<story><title>The cartel that controls the US meat industry</title><url>https://statecraft.beehiiv.com/p/the-cartel-that-controls-us-meat</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ceejayoz</author><text>&amp;gt; But ... why now?&lt;p&gt;Because &amp;quot;oh, it&amp;#x27;s the pandemic&amp;quot; gave them cover for the increases.</text></item><item><author>Michelangelo11</author><text>&amp;gt; In general, I don’t know if they answer properly if profits increased because of inflation or if inflation increased because of inflation. Since the cartel existed before the shift, I would like to know what they think made companies suddenly get greedier.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s my big question too with all this &amp;quot;greed driving inflation&amp;quot; discourse. I don&amp;#x27;t doubt it at all, in fact, from everything I see it seems like the likeliest story. But ... why now?</text></item><item><author>prepend</author><text>I was really interested in the figure that shows prices going up while input costs decrease. But this doesn’t reflect all inputs just the price of meat procured. There are many other input costs, mostly labor.&lt;p&gt;So this diagram is really frustrating as it makes me want to reach a conclusion (wtf, what an unnatural difference) without giving me enough information to know anything.&lt;p&gt;It would be like showing that household grocery costs decreased while disposable income decreased and then writing an article about the relationship between those two while not revealing that rent increased at the same time.&lt;p&gt;In general, I don’t know if they answer properly if profits increased because of inflation or if inflation increased because of inflation. Since the cartel existed before the shift, I would like to know what they think made companies suddenly get greedier.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gruez</author><text>&amp;gt;Because &amp;quot;oh, it&amp;#x27;s the pandemic&amp;quot; gave them cover for the increases.&lt;p&gt;It might work, but as far as I can tell it doesn&amp;#x27;t stick. Egg producers had the &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s bird flu excuse&amp;quot; about a decade ago[1]. Profits (as %) went up, but eventually fell back down a few years later[2].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Avian_influenza#United_States_2014%E2%80%9315_outbreak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Avian_influenza#United_States_...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.macrotrends.net&amp;#x2F;stocks&amp;#x2F;charts&amp;#x2F;CALM&amp;#x2F;cal-maine-foods&amp;#x2F;profit-margins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.macrotrends.net&amp;#x2F;stocks&amp;#x2F;charts&amp;#x2F;CALM&amp;#x2F;cal-maine-foo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The cartel that controls the US meat industry</title><url>https://statecraft.beehiiv.com/p/the-cartel-that-controls-us-meat</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ceejayoz</author><text>&amp;gt; But ... why now?&lt;p&gt;Because &amp;quot;oh, it&amp;#x27;s the pandemic&amp;quot; gave them cover for the increases.</text></item><item><author>Michelangelo11</author><text>&amp;gt; In general, I don’t know if they answer properly if profits increased because of inflation or if inflation increased because of inflation. Since the cartel existed before the shift, I would like to know what they think made companies suddenly get greedier.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s my big question too with all this &amp;quot;greed driving inflation&amp;quot; discourse. I don&amp;#x27;t doubt it at all, in fact, from everything I see it seems like the likeliest story. But ... why now?</text></item><item><author>prepend</author><text>I was really interested in the figure that shows prices going up while input costs decrease. But this doesn’t reflect all inputs just the price of meat procured. There are many other input costs, mostly labor.&lt;p&gt;So this diagram is really frustrating as it makes me want to reach a conclusion (wtf, what an unnatural difference) without giving me enough information to know anything.&lt;p&gt;It would be like showing that household grocery costs decreased while disposable income decreased and then writing an article about the relationship between those two while not revealing that rent increased at the same time.&lt;p&gt;In general, I don’t know if they answer properly if profits increased because of inflation or if inflation increased because of inflation. Since the cartel existed before the shift, I would like to know what they think made companies suddenly get greedier.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>HDThoreaun</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s not a better excuse than what they had before. The question is why didn&amp;#x27;t competition undercut them to keep prices low as it had before. Food company excuses don&amp;#x27;t matter, people will continue to buy the product they perceive as having the best value.</text></comment>