Both statements are true by the definition of their words because salaries are counted as costs and subtract from revenue to give you smaller profits. Sooooo, higher salary is the reason for their smaller profits.
Yep. Because it’s easier to buy a captive consumer population through setting conditions through legislation or gain them with addictive additives and processing or get access to cheaper materials and labor regardless of quality, fairness, safety etc than try to appeal to each individual separately and solely.
@ArkGenesys Are those fascists in the room with us? Did the socialists show up at the voting booth? Are liberals sane and intelligent? The answer is the same for all.
@ArkGenesys.....wtf it already is socialist. Government owns the military, fund lots and subsidize billionaire industries, picked up the tab on research and development for many consumer products. Ensure things work and Fkorida is actually providing consumer insurance.
@flyinpolack6633How long has she been there, what's the rough COL, and is that just her hourly rate extrapolated to a full time salary or is she actually full time? One of the tactics business use is to hire 4 workers working 30 hours rather than hire 3 and give them full time 40 hour status so they don't qualify for benefits since the benefits+pay of 3 employees would be way more than the pure pay of 4. If full time, that'd be ~$21.5/hr which is right at the top of national bagging rates for starting rates. Openings I see near me in a 600k Midwest metro area are advertising $12-$15/hr. Last person I knew doing bagging was earning $16/hr after a few years at a Pick N Save ~2019.
You must not be a Christian. From what republicans have told me, Jesus was all for bombing people and was firmly opposed to helping people who can’t afford to eat.
This was an issue brought up in the Supreme Court in 2010. Look up "Citizens United v. FEC". It was ruled 5-4 in the supreme court to allow continue allowing bribes and is probably the most detrimental decision in the history of the US legal system.
Walmart is horrible -- go in the meat section , grab a ham and take it to the veg section and actually weigh it -- it's 2 lbs more in some cases!! Complete robbery. And no state/county is following weights and measures with Walmart.
I think most people today can get on-board with a government funded grocery store chain just like universal healthcare. People need to eat, and it would be nice we don't have to be pawns that have to keep paying more day after day so billionaires can make more money. Of which money they use to lobby against us even more. A government-run grocery store would force every grocery store in the nation to compete.
And there is the punchline: "A 1% Tax Increase". So what you're saying is we just need to spend $900,000,000,000 and then we'll get a discount on our groceries?! I'm sure the government is really running these stores so efficiently. Do they have to pay for the real estate? Do they have to pay taxes? Do they have to pay for security? Advertising? Your whole argument is full of holes. Do they use military planes and airmen to ship this stuff? Trucking? Fuel? Fuel taxes? Do they get to force enemy combatants to stock the shelves late at night like the US military does? I bet your next video will teach us all about how Modern Monetary Theory really works or How Karl Marx's ideas are really good just misunderstood and didn't really result in the deaths of 60,000,000-100,000,000 people when implemented. Walmart spent $60-70 Billion to get its distribution system set up. You think this system is going to be anywhere near as efficient? Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself. Set up a free grocery store and he'll become completely dependent on you and vote Democrat. What a stupid idea by people that have only ever "run" a political campaign and not a real business.
@NekoBoyOfficialThey still spend $1 trillion a year on the military. At the same time, most of that ‘social’ spending is just subsidies to private actors, not providing anything to ppl in need.
I mean, this is just a feature of the free market. It can in many ways be a cool thing as long as you keep it in check, but incumbents converging on the very peak of the supply and demand curves is simply how the game works. Same thing with real estate and every other thing we complain about. This is why many people favor at the very least heavily regulating essential goods, although swaths of the country think that's an insane idea. A government-run competitor seems like a good idea too, but it does face issues like the instability from the electoral cycle, from politicians meddling in its financing and whatnot for their own gain, like you see in many other areas since nobody acting for 4 years at a time wants to engage in long-term investments, nobody wants to be in office during a recession.
@michaelwayne1977Condemning the majority of people to sickness and hazards by early adulthood (as opposed to health and safety) so 1000 old white men can be billionaires SHOULD be illegal! Or do you LIKE hoardes of sick, scared people who should be in the prime of life?!? 🤨
That is the point of profit. They are locked in a struggle to get more and more profits statistically year by year. They never get as much proportionally from when they started so there is natural asymmetry.
That doesn’t mean the profit margins arnt slim it’s the amount you spend vs what you make. The profit margin is 2% pers store if you have a few thousand stores you’re making millions or billions, however that doesn’t change that 2% groceries are middlemen retailers they’re buying shit and selling it thus their profits are impacted by the prices from manufacturers and farmers. Thus government ran groceries don’t answer the underlying problem which is the manufacturer cost also if you think the military is bloated their is no reason to expect any difference with groceries
@M@Mystic_Light you need to own a store to use google? The average operating profit of grocery or retail food is 1-2% per any site or study I can find or you wanna look at. the average operating profit for retail in general is 6%. The average operating profit for any small business which is most businesses is around 13% so no there isn’t some mythical grocery store doing 30% The profit margin and operating margin arnt the same as gross profit is just what you spent to make whatever vs what you sold it for the operating profit includes rent,taxes,salaries etc. you might be confusing them.
@Mystic_LightI was in the grocery store industry for 40 years. It used to be 1 percent in the 70s now it’s closer to 5 or more depending on on the store.
Government exists to keep people safe and to defend the country, not to become the largest employer. We are over-regulated, over-taxed, and it is crazy to place our trust in politicians whose only solution is more government and who are bought and paid for to somehow solve it.
@Digger-Nick Dude, there is a working exemple in the video above: The Defence Commissary Agency (DeCA), they are a state-run and have existed for decades. Are you a bot or just so brainwashed that you can't absorb information contrary to your worldview? Or maybe you didn't watch the video at all?
@ercushkakulmetov7458 Nah. I'd call you guys fascists for wanting to hand over the most effective resource for controlling people over to the government.
@Digger-Nick Exactly like the light bulb. You can't make light by turning a crank and Edison showed about 5,000 ways to not make a light bulb. It didn't work so it can't work so we shouldn't even try? We shouldn't keep trying until we find a way to make it work!!! The light bulb is a LIE!!!!
You're absolutely right, but the problem is you're arguing against people who don't see anything wrong with putting a paywall between sick people and medical care. They're simply indoctrinated to be slaves that feed and clothe and house themselves. I have a degree in international supply chain management and by crowdsourcing my extended family. I've been able to buy bulk and distribute to them saving everybody a ton of cash every year. Basically running an on paper grocery store for family. And no, I don't take a massive cut. And no, I don't live off the profits. But this is an absolutely viable solution to hardship. The fact that people don't understand that and rail and fight against their own well-being is the problem with America in a nutshell.
Lets just make sure that corporations don’t get involved with administering it… Government programs so often rely on for-profit companies to actually deliver the programs, which causes issues
All the while schmoozing it up with their pals in Little Saint James. I truly think once you make a billion, you are just truly an evil person. It's such an absurd amount that you _have_ to being doing evil things to get there.
@quor2243 You must be new here. Look up private equity firms like Black Rock which own literally 99% of the world's resources (including government and therefore the laws/regulations etc) The problem is not all rich people, just the ones that now basically control everything
Businesses are supposed to be profitable. Governments are supposed to be able to bring in enough revenues to be able to provide Enterprise Services, to provide the highest good possible for its residents without creating long term, burdensome debts, unapproved by the populace. YOU CAN'T RUN ONE LIKE THE OTHER. 🌵🧓+73 year old Retired Nurse, EMT & former World traveler + 5 🦮🐶🐩🐕🐕🦺 Rescues🌵💙🇺🇸💙 who now supports candidates who lean towards a Democratic Socialism platform with Capped Net Worth income limits. After reaching $500 million, net worth is subject to progressively increasing taxation. If you can't get by on more than $500 Million and $1 in any given year, you really need to learn the differences between Needs and Wants.
Sure they do. The local chain store creates a nice illusion by having discount cards and sales. Walmart doesn't deal in that smoke and mirror game for the most part. I shop the sales at the chain stores and shop Walmart for specific staples that are consistently cheaper. It amazes me that King Arthur flour is typically $5.49 or so at Walmart but $9 at Safeway.
@wturber Walmart has charges fifty cents more for butter than the local chain for 5 years now. it's super weird the products walmart just charges more for. I'll make a list using both stores online shopping with the instore prices and sometimes walmart is a few dollars more. local chain I compared to is not safeway. it's food lion. safeway is ALWAYS expensive. Aldi can cheaper than walmart a lot of times too but doesn't feature store pricing on the website for me to be able to compare.
The big stores here are Walmart, meijer, and Kroger. It really varies by item and what's on sale. Kroger is the most expensive but has the best meat and produce but limited selections of everything else. Meijer has a better selection of groceries than the others and is a middle price point. Walmart tends to be cheaper but their selection is OK and their meat depot is horrible. I need to investigate Aldis still.
CO-OP's did work in the 70s & 80s. And I grew up with one in greenbelt, maryland. We worked fine until regulations were cut and corporations were allowed to be greedy !!!!
Coops still work! There is a national network of thriving food coops across the country. What needs to happen is the government should give grants to create coops in every city.
I will never stop laughing at people who demand access to 47 different colors of cans for their navy bean aisle. They're the same beans, purchased from the same group of farmers and processed by the same group of international conglomerates and sold to 12 different canning companies who put 4 different labels on their stockpile each.
I remember when green grocers, butchers, and dry goods were seperate individually owned stores and modern chain markets were just creeping in. I kind of preferred that system especially as it focused more on local food economies and everything was fresh with out all the extra steps to maintain that freshness.
Even more than that! Walmart is a good example -- they pay their employees so little that those employees qualify for food stamps, meaning that the taxpayer is paying for Walmart's employees to eat instead of Walmart paying for it.
I've heard they get a nice housing allowance to live comfortably wherever they are stationed and even get more money if it's an expensive area, like in San Diego. Also top tier healthcare. This is what I've heard from ex military folks.
You are wrong. Most other governments make FAR BETTER use of their much less tax payer dollars. It's not that we want gov services to turn profit, it's the only way to keep gov agents accountable to some degree.
@_w_w_ ExpIain how you wouId keep caretaking of heaviIy disabled peopIe “profitabIe”. Or heII, even just pubIic Iibraries? Other countries aIso don’t hit this waII because there is nowhere near as much Iaxity for privatized bIoodsuċkers to come in & try to scoop tax revenue into their own bank accounts. There is zero justification for ínsurance-middIemen to get between taxpayers & heaIth províders as one simpIe exampIe, none. So aII of that wasted taxbase síphoned into “negotiating” Pharma prices (that were researched via govt. grants to begin with) wouId disappear Not to mention aII those poisonous aid & subsidies roIIing into the pockets of lsraeI etc., which couId aII be much better spent on our own peopIe instead. AII connected
@_w_w_ There are two major outlets of inefficiency in the US government that don't exist elsewhere. The first one is military spending. The US government will spend as many bucks as their bang-makers ask for. It will also involve itself in foreign wars, ship overpriced weapons overseas at the drop of a hat, and pay 6 figures for 'heated toilet seats' without asking what is actually being paid for. The second one is corruption and poor contract decisions. They're more or less the same bin - officials face basically no penalties for giving government contracts to their rich friends and even family, and even when there's not corruption involved, many times the government contract bidding process doesn't look at reliability, logistical feasibility, or actionable guarantees. One contractor might win bids for a dozen city projects when they can only feasibly handle one in the given timespan, and make only verbal or vague guarantees that they can do the work in the time allotted. They'll underestimate material and labor costs and include clauses in their final contract to have the government pay the difference if they have a 'budget overrun'. Essentially, nobody is held responsible when the government gets scammed and the people doing the scamming handle their profit such that there's no way for the government to get that money back. You're right that the government needs to be accountable, but treating government like a for-profit business is not how you do it. Government is made up of individuals - it's not some mythical monolithic thing that you need to interact with via arcane ritual. You make every person in a position of power face huge, 'unfair' penalties for misuse of their power and let citizens sue officials for discrepancies in spending. Boom, accountability. Wealthy people with a lot to lose stop running for office. Competent people with the mentality of 'doing a job' take their places.
Tax payer are ALREADY subsidizing grocery stores like Walmart and Kroger--through a complex set of welfare programs because these companies route profits to shareholders not employees and then shift the cost of THEIR labor to the tax payer.
@NasarAhmed-co2wdI think poor people have more potential to be socialists than to be as greedy as a rich defender of capitalism, if they are well-informed.
It has always clearly been absolute bullsh|t as to how supermarkets could only eek out 1% profit, but in the next breath they are paying shareholders billions and the ceos tens, if not hundreds of millions.
Walmart had $681 billion in sales and $20 billion in profit. So about 3%. But the scale is large enough to pay out billions in dividends, buybacks, and bonuses.
@richardchild2783 Walmart is quite a special example. There are few chains running a similar business model based on massive, nationwide scale with net profits kept low to maintain dominance. Hard to compare them to dedicated grocery store chains. Interesting to research though.
I'm guessing the military doesn't pay the taxes on gas that consumers pay. Taxes on gas in here in Vermont account for about 12% of the price of a gallon (33c). Additionally, I would assume the military doesn't have to satisfy the same expensive regulatory requirements that civilian companies do
Commissary is better than a lot of places but it isn't as good a markdown as it used to be. Gas prices are just the average price of gas in the area so cheaper ones a few miles away will pull down the cost a little bit
Reminds me of a military friend of mine arguing about government healthcare.. “I’ve been on single payer government care for decades - it’s called the Army”
@robertd9850and he has a place to live, food on his table, clothes on his back, free education and if he can tolerate it for 20 years, a life time pension by the age of 40. Oh the suffering he has endured. 🤨
@K.R.20 Everything. If we are going to have government subsidized grocery stores like the military then we get to tell the customers what to do, where to be, when to be there, and how to act.
What I've learned in the last decade is we the people could have everything we ask for to live better lives, the only thing holding us back is the people in power. How do we find people that aren't greedy to run the country
No the problem is you blame the wrong billionaires. You then get leaders to hurt millionaires and middle class to fund the poor instead of going after the federal reserve and banking cartels that litterally devalue every dollar you have through manipulation of fiat
Walmart is the worst grocery store in the country. I used to live in New Mexico. I knew military people from Kirkland Air Force base. I am pleased that our military people have this commissary system. Lobbying is way out of control. Repeal Citizens United and break up the big corporations.
@Juanitalolo It's also so the govt can save money on salaries... which does save your tax dollars. Plus they are talking about privatizing the commissary system (again) now.
In Europe, particularly in Switzerland and Italy we have lots of supermarket cooperations. Also for stuff like car and household insurance. If you insure your car/house with them, you become a member in the coop and any excess profit will be returned to members. It works perfectly fine. It would work fine in the US too, just don't call it "socialist" under any circumstance 😂
We have one such supermarket cooperative in the western US, Winco, that doesn't require membership, but they easily have the lowest prices in many smaller cities. Not sure how they stack up to Aldi though.
I love my electric co-op, it’s actually hilarious how funny it is to tell the people that try to pitch to me about their for profit utility company to fuck off, because they just raise the price of electricity every time a new data center gets built nearby, or straight up don’t supply energy to rural communities all in the name of “NOT ENOUGH PROFIT, MMM YESSSS” smeagle looking ass, greedy ass, people.
@sallyprzybil2404 The Americans support government run grocery shops and other social net like a affordable healthcare and pension funds. But they don't realise it's a socialist system.
@Deedeedee214there are solutions; price caps, cutting tax loopholes, enforcing anti-monopoly laws, and allowing corporations to crumble like in an actual free market to be replaced by better services..this system of socialized losses and capitalized profits is the shovel digging ourselves into wage slavery
Yep, screw the commissary. I haven't been to one of them in years. People that shop there have been conned into believing that they need brand name foods.
I really like the idea of community-owned grocery stores... 20 people in a neighborhood going in and owning in their own community... It passes down generational wealth. Putting a stake in their own community.. When people own in the community they care about the community, they put back in and invest in their community.. it brings back a sense of belonging to your community and you take pride in it...Community-owned grocery stores prioritize local needs over corporate profits, keeping money within the local economy and acting as essential community hubs. They foster community, offer healthier, locally sourced food options, and provide democratic governance, ensuring the store serves the people and planet. If they work with local (within a hundred miles) Small ranchers and farmers to get all their produce and meat instead of having it shipped in we could now form a bond for healthier food that isn't filled with pesticides and gassed so they have no taste and are filled with either hormones or pesticides while creating a bond with the rural communities around us that would be the icing on the cake... Keeping it all local while supporting each other financially and understanding where our food comes from...
I find the complaint about lack of beand choice to be a strange one. If a government run grocery stores lets people get their basics at an affordable price, would we really care if it only carries a couple brands insteads of dozens? If we dont like what they have, we can just go somewhere else - noone is talking about shutting down remaining stores, do they? But now regular stores have an added motivation to keep price gauging in check because of competition.
Those monthly grocery bills sound absolutely insane from a European perspective. I live in one of the most expensive EU countries and €250 for a months worth is perfectly doable. For a family hitting €500 a month would be crazy fancy. And that's counting EVERYTHING from food, cleaning supplies, bathroom supplies, etc. €1000,- a month sounds absolutely wild, that's a rent bill, not a grocery bill.
Technically you can always go back provided you a veteran ID, the problem is finding a post/base near you. There was a benefit i always wanted to try: go to airforce base and ask when the next flight to japan was and get a free flight! Too lazy to bother i guess.
Get your VA ID card. However, honestly it's not cheaper at the commissary compared to Lidl and ALDI. Commissary was for folks who wanted name brands at a slight discount but Freedom's Choice is more expensive than other store brands.
@Unsatisfiedpickle This would all be so easy to solve if Americans just learned what Capitalism is and is not. Hint: it's only been used a system for couple of centuries. Marx coined the term, and maybe, just maybe that's why Capitalists don't want us to read sources. People might find out Communism is *stateless* so it can't even be a country. They might learn that no country has ever even claimed to be. They might start to realize greedy people lie.
They are getting richer as they burn this country to the ground and we are going to starve and die with no medical no housing and no food they don't give a damn about us so we must get in the streets and stay in the streets until we take our government back PERIOD‼️🤬✊🏼💪🏼✊🏼💪🏼✊🏼💯
That's a rather ignorant rant. The country is not burning. We are not starving. We have riches beyond the dreams of most people around the world. But perhaps you don't have all that? Well, generally you have to work to make a living. By doing so you earn all of those things. Maybe that's the part you're not doing?
@fastfr8ght You're correct. My point was this: kellypowers was implying that we're all in despair and that the country is "burning". it is not. But it is often the case that doomsayers such as him see the entire country as bleak. It is not.
@cokesandwich1668 You should look at a historic graph of wealth inequality in America. It's been constantly getting worse for the entire history of this country. In 2025 the top 1% of wealthy individuals controlled more than a THIRD of all of the wealth of the nation. The bottom HALF of Americans controlled just 2.5%. What good is any form of government (democracy, republic, call it what you want) if it effectively creates a ruling class and a peasant class? I say this as someone in the top 5% of earners as a firmware engineer.
So when the state of New York runs grocery stores, it's considered filthy communism, but when the military does it, it's suddenly a patriotic blessing? I'll never understand Americans.
It isn't communism when the military does it because it is essentially a private club that only military members can shop at. It is a benefit to attract recruits who in return live a very structured life and must be willing to sacrifice their lives if need be. All Mamdani's stores will do is attract leaches already sucking the government teet and providing nothing in return.
Because you can steal in NY and if you try that at a comesary you get arrested, a $3k fine, you lose rank and dont get to leave work until midnight [then back to work at 5am everyday for a mouth
@robertd9850I do think of it as art, but only us electrical contractors would understand it. See I think it's the CSuites that know nothing about business. They're running scams, not businesses. They have victims, not customers. I run an actual business. My work product is just as important as my profits. I often put the product first. That allows me to know my profits are profits, and not money I stole from someone. Dirty hands, clean money!
@TV-xv1lethe federal government is, by orders of magnitude, the most impressive organization on the planet. It provides more service, to more people, in more places, at higher quality,and a lower cost. No private corporation will ever come close in comparison. What you are repeating is private sector propaganda that you've been hearing your whole life. The people who have been serving all of us that propaganda are rich and greedy and have an interest in undermining the government for a few reasons which should be obvious. They want to shrink the government so they can pay less taxes. A government with less resources becomes less effective. A less effective government gives that rich and greedy fucker an opportunity to take over services, do them as shitty as possible, turning as many taxpayer dollars into privatized profits. Try to think about stuff
Bro they paid billions for shareholders who are majority only few rich 1% people It’s not even 1 billion, it’s almost trillions over last decade already
Why don't you just apply to be a CEO and make all that money? If it's such an easy job, anybody can do it, right? I mean, how much knowledge and skill can it really take to run a multi billion dollar company? Everyone here in the comments could run a corporation while they play x-box Obviously
My parents continued to drive a 50 minute round-trip to a base commissary for at least two decades between when my father retired and when my mother died. And there was a Stater Brothers less than a mile away.
The commisary works because it is a military operation. If u mismanage it u would probably be court martialed. Not the same for any other govt groceries.
I would think that the main benefit of having govt owned groceries would be to help push down price gouging by the big chains. Even if the government takes a small loss, if it helps anchor low prices at other stores, it could have a net positive for consumers, who are paying those taxes anyway. The govt doesn't have to outcompete the bigger chains, they just have to have low priced options and diversified suppliers so that prices can't artificially be inflated by big chains.
It doesn’t matter what they want as the problem is the economic system, not the individuals. Capitalism causes wealth concentration and we are seeing the eventual and inevitable results. That’s why it is described as a death cult.
@RAREFORMDESIGNS Yes they are. They're paying for the contracts and subsidies that will be delivered to the donors to the ballroom. Bribes are investments.
None of your taxes-or anybody's for that matter-are going to the ballroom. Same for the arch: it isn't being payed for by your taxes either, although it is fair to say that it's probably being built so he can stroke his ego. Nevertheless, I do actually think it's quite a nice tribute to our 250th birthday as a nation; it could've been something worse. That's just my opinion though, and you can feel however you wish to about the arch, you're entitled to. Anyways just wanting to let you know that your taxes aren't going to those two-rather extravagant-projects!
The commissary's $8.53 price is a subsidized mirage. It only works because it's a small system for 8 million people supported by the taxes and infrastructure of a 330-million-person private market. If you replace the private market with the commissary model, you destroy the tax base that pays for the subsidy. You aren't actually lowering the cost of food; you're just moving the charge from the grocery receipt to the taxpayer's bill.
10:56 people love touting the old chestnut "private companies can do it more effectively" and that might actually be true. What they always forget is that private companies wants profit for their stockholders as well. And the stockholders hunger never ends.
If the grocery store is barely scraping by why is the richest man in my country a grocery store tycoon with a bunch of anti monopoly lawsuits being thrown at him due to price fixing (together with the other grocery store chains)
@martinlutherkingjr.5582 Hmm you made me think about it and you're both right and wrong. The whole system would include the profits being taken (it's an extractive loss), so the input to output would not be great. But many use the term efficiency to indicate the systems ability to generate profits.. which in that framing would kind be true, but only if the customer is considered part of the system and your input in capex and the output is expoitation.
Privatizing government is graft. A sub type of corruption. The garbage this administration throws billions at, the commissary is cheap and works. Expanding it to civilians with a minor subsidy makes perfect sense. It’s our money - butter not guns
Corporate greed is insane. Walmart wants to claim that there are issues with policy and taxes on businesses and whatnot, while at the same time posting record profit and marginal operating profit. They claim cost of labor while maintaining wages.
The one on you left for $8.53; is only half the price of the one on your far right, so it's not half the price of all of the others, but we get your point.
Remember, she said they eat out once a week. If you look at the labels, they had name brand items in their pantry. They could EASILY have a bill less than 1,000 dollars if they would budget better. I live in a military town, and most families I know that could buy at the commissary don't.
He's an officer and she runs a whole travel agency (probably selling to his fellow officers and their families in a very prominent area, so people with money) and they live in base housing, I'm willing to bet they bring in over $12k a month after taxes with no home or basic utility bills. $1500 a month for food is nothing for these folks. I do most of my grocery shopping at the Commissary just for myself and spend about $500 and I don't eat out at all so I'm definitely on the lower end, nobody in America can feed an entire family on $500 a month, even 15 years ago that would have been difficult to do.
Taxpayers also subsidize Walmart and other low wage stores via welfare to their underpaid employees...it's just that all those subsidies go to the billionaire owners.
@TenaB-j2l To copy google: No, Walmart employees are not ineligible for government benefits. In fact, reports have consistently shown that Walmart employees are the top users of SNAP (food stamp) and Medicaid beneficiaries in numerous states.
@T@TenaB-j2lThere’s no state or federal program that says you can’t get benefits if you work for a specific company. Benefits are determined by your income and family status. Many Walmart employees make low enough wages to qualify for benefits.
It's because this videos suggestions is just Aldi with the government paying for construction of the building, labour, rent and property taxes. Then you take away all the theft and advertising. Then you basically get the same prices as you do with the military stores .
The Federal Income Tax is higher than local income taxes. The Federal tax base is in the hundreds of millions. As you said in your video their are only 250 stores in the commisary system. New York City has over 5,000 grocery stores feeding over 8,000,000 people. There's no way it could work and you know it and are willfully trying to decieve people !
15:06 one other important factor that I don't think was touched on in this video was that big stores like Walmart pay their employees fairly low wages and as such those people end up getting and needing food stamps and then they spend the food stamps at Walmart. So, thus is an additional layer of subsidization for Walmart. Wal mart gets to underpay their employees and still gets customers out of those same employees
It's just the reality of intentional constant ~3% inflation which is the target inflation of the fed bank. This means roughly every 10 years the value of your dollar is halved intentionally. You're thinking of prices 10 or 20 years ago.
Whenever large monopolies and companies increase their prices and people talk about just decreasing executive and ceo profits, they wants to start talking about communism… but it’s literally just reducing corporate greed
that's partly because it's, technically speaking, socialism to do stuff like that, but that's also because a lot of the masses in the US don't understand how economies work beyond the basics or just don't care, and are still stuck in the mindset of 'Communism/Socialism=Russia/China" which is bad, not helped by the fact that the US government pushed those ideals so heavily to the point that people where able to use it to basically commit modern witch hunts.
If the Military can lower prices by 23.7 percent when they buy in bulk from private suppliers, it makes you wonder what further savings they could implement if they had their own distribution system, their own meat packing system, a direct to farmer purchasing system.
@imapig2024 To add to your point They don’t pay for their real estate The stores sit on military bases. No rent. No land cost. No property tax. No zoning battles.
in this video, we're not just going to tell you why grocery prices are so high We're going to leave peanut butter on a butter knife on the front of our plate for no reason at all so that you can think about it for the rest of the video!
WinCo is an employee owned company and has significantly better pricing than the bullshit giant stores. I love shopping there and supporting that. It shows how elements of socialism/communism can be used to keep things fair and working for all of us.
angloidmuncher They have an ESOP or Employee Owed Stock. My mom worked for them for 30 years and retired early (59) with well over the typically needed amount. The stock goes to enrich the workers and not outside stockholders.
Honestly the government should subsidize Whole Foods (not the grocery store) in grocery stores and increase prices on junk food. Yeah the food companies aren’t going to like it, but junk food isn’t healthy for us to consume everyday.
The scale of misrepresentation here is astounding. While 0.2% of the military budget sounds small, that’s $1.5 billion-spread across fewer than 200 commissaries, around $8.5 million per store. Scaling that to 50,000+ grocery stores and 300,000+ convenience stores nationwide would balloon into hundreds of billions. Comparing food costs to aircraft carriers makes for a dramatic line, but it’s not a scalable comparison. Whether the creators didn’t grasp the math or hoped you wouldn’t, the reality is that this “small percentage” pitch obscures the fact that the cost would be enormous. We spent over $1T in groceries last year. 1% tax on millionaires is $15B.....maybe more on the hoped you wouldn't
9:02 Note: That "billion and a half" looks like 1.5 million because it's X 1,000. You have to pause the video at the top of the page to see the 1.5 million is not dollars but 1 thousand dollars. 1.5M x 1K = 1.5B.
In most of Europe, loss leaders are illegal. We need to end loss leading in the US once and for all. We need to hold these corporations accountable to the people once and for all, not to their board of directors.
Of course it will work this time, despite it not working in socialized countries. Keep in mind that the private grocery stores have to buy real estate and build stores, these military run stores do not. Imagine if we had the government run the mail service....oh wait, we know how that doesn't work well at all, and has become obsolete.
Just give U.S. citizens free Healthcare and education for 100 years. Put money into the public infrastructure for those. Let those educated and healthy people have families for a couple generations and see what we come out with after.
The known problem isn't the farmers, it's the middle men like kraft, general mills, ect ect and meat processors. They pay farmers very little then mark it way way up when the sell it to grocery stores.
@robertd9850 They were being sarcastic and saying you were implying there weren't laws regulating driving speed on public roads. There are and they're enforced generally.
I worked in the Grocery industry as part of Logistics, the stores themselves only make one to two percent as a ploy to keep people from asking questions about the price or for asking for more money to work there. Most of these grocery store chains that are decent size own the distributor that gets the product into the store and they make the rest of their profit there. That way they get to say they're paying astronomical prices but they're paying it to a sister company that's owned by the same people that own the grocery store.
This is true for many industries. We had 4 companies in the vertical integration. One company would have massive losses. Those losses were written off taxes. The other 2 were break even 0 profit. The 4th made massive profits that far outweighted the losses from the other company. If these were all treated as one company we would have payed far higher taxes and no write offs.
One thing I wish you would've mentioned is that the reason that the DMV, Social Security Office, etc., are run so poorly is because our politicians have decided to run them like a dollar general. Instead of running them as a service for the citizens, they frequently close DMVs, etc., to create congestion in the system. It'd be very easy to have a smooth running DMV, etc., if we decided to fund and staff it appropriately, but it's more important to run the government like a dollar general (if you don't understand the dollar general reference, they are a privatized set of stores that are run with a skeleton crew). This benefits a Republicans because they can simply scream about how they underfunded services and now those underfunded services don't work!
In the public schools in Michigan we had great subsidized hot lunches, and all people ever did was complain. The food was good and kids ate it, then say they hated it. Same thing would happen with government grocery stores. They'd work just fine, but as soon as people got used to them they'd start complaining and never stop.
MAN THAT HOT LUNCH PROGRAM FED SO MANY KIDS IN MY COMMUNITY and YET the people there were some of the loudest complainers about "free-loading". As if a kid can even do that.
If you understand what the world runs on yes you’d know that’s stupid. Second we spend far more on the failing social security system and Medicare then we do anything.
@radchad992and why are those systems falling? Well they said “struggling military families” in this video so obviously your military personnel aren’t being paid enough time support a family so combine that with the rest of the population across the rest of the industries who are also being underpaid (by which I mean below the cost of living which has nothing to do with your legal minimum wage) and you’ll find your problem. When people are spending everything they earn on basic utilities and rent with nothing left over for health care or food of course the strain on the government resources is going to increase beyond what it was built for.
@TheChardygirl007military pay is an issue and has to do with overspending on military procurement and r/d. That’s a known issue with literal books written on it. If you want to talk about Americas predicament in general I can write a novel but to be brief we switched from manufacturing to services as an economy and most ppl are paid for doing a redundant job that 2000 ppl are employed for that takes 500 to boost the stock price of companies and lower unemployment. That cost though is traded off to the consumer and services like rent and retail keep climbing and climbing. As for grocery stores in general their prices are going to be up from whatever the producers prices are and since we 1. Gutted manufacturing and 2. Had the ‘08 crash and 3. Had covid, all happen in 30 years the production side of retail is fucked and you’re seeing the chain reaction of stupidity, greed, and reality cascade into what we have now. No amount of subsidizing fixes the underlying systems we through pipe bombs into for decades
The fact that a 1.5 billion dollar subsidy is considered "small" is insane to me. Just because healthcare subsidies and defense expenditure are extremely overbloated and expensive does not mean its okay to finance additional expenditures elsewhere if they arent as bad. Not to mention, the reason that the 1.5 billion subsidy exists in the first place, which this video doesn't really try to describe, is because while on paper it appears that the commissaries attempt to 'break even' on the products that they sell, it completely neglects the operating costs of each establishment such as paying for workers or cleaning supplies or electricity. And the reason that there are so many food deserts and active corporate consolidations in the groceries market is actively because of the bureaucratic systems that we have in place which interfere with the creation of small businesses, such as legal limits on how and where you can establish your store, permanent costs like property taxes, establishment/construction costs which are massively amplified by things like zoning laws and other barriers to entry which ultimately stem from regulation lobbied for by corporations in congress. The commissary system is financially terrible, and the video is disingenuous anyway because part of the reason that theres a push to privatize them in the first place is because commissaries in the US have a 2.4 billion dollar maintenance cost yearly and an extensive maintenance backlog, as well as accusations of using low quality and extremely cheap products that technically meet the requirements for bread or eggs but ultimately don't really meet consumer demand because they aren't at the expected level of quality. Operators of state owned grocery chains have an incentive to cut corners, or rather a lack of an incentive to economize because they do not profit or directly benefit from the financial success of the store that would be directly associated with providing the most highly demanded products, at the expected quality while maintaining their stores properly. Their only incentive IS political and to make it look like they are delivering on low grocery prices - even though they're being forced to keep open grocery stores which are in active decline (like the administrator in the video stated).
Why does it sound like every industry has "really small profit margins" when their ceos and owners are making millions
Gitgud and stop working for them?
@morenothing4uwe're not asking for millions, we're demanding that the lies stop.
Both statements are true by the definition of their words because salaries are counted as costs and subtract from revenue to give you smaller profits. Sooooo, higher salary is the reason for their smaller profits.
Donkey shit Imaginary Accounting
CEO pay is before profits.
Amazing how these companies will spend millions lobbying instead of just providing good service to their customers
Lobbying is like a one time expense. Providing good service is on-going.
@jenstars112Millions...
Do you understand the difference between service and prices?
@jenstars112 no its not. Stop lobbying, and the politicians will sabotage and betray you.
Yep. Because it’s easier to buy a captive consumer population through setting conditions through legislation or gain them with addictive additives and processing or get access to cheaper materials and labor regardless of quality, fairness, safety etc than try to appeal to each individual separately and solely.
If a Billionaire is against it, then I'm for it.
Get out of fascist USA.
@ABa-os6wm Nah, we're making it Socialist USA. It'll be a few years, but the fascists are losing the war.
@ArkGenesys Are those fascists in the room with us? Did the socialists show up at the voting booth? Are liberals sane and intelligent?
The answer is the same for all.
please won't someone think of the billionaires!
@ArkGenesys.....wtf it already is socialist.
Government owns the military, fund lots and subsidize billionaire industries, picked up the tab on research and development for many consumer products. Ensure things work and Fkorida is actually providing consumer insurance.
We are subsidizing Walmart employees because Walmart doesn't pay enough and few are given full-time schedules.
That's such a scam, this need to go to court
...and enriching the fabulously weathly Walton family even more.
My buddie's daughter makes $45k/ year to put bread in bags for Wakmart. For unskilled work that is good money.
@flyinpolack6633 lots of people lie to save face
@flyinpolack6633How long has she been there, what's the rough COL, and is that just her hourly rate extrapolated to a full time salary or is she actually full time? One of the tactics business use is to hire 4 workers working 30 hours rather than hire 3 and give them full time 40 hour status so they don't qualify for benefits since the benefits+pay of 3 employees would be way more than the pure pay of 4.
If full time, that'd be ~$21.5/hr which is right at the top of national bagging rates for starting rates. Openings I see near me in a 600k Midwest metro area are advertising $12-$15/hr. Last person I knew doing bagging was earning $16/hr after a few years at a Pick N Save ~2019.
Hot take: I’d rather my taxes supplement grocery prices instead of blowing up a wedding in a foreign land
You must not be a Christian. From what republicans have told me, Jesus was all for bombing people and was firmly opposed to helping people who can’t afford to eat.
Ahh that's anti capitalist.
No deal
Same. Access to quality, affordable food should be a human right in the "richest country in the world".
Yea, that's right! Why send our tax dollars to a foreign land when we could be blowing up weddings right here in the good ol' USA!
@MichaelG485its sad that the richest country in the world can't provide food to their citizens because they spent so much terrorizing other countries
Lobbying should be considered political bribes and be illegal
RIGHT!! I wrote a paper about it in college 40 years ago. Lawmakers for sale. Made absolutely no sense.
I agree completely! Check out RepresentUS and help pass legislation in your state, they may already be working on something.
It IS policial bribes. Bribes legalized. Amazingly we allow this to go on.
This was an issue brought up in the Supreme Court in 2010. Look up "Citizens United v. FEC". It was ruled 5-4 in the supreme court to allow continue allowing bribes and is probably the most detrimental decision in the history of the US legal system.
AIPAC lobbyism gets US to pay around $4 billion to a foreign country for war...so
In 1965 CEOs made 20 times typical workers salaries, now its 296 times
Lobbying should be removed asap from American politics.
You'll have to lobby some politicians for them to consider that.
. . . Lobbying= Bribery . . .
. . . the Constitution- needs to have this, corrected . . . severely . . .
@Ookanju lobbying = corruption
@TheCaffeineJitterzyou'd have to lobby a whole lot for them to give up their cash cow
Then join us r/TheACTTMission
Taxpayers subsidize WalMart because they pay their staff so little they qualify for food stamps and medicaid.
not to mention all the tax breaks and rule-bending from local governments to incentivize Walmart to come to their town!
Walmart is horrible -- go in the meat section , grab a ham and take it to the veg section and actually weigh it -- it's 2 lbs more in some cases!! Complete robbery. And no state/county is following weights and measures with Walmart.
^this. Exactly, private companies get loads of government subsidies.
I think most people today can get on-board with a government funded grocery store chain just like universal healthcare. People need to eat, and it would be nice we don't have to be pawns that have to keep paying more day after day so billionaires can make more money. Of which money they use to lobby against us even more. A government-run grocery store would force every grocery store in the nation to compete.
And there is the punchline: "A 1% Tax Increase". So what you're saying is we just need to spend $900,000,000,000 and then we'll get a discount on our groceries?! I'm sure the government is really running these stores so efficiently. Do they have to pay for the real estate? Do they have to pay taxes? Do they have to pay for security? Advertising? Your whole argument is full of holes. Do they use military planes and airmen to ship this stuff? Trucking? Fuel? Fuel taxes? Do they get to force enemy combatants to stock the shelves late at night like the US military does?
I bet your next video will teach us all about how Modern Monetary Theory really works or How Karl Marx's ideas are really good just misunderstood and didn't really result in the deaths of 60,000,000-100,000,000 people when implemented.
Walmart spent $60-70 Billion to get its distribution system set up. You think this system is going to be anywhere near as efficient?
Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself. Set up a free grocery store and he'll become completely dependent on you and vote Democrat.
What a stupid idea by people that have only ever "run" a political campaign and not a real business.
Government subsidies for killing people: 🙂
Government subsidies for feeding people: 😞
but if they feed the people, they won't die
@San-lh8usnot the same people
Majority of the federal budget is already for social programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Lol
@NekoBoyOfficialThey still spend $1 trillion a year on the military. At the same time, most of that ‘social’ spending is just subsidies to private actors, not providing anything to ppl in need.
Algorithmic pricing should literally be crime anywhere in the world
That's why I don't go to Wally World anymore.
I mean, this is just a feature of the free market. It can in many ways be a cool thing as long as you keep it in check, but incumbents converging on the very peak of the supply and demand curves is simply how the game works. Same thing with real estate and every other thing we complain about.
This is why many people favor at the very least heavily regulating essential goods, although swaths of the country think that's an insane idea. A government-run competitor seems like a good idea too, but it does face issues like the instability from the electoral cycle, from politicians meddling in its financing and whatnot for their own gain, like you see in many other areas since nobody acting for 4 years at a time wants to engage in long-term investments, nobody wants to be in office during a recession.
Yes, comrade, everything you find bad or confusing should be illegal.
@justalonelypoteto "as long as you keep it in check" contradicts the idea of free market
@michaelwayne1977Condemning the majority of people to sickness and hazards by early adulthood (as opposed to health and safety) so 1000 old white men can be billionaires SHOULD be illegal! Or do you LIKE hoardes of sick, scared people who should be in the prime of life?!? 🤨
In Denmark we’ve had custum owned supermarkeds since 1880
"profit margins are thin" meanwhile these companies are announcing record breaking profits just about every year
That is the point of profit. They are locked in a struggle to get more and more profits statistically year by year. They never get as much proportionally from when they started so there is natural asymmetry.
That doesn’t mean the profit margins arnt slim it’s the amount you spend vs what you make.
The profit margin is 2% pers store if you have a few thousand stores you’re making millions or billions, however that doesn’t change that 2% groceries are middlemen retailers they’re buying shit and selling it thus their profits are impacted by the prices from manufacturers and farmers.
Thus government ran groceries don’t answer the underlying problem which is the manufacturer cost also if you think the military is bloated their is no reason to expect any difference with groceries
@radchad992 do you own or run a grocery store? Because profit margins are waaaay above 2%...
@M@Mystic_Light you need to own a store to use google?
The average operating profit of grocery or retail food is 1-2% per any site or study I can find or you wanna look at. the average operating profit for retail in general is 6%. The average operating profit for any small business which is most businesses is around 13% so no there isn’t some mythical grocery store doing 30%
The profit margin and operating margin arnt the same as gross profit is just what you spent to make whatever vs what you sold it for the operating profit includes rent,taxes,salaries etc. you might be confusing them.
@Mystic_LightI was in the grocery store industry for 40 years. It used to be 1 percent in the 70s now it’s closer to 5 or more depending on on the store.
You know what they could do? They could make monopolies illegal... oh, wait.
Better yet, just nationalise them and run them at cost.
@planet7085History tells us that ends up costing more
Government exists to keep people safe and to defend the country, not to become the largest employer. We are over-regulated, over-taxed, and it is crazy to place our trust in politicians whose only solution is more government and who are bought and paid for to somehow solve it.
@Yabo-hell yes😊
@Yabo-Well, this is not empirical, this is just your own personal opinion on what should be the reach of the government.
Privatize profits, socialize debts that’s how it works
We have a debt = 138% of GDP. Cheers from Italy 🇮🇹 🇺🇸
A point made very clear in 2008
You mean thats how shell elite socialist movements work? Yep
Give billie eilish’s mansion to indigenous tribes that own that land
Fun part is how MAGA get fooled in to this, helping a billioners like they barely have money for food and kids education.
5:30 "in order to get a closer look at the Commissary system, I decided to get adopted by a service member."
The big issue is that the people saying "it can't work" are in positions to really mean "I will make sure this doesn't work"
then throw in socilaist/communist insult
It can't work because it doesn't work.
Leftists love ignoring history so they can keep repeating it.
@Digger-Nick Dude, there is a working exemple in the video above: The Defence Commissary Agency (DeCA), they are a state-run and have existed for decades.
Are you a bot or just so brainwashed that you can't absorb information contrary to your worldview? Or maybe you didn't watch the video at all?
@ercushkakulmetov7458 Nah. I'd call you guys fascists for wanting to hand over the most effective resource for controlling people over to the government.
@Digger-Nick Exactly like the light bulb. You can't make light by turning a crank and Edison showed about 5,000 ways to not make a light bulb. It didn't work so it can't work so we shouldn't even try? We shouldn't keep trying until we find a way to make it work!!!
The light bulb is a LIE!!!!
"profit margins are thin."
"sir, this is a public utility, it isn't supposed to do profit."
Taxes pay the infrastructure too no matter the business
Uh you missed the point
Groceries are not a public utility. Its privatization of the community garden.
You're absolutely right, but the problem is you're arguing against people who don't see anything wrong with putting a paywall between sick people and medical care.
They're simply indoctrinated to be slaves that feed and clothe and house themselves.
I have a degree in international supply chain management and by crowdsourcing my extended family. I've been able to buy bulk and distribute to them saving everybody a ton of cash every year.
Basically running an on paper grocery store for family.
And no, I don't take a massive cut. And no, I don't live off the profits.
But this is an absolutely viable solution to hardship.
The fact that people don't understand that and rail and fight against their own well-being is the problem with America in a nutshell.
Lets just make sure that corporations don’t get involved with administering it… Government programs so often rely on for-profit companies to actually deliver the programs, which causes issues
The billionaire class will stop at nothing to keep everyone else down.
That's only 99% correct. They will draw the line at reducing their profits to keep us down.
All the while schmoozing it up with their pals in Little Saint James. I truly think once you make a billion, you are just truly an evil person. It's such an absurd amount that you _have_ to being doing evil things to get there.
@quor2243 Quorum of zero...
@quor2243 You must be new here. Look up private equity firms like Black Rock which own literally 99% of the world's resources (including government and therefore the laws/regulations etc) The problem is not all rich people, just the ones that now basically control everything
Businesses are supposed to be profitable. Governments are supposed to be able to bring in enough revenues to be able to provide Enterprise Services, to provide the highest good possible for its residents without creating long term, burdensome debts, unapproved by the populace. YOU CAN'T RUN ONE LIKE THE OTHER. 🌵🧓+73 year old Retired Nurse, EMT & former World traveler + 5 🦮🐶🐩🐕🐕🦺 Rescues🌵💙🇺🇸💙 who now supports candidates who lean towards a Democratic Socialism platform with Capped Net Worth income limits. After reaching $500 million, net worth is subject to progressively increasing taxation. If you can't get by on more than $500 Million and $1 in any given year, you really need to learn the differences between Needs and Wants.
Simple answer Corporate greed.
Walmart doesn’t even have better prices than my local chain store
Sure they do. The local chain store creates a nice illusion by having discount cards and sales. Walmart doesn't deal in that smoke and mirror game for the most part. I shop the sales at the chain stores and shop Walmart for specific staples that are consistently cheaper. It amazes me that King Arthur flour is typically $5.49 or so at Walmart but $9 at Safeway.
Not since Trump's tariffs went into effect - I can't afford Walmart any longer and have switched to another local store.
@wturber Walmart has charges fifty cents more for butter than the local chain for 5 years now. it's super weird the products walmart just charges more for. I'll make a list using both stores online shopping with the instore prices and sometimes walmart is a few dollars more.
local chain I compared to is not safeway. it's food lion. safeway is ALWAYS expensive. Aldi can cheaper than walmart a lot of times too but doesn't feature store pricing on the website for me to be able to compare.
The big stores here are Walmart, meijer, and Kroger. It really varies by item and what's on sale. Kroger is the most expensive but has the best meat and produce but limited selections of everything else. Meijer has a better selection of groceries than the others and is a middle price point. Walmart tends to be cheaper but their selection is OK and their meat depot is horrible. I need to investigate Aldis still.
@wturbermy local store, HEB, does do a variety of weekly specials, but doesn’t require a membership card of any sort.
CO-OP's did work in the 70s & 80s. And I grew up with one in greenbelt, maryland. We worked fine until regulations were cut and corporations were allowed to be greedy !!!!
Do you know what regulations killed co-ops? I've seen them in other countries and wished we had them. I didn't know we used to.
Coops still work! There is a national network of thriving food coops across the country. What needs to happen is the government should give grants to create coops in every city.
@StabbyToeswe DO have coops and if the govt offered start up funds we could have them everywhere!
Co ops still work under capitalism. Good luck getting it they only allow extremely high performers.
We have an excellent co-op in my town. They have been around for almost 40 years.
I will never stop laughing at people who demand access to 47 different colors of cans for their navy bean aisle. They're the same beans, purchased from the same group of farmers and processed by the same group of international conglomerates and sold to 12 different canning companies who put 4 different labels on their stockpile each.
You must stop laughing at some point. It's simply not sustainable.
YUP
@garyroberts2563laughing isn’t sustainable? How sad.
Not always...I am extremely cheap but can't eat a lot of bargin brands...its gross, taste completely different sometimes, not all the time
Especially when people can barely afford the other 40
I remember when green grocers, butchers, and dry goods were seperate individually owned stores and modern chain markets were just creeping in.
I kind of preferred that system especially as it focused more on local food economies and everything was fresh with out all the extra steps to maintain that freshness.
All those so-called private companies are also subsidised by the taxpayer as they don’t pay their fair share of tax so still a subsidy!
Even more than that! Walmart is a good example -- they pay their employees so little that those employees qualify for food stamps, meaning that the taxpayer is paying for Walmart's employees to eat instead of Walmart paying for it.
@davidstorrs and walmart profits cause guess where the employee is gonna use those food stamps?
@govaic Excellent point.
somehow using tax money to help people is only okay if they are in the army
It's the American way.
Or already rich enough that they don’t need the help!
the military is the ibggest socialist organization on the planet but don't tell maga that
...or billionaires
I've heard they get a nice housing allowance to live comfortably wherever they are stationed and even get more money if it's an expensive area, like in San Diego. Also top tier healthcare. This is what I've heard from ex military folks.
I love how America is obsessed with government services having to turn a profit. Same shit that has set Amtrak and USPS back
You are wrong. Most other governments make FAR BETTER use of their much less tax payer dollars. It's not that we want gov services to turn profit, it's the only way to keep gov agents accountable to some degree.
Is that because government IS a corporation..?
That's not how it was designed by the Founding Father's but somehow it was allegedly changed.
@_w_w_
ExpIain how you wouId keep caretaking of heaviIy disabled peopIe “profitabIe”. Or heII, even just pubIic Iibraries?
Other countries aIso don’t hit this waII because there is nowhere near as much Iaxity for privatized bIoodsuċkers to come in & try to scoop tax revenue into their own bank accounts.
There is zero justification for ínsurance-middIemen to get between taxpayers & heaIth províders as one simpIe exampIe, none. So aII of that wasted taxbase síphoned into “negotiating” Pharma prices (that were researched via govt. grants to begin with) wouId disappear
Not to mention aII those poisonous aid & subsidies roIIing into the pockets of lsraeI etc., which couId aII be much better spent on our own peopIe instead. AII connected
@_w_w_taking care of people isn’t and shouldn’t be profitable…
@_w_w_ There are two major outlets of inefficiency in the US government that don't exist elsewhere.
The first one is military spending. The US government will spend as many bucks as their bang-makers ask for. It will also involve itself in foreign wars, ship overpriced weapons overseas at the drop of a hat, and pay 6 figures for 'heated toilet seats' without asking what is actually being paid for.
The second one is corruption and poor contract decisions. They're more or less the same bin - officials face basically no penalties for giving government contracts to their rich friends and even family, and even when there's not corruption involved, many times the government contract bidding process doesn't look at reliability, logistical feasibility, or actionable guarantees. One contractor might win bids for a dozen city projects when they can only feasibly handle one in the given timespan, and make only verbal or vague guarantees that they can do the work in the time allotted. They'll underestimate material and labor costs and include clauses in their final contract to have the government pay the difference if they have a 'budget overrun'. Essentially, nobody is held responsible when the government gets scammed and the people doing the scamming handle their profit such that there's no way for the government to get that money back.
You're right that the government needs to be accountable, but treating government like a for-profit business is not how you do it. Government is made up of individuals - it's not some mythical monolithic thing that you need to interact with via arcane ritual. You make every person in a position of power face huge, 'unfair' penalties for misuse of their power and let citizens sue officials for discrepancies in spending. Boom, accountability. Wealthy people with a lot to lose stop running for office. Competent people with the mentality of 'doing a job' take their places.
13:10 The selfish hypocrisy alwayssssss grinds my gear
Tax payer are ALREADY subsidizing grocery stores like Walmart and Kroger--through a complex set of welfare programs because these companies route profits to shareholders not employees and then shift the cost of THEIR labor to the tax payer.
EXACTLY!!! Most people haven't figured this out yet...
Walmart generally pays highest wages of any unskilled labor in the food sector wherever they are.
Well, its the companys money.
Literally making shit up
@Joe_JesusWins_Lewisand they make billions in profits while a large portion of their workforce sits below the federal poverty line.
The problem is always greed 😂
Businesses aren't charities. If you don't want to handle greed, run a charity or non-profit like this: ruclips.net/video/-OiWeaygsC0/video.html
True but are we not too?!
Greed is good.
@NasarAhmed-co2wdI think poor people have more potential to be socialists than to be as greedy as a rich defender of capitalism, if they are well-informed.
no, the problem is the system that reward greed. Greed is to be expected
It has always clearly been absolute bullsh|t as to how supermarkets could only eek out 1% profit, but in the next breath they are paying shareholders billions and the ceos tens, if not hundreds of millions.
Walmart had $681 billion in sales and $20 billion in profit. So about 3%. But the scale is large enough to pay out billions in dividends, buybacks, and bonuses.
@richardchild2783 Walmart is quite a special example. There are few chains running a similar business model based on massive, nationwide scale with net profits kept low to maintain dominance. Hard to compare them to dedicated grocery store chains. Interesting to research though.
the 1% is when the supermarket calculates it , if an independent accountant calculates using GAAP its about 5% or more
The interview where the CEO of Woolworths walked out because he was asked about how he made so much extra money over lockdowns...
Carry a white hankie for every time they plead poverty.
yup, the military gets lower food prices and lower gas prices as well
I'm guessing the military doesn't pay the taxes on gas that consumers pay. Taxes on gas in here in Vermont account for about 12% of the price of a gallon (33c). Additionally, I would assume the military doesn't have to satisfy the same expensive regulatory requirements that civilian companies do
Commissary is better than a lot of places but it isn't as good a markdown as it used to be. Gas prices are just the average price of gas in the area so cheaper ones a few miles away will pull down the cost a little bit
@peters-y1nyep gas on base takes forever to get down to the rest of the city. The commissary is hit or miss with fresh produce going bad
They are non profit organisation no tax
fuck the military.
Reminds me of a military friend of mine arguing about government healthcare.. “I’ve been on single payer government care for decades - it’s called the Army”
He was also told what to do, where to be, when to be there, how to act, etc.
@robertd9850and he has a place to live, food on his table, clothes on his back, free education and if he can tolerate it for 20 years, a life time pension by the age of 40. Oh the suffering he has endured. 🤨
@robertd9850what does that have to do with a single payer government system?
I’ve enjoyed the benefit of government run military healthcare for 35 years now. Nobody can tell me it doesn’t work.
@K.R.20 Everything. If we are going to have government subsidized grocery stores like the military then we get to tell the customers what to do, where to be, when to be there, and how to act.
What I've learned in the last decade is we the people could have everything we ask for to live better lives, the only thing holding us back is the people in power. How do we find people that aren't greedy to run the country
If you look around you and no one seems to be decent enough maybe you are the one to do it
The people need to select another person who doesn't actually want the position very much, but would do a good job anyway.
We did it once.
Everyone wants the best deal they can get. If people aren't greedy for money, they'll be greedy for power, if power becomes the only way to get ahead.
No the problem is you blame the wrong billionaires. You then get leaders to hurt millionaires and middle class to fund the poor instead of going after the federal reserve and banking cartels that litterally devalue every dollar you have through manipulation of fiat
TAX THE RICH. Next Congress and Senate term limits - 2 terms, all holdings are held in blind trust until they leave.
Walmart is the worst grocery store in the country. I used to live in New Mexico. I knew military people from Kirkland Air Force base. I am pleased that our military people have this commissary system. Lobbying is way out of control. Repeal Citizens United and break up the big corporations.
Off OUR tax dollars which military people do not pay. We should also have this commissary system for civilians.
@Juanitalolo It's also so the govt can save money on salaries... which does save your tax dollars. Plus they are talking about privatizing the commissary system (again) now.
In Europe, particularly in Switzerland and Italy we have lots of supermarket cooperations. Also for stuff like car and household insurance. If you insure your car/house with them, you become a member in the coop and any excess profit will be returned to members. It works perfectly fine. It would work fine in the US too, just don't call it "socialist" under any circumstance 😂
We have one such supermarket cooperative in the western US, Winco, that doesn't require membership, but they easily have the lowest prices in many smaller cities. Not sure how they stack up to Aldi though.
I belong to a food co-op & they focus on local producers, seasonal specials & are supremely responsive to members customer's requests.
@GirtonOramsay Not a coop in anyway
I love my electric co-op, it’s actually hilarious how funny it is to tell the people that try to pitch to me about their for profit utility company to fuck off, because they just raise the price of electricity every time a new data center gets built nearby, or straight up don’t supply energy to rural communities all in the name of “NOT ENOUGH PROFIT, MMM YESSSS” smeagle looking ass, greedy ass, people.
@BernardS4it's an Employee Stock ownership plan (ESOP)
Using subsidies, or tax breaks to profitable companies to lower prices is just taxpayers still paying the bill to keep the wealthy wealthy
Corporate welfare!
@sallyprzybil2404 The Americans support government run grocery shops and other social net like a affordable healthcare and pension funds. But they don't realise it's a socialist system.
@henryairconcepts2999they know, they just dont want to admit it😂
Indeed. There are no solutions; only trade offs.
@Deedeedee214there are solutions; price caps, cutting tax loopholes, enforcing anti-monopoly laws, and allowing corporations to crumble like in an actual free market to be replaced by better services..this system of socialized losses and capitalized profits is the shovel digging ourselves into wage slavery
Lidl and Aldi been having my back for years
Yep, screw the commissary. I haven't been to one of them in years. People that shop there have been conned into believing that they need brand name foods.
I really like the idea of community-owned grocery stores... 20 people in a neighborhood going in and owning in their own community... It passes down generational wealth. Putting a stake in their own community.. When people own in the community they care about the community, they put back in and invest in their community.. it brings back a sense of belonging to your community and you take pride in it...Community-owned grocery stores prioritize local needs over corporate profits, keeping money within the local economy and acting as essential community hubs. They foster community, offer healthier, locally sourced food options, and provide democratic governance, ensuring the store serves the people and planet. If they work with local (within a hundred miles) Small ranchers and farmers to get all their produce and meat instead of having it shipped in we could now form a bond for healthier food that isn't filled with pesticides and gassed so they have no taste and are filled with either hormones or pesticides while creating a bond with the rural communities around us that would be the icing on the cake... Keeping it all local while supporting each other financially and understanding where our food comes from...
I was an Army Brat and I can remember how excited we were when we had a chance to shop at the commissary and the PX.
You mean that when the government wants and is not being manipulated by private lobby, things can work in a better way for the overall population?! 😮
Right?
Wowwww
No I mean when private business is not manipulated by the government things can work better
I find the complaint about lack of beand choice to be a strange one. If a government run grocery stores lets people get their basics at an affordable price, would we really care if it only carries a couple brands insteads of dozens? If we dont like what they have, we can just go somewhere else - noone is talking about shutting down remaining stores, do they? But now regular stores have an added motivation to keep price gauging in check because of competition.
A government run grocery store has the ability to cause all the other grocery stores to shut down. Then you have no choice at ALL.
Those monthly grocery bills sound absolutely insane from a European perspective. I live in one of the most expensive EU countries and €250 for a months worth is perfectly doable. For a family hitting €500 a month would be crazy fancy. And that's counting EVERYTHING from food, cleaning supplies, bathroom supplies, etc. €1000,- a month sounds absolutely wild, that's a rent bill, not a grocery bill.
Americans buy a lot of premade food and do not make foid from fresh, whole foods.
As a former active duty military I sure do miss my commissary privileges.
kids miss the parents you and your buddies deleted.
Me too.. but I greatly appreciate my VA disability benefits. Including free health care.
Technically you can always go back provided you a veteran ID, the problem is finding a post/base near you.
There was a benefit i always wanted to try: go to airforce base and ask when the next flight to japan was and get a free flight!
Too lazy to bother i guess.
Get your VA ID card. However, honestly it's not cheaper at the commissary compared to Lidl and ALDI. Commissary was for folks who wanted name brands at a slight discount but Freedom's Choice is more expensive than other store brands.
@Unsatisfiedpickle This would all be so easy to solve if Americans just learned what Capitalism is and is not.
Hint: it's only been used a system for couple of centuries. Marx coined the term, and maybe, just maybe that's why Capitalists don't want us to read sources. People might find out Communism is *stateless* so it can't even be a country. They might learn that no country has ever even claimed to be. They might start to realize greedy people lie.
They are getting richer as they burn this country to the ground and we are going to starve and die with no medical no housing and no food they don't give a damn about us so we must get in the streets and stay in the streets until we take our government back PERIOD‼️🤬✊🏼💪🏼✊🏼💪🏼✊🏼💯
I think they'd rather kill us all than meet our demands...
That's a rather ignorant rant. The country is not burning. We are not starving. We have riches beyond the dreams of most people around the world. But perhaps you don't have all that? Well, generally you have to work to make a living. By doing so you earn all of those things. Maybe that's the part you're not doing?
@cokesandwich1668 Many people ARE working and cannot afford food or shelter.
@fastfr8ght You're correct. My point was this: kellypowers was implying that we're all in despair and that the country is "burning". it is not. But it is often the case that doomsayers such as him see the entire country as bleak. It is not.
@cokesandwich1668 You should look at a historic graph of wealth inequality in America. It's been constantly getting worse for the entire history of this country. In 2025 the top 1% of wealthy individuals controlled more than a THIRD of all of the wealth of the nation. The bottom HALF of Americans controlled just 2.5%. What good is any form of government (democracy, republic, call it what you want) if it effectively creates a ruling class and a peasant class? I say this as someone in the top 5% of earners as a firmware engineer.
So when the state of New York runs grocery stores, it's considered filthy communism, but when the military does it, it's suddenly a patriotic blessing?
I'll never understand Americans.
It isn't communism when the military does it because it is essentially a private club that only military members can shop at. It is a benefit to attract recruits who in return live a very structured life and must be willing to sacrifice their lives if need be. All Mamdani's stores will do is attract leaches already sucking the government teet and providing nothing in return.
Because you can steal in NY and if you try that at a comesary you get arrested, a $3k fine, you lose rank and dont get to leave work until midnight [then back to work at 5am everyday for a mouth
thank you for putting it more succinctly than I.
Thats what happens when you have no real culture
@Samuel.McCandlesssomeday, when you're a grown up, you'll understand the larger perspective from above, rather than the ground up.
What is the theft rate at the military grocery store? How many unions regulate military bases?
Private companies are not efficient. Paying 1 person $100M to figure out ways to nickel and dime customers to death is the definition of inefficient
I love it when the artists chime in. They know exactly zero about business and are the most susceptible to absurd stereotypes.
I'm sorry but in what way do you find the government is efficient. The US govt is the most bloated inefficient thing out there.
@robertd9850I do think of it as art, but only us electrical contractors would understand it.
See I think it's the CSuites that know nothing about business. They're running scams, not businesses. They have victims, not customers.
I run an actual business. My work product is just as important as my profits. I often put the product first. That allows me to know my profits are profits, and not money I stole from someone. Dirty hands, clean money!
@TV-xv1leit’s just a troll. The hate working class and boot lick the wealthy
@TV-xv1lethe federal government is, by orders of magnitude, the most impressive organization on the planet. It provides more service, to more people, in more places, at higher quality,and a lower cost. No private corporation will ever come close in comparison.
What you are repeating is private sector propaganda that you've been hearing your whole life. The people who have been serving all of us that propaganda are rich and greedy and have an interest in undermining the government for a few reasons which should be obvious. They want to shrink the government so they can pay less taxes. A government with less resources becomes less effective. A less effective government gives that rich and greedy fucker an opportunity to take over services, do them as shitty as possible, turning as many taxpayer dollars into privatized profits.
Try to think about stuff
Exactly, if they cut prices they can't pay the CEO millions.
Only billionaires are bad. Elite millionaire ceos are okay according to woke people
you spelled billions wrong
Bro they paid billions for shareholders who are majority only few rich 1% people
It’s not even 1 billion, it’s almost trillions over last decade already
Why don't you just apply to be a CEO and make all that money?
If it's such an easy job, anybody can do it, right?
I mean, how much knowledge and skill can it really take to run a multi billion dollar company? Everyone here in the comments could run a corporation while they play x-box
Obviously
People who make millions aren’t the problem. The problem only lies with the 800 or so who make billions
My husband is retired military USAF. The on base Commissary was a great at benefit.
everytime we go on vacation in Vegas we stop in to stock the condo.
that's unfortunate that your husband joined the largest gang of terror in the world.
My parents continued to drive a 50 minute round-trip to a base commissary for at least two decades between when my father retired and when my mother died. And there was a Stater Brothers less than a mile away.
Don't forget that, being retired, you still have access to it!
Assuming you have one near where you live, that is.
Boooooo
The commisary works because it is a military operation. If u mismanage it u would probably be court martialed. Not the same for any other govt groceries.
I would think that the main benefit of having govt owned groceries would be to help push down price gouging by the big chains. Even if the government takes a small loss, if it helps anchor low prices at other stores, it could have a net positive for consumers, who are paying those taxes anyway. The govt doesn't have to outcompete the bigger chains, they just have to have low priced options and diversified suppliers so that prices can't artificially be inflated by big chains.
The question is do the billionaires want people to afford basic needs?.
They just don't care, as long as it doesn't infringe on any if their interests and privileges.
If you can afford basic needs, you'll work less so no
I'll assume this question is rhetorical.
It doesn’t matter what they want as the problem is the economic system, not the individuals. Capitalism causes wealth concentration and we are seeing the eventual and inevitable results. That’s why it is described as a death cult.
@FDLXI agree with you on that point. These billionaires have so much money that they don't even work anymore. So let's keep them poor too.
I rather my taxes go to public-owned grocery stores and healthcare over a ballroom, or a stupid ego-stroking arch.
Your taxes(if you pay taxes) are not paying for a ballroom.
@RAREFORMDESIGNS
Where do s government gets money from to pay for it then?
@RAREFORMDESIGNS Yes they are. They're paying for the contracts and subsidies that will be delivered to the donors to the ballroom. Bribes are investments.
None of your taxes-or anybody's for that matter-are going to the ballroom.
Same for the arch: it isn't being payed for by your taxes either, although it is fair to say that it's probably being built so he can stroke his ego.
Nevertheless, I do actually think it's quite a nice tribute to our 250th birthday as a nation; it could've been something worse.
That's just my opinion though, and you can feel however you wish to about the arch, you're entitled to.
Anyways just wanting to let you know that your taxes aren't going to those two-rather extravagant-projects!
@Blu@BlueHawaiianShirt
Where the money are coming from then?
The commissary's $8.53 price is a subsidized mirage. It only works because it's a small system for 8 million people supported by the taxes and infrastructure of a 330-million-person private market. If you replace the private market with the commissary model, you destroy the tax base that pays for the subsidy. You aren't actually lowering the cost of food; you're just moving the charge from the grocery receipt to the taxpayer's bill.
10:56 people love touting the old chestnut "private companies can do it more effectively" and that might actually be true. What they always forget is that private companies wants profit for their stockholders as well. And the stockholders hunger never ends.
If the grocery store is barely scraping by why is the richest man in my country a grocery store tycoon with a bunch of anti monopoly lawsuits being thrown at him due to price fixing (together with the other grocery store chains)
low profit margin is cap
Corporate profit margins are not efficiencies.
True, but profit margins can be indicative of efficiency
@martinlutherkingjr.5582 Hmm you made me think about it and you're both right and wrong. The whole system would include the profits being taken (it's an extractive loss), so the input to output would not be great. But many use the term efficiency to indicate the systems ability to generate profits.. which in that framing would kind be true, but only if the customer is considered part of the system and your input in capex and the output is expoitation.
Price gauging, they already know how to play us on our money, while they make a killing
Privatizing government is graft. A sub type of corruption. The garbage this administration throws billions at, the commissary is cheap and works. Expanding it to civilians with a minor subsidy makes perfect sense. It’s our money - butter not guns
-Beans not bombs
Eat too much beans, it becomes chemical weapons
@u.a.perfectace7786bread not bullets?
@StruggleGaming
Maximum approval but I must raise you necartines, not nukes.
Why not talk about all the successfully run DEMOCRAT grocery stores?!?!
9:33 what’s kinda funny is private grocery stores already have subsidies due to write offs for expired food they toss and theft.
Corporate greed is insane. Walmart wants to claim that there are issues with policy and taxes on businesses and whatnot, while at the same time posting record profit and marginal operating profit. They claim cost of labor while maintaining wages.
@sergniono, I’m not sure you know what socialism is friend
The one on you left for $8.53; is only half the price of the one on your far right, so it's not half the price of all of the others, but we get your point.
1500 a month on FOOD !!! that is insanity!!!!!
in Europe 500 a month is too high
Remember, she said they eat out once a week. If you look at the labels, they had name brand items in their pantry. They could EASILY have a bill less than 1,000 dollars if they would budget better.
I live in a military town, and most families I know that could buy at the commissary don't.
He's an officer and she runs a whole travel agency (probably selling to his fellow officers and their families in a very prominent area, so people with money) and they live in base housing, I'm willing to bet they bring in over $12k a month after taxes with no home or basic utility bills. $1500 a month for food is nothing for these folks. I do most of my grocery shopping at the Commissary just for myself and spend about $500 and I don't eat out at all so I'm definitely on the lower end, nobody in America can feed an entire family on $500 a month, even 15 years ago that would have been difficult to do.
She was talking about her family, not herself. 1500 per month to feed the family
Is that what you mean too or do you mean per person?
@ranch.flavor anywhere in Europe or the world really
surely YOU understand that!
@ranch.flavor I'm not arguing with you I'm telling you
Taxpayers also subsidize Walmart and other low wage stores via welfare to their underpaid employees...it's just that all those subsidies go to the billionaire owners.
Walmart employees are not eligible for government benefits.
@TenaB-j2l To copy google: No, Walmart employees are not ineligible for government benefits. In fact, reports have consistently shown that Walmart employees are the top users of SNAP (food stamp) and Medicaid beneficiaries in numerous states.
@benishborogove2692 They can always go work someplace else.
@T@TenaB-j2lThere’s no state or federal program that says you can’t get benefits if you work for a specific company. Benefits are determined by your income and family status. Many Walmart employees make low enough wages to qualify for benefits.
@robertd9850I'm sure employment is always that simple in every situation
Why does America have such a hard fetish for privatizations?
It's because this videos suggestions is just Aldi with the government paying for construction of the building, labour, rent and property taxes.
Then you take away all the theft and advertising.
Then you basically get the same prices as you do with the military stores .
Groceries were never nationalized in the US in the first place. So “privatization” term is wrong.
Wtf? So govt run programs are what you seek?
@malnorfleet4925did you even watch the video?
food prices are not any better in europe. if anything, more expensive. food inflation in europe is just as crazy.
The Federal Income Tax is higher than local income taxes. The Federal tax base is in the hundreds of millions. As you said in your video their are only 250 stores in the commisary system. New York City has over 5,000 grocery stores feeding over 8,000,000 people. There's no way it could work and you know it and are willfully trying to decieve people !
15:06 one other important factor that I don't think was touched on in this video was that big stores like Walmart pay their employees fairly low wages and as such those people end up getting and needing food stamps and then they spend the food stamps at Walmart. So, thus is an additional layer of subsidization for Walmart. Wal mart gets to underpay their employees and still gets customers out of those same employees
i remember in 2010ish 150$ would fill a cart past the brim
You remember too much.. Need more Fumes and processed meals Grandmpa
Even 2019
@Gee90210I'm convinced those stimulus checks came out of inflation thin air.
50$ does that
How can bread, peanut butter and jam be so expensive??? Even $8.53 is a lot!
It's just the reality of intentional constant ~3% inflation which is the target inflation of the fed bank. This means roughly every 10 years the value of your dollar is halved intentionally. You're thinking of prices 10 or 20 years ago.
$8.53 is the cost of my favorite loaf of bread, before taxes.
@wundertv-p5g Nope, the target is 2% and this makes a big difference in the long term.
@wundertv-p5g 3% inflation would halve the value every 23.45 years. 10 years would need a rate of almost 7.2%
@publicuser2007 stop eating it, lol. why wasting your money on wheatbun, eat meat and thrive
Why didn't they mention the lack of theft at the average commissary compared to in these inner city food deserts?
Most food deserts are in rural counties. But way to show your racism
@PeterSedesse the video focused on inner cities and the mayor of New York. Did you not watch the video?
@MarkWilliams-cy2gt you think nyc is a food desert?
@PeterSedesseI didn't say that and based on your comments you aren't familiar with the content of the video
@PeterSedesse, most commissaries are in rural counties.
Whenever large monopolies and companies increase their prices and people talk about just decreasing executive and ceo profits, they wants to start talking about communism… but it’s literally just reducing corporate greed
that's partly because it's, technically speaking, socialism to do stuff like that, but that's also because a lot of the masses in the US don't understand how economies work beyond the basics or just don't care, and are still stuck in the mindset of 'Communism/Socialism=Russia/China" which is bad, not helped by the fact that the US government pushed those ideals so heavily to the point that people where able to use it to basically commit modern witch hunts.
@CrystallineFoxCF A lot of people also know very clearly that commuism ALWAYS equals breadlines.
If the Military can lower prices by 23.7 percent when they buy in bulk from private suppliers, it makes you wonder what further savings they could implement if they had their own distribution system, their own meat packing system, a direct to farmer purchasing system.
They don’t really save the much. If you look at the budget, basically all of the savings are created via the subsidies
@imapig2024 To add to your point They don’t pay for their real estate
The stores sit on military bases.
No rent. No land cost. No property tax. No zoning battles.
Shop anywhere but stores that engage in greedflation and underpaying their workers.
Unfortunately, when it comes to most items that means shopping nowhere
@paulpeterson4216 It’s ok to re-evaluate & decide you don’t need it, depending on the item. Or there’s another alternative. Get creative.
Commissary is awesome. I miss being able to go there as a dependent.
in this video, we're not just going to tell you why grocery prices are so high
We're going to leave peanut butter on a butter knife on the front of our plate for no reason at all so that you can think about it for the rest of the video!
WinCo is an employee owned company and has significantly better pricing than the bullshit giant stores. I love shopping there and supporting that. It shows how elements of socialism/communism can be used to keep things fair and working for all of us.
angloidmuncher They have an ESOP or Employee Owed Stock. My mom worked for them for 30 years and retired early (59) with well over the typically needed amount. The stock goes to enrich the workers and not outside stockholders.
angloidmuncher Yes, I am telling you that. It is majority owned by employees. It proves this point PERFECTLY.
Honestly the government should subsidize Whole Foods (not the grocery store) in grocery stores and increase prices on junk food. Yeah the food companies aren’t going to like it, but junk food isn’t healthy for us to consume everyday.
Algorithmic pricing should be illegal.
The scale of misrepresentation here is astounding. While 0.2% of the military budget sounds small, that’s $1.5 billion-spread across fewer than 200 commissaries, around $8.5 million per store. Scaling that to 50,000+ grocery stores and 300,000+ convenience stores nationwide would balloon into hundreds of billions. Comparing food costs to aircraft carriers makes for a dramatic line, but it’s not a scalable comparison. Whether the creators didn’t grasp the math or hoped you wouldn’t, the reality is that this “small percentage” pitch obscures the fact that the cost would be enormous. We spent over $1T in groceries last year. 1% tax on millionaires is $15B.....maybe more on the hoped you wouldn't
9:02 Note: That "billion and a half" looks like 1.5 million because it's X 1,000. You have to pause the video at the top of the page to see the 1.5 million is not dollars but 1 thousand dollars. 1.5M x 1K = 1.5B.
In most of Europe, loss leaders are illegal. We need to end loss leading in the US once and for all. We need to hold these corporations accountable to the people once and for all, not to their board of directors.
What's a loss leader ?
@skyandwater100 The leader who tolerates losses, I guess?
A loss leader is a product which is sold under cost. E.g. Milk costs 5 USD but is sold for 1 USD.
@skyandwater100 Selling products at a loss, to drive the competition out of bussiness. It's a tactic that creates monopolies.
@apostolidispeter2499thanks
Saw the first half of this and didn't hear the word "inflation" uttered once.
Because corporate greed is a bigger factor than inflation.
Of course it will work this time, despite it not working in socialized countries. Keep in mind that the private grocery stores have to buy real estate and build stores, these military run stores do not. Imagine if we had the government run the mail service....oh wait, we know how that doesn't work well at all, and has become obsolete.
privatization will never fix the issue 😭
Nothing is broken.
@robertd9850The money is broken
I enjoy shopping at commissary's & the PX/BX they tend to be cheaper on family basic items and essentials, they are also tax free
So basically tax the billionaires and make them pay for our food education and housing. I'm fine with this.
Just to be clear, pay for it with profits stolen from underpaying labor consistently for decades, and stolen from the public from dodged taxes.
Just give U.S. citizens free Healthcare and education for 100 years. Put money into the public infrastructure for those. Let those educated and healthy people have families for a couple generations and see what we come out with after.
So are you fine with it when you're robbed to fund it?
@theEvvoh Free means some one else is paying for it and anything given has lesser value than that which you've created or earned.
@kylemitchell328 yes
The only reason commissaries make any money is because they exploit baggers:
they don't pay their baggers anything, the baggers rely on tips.
The known problem isn't the farmers, it's the middle men like kraft, general mills, ect ect and meat processors. They pay farmers very little then mark it way way up when the sell it to grocery stores.
shoked people belive corpos bs
I'd love to have single payer auto insurance to keep the industry honest. They keep raising prices without tickets, accidents, anything.
And everybody would feel free to drive like a bat out of hell. Great plan.
@robertd9850yeah because speeding tickets and laws don't exist also
@DennisJDoesVoice So, anarchy. Great idea. What could go wrong? (hint: EVERYTHING).
@robertd9850 They were being sarcastic and saying you were implying there weren't laws regulating driving speed on public roads. There are and they're enforced generally.
@alpacalover0 That was not sarcasm. You overestimate the sophistication of commenters here.
I worked in the Grocery industry as part of Logistics, the stores themselves only make one to two percent as a ploy to keep people from asking questions about the price or for asking for more money to work there. Most of these grocery store chains that are decent size own the distributor that gets the product into the store and they make the rest of their profit there. That way they get to say they're paying astronomical prices but they're paying it to a sister company that's owned by the same people that own the grocery store.
Like contractors who rent equipment from other companies that they also own so they can control pricing and taxes on what they report and deduct.
😠
This is true for many industries. We had 4 companies in the vertical integration. One company would have massive losses. Those losses were written off taxes. The other 2 were break even 0 profit. The 4th made massive profits that far outweighted the losses from the other company. If these were all treated as one company we would have payed far higher taxes and no write offs.
More people need to know this
Yeah, the 1% includes some accounting and spreadsheet magic
One thing I wish you would've mentioned is that the reason that the DMV, Social Security Office, etc., are run so poorly is because our politicians have decided to run them like a dollar general. Instead of running them as a service for the citizens, they frequently close DMVs, etc., to create congestion in the system.
It'd be very easy to have a smooth running DMV, etc., if we decided to fund and staff it appropriately, but it's more important to run the government like a dollar general (if you don't understand the dollar general reference, they are a privatized set of stores that are run with a skeleton crew).
This benefits a Republicans because they can simply scream about how they underfunded services and now those underfunded services don't work!
If a non-profit grocery store doesn't have to pay taxes, I'd think that that alone could help bring down prices for customers.
No. Taxes paid on profit. Amount paid for goods, supplies, salaries, building is excluded from taxation.
But what about the Soviet's state owned grocery stores that we were all talking about?
How about abolish tax altogether?
@borkerfieldfilms7053how do you fund roads, police and city maintainance
@borkerfieldfilms7053 ...and all public services? You'll end up paying more just to drive on the private roads.
In the public schools in Michigan we had great subsidized hot lunches, and all people ever did was complain. The food was good and kids ate it, then say they hated it. Same thing would happen with government grocery stores. They'd work just fine, but as soon as people got used to them they'd start complaining and never stop.
Naturally, it’s a crime to watch the underprivileged in our society be treated with basic human decency.
s/
MAN THAT HOT LUNCH PROGRAM FED SO MANY KIDS IN MY COMMUNITY and YET the people there were some of the loudest complainers about "free-loading". As if a kid can even do that.
Its because of the terrible educations people get
As consumers, we don't want cheap. We want a better deal than the guy next to us.
@caikedelivery3736 nahhhhh it's those that take advantage that ruin it for those in need.
Imagine if we stopped paying CEOs and instead of dividends we just gave that back to the customers as savings how fast prices would fall.
you mean cut the parasites out of the business, that'll do
@Cryosxify yup pretty much haha
Then shareholders dump the stock and the company goes under.
But what about the woke hundred millionaire CEOs that you guys love so much because they aren’t technically billionaires
The whole C-suite should be replaced by AI.
So this demonstrates a system that works...if only a small subset of the population can shop there.
I love the cheeky response to "you should run it like a business"
Cut the middleman
Heaven forbid we stop paying 1.5 trillion into military and focus on food
No no no, firearm manufacturers would very sad then
If you understand what the world runs on yes you’d know that’s stupid. Second we spend far more on the failing social security system and Medicare then we do anything.
@radchad992and why are those systems falling? Well they said “struggling military families” in this video so obviously your military personnel aren’t being paid enough time support a family so combine that with the rest of the population across the rest of the industries who are also being underpaid (by which I mean below the cost of living which has nothing to do with your legal minimum wage) and you’ll find your problem. When people are spending everything they earn on basic utilities and rent with nothing left over for health care or food of course the strain on the government resources is going to increase beyond what it was built for.
@TheChardygirl007military pay is an issue and has to do with overspending on military procurement and r/d. That’s a known issue with literal books written on it.
If you want to talk about Americas predicament in general I can write a novel but to be brief we switched from manufacturing to services as an economy and most ppl are paid for doing a redundant job that 2000 ppl are employed for that takes 500 to boost the stock price of companies and lower unemployment. That cost though is traded off to the consumer and services like rent and retail keep climbing and climbing.
As for grocery stores in general their prices are going to be up from whatever the producers prices are and since we 1. Gutted manufacturing and 2. Had the ‘08 crash and 3. Had covid, all happen in 30 years the production side of retail is fucked and you’re seeing the chain reaction of stupidity, greed, and reality cascade into what we have now.
No amount of subsidizing fixes the underlying systems we through pipe bombs into for decades
@radchad992we should be spending the most on the very systems that keep people alive!!!
The fact that a 1.5 billion dollar subsidy is considered "small" is insane to me. Just because healthcare subsidies and defense expenditure are extremely overbloated and expensive does not mean its okay to finance additional expenditures elsewhere if they arent as bad.
Not to mention, the reason that the 1.5 billion subsidy exists in the first place, which this video doesn't really try to describe, is because while on paper it appears that the commissaries attempt to 'break even' on the products that they sell, it completely neglects the operating costs of each establishment such as paying for workers or cleaning supplies or electricity.
And the reason that there are so many food deserts and active corporate consolidations in the groceries market is actively because of the bureaucratic systems that we have in place which interfere with the creation of small businesses, such as legal limits on how and where you can establish your store, permanent costs like property taxes, establishment/construction costs which are massively amplified by things like zoning laws and other barriers to entry which ultimately stem from regulation lobbied for by corporations in congress.
The commissary system is financially terrible, and the video is disingenuous anyway because part of the reason that theres a push to privatize them in the first place is because commissaries in the US have a 2.4 billion dollar maintenance cost yearly and an extensive maintenance backlog, as well as accusations of using low quality and extremely cheap products that technically meet the requirements for bread or eggs but ultimately don't really meet consumer demand because they aren't at the expected level of quality. Operators of state owned grocery chains have an incentive to cut corners, or rather a lack of an incentive to economize because they do not profit or directly benefit from the financial success of the store that would be directly associated with providing the most highly demanded products, at the expected quality while maintaining their stores properly. Their only incentive IS political and to make it look like they are delivering on low grocery prices - even though they're being forced to keep open grocery stores which are in active decline (like the administrator in the video stated).