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I read here and elsewhere concern about profits. It seems people are concerned about the profits made by car dealers, health insurance companies, drug companies, health care providers, mutual funds, etc.
On the other hand, we seem unconcerned over profits made by professional sports teams, concert producers, casinos, gaming companies, celebrities, etc. This group provides very little real value to us.
The first group provides goods and services we need or want.
Is that the difference? If we must spend our money on necessities, we care how much people make from us.
If we spend money on pleasurable things we don’t give the profits made from us a second thought.
No deep research, just an observation. We care little about the profit margin for Apple at about 26% but scream loudly at health insurance companies where profit margins are about 5% or less.
We humans are an interesting lot.
A common cry here in Australia is that our supermarkets are price gouging. The fact is their net profit margins are 2-3%. So even if our large supermarket chains started to operate as not-for-profits, your $200 grocery bill might come down to $194. Yet the price gouging belief persists.
I heard on the news yesterday that Instacart is being investigated for using AI powered algorithms to set different prices for the same grocery items across its platform. Price variations reaching up to 23% for identical products purchased at the same store and time. Interesting ‘perspective’ on those profits.
See this NYT article.
It’s not curious at all. There is a vast difference between non-essential purchases and essential or at least semi-essential purchases.
Consumers are right to be vigilant about the latter because they don’t have the choice or limited choice. Imagine if utilities could act as price makers….
So $10.00 isn’t always $10.00? Couldn’t not being vigilant about non essentials mean less money for essentials – like a prescription?