It’s not “price gouging,” it’s "price pack architecture"

It means selling you less stuff for the same price.

By Jim Hightower 

We should pay attention to corporate America’s fluctuating wordplay, for their frequent contortions of language disguise ploys to dupe, confuse, and rip off us hoi polloi — i.e., their customers.

For example, here’s a mouthful that’s been gaining popularity among manufacturers of food products: price pack architecture.

It’s a bit of gobbledygook meant to obscure the profiteering practice of ever so quietly shrinking the size and contents of their packages — without lowering prices. Economists dubbed this “shrinkflation,” but that too clearly implied gouging. Thus, corporate image-makers invented the incomprehensible nonsense phrase of PPA to cloak their anti-consumer trickery.

This convoluted codeword also allows the tricksters to brag openly about their cleverness to their Wall Street investors. Here’s Coca-Cola’s CEO, for example, doing corporate-speak to bankers in February: “We are leveraging our revenue growth management capabilities to tailor our offerings and price pack architecture to meet consumers’ evolving needs.”

English translation: Consumers will need to pay us more for less Coke. You could almost hear the bankers weep for joy over Coke’s sneaky scheme to stiff its customers.

Perhaps you’ve wondered what big-time corporate CEOs actually do to rake in their exorbitant salaries, now averaging more than $8,000 an hour! Well, there it is: The CEO’s main job is to keep workers’ pay low, monopolize markets, and constantly invent slick ways to squeeze another dime from each consumer’s pocket.

It’s not honest work, but it does pay well. Coca-Cola’s CEO James Quincey, for example, hauled in $25 million in pay last year. That’s 1,800 times more than the annual income of the typical Coca-Cola worker, who will now pay more for a sip of Coke, thanks to Quincey’s “price pack architecture.”

OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.