What with the shortage of new cars for sale and the stories I keep seeing of them flying off the lots, I have to ask: What's with all of the "sales events" commercials the car companies are running right now?
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If you're wondering why meat prices are so high, it's not because the ranchers or the supermarkets are making more money from it. They're not. It's the meatpackers. Tyson Foods, Cargill, National Beef Packing Company and JBS have bought up and closed competing slaughterhouses. Over the last forty years, those four companies have gone from having 36% of the market to 85%. They squeeze the ranchers and the feedlots and then keep the savings for themselves.
120 years ago, they would be called "the beef trust". Maybe they're not conspiring, but they are acting in concert. None of the companies seem to seek to undercut the others. It's sort of an unvoiced, unspoken price-fixing scheme. Which means that they are price-fixing, but since they aren't discussing it amongst each other, they're not doing anything that can be proven.
But we know what is going on. It's extracting the maximum amount of money from the consumers and the producers to benefit the middleman. It's charging as much as the market can bear, which was evil when the railroads were doing it in the 19th Century and it's just as evil now.
One of the main functions of government should be restraining the unfettered greed of corporations. Corporations do not exist for the public good. They don't care about their employees, their customers, the nation, the environment, none of that. Corporations are amoral sociopaths, it is baked into the system. You need only look at a few tech companies (one of which stated, when it was much smaller, that its guiding principle was "do no evil", a principle that has been replaced by "let's make a shitload more money") to see that in action. The fuckery in the pharmaceuitcal companies, especially the huge price-hikes of older drugs, is another example.
Those greedy pigs need to be restrained, lest they ruin us all.
A blog by a "sucker" and a "loser" who served her country in the Navy.
If you're one of the Covidiots who believe that COVID-19 is "just the flu",
that the 2020 election was stolen, or
especially if you supported the 1/6/21 insurrection,
leave now.
Slava Ukraini!
Tuesday, December 28, 2021
1 comment:
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When I worked at a Sizzler steak house all of those years ago, we bought our meat from IBP, which has since become a subsidiary of Tyson. They seemed like a good company back then, and the prices and service were excellent.
ReplyDeleteTyson, on the other hand, are a bunch of pricks. They stayed open while their employees on the line died of covid in droves, and don't even get me started about their chicken business.
-Doug in Sugar Pine