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"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." — 1 Timothy 6:10 NIV

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"Traditional grocery stores have net profit margins ranging from 1.96 percent for Harris Teeter and 1.91 percent for Kroger's to 1.77 percent for Safeway." https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/profit-margin-supermarket-17711.html

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Dec 30, 2021·edited Dec 30, 2021

corporate buybacks funded by fed buying bonds is a serious problem.

also, fiat money is not a problem. mismanagement of fiat money is. so long as economies are not homogeneous, fiat has value because it allows counter-cyclical measures. The value of bitcoin, in this sense, is that it becomes an immutable anchor for value. Rather than floating value that we currently have, as bitcoin becomes mainstream, all fiats will have a better objective measure of value through it.

we should spend time understanding the concept of "dislocation of settlement" The more dislocated the settlement, the more room for fuckery. Homeloans are a dislocation of settlement, but the bank having legal rights to your house as collateral so it eliminates fuckery. Wall Street has a 7-day dislocation of settlement which allows naked shorting. MMT has a dislocation of settlement and the more we move towards it, the greater propensity our government has for frauding the people. This is one thing that makes crypto great... instant settlement. I'd rather scams and manipulation in an unregulated market over allowed fraud in a regulated market any day of the week.

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Dec 30, 2021·edited Dec 30, 2021

Pomp, have you looked at executive pay, buybacks (haven’t looked at buybacks myself), dividends? They’re up, and can be manipulated to effect gross margins. Regardless, grocery stores work on 3-7% PM, for the fancy ones, volume based chains on less than 2.5% even. I’m not doubting you, obviously I’m here.

But, my education is in fiancé, banking, portfolio management, but I’m a farmer, and know plenty ranchers, who have 100% been squeezed. So many are on the brink of bankruptcy, because it’s all a monopoly.

Full disclosure, I haven’t seen buyback data, I’m a BernieBro, trust no one else in DC. So, I’m a pro-union as a last resort, preferably pro collectives and cooperative. So some call me, an anti-woke/ Marxist maximalist, meaning I only think we need to completely redo our means of production ownership system, not means of distribution. I believe workers should have an equal voice in the important decisions, and we should provide equal assistance for them to own businesses, as we assists Elon musk. Would love to see some evidence for price pressures, other than the measly few $ entry-level jobs are sometimes being afforded… supply chain issues don’t affect price, in our system, even if we pretend $2400 in 2yrs, made us all have Elons purchasing power…

FWIW.

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