking hat and spread some financials back to 2018 / 2019.
And man, was I ever surprised...
I started by looking at Target's annual revenue:
2018: $75.4 billion
2019: $78.1 billion
2020: $93.6 billion
2021: $106.0 billion
2022: $109.1 billion
2023: $107.4 billion
Last Twelve Months (LTM): $106.6 billion
Couple things I noticed. First, revenue has slipped a bit since 2022 and is continuing to do so in 2024 - not a great sign for the broader economy. Second, there's been big growth since 2018. They must be price gouging!
Well, I looked a bit deeper. Let's look at their cost of goods sold over the same period (the price they paid to buy the products they sold you).
2018: $53.3 billion (70.7% of sales)
2019: $54.9 billion (70.2%)
2020: $66.2 billion (70.7%)
2021: $75.0 billion (70.7%)
2022: $82.2 billion (75.4%)
2023: $77.7 billion (72.4%)
Last Twelve Months (LTM): $76.8 billion (72%)
Wow, so let me get this straight...
Target is making less money (28 cents) on every dollar of sales today than they were in 2018 (29.3 cents). Hmmmm. That's weird. Maybe they're not so good at this price gouging thing.
So, I decided to dig even deeper. They were prolly being evil and firing all of their employees so they could make up for the money they weren't gouging, right?
So, I looked at their operating expenses (the amount they pay to run the stores and the overall business):
2018: $15.7 billion (20.9% of sales)
2019: $16.2 billion (20.8%)
2020: $18.6 billion (19.9%)
2021: $19.8 billion (18.6%)
2022: $20.7 billion (18.9%)
2023: $21.6 billion (20.1%)
Last Twelve Months (LTM): $21.7 billion (20.3%)
Hmmmm. Very unusual behavior for someone price gouging me. Let's sum this all up by looking at their operating cash flow:
2018: $6.3 billion (8.4% of sales)
2019: $7.0 billion (9.0%)
2020: $8.8 billion (9.4%)
2021: $11.3 billion (10.7%)
2022: $6.2 billion (5.7%)
2023: $8.1 billion (7.6%)
Last Twelve Months (LTM): $8.1 billion (7.6%)
So, what this all means is that Target's making less overall profit on every dollar of revenue today (7.6 cents) than they were in 2018 (8.4 cents). And revenue has grown at an average (CAGR) of 7.3% per year since 2018 and operating cash flow has grown at 5.1% per year - both of which are pretty much in line w/ the overall rate of inflation during that period.
I guess I expected price gouging to be more profitable.
"Well Steve," you may say, "that's all fine and good, but even if Target isn't price gouging, Kimberly Clark and International Paper (both of whom are involved in the manufacture / marketing of paper towels and TP) sure as H3ll must be!"
Well Yes! Surely they are! I'll spare you all the numbers, but here's the summary:
Kimberly Clark:
5-year avg revenue growth: 2.0%
2018 Gross Margin: 69.7%
LTM Gross Margin: 64.0%
2018 EBITDA Margin: 12.1%
LTM EBITDA Margin: 15.6%
"A-HA! Look at that EBITDA margin!" you say, "They must be gouging!"
Well, the gross margin clearly says otherwise, and the five-year EBITDA CAGR is 6.6% - pretty much in line with inflation. Again, management is clearly bad at gouging.
"Well ok," you say, "I'm sure International Paper must be capturing all of that extra profit because they're the ones gouging then."
Let's take a look:
International Paper:
5-year avg revenue growth: 0.8%
2019 Gross Margin: 30.8%
LTM Gross Margin: 27.8%
2018 EBITDA Margin: 16.1%
LTM EBITDA Margin: 11.6%
Wowza, I guess IP is the worst price gouger of all since, well, they've basically been destroying value since before COVID began. You would think price gougers would be gouging to, I don't know, make more money and all. Well, IP made almost $3 billion of EBITDA in 2019, and a little over $2 billion over the last twelve months. Sigh.
So, maybe this means the inflation we've been dealing with hasn't been about corporate greed and price gouging after all. Maybe it has had something to do with, oh, I don't know, government spending and stimulus run amok or something.
So, rather than going on populist rants about implementing price controls for the greedy corporations (which, you know, have never worked out so well in the past), maybe we should consider some price controls for government spending.
That's a novel idea.
p.s. And for those of you who say "Hey, wait a minute, your receipt says "Bounty" - that's not Kimberly Clark, that's P&G! They must be price gouging!"
Procter & Gamble:
5-year avg revenue growth: 4.4%
2019 Gross Margin: 48.6%
LTM Gross Margin: 51.4%
2019 EBITDA Margin: 20.4%
LTM EBITDA Margin: 23.7%
Gross margin up? Yep. EBITDA margin up? Yep. Good management? Yep. Price gouging? Nope.
www.breitbart.com
You should thank the guy he copied it from.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
hotair.com
