In an editorial criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris for her speech on Friday, the Washington Post claimed that it’s “hard to see how groceries” qualify as a perpetrator of “excessive” profits.
A lesson in market concentration is overdue.
Markets are ‘concentrated’ when a few companies control a substantial percentage of the market. Concentrated markets are not a consumer’s friend.
At the consumer level, a 2023 USDA report revealed “[i]n most metropolitan areas, five to six store chains account for most supermarket sales.”
The challenge here is that chains aren’t individually owned. For example, Kroger owns two chains in the Seattle MSA, “account[ing] for about one-third of the Seattle region’s grocery market.“
Three firms control about half the Seattle area grocery market: Kroger, Albertson’s (Safeway) and Costco.
At the wholesale level, “the four largest meatpackers accounted for 85% of steer and heifer slaughter and 67% of hog slaughter” in 2019.
For farmers, “two seed companies accounted for 72% of planted corn acres and 66% of planted soybean acres in the U.S. in 2018-20.”
Fewer and fewer firms control the products on the shelves. They are responsible for shrinkflation and offer an “illusion of choice.”
These are not “free” and “competitive” markets. “[P]er capita, Americans spend more on food than Italians,” according to Austin Frerick, author of ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry.’
Now add to all of this Kroger’s implementation of digital price tags “which would allow employees to update prices for items within seconds.” The price when you took an item off the shelf could easily be less than when you scanned it to check out.
It’s a system and that system is broken, whether the Washington Post editorial board thinks so or not.
Democracy dies in willful ignorance.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com