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You don't need to. Words can say "see spot run" but images are what people see, and media savvy people know how to send a message without committing to it.
Btw, have you updated my Bingo card today? Get after it. I already told you this.
Not sure who you're addressing. Matthew Stoller didn't say so and neither did I.
You don't need to. Words can say "see spot run" but images are what people see, and media savvy people know how to send a message without committing to it.
Btw, have you updated my Bingo card today? Get after it. I already told you this.
An impression that would be dispelled by reading the first few sentences...
Last edited by Winehole23; 10-26-2021 at 02:05 PM.
link to the report on monopsony power: https://home.treasury.gov/system/fil...ition-2022.pdf
Can you imagine the per Diem for these mother ers? Like money from home.
Ain't neoliberal capitalism fantastic!?
Ain't neoliberal capitalism fantastic!?
While Manchin worked in Washington to secure funding for pet projects, his daughter was narrowly avoiding cross-examination. Also on Friday, a Kansas judge granted preliminary approval to a settlement in which
the drug manufacturer Viatris, formerly known as Mylan, agreed to pay $264 million for an rust violations pertaining to the marketing and sales of epinephrine,
the lifesaving medication it uses to make EpiPens.
With a final hearing set for July, the deal puts
Heather Bresch, Manchin’s daughter and Mylan’s former CEO, on track to dodge legal repercussion
from a yearslong saga involving allegations of
racketeering, price fixing, and the anti-compe ive sale of EpiPens
— whose price jumped by nearly $550 under Mylan’s watch.
https://theintercept.com/2022/03/17/joe-manchin-viatris-mylan-union-heather-bresch
consolidation is killing cattle farmers
And the toxic rUral culture repeatedly Votrd repug but they never get any benefit from Repugs
Abbott Labs provides ~80% of WIC's supply of baby formula.
Look's like Abbott skimped on safety while buying back billions in their own stock.
Two babies died from drinking their tainted product, but you can't put a price on the creation of shareholder value.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/08/business/baby-formula-shortage-retailers.html
blame Biden tho
Was this it, pgardn?
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/c...onopolized?s=r
Great explainer in Freightwaves on how consolidation and the shift to megacontainers has made shipping more unreliable and shafts the public, while leading to windfall profits for shippers
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/oc...panies-profits
Making it way more expensive to be disabled. Profit margins >people.
levelling the playing field: the USPS?
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2022/0...ostal-service/But there’s one program already being implemented that’s helping small businesses compete against behemoth corporations. Most surprisingly, it’s being carried out by a holdover from the Trump administration: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
In his 10-year “Delivering for America” plan, DeJoy included the idea for “neighborhood businesses access to local drop points and local services for same day or next day delivery.” Dubbed “USPS Connect Local,” the service launched in February, starting in New York City, and has continued to spread across the country.
USPS Connect Local provides businesses with next-day local deliveries, as well as same-day service and Sunday delivery in select locations. Businesses can prepare packages for fast local delivery by paying postage and printing labels with the “Click-N-Ship” app, then bringing them to the post office or, in some locations, arranging for pickup. According to a USPS spokesperson, the service is already available in 2,416 offices across 3,680 zip codes. USPS Connect Local should be in all 50 states by the end of September.
Eric Cortellessa reported in the Washington Monthly last year that “dozens of current and former USPS officials and industry analysts” saw “fast, local shipping” for small businesses as a tantalizing opportunity. If consumers “can start ordering from their local mom-and-pop stores and get the products delivered to them as quickly as if they ordered from Amazon,” he wrote, then that will help small businesses withstand the pressures from their bigger rivals, as well as help the USPS withstand the pressures from Amazon.
In Mexico, the price of tortillas is rising while the price of corn is falling.
There is, however, something rather strange about the latest rise in tortilla prices, in that it follows a three-month period of largely falling prices of corn on global commodity markets. Despite rebounding in recent days, corn prices are still down around 20% since mid-May. Yet during that time tortilla prices in Mexico have continued to rise.
Mexico’s federal consumer association Profeco has pointed the finger of blame at Gruma (Maseca), a Mexican multinational corn flour and tortilla manufacturing company headquartered in San Pedro, near Monterrey. It is the largest cornflour and tortilla manufacturer in the world, with 79 plants spread across Mexico, the United States, Europe and South America. In Mexico, the company dominates the industrial tortilla market.
“The recent price behavior of tortillas is directly tied to the price set by Maseca,” said Ricardo Sheffield, Profeco’s director at one of AMLO’s daily press conferences. “There are some economic issues that Cofece [Mexico’s market regulator] will certainly be interested in looking into.”
Sheffield added that something is clearly not right when the dominant player in the market can push most of the country’s tortilla makers to increase prices, even when the price of corn is falling. While it is true that other input costs, such as transportation and labor, may have played a part in the rising tortilla prices, Gruma (Maseca) plays a pivotal role in setting prices across the industry, since cornflour represents between 50-60% of tortilla factories’ costs of production.
At a global level there are huge corn traders, including Cargill, but in Mexico far and away the biggest player is Gruma, says Gustavo Vargas Sánchez, an economist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in an interview with La Jornada: “[I]t produces most of the corn flour used by tortilla factories, partly because it offers better quality than its compe or Minsa and it mixes… its cornflour with nixtamal (cooked corn dough).”
The rampant privatization schemes of Carlos Salinas Goteri’s presidency dealt a brutal blow to the nutritional value of Mexican tortillas. And the biggest beneficiary was Gruma’s founder, Roberto González Barrera, reports a 2007 article by the U.S. online non-profit magazine Grist:
Buoyed along by his good friend, the now-disgraced former president Carlos Salinas, a magnate named Roberto González Barrera used government power to rig a market for his new industrial tortilla-making process, which relies on refined corn flour rather than whole corn kernels. Its products less flavorful and nutritious than traditional tortillas, González’s method was decisively rejected by the market — and then, in the mid-1990s, it got a boost from his political cronies. Today, it accounts for about half of Mexican tortilla production — and González’s company, Gruma, controls 70 percent of the industrial tortilla market. (In the same bout of privatization that won him his tortilla powerhouse, González also pocketed a bank.)
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022...year-high.htmlGruma’s untrammelled control of the industrial tortilla market allows it to book big profits during periods of high inflation, says Vargas Sánchez: “When there are general price increases, Gruma takes advantage of its pricing power to increase its own prices, which are then passed on to the tortilla maker.” In the first half of 2022, as inflation in Mexico hovered above 7%, Gruma’s profits surged by more than 20%.
This is not the first time Gruma has faced accusations of price gouging during times of inflation, notes the Grist article:
According to Oxfam [PDF], the government watched idly while the retail price of tortillas tripled between 1994 and 1999 — even as the price of Gruma’s raw material, corn, fell steadily.
When prices soared recently [in 2006], accusations swirled that Gruma was taking advantage of the global corn rally to gouge Mexican consumers on tortillas. The company claimed it was merely passing on its higher corn costs, but that claim rang hollow. U.S. ethanol makers use yellow corn, and their heightened demand for it indeed caused its global price to double. But Mexican tortilla makers use white corn, the price of which has not risen nearly as steeply.
tl;dr
Monopolies are anticompe ive.
Duh, that's the whole point
Businesses hate compe ion and the free open market
Every businessman's wet dream is to be an extractive, predatory Monopoly with no restraints on his pricing and profits
Eyewatering consent decree.
Chicken processors screwed farmers and suppressed wages and benefits sectorwide, for decades.
https://www.federalregister.gov/docu...e ive-impact
supply chain problems and corporate greed are goosing inflation WAY more than wages
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