If you think you’re being gouged, you’re right!
Take
the rat-a-tat-tat of today’s price jumps at supermarkets and chain restaurants.
They make you want to race to the cash register before they raise prices again.
No,
no cry the CEOs of food giants, it’s not us, it’s “supply chain disruptions.”
Then corporate politicians and economists chime in with old platitudes about
the invisible hand of “supply and demand” while media know-nothings pile on,
blathering about “ne’er-do-wells” causing a labor shortage.
But
that’s hogwash — your suspicions are right: It’s plain old price fixing
by avaricious food monopolies.
Top executives even brag about it when talking to their bankers and stockholders. McDonald’s, for example, recently told investors that “strategic menu price increases” in the past three months had boosted profits by 63 percent.
Big Mac’s CEO exulted: “I’m really proud of how our
system has executed pricing.” Never mind that it’s their customers being
executed.
Well,
say free-market proselytizers,” just buy from a competitor. But in nearly all
segments of today’s food economy, a handful of giants control the market — with
each one in on the fix.
For
example, Chipotle, a McDonald’s rival, also jacked up prices in the same
three-month period, manufacturing an 84 percent profit increase. Its CEO then
gloated to Wall Streeters: “I think we’ve demonstrated we do have pricing
power.”
By
the way, these same giants are also fattening their profits by ripping off
their workers.
The federal poverty level is now $25,000 a year, with fast-food workers typically getting only $3,000 a year more than that bare minimum for a 40-hour week.
But profiteering executives hold each worker to about 26 hours a week, creating a sub-poverty labor force for this multi-billion-dollar industry.
OtherWords columnist Jim
Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This
op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.