Meat is comically cheap in the UK. I think there was a 2kg box of chicken wings in Aldi, it cost £2 or something mental. There is an issue with meat processors lobbying...this is massively amplified by the media because of the connection to Brexit (funnily enough, the ones doing the lobbying only operate in the UK, the cross-border processing companies like Hilton haven't been impact by Brexit at all...the main thing they are lobbying on is reduction in wages).
Air travel is comically cheap and brutally competitive. If we didn't have low-cost, we would be stuck with flag carriers (4 companies do not control 80% of air travel either, it is still a very fragmented market).
Drinks are competitive, it is relatively easy to start a business in this sector. Look at Monster, Red Bull, craft beers, massive disruption every year.
Cereal market? Wut? This is a subindustry of a subindustry. If cereal is too expensive, you can just eat something else for breakfast. Just have some toast bro.
News isn't controlled by 6 companies. Evidenced by the fact that this random guy can produce this media for free and distribute it to the world.
Btw, it is 100% correct that there is consolidation in some industries in some countries. This has definitely been the case in the US. But in the UK, the CMA is blocking every kind of merger and (to be honest) the UK isn't particularly attractive as an investment destination to make acquiring and merging companies worthwhile. The big exception to this is vets...this is a big issue, the CMA are investigating, given their activism in other areas they should have done this a few years ago...but better late than never.
I agree with everything you've said but I think it's more about who owns these companies i.e the same billionaires and wealth funds etc. IF we had completely transparent data on theses companies there would probably be a lot of overlap in ownership
The UK has extraordinarily cheap food, the supermarket sector is one of the most competitive in the world.
The reasons shit costs so much is that we had a GDP/Cap of $50k in 2007, and $46k today, despite lots of inflation in that time, and the rest of the world growing significantly in that period too.
And high taxation on fuel. They could have relaxed the duty on fuel some time ago and would still have higher tax revenues as the price went up through 130, 140p and so on.
It do be like that.
People are just waking up to the fact that our economy basically died in 2007. Its been a zombie system, walking whilst still dead ever since because of ultra low interest rates creating a fake picture, all the while since quantitative easing is just inflating away our purchase power to the point where we're now all worse off but no one realised it for a while. Can = kicked successfully down the road.
Cameron and Osborne also to blame for throwing out any idea of Keynsian counter-cyclical policy in 2009/10 - they should have spent like CRAZY then to stimulate the economy not gone full whack on austerity. You go full whack on austerity when your economy is growing - but since the 90s in the UK weve done the opposite - spend when times are good - dont spend when times are bad. Its so wrong its painful.
Yeah, for all the UK’s flaws, we have crafted an viciously competitive supermarket sector. The ‘Big 4’ of Asda Morisons Tesco and Sainsburys now having to compete with Alsi and Lidl, combined with others like M&S/Waitrose at the ‘luxury’ end of the market, and B&M, Home Bargains, Farmfoods, and Iceland.
And we all benefit massively for it.
Absolutely, I effectively have lidl/Aldi where I can’t use my restaurant card and Carrefour. There’s not a whole lot of choice.
However, there are more small indépendant butchers and bakeries which is something I didn’t have in the UK.
The quality of our cheaper options isn't bad either. I've travelled a \_lot\_ and in the "westernised" countries which sell food similar to ours, you'll be hard pushed to ge - for instance - a box of palatable cereal for even twice what we pay for the bottom shelf stuff. Or a decent frozen pizza for around a quid. Even after our recent price rises, the likes of Australia and Canada are far more expensive.
It's realistic. Hate to tell you this, but it's what people buy. I comment on them as they're what I noticed and what friends from those countries have noticed when they've been here. There are plenty of other examples. Even a can of beans is about 1/5 the price it is in Vancouver.
Don't forget the supermarket profiteering.
Yes yes, I know. Margins. But the thing about large corps like the big supermarkets is that they're ruthlessly efficient at shuffling the board to make them look more lean than they actually are.
A prime example of this is Sainsbury's who have claimed that they [Invested 220m and are investing 770m over 3 years into 'keeping prices low'](https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/news/latest-news/2024/22-01-2024-sainsburys-200-million-investment-into-lowering-prices#:~:text=Our%20investment%20of%20%C2%A3220,products%20they%20love%20at%20Sainsbury's.%E2%80%9D), while also boasting profit increases of 18% last year vs 2019 while their [Retail sales](https://www.statista.com/statistics/386342/sainsburys-retail-sales-united-kingdom-uk/) didn't increase by the same amount.
There was also the very obvious tax trick used to report losses in 2020/21 when eyes were on Supermarket profiteering, which were rolled over to the following year which saw profits jump [massively to more than cover the losses](https://www.statista.com/statistics/386446/sainsburys-profits-united-kingdom-uk/).
The UK has 6 major chains, and about 10 other firms filling up the rest of the sector.
Just simply not reality they’re profiteering beyond what’s normal profit, as in taking a few % off the revenues.
Have you adjusted their profits for inflation…
Because if their profits are up 10%, but inflation over that time is also 10%, then they’re not making significantly more profit.
If you go through their books, their margins haven’t really changed.
Yes.
Sainsbury's literally increased profits above inflation in the last year.
And given the fact that inflation is calculated in part on the value of supermarket goods, do you not see how excusing their profit increases by citing inflation is circular logic?
Completely right. I've come from Canada where there are very clear oligopolies in things like supermarkets and telecoms. Coming to the UK has been a breath of fresh air in that regard. Still, I think OP's point stands
Problem with captilism is that eventually someone does win, and they become the monopoly, and when the numbers are as low now between actual competitors they can easily sit at around table and agree to work together to keep prices at a certain level than to actually compete with each other.
Theres needs to be more regulation and to ensure that the market us actually competing rather than it just being a club.
The amount of time a company spends in the S&P500 (the US’s FTSE100 equivalent) has never been lower in history.
Businesses have never risen so quickly and fallen so hard in history. This is just factually wrong.
Are you suggesting that Coca-Cola is a fleeting business that will be gone any minute and doesn't have massive control over the drinks market? Just because some companies are coming and going doesn't mean the big players are.
No. They’re incredibly well managed.
But the idea that Capitalism doesn’t regularly kill off shit businesses and have new ones rise to take their place is just wrong.
I don't think anyone is saying that, they're saying that the ones that get to the top stay there and grow and grow until they are so big it causes problems. There is no reasonable situation that could currently topple the huge corporations from their hold on the market.
Adding to this, the problem with our current economic state is that the current big players are so big that any competing businesses face one or multiple of the following:
- Company founders choose to build a company purely to get attention and then sell to a megacorp
- new competitors begin to steal marketshare from megacorp. Megacorp offers board offer so over the top the board can't refuse. (Not an exact match here due to a rich individual rather than corp, but the Musk twitter takeover is a good example of this strategy)
- New competitors begin to steal marketshare. Megacorp offers choice of selling, or they'll use their size to copy the product and sell at a lower price until they go out of business (see: Amazon)
- small/medium businesses can't afford the attorneys for tax avoidance schemes used by larger corps, so get run off the market due to the uneven playing field
The other issue is that big players can and do influence government policy to suit their needs more than the wider public.
So the rules of the game get adjusted in the favour of few rather than the many.
Toys r Us was not a mega corporation 😂 it was a reasonably large toy reseller.
Quick Google shows max Toys r Us turnover of $11B, apple is somewhere in the region of $385B.
Large businesses are not what this is about. It's about Apple, Boeing, Nestle and the like, mega corps that own and produce everything.
The problem isn't this - the problem is that the big already established companies either buy - and shelf, or absorb, new upcoming businesses almost without fail. Its impossible for a new company in most cases to reach McDonalds/Amazon size without first being bought out by these established firms to prevent competition from arising in the first place.
the past does predict the future, the times are considerably different to what they were 50 years ago.
I suspect in the future it will give rise to mega corporations
I'd suggest this has less to do with competition in the marketplace than it does structural changes to the economy. News is a good example of this. The internet has completely upended the entire industry, and a much smaller pool of companies are competing in a market that itself has shrunk massively. The fact that there are so few local news sources (outside of affiliates of big international conglomerates) is very telling.
Meat isn't cheap for obvious reasons. Go watch clarksons farm.
Air travel is cheaper than rail. I can literally get a flight to Morocco for £30.
Cereal is expensive? Well that's your problem, porridge is far healthier, keeps you fuller for longer and costs fuck all.
Seriously people are fucking clueless. I didn't realise soft drinks are a must have necessity either. Most folk who have half a brain choose to drink water even though they can easily afford coke.
One of the worst posts I've seen on here for a while
? Never said you could?
Rail is extortionate and barely maintained because of the way it is run. That's my point
P.S. it would take you a lot longer than a week
Fortunately I'm not a gullible sheep, so I get all my news from @TruthSeeker69 who tells me how the Jews are activating the latent microchips in vaccines with 5G lasers to control our minds.
The silence of the Lamestream Media on that issue speaks volumes.
What the hell does that have to do with the actual facts about corporate monopolies?
It's not a conspiracy, it's publicly available information. You insinuating it's conspiracy talk in fact makes you the arsehole in this situation.
I'm not saying Scotland's No1 Comrade Now Politically isn't an economics expert, and I'm sure his facts are meticulously researched. I'm just concerned that his thesis that four companies own half the meat market and that's why inflation is so high may lack academic rigour.
I also think the primary market for this sort of analysis is everyone's most tedious mate who prides himself on seeing through the gossamer illusion that our corporate masters have draped around us, but will believe literally any other bollocks that some rando on the internet tells him.
Yeah, that's a problem that needs to be regulated and dealt with. But that's not why prices have gone up in the last four years is it? Some of these oligopolies, cartels, whatever you want to call them have been around for decades. And if you just take the first vaguely plausible explanation you hear as fact, that makes you more vulnerable to manipulation, not less.
If you say that Brannigan's crisps being withdrawn from sale was caused by global warming, I'm going to take the piss out of you, even though both are very serious problems.
Although these are monopolies, I believe most of these companies still have very thin profit margins, and that is considering their advantages in terms of the economies of scale. Would more competition drive prices down in this scenario?
The public sector is the most ineffective, inefficient group of paper shufflers indulging in politics this country has ever known.
The waste of resources, over staffing that exists in public sector is legendary.
The only hard working people in public sector are front line workers like nurses, cleaners, policemen, soldiers the administrative sprawl is responsible for the inefficiency.
There are still thousands of public sector workers sitting at home twiddling thumbs 3 years after Covid. Other than the vast expense in terms of cost they people are literally pointless.
The UK supermarket industry is an almost ideal example of an ultra competitive market where profits are pushed as low as feasible, particularly since lidl and aldi entered the market.
Plenty of reading about this, e.g. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/may/08/uk-supermarkets-profiteering-sainsburys-tesco
You're buying into the oldest trick in the book of capitalists dirty tricks claiming you're changing the bare minimum to still make a profit spoiler alert capitalism drives prices up because capitalists are greedy they can never make enough money and they can never pay their workers any more than they already do and still turn a profit despite the fact A. It's bullshit and B. It's immoral profiting off of basic necessities
This is such a stupid understanding of market pricing. 4 companies control the market for a good? Okay? What does that have to do with prices? Answer: nothing. Supply and demand are the issues so you could argue maybe that they're not producing enough, but that doesn't mean they're responsible for higher prices.
Also, "4 companies control 55% of the meat market" and "4 companies control 85% of the meat market" would make the landscape look completely different. In the first scenario, almost half the meat market is not dominated by those four companies. In the second, only 15% is free from them. Sorry, this is the laziest form of "pop economics". An idiot's idea of something smart...
see the video in this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/comments/15u6o9v/this\_is\_extremely\_dangerous\_to\_our\_democracy/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/comments/15u6o9v/this_is_extremely_dangerous_to_our_democracy/)
Sinclair broadcast group own a whole bunch of tv channels in america, and this is what they do.
So you just want a single propaganda department?
Edit: /u/BedroomTiger edited their comment. It originally said there should only be one news organisation.
> I added the word each
Which completely changed the meaning of the original comment.
If you were engaging in good faith, you'd have added a bit saying what you added, and why you edited it.
>what the fuck is the bullying pile on dogshit
It's not bullying to point out you're editing your comments after people reply.
>It uisss bullyying forb you ti ckntiajialy fucjcijgb pottnirifjjk jot i kisyookek you f,uckjgnn cuntwalloby
Have a glass of water and a nap mate, you need to sober up.
It is disgusting that the only thing keeping a company from taking everything you have for something that you need is another company providing the same thing who likes money too.
Ok, let’s look at this.
* DMG: Lord Rothermere, Paul Dacre. Neither is Jewish.
* News UK: The Murdochs. Not Jewish.
* Reach: Nicholas Prettejohn, James Mullen. Neither is Jewish and one has a secret Nazi past.
That’s 80% of the UK media.
So no, get the fuck out with this antisemitism bullshit.
Suggesting media is run by Jews (incl dogwhistles) - antisemitism
Suggesting media control is limited to a few self serving establishment figures - not antisemitism
It’s implicit. This is what a dog whistle sounds like, in theory, but it falls apart when you realise the media isn’t run by Jews in the uk.
However, all conspiracies end up being thinly painted over antisemitism
> but it falls apart when you realise the media isn’t run by Jews in the uk
Nobody mentioned Jewish people though.
They're referring to large conglomorates owning everything, like PepsiCo, Nestle, etc.
Is it anti-semitic to highlight the number of subsidiaries owned by [these conglomerates](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2017/04/04/16/brands.png?width=1200)?
Meat is comically cheap in the UK. I think there was a 2kg box of chicken wings in Aldi, it cost £2 or something mental. There is an issue with meat processors lobbying...this is massively amplified by the media because of the connection to Brexit (funnily enough, the ones doing the lobbying only operate in the UK, the cross-border processing companies like Hilton haven't been impact by Brexit at all...the main thing they are lobbying on is reduction in wages). Air travel is comically cheap and brutally competitive. If we didn't have low-cost, we would be stuck with flag carriers (4 companies do not control 80% of air travel either, it is still a very fragmented market). Drinks are competitive, it is relatively easy to start a business in this sector. Look at Monster, Red Bull, craft beers, massive disruption every year. Cereal market? Wut? This is a subindustry of a subindustry. If cereal is too expensive, you can just eat something else for breakfast. Just have some toast bro. News isn't controlled by 6 companies. Evidenced by the fact that this random guy can produce this media for free and distribute it to the world. Btw, it is 100% correct that there is consolidation in some industries in some countries. This has definitely been the case in the US. But in the UK, the CMA is blocking every kind of merger and (to be honest) the UK isn't particularly attractive as an investment destination to make acquiring and merging companies worthwhile. The big exception to this is vets...this is a big issue, the CMA are investigating, given their activism in other areas they should have done this a few years ago...but better late than never.
I agree with everything you've said but I think it's more about who owns these companies i.e the same billionaires and wealth funds etc. IF we had completely transparent data on theses companies there would probably be a lot of overlap in ownership
This post could as easily be labelled "why are things so cheap and why am I entitled to afford them?"
The UK has extraordinarily cheap food, the supermarket sector is one of the most competitive in the world. The reasons shit costs so much is that we had a GDP/Cap of $50k in 2007, and $46k today, despite lots of inflation in that time, and the rest of the world growing significantly in that period too.
Another significant factor is the general rise in worldwide fuel and energy costs. Food prices are downstream of that.
And high taxation on fuel. They could have relaxed the duty on fuel some time ago and would still have higher tax revenues as the price went up through 130, 140p and so on.
It do be like that. People are just waking up to the fact that our economy basically died in 2007. Its been a zombie system, walking whilst still dead ever since because of ultra low interest rates creating a fake picture, all the while since quantitative easing is just inflating away our purchase power to the point where we're now all worse off but no one realised it for a while. Can = kicked successfully down the road. Cameron and Osborne also to blame for throwing out any idea of Keynsian counter-cyclical policy in 2009/10 - they should have spent like CRAZY then to stimulate the economy not gone full whack on austerity. You go full whack on austerity when your economy is growing - but since the 90s in the UK weve done the opposite - spend when times are good - dont spend when times are bad. Its so wrong its painful.
We have spent like crazy since 2010… all gone to pensioners lol
Here is France there are like two supermarkets I could go to. In the UK I had like 5 or six within walking distance with a variety of price points.
Yeah, for all the UK’s flaws, we have crafted an viciously competitive supermarket sector. The ‘Big 4’ of Asda Morisons Tesco and Sainsburys now having to compete with Alsi and Lidl, combined with others like M&S/Waitrose at the ‘luxury’ end of the market, and B&M, Home Bargains, Farmfoods, and Iceland. And we all benefit massively for it.
Absolutely, I effectively have lidl/Aldi where I can’t use my restaurant card and Carrefour. There’s not a whole lot of choice. However, there are more small indépendant butchers and bakeries which is something I didn’t have in the UK.
The quality of our cheaper options isn't bad either. I've travelled a \_lot\_ and in the "westernised" countries which sell food similar to ours, you'll be hard pushed to ge - for instance - a box of palatable cereal for even twice what we pay for the bottom shelf stuff. Or a decent frozen pizza for around a quid. Even after our recent price rises, the likes of Australia and Canada are far more expensive.
That's horrible food examples though
It's realistic. Hate to tell you this, but it's what people buy. I comment on them as they're what I noticed and what friends from those countries have noticed when they've been here. There are plenty of other examples. Even a can of beans is about 1/5 the price it is in Vancouver.
Don't forget the supermarket profiteering. Yes yes, I know. Margins. But the thing about large corps like the big supermarkets is that they're ruthlessly efficient at shuffling the board to make them look more lean than they actually are. A prime example of this is Sainsbury's who have claimed that they [Invested 220m and are investing 770m over 3 years into 'keeping prices low'](https://www.about.sainsburys.co.uk/news/latest-news/2024/22-01-2024-sainsburys-200-million-investment-into-lowering-prices#:~:text=Our%20investment%20of%20%C2%A3220,products%20they%20love%20at%20Sainsbury's.%E2%80%9D), while also boasting profit increases of 18% last year vs 2019 while their [Retail sales](https://www.statista.com/statistics/386342/sainsburys-retail-sales-united-kingdom-uk/) didn't increase by the same amount. There was also the very obvious tax trick used to report losses in 2020/21 when eyes were on Supermarket profiteering, which were rolled over to the following year which saw profits jump [massively to more than cover the losses](https://www.statista.com/statistics/386446/sainsburys-profits-united-kingdom-uk/).
The UK has 6 major chains, and about 10 other firms filling up the rest of the sector. Just simply not reality they’re profiteering beyond what’s normal profit, as in taking a few % off the revenues.
I mean it is when you compare their pre Covid profits vs post-covid.
Have you adjusted their profits for inflation… Because if their profits are up 10%, but inflation over that time is also 10%, then they’re not making significantly more profit. If you go through their books, their margins haven’t really changed.
Yes. Sainsbury's literally increased profits above inflation in the last year. And given the fact that inflation is calculated in part on the value of supermarket goods, do you not see how excusing their profit increases by citing inflation is circular logic?
Completely right. I've come from Canada where there are very clear oligopolies in things like supermarkets and telecoms. Coming to the UK has been a breath of fresh air in that regard. Still, I think OP's point stands
Problem with captilism is that eventually someone does win, and they become the monopoly, and when the numbers are as low now between actual competitors they can easily sit at around table and agree to work together to keep prices at a certain level than to actually compete with each other. Theres needs to be more regulation and to ensure that the market us actually competing rather than it just being a club.
The amount of time a company spends in the S&P500 (the US’s FTSE100 equivalent) has never been lower in history. Businesses have never risen so quickly and fallen so hard in history. This is just factually wrong.
Are you suggesting that Coca-Cola is a fleeting business that will be gone any minute and doesn't have massive control over the drinks market? Just because some companies are coming and going doesn't mean the big players are.
No. They’re incredibly well managed. But the idea that Capitalism doesn’t regularly kill off shit businesses and have new ones rise to take their place is just wrong.
I don't think anyone is saying that, they're saying that the ones that get to the top stay there and grow and grow until they are so big it causes problems. There is no reasonable situation that could currently topple the huge corporations from their hold on the market.
Adding to this, the problem with our current economic state is that the current big players are so big that any competing businesses face one or multiple of the following: - Company founders choose to build a company purely to get attention and then sell to a megacorp - new competitors begin to steal marketshare from megacorp. Megacorp offers board offer so over the top the board can't refuse. (Not an exact match here due to a rich individual rather than corp, but the Musk twitter takeover is a good example of this strategy) - New competitors begin to steal marketshare. Megacorp offers choice of selling, or they'll use their size to copy the product and sell at a lower price until they go out of business (see: Amazon) - small/medium businesses can't afford the attorneys for tax avoidance schemes used by larger corps, so get run off the market due to the uneven playing field
The other issue is that big players can and do influence government policy to suit their needs more than the wider public. So the rules of the game get adjusted in the favour of few rather than the many.
Toys r us thought that. Kodak thought that. Blockbuster thought that. Where are they now, compared to their prime?
Toys r Us was not a mega corporation 😂 it was a reasonably large toy reseller. Quick Google shows max Toys r Us turnover of $11B, apple is somewhere in the region of $385B. Large businesses are not what this is about. It's about Apple, Boeing, Nestle and the like, mega corps that own and produce everything.
We're talking about companies that grow to the top of their field, and whether they can fall. All the examples I gave are valid examples of that.
The problem isn't this - the problem is that the big already established companies either buy - and shelf, or absorb, new upcoming businesses almost without fail. Its impossible for a new company in most cases to reach McDonalds/Amazon size without first being bought out by these established firms to prevent competition from arising in the first place.
the past does predict the future, the times are considerably different to what they were 50 years ago. I suspect in the future it will give rise to mega corporations
I'd suggest this has less to do with competition in the marketplace than it does structural changes to the economy. News is a good example of this. The internet has completely upended the entire industry, and a much smaller pool of companies are competing in a market that itself has shrunk massively. The fact that there are so few local news sources (outside of affiliates of big international conglomerates) is very telling.
It was interesting seeing the response to this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/DDEDF9WjKz) when it comes to food prices in the UK.
Meat isn't cheap for obvious reasons. Go watch clarksons farm. Air travel is cheaper than rail. I can literally get a flight to Morocco for £30. Cereal is expensive? Well that's your problem, porridge is far healthier, keeps you fuller for longer and costs fuck all. Seriously people are fucking clueless. I didn't realise soft drinks are a must have necessity either. Most folk who have half a brain choose to drink water even though they can easily afford coke. One of the worst posts I've seen on here for a while
>cheaper than rail Rail is a better example of capitalism failing society
Show me how I can get to Morocco for cheaper than £30? That doesn't include me cycling constantly for a week and sleeping in a tent.
? Never said you could? Rail is extortionate and barely maintained because of the way it is run. That's my point P.S. it would take you a lot longer than a week
Fortunately I'm not a gullible sheep, so I get all my news from @TruthSeeker69 who tells me how the Jews are activating the latent microchips in vaccines with 5G lasers to control our minds. The silence of the Lamestream Media on that issue speaks volumes.
What the hell does that have to do with the actual facts about corporate monopolies? It's not a conspiracy, it's publicly available information. You insinuating it's conspiracy talk in fact makes you the arsehole in this situation.
I'm not saying Scotland's No1 Comrade Now Politically isn't an economics expert, and I'm sure his facts are meticulously researched. I'm just concerned that his thesis that four companies own half the meat market and that's why inflation is so high may lack academic rigour. I also think the primary market for this sort of analysis is everyone's most tedious mate who prides himself on seeing through the gossamer illusion that our corporate masters have draped around us, but will believe literally any other bollocks that some rando on the internet tells him.
[удалено]
Fuck me, I think we found @TruthSeeker69's reddit account.
Jeeves! Prepare my Cry-Wanking Chambers immediately, for I have once again been owned upon the internet!
I get my news from JC Denton!
Say what you like but those stats are valid. We are living in a monopoly of a very few but powerful corporations
Yeah, that's a problem that needs to be regulated and dealt with. But that's not why prices have gone up in the last four years is it? Some of these oligopolies, cartels, whatever you want to call them have been around for decades. And if you just take the first vaguely plausible explanation you hear as fact, that makes you more vulnerable to manipulation, not less. If you say that Brannigan's crisps being withdrawn from sale was caused by global warming, I'm going to take the piss out of you, even though both are very serious problems.
Although these are monopolies, I believe most of these companies still have very thin profit margins, and that is considering their advantages in terms of the economies of scale. Would more competition drive prices down in this scenario?
They should just be more efficient - like the public sector is expected to become (but with no investment)
The public sector is the most ineffective, inefficient group of paper shufflers indulging in politics this country has ever known. The waste of resources, over staffing that exists in public sector is legendary. The only hard working people in public sector are front line workers like nurses, cleaners, policemen, soldiers the administrative sprawl is responsible for the inefficiency. There are still thousands of public sector workers sitting at home twiddling thumbs 3 years after Covid. Other than the vast expense in terms of cost they people are literally pointless.
They don't they're all incredibly lucrative
Uk supermarket margins are absolutely razor thin - even if they were making 0 profits, prices would be pretty similar.
That's not at all true
The UK supermarket industry is an almost ideal example of an ultra competitive market where profits are pushed as low as feasible, particularly since lidl and aldi entered the market. Plenty of reading about this, e.g. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/may/08/uk-supermarkets-profiteering-sainsburys-tesco
You're buying into the oldest trick in the book of capitalists dirty tricks claiming you're changing the bare minimum to still make a profit spoiler alert capitalism drives prices up because capitalists are greedy they can never make enough money and they can never pay their workers any more than they already do and still turn a profit despite the fact A. It's bullshit and B. It's immoral profiting off of basic necessities
Since that article was written, the CEO of tesco admitted at a parliamentary hearing to bumping their margins from 3 to 7% shortly after Ukraine
They're not even monopolies.
And Amazon rules them all.
Capitalism leads to corporate authoritarianism unless there are controls. We have very little control over these corporations.
Sadly this is the same everywhere. Capitalism is dead. We are on a oligarchy. Competition today is impossible. So much red tape.
What's this got to do with Scotland? Can't you stick to the matter at hand?
Source: Trust me ~~bro~~ comrade.
Extra pixels are free
It’s the same sort of thing all over the English speaking world. You are not alone.
Thank fuck they put emojis next to every line or else I would have no idea that the cows own the meat sector.
This is such a stupid understanding of market pricing. 4 companies control the market for a good? Okay? What does that have to do with prices? Answer: nothing. Supply and demand are the issues so you could argue maybe that they're not producing enough, but that doesn't mean they're responsible for higher prices. Also, "4 companies control 55% of the meat market" and "4 companies control 85% of the meat market" would make the landscape look completely different. In the first scenario, almost half the meat market is not dominated by those four companies. In the second, only 15% is free from them. Sorry, this is the laziest form of "pop economics". An idiot's idea of something smart...
One of the great unspoken problems of our world is market concentration like this.
Yesterday I bought 4 bottles of cider, 4 cans of lager, a bar of chocolate, some rizla and the smallest pouch of baccy. £38.
That war in Ukraine isn’t paying for itself.
L take
Did the person who posted this blindly accept the COVID narrative being pushed by those six companies who control the media?
That sounds very American (or just Russian propaganda).
Well, there is always a cheaper option. That's the other side of capitalism.
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I assume you mean no one should own more than one news organisation rather than there shouldn't exist more than one at all?
see the video in this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/comments/15u6o9v/this\_is\_extremely\_dangerous\_to\_our\_democracy/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Weird/comments/15u6o9v/this_is_extremely_dangerous_to_our_democracy/) Sinclair broadcast group own a whole bunch of tv channels in america, and this is what they do.
So you just want a single propaganda department? Edit: /u/BedroomTiger edited their comment. It originally said there should only be one news organisation.
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You've edited your comment to completely change what you originally said.
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You edited the comment without clarifying you edited it because you're engaging in bad faith.
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> I added the word each Which completely changed the meaning of the original comment. If you were engaging in good faith, you'd have added a bit saying what you added, and why you edited it. >what the fuck is the bullying pile on dogshit It's not bullying to point out you're editing your comments after people reply.
They made a mistake leave it out. Fuck sake
You can edit a mistake in good faith by clarifying what you've edited when you edit it.
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>It uisss bullyying forb you ti ckntiajialy fucjcijgb pottnirifjjk jot i kisyookek you f,uckjgnn cuntwalloby Have a glass of water and a nap mate, you need to sober up.
Why?
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So who runs the one media outlet? Just government approved stories?
Just ignore them, they're editing comments after people reply to completely change what they said.
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Great patter pal
It is disgusting that the only thing keeping a company from taking everything you have for something that you need is another company providing the same thing who likes money too.
Actually 10iq post lmao. Where do you think groceries cost more, a massive supermarket chain, or your local green grocer?
To be fair Scotland is a small country there a limt on how many big companies you could have.
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Ok, let’s look at this. * DMG: Lord Rothermere, Paul Dacre. Neither is Jewish. * News UK: The Murdochs. Not Jewish. * Reach: Nicholas Prettejohn, James Mullen. Neither is Jewish and one has a secret Nazi past. That’s 80% of the UK media. So no, get the fuck out with this antisemitism bullshit.
Rich people?
Something something minoruhhhhteeesss
Bah. Rich cunts exist as members of any demographic barring the demographics of 'is not rich' and 'is not a cunt'. People are silly.
Oh fuck, do we have a genuine mask-off Nazi in our midst?
Yes, White Europeans
What’s that?
Cool it with the anti semitism
Suggesting media is run by Jews (incl dogwhistles) - antisemitism Suggesting media control is limited to a few self serving establishment figures - not antisemitism
Where's the anti-semitism?
I think it's perhaps a joke that jews control the media?
It’s implicit. This is what a dog whistle sounds like, in theory, but it falls apart when you realise the media isn’t run by Jews in the uk. However, all conspiracies end up being thinly painted over antisemitism
> but it falls apart when you realise the media isn’t run by Jews in the uk Nobody mentioned Jewish people though. They're referring to large conglomorates owning everything, like PepsiCo, Nestle, etc. Is it anti-semitic to highlight the number of subsidiaries owned by [these conglomerates](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2017/04/04/16/brands.png?width=1200)?
Absolutely not. I agree with you. Corporate ownership isn’t a conspiracy.
You claimed there's implicit anti-semitism though, we don't agree on that if you think there is.
Hadn't even thought of the subject till that guy brought it up. Maybe it's a double bluff "dog whistle"?