Capitalism, where a couple of fucking dudes can make or break a whole country.
And where being poorly suited for wielding that kind of power responsibly makes you more likely to be one of those fucking dudes.
FML, I hate that this is actually the case. God damn it.
Shittier services and higher prices/more fees, every merger ever.
Read yesterday about Wendy’s rolling out new electronic menus this year so they can enact dynamic pricing. Can’t wait until Surge pricing hits another non-negotiable like food.
Burn all these oligarchs down.
Yhgtbsm. Charge people more during a lunch rush because it’s convenient to do so. For fast food. Fuck them.
That’s stripping the “supply” out of “supply and demand” and just making it “demand pricing.”
They demand you pay more.
So rare.
Kroger has promised to invest $500 million to lower prices as soon as the deal closes.
Kroger made 1.8 billion last year after expenses, so investing 500 million is a good gesture of faith but, I think that it should be required to be repeated yearly if they wish to make it as a condition of the merger, 500 million while likely wouldn’t do much prices wise, wouldn’t even be helpful if they aren’t doing it past the first year anyway
It’s such a backwards way of doing it though. If they’re going to invest that much, that means they need to make a lot of money to cover for it, so they’ll have to keep prices where they are until they get the money, then they’ll make a show of spending it to lower prices, which really means they’re paying the salaries of business analysts who will come up with ideas. Once they’ve spent $500m coming up with ideas, their obligation will be fulfilled, and they won’t have to actually act on any of those price-lowering ideas.
Instead they could just make $500m less in revenue by directly lowering prices immediately.
But then they can’t brag about all the good money they spent and will instead whine about how hard up they are, so we’ll be stuck with high prices and no relief.
Okay we’ll stop the merger. I just need to tell them tomorrow while I’m there to get some tortillas for lunch. Albertsons, …it’s my store! 🎶 🎵
I wonder how much Walmart paid for that lawsuit.
Kroger and Albertsons are the two major chains in my city (known as Fry’s and Safeway here). If they merge, their only real competition left is Walmart.
That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t secretly merged decades ago already. Their products, prices, and branding are nearly identical. Even the commercials they play over the store speakers are the same.
Prices are already outrageous. We don’t need more of that.
Does anyone get hanged when it reaches half a billion?
Awesome. While we’re at it let’s sue Kroger/Smith’s for the absolute eyesore that is the hideous playmobil-lookin 3D people in their ads. The design is so bad it’s a public nuisance. Lol
That and their excessive use of Flo Rida’“Low” in their radio ads.
Albertsons has been buying up competitors for a while.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertsons
Kroger has a few too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kroger#Chains
They turned Pavilions from a nice store to another dingy grocery. I can’t imagine this going through would be good for consumers. Many neighborhoods only have access to 2 stores at best, and I suspect most are already owned by the same parent. A merger would further turn this into a monopoly.
Hell I’m in Seattle and my walkable area (about 2 mile radius for me) would be reduced to this mega corp, Amazon, and a couple Asian marts. I’ve got two corner stores nearby but their produce is usually not great and mostly they have snacks and microwavables. I suspect smaller towns or less bustling neighborhoods could easily be reduced to just this super chain and nowhere else
My 2nd closest grocery store is a 40 minute drive, and it’s a Walmart.
FTC is a captured agency with revolving door administration between what businesses they regulate and people responsible for regulation.
You’re not wrong, but the appointment of Lina Khan to head the FTC is easily one of the only good things Biden has done while in office.
So, at least she’ll go down kicking and screaming before they finally snuff her out, metaphorically speaking.
Honestly, i dislike his age, his stance on Israel and some other general things but overall I think Biden has accomplished a lot of good things as president.
Some examples:
- rejoined Paris Agreement
- rejoined WHO
- ends federal private prison contracts
- 130+ billion in student loan forgiveness
- Russia sanctions
- national registry for police fired for misconduct
- executive order protecting travel for abortion
- gas prices down (not all in his control but still)
- inflation reduction act
- Arguably the best post-pandemic economy in the world
Wait he did ALL that? I had absolutely 0 idea, it’s way more than I thought. Although I will add the one other thing I do know that he did:
- took major steps to removing medical debt from credit scores, including rolling out regulations prohibiting medical debt from being included on credit reports and creating standards for property owners to not consider medical debt for potential renters
Bad news sells. Good news goes unnoticed.
Hopefully… Biden appointed some real pussycats to the SEC who also died shit about fuck all…
Lina Khan has been extraordinarily ineffective at the head of the FTC.
While the agency has made a lot of noise about holding big tech accountable, all they’ve managed to accomplish is losing court cases and setting even more precedent against the government’s ability to enforce anti-monopoly legislation against these companies.
Her heart seems to be in the right place, but results matter as well.
Block
This
Surely this merger is different from all the other ones where corporations lied their asses off then jacked up prices after the merger went through, right?
I’ve got three grocery stores near my house. One is owned by Kroger and two by Albertsons. I hate to think what would happen if there were zero effective competition.
Same situation but we have two Kroger-owned (FM and QFC) and one Albertsons-owned (Safeway). The Safeway is right across the street from Fred Meyer, so the chances are they will shut Safeway down if the merger goes through. No point in competing with themselves. So we’re looking at fewer options, lost jobs, and higher prices. Wheee.
Very rare pro-consumer W
Very rare pro-consumer W
Is it though? I fear that all this will do is allow WalMart to clobber them individually then take over their market share. A&K combined are already smaller than Wally World. (13% vs 22%). It would actually be more helpful to the grocery market if they forced Walmart to divest, what their doing with this is likely to end up with Walmart taking it all.
Why not both
I actually agree. They’re targeting the smaller fish in "big business " when they should be focusing on Walmart amazon google and the like
The FTC has always been harsher about monopolization via mergers versus business finding success independently. Not saying that’s the right way to handle things, but Walmart got to where they are through competing, not merging, with other businesses.
As a Canadian, what’s it like?
It’s like walking out of a doctor’s office without thousands of dollars in debt… I assume.
Two of the major chains in my area merged a while back and they were required to close down a few of their stores to prevent having a monopoly.
So of course they closed the stores that were under-performing, which just means they closed the ones in poor neighborhoods.
They still owned or kept the leases to the buildings and sub-leased them out with the stipulation that any business taking them over could not carry groceries.
Not only are the people in those areas having to drive a lot further (or spend more time on public transit), but a lot the surrounding businesses to the stores that closed down ended up going out of business themselves.
There’s at least one nearly abandoned mini-small, shopping plaza in town due to this.
If they won’t let others use it they should be compelled to sell it.
Wow never realized it but same. Clemens and Acme went under, then Superfresh. All those shopping centers are still empty or near barren and that was like well over a decade for those to go under
that seems like anti competitive behavior, I wonder if those kinds of stipulations could be made illegal. Also a commercial vacancy tax probably wouldn’t hurt.
They are legal. This is/was Walmart’s M.O. for anticompetitive behavior when one of their stores closed. Any competitors couldn’t lease, other businesses failed when they moved and didn’t have the traffic, and so you are left with both an unoccupied eye sore as well as a food / product desert…
Good idea on the vacancy and potentially changing the law to prevent anti-competitive stipulations like that.
