It's explained mostly by the lack of competition in grocery stores. Not to mention that Albertsons & Kroger are trying to merge. If this is the case there will be essentially 2 grocery stores owning almost every other grocery store in the country.
Walmart, Kroger (Harris Teeter), Costco, Target, Aldi, Lidl, Food Lion. Those are the places within 15 minutes of me where I've bought eggs recently (or at least the ones that come to mind).
I agree that monopolies are bad, but the grandparent listed 7 stores, and all are owned by different companies. I am similarly in an area where I can count at least 12 different grocery store parent companies, two of which are local and not in the big list in your first link.
Maybe the monopolization is only happening in certain areas?
Yeah I get those are the concerns. I guess I’m trying to find evidence that will impact the “majority of the people.” One article [1] mentions that the combined company would still have less grocery market share than Walmart (which has just over 1/5th of the market), and the pie charts shown for some sample markets still don’t look anything like a monopoly situation to me.
Yes, but these don’t actually address the points I mentioned. Your stance has migrated from “majority of people” to “monopolies are bad” (not that I disagree with that point)!
I've actually been trying to find the source about the percentage of people and may be misremembering the specifics, tbh. Listen to the podcast link I provided, it might be there. This will no doubt disproportionately impact people in rural areas and people already impacted by food deserts.
For example, I live within a few minutes drive of a QFC (Kroger) and an Albertsons, and a Safeway. If they merge, there will be 0 competition outside of a Walmart and you know how that goes...
If you get into who owns the products we consume it's even worse, this is a study that looks at a bit of both the distribution at grocery stores as well as who owns and manufacturers the food products we consume: https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11...
Welcome to hell.
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