So many companies cut their workforce as much as 10-15% citing that those jobs can be fully automated by the use of AI but I am still waiting to see any meaningful price cuts of their products from the said companies, etc.
Otherwise this will mean that they are doing this just to increase their profit margins and please their shareholders and don’t care about their customers or workforce.
Nope. Worker productivity has increased many fold over the last 50 years, meaning each person can produce many times more goods.
Wages have been stagnant and cost of living is through the roof, despite all of this increased efficiency, productivity, fewer workers and much cheaper operating costs.
We’re fucked lol
Genuine question. Why hasn’t free market forced the prices to drop? If company X makes Y twice as cheaply, it could drop its prices like 20% and having way more customers and way higher profits. Why hasn’t this ever happened?
Good question. I personally think it’s because of conglomerates and large companies. Nestle has so many brands that it’d be a full time job to avoid their products. They are unfathomably huge, and so are many other food companies. They know how to play ball with each other, people have to eat, and they will pay anything.
Additionally supermarket chains likely play into it, same concept. Walmarts, targets etc killed off many small business and local grocery stores, they can also charge whatever they want. In fact the dollar store would go to tiny towns, compete and murder the local grocery with low prices, and monopolize the towns food needs with processed crap, these are called food deserts.
Nestle has so many brands that it’d be a full time job to avoid their products.
Not quite. I actually checked a couple years back and there was only 1 product that I bought from them: bagged Starbucks coffee. I just had to switch to a local coffee roaster to fix that.
That being said, I tend to make the majority of my food from scratch, but that’s actually not that hard if you know what you’re doing. Plus I don’t eat snacks, which also helps.
Yeah, I always wondered this, why would competition lower prices? If something is selling at $100, why would I make it and sell it way below that?
Sure, I might give a small discount at first to lure customers, but once I have enough market share, wouldn’t I rather sell it for $100?
To some degree barrier of entry. Let’s say I want to create a smartphone. I know it’s possible to do it cheaper, without selling customer data or with special features.
You would need crazy amounts of start captial to even enter the market and the current leaders would make your entry as miserable as they could with huge sales and temporary minor pro consumer moves.
If you could get the captial you would probably fail there or cave and accept some kind of deal where you become rich and your company gets ingested and dissolved by current market leaders.
Well it has but it isnt going to be commented on. My house was built in 1899 and we have a shortage of closet space remember once getting annoyed and wondering out loud “did people just have less clothing at one point”. I said that as a man who quite literally did an engineering internship with a textile machine company. Of course clothing has gotten a lot cheaper.
Now cost disease is hitting us all where it hurts so of course it is the thing we all comment on.
But hey we can’t afford a degree, a doctor, a place to live, or to go to a restaurant anymore but on the plus side you can buy anything mass produced for very little.
I hope UAW gets and starts the 4 day workweek trend. I doubt employers will suddenly start paying decent wages so that might be the best we get.
