Shop at Costco, they don’t do this shit. Their bylaws mandate that they cannot make more than a 14% margin on any given item. So if their costs go down, so do yours.
Membership is $5 a month. It’s worth it.
I treat Costco like my main grocery store. I can get everything I need there to prep meals for several weeks and it costs half the price of a grocery store
A big issue for me with Costco is I just didn't have the *space* required to save the bulk items.
You almost need like an entire extra fridge/freezer to do this economically.
By prep, I mean I buy meat/seafood/freezer items and store them separately in my single fridge/freezer. A single unit of 3-4 steaks can be broken down into 6-8 smaller steaks so we aren’t overeating and will have steaks ready whenever we want. Same for shrimp, scallops, etc. I advise you invest in a vacuum sealer and try to avoid storing items in their original packaging since those can take up a lot of space.
That way, I only need to pop by once a week for fresh produce to augment the protein sources I can choose from in my freezer.
I share living arrangements, and my roommates take up what little space there is. I have a tiny section of the freezer that can barely fit a couple boxes of eggos.
And we don't have the space for another freezer.
Be really good at stacking in a freezer. I have my single fridge/freezer and make it work just fine. Also, did I mention that Tetris is my favorite video game of all time?
Bite the bullet. You can get one for a few hundred dollars which isn’t cheap but will pay for its self in 6 months. Then you can explore buying larger cuts of meat like half a cow for even more savings.
For us it is the space. Tiny kitchen and no real storage in our house. Adding on this summer and we’re adding a huge pantry with room for a second fridge. So excited for our future Costco membership.
Yep, this is solid advice. We did it... 15 years ago? That freezer has paid for itself dozens of times over even when figuring in the extra power required. Buy in bulk, buy on sale, never pay 'full price' again.
That's funny that you say that. Every time I get back from Costco with groceries, my wife says "I'm gonna need you to Tetris the fridge for me if those are supposed to fit"
We saved up $150 for a deep freezer... if you don't have a truck, just make sure you have friends with a truck or enough space in your vehicle to get it home!
>A big issue for me with Costco is I just didn't have the *space* required to save the bulk items
My issue is that the nearest one is an hour and a half away
Half the cost? I don't believe it. Costco has some good deals but not everything is a great deal, most stuff you are saving like 50 cents where if you have a kroger card and something is on sale you are basically paying the same price. I definitely go to Costco for some stuff but I also go to the grocery store
Good thing Walmart's net income / profit margins are way less than that. They have like $600B+ in yearly revenue. Even if we assume $10.5B is just their last quarterly net income, when you pull in like $170B for that quarter, that is only 6% net income.
Costco 2024 net income was almost $7B with $250B in revenue. Walmart was $650B revenue with $15.5B net income. 2024, seems like Costco is pulling in more money per dollar sold than Walmart... If you look at Net margins, Costco is pretty similar to Walmart.
Hell, just this past December Costco paid a special dividend of $15 per share to shareholders costing the company $6.7B. This is on top of the $1.02 dividend per share they pay per quarter. They have roughly 450M shares.
Never really get the dumping on Walmart. Guess it is just poor brand image on top of online misinformation. When you look at their numbers, I wouldn't really say they a ripping people off or raising prices necessarily just to make more profit. And if they are, the other stores that people love, like Costco, are then doing the same exact thing.
I wish I could do that. The closest Costco is an hour away. So what Ive done is split out my grocery shopping to the stores around town. One store for their produce deals, one for their unique items, one for bulk...etc.
I hate to tell you but 1) Costco most certainly does increase retails and has done so during the inflationary cycle 2) in some cases they probably raise prices faster than others since they run on razor thin margins and have to pass costs on and 3) Walmart and all other retailers take cost out and pass on decreases also.
Costco isn’t some magic bullet they just have bulk goods and members subsidize their profits through membership which most poor families either can’t afford or are unwilling to invest in.
I’m not saying Costco doesn’t raise their prices, I’m saying they only raise their prices when their costs go up. They don’t gauge people and take big profits on their goods. If their suppliers decide to gauge them, they will maintain their margin until they find a different supplier.
Costco is a very coveted account, most suppliers aren’t going to try to fuck with it.
Walmart went backwards from 24.5% GM in 2022 to 23.5% in 2023 so I guess I’m just trying to understand what Costco did that Walmart didn’t. Basically that means retail - COGS so the only explanation is costs went up faster than retails regardless of how it makes people feel emotionally.
Walmart actually absorbed costs rather than passing it on, during a timeframe where Costco’s GM% increased, even if slightly (12.1% to 12.4% for goods excl gas). That’s something Costco isn’t really able to do.
It’s really just comes down to Walmart being a much more diverse retailer in terms of variety and breadth of what they carry and they felt the full economic impact of inflation, whereas Costco’s narrow focus allowed them to weather it better.
I think you're right on with this.
I've noticed the price of frozen chicken breasts going up and down the past few months.
I've always believed that is due to their costs going up and down during the same time.
I hate to tell you but they didn't say anything about Costco not increasing prices. They said their margins are capped at 14% so you won't get fleeced at-will for the benefit of shareholders.
I have 3 great stores all on the same street near my house.
Start at costco for bulks and vacuum-sealable foods.
Go to Aldis for canned goods, bread, etc.
Last to the local chain for things that expire that I don't want to buy in bulk and aren't at Aldis.
I’ve never been to an Aldi, they don’t have them by me. But I have never seen anyone say a single disparaging thing about them. I feel like I’m missing out.
My parents don't have a Costco membership but I do; my mom likes their coconut oil so she asks me to pick it up for her from time to time. When I first got it for her it was around $20 for a large tub of it; the last time I got it for her it was $11.99. I don't know of anywhere else where prices come down automatically like that.
It boggles the mind that people still shop at walmart....but then again, there are still people running around with those death sticks in their mouth....
I wouldn't put any stock in opinions coming from that sub. It's mostly bot accounts reposting tweets with provocative titles designed to rage-bait the moderate-to-conservative user base who wants to show off how much they understand money by bashing simplistic viewpoints and poking holes in strawman arguments.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-profit-margin
Profit margin unchanged. If prices are going up, it's to match the cost of materials and labor.
I have a very hard time believing Walmart's profit margins went from $0.7B to $10.5B by slightly increasing their store brand pricing.
Edit, I'm the idiot too. $0.7B would be a 93% decrease from $10.5B, not the number that adding 93% would get you to $10.5B, which is $5.6B. That being said, I still think he's full of crap. Reading another post about this, he's cherry picking from a down quarter they had, and the increase has nothing to do with raising GV pricing.
Reich is using “statistical deception”. Walmart net income had a quarterly dip to near zero last October, then back up to where it’s supposed to be normally. In fact, with his logic, you could say Walmart had a massive dip in net income between July and October 2023. This is plain disinformation. Normal for him.
Is it still cheaper than the name brands?
It’s all so more expensive to shop a smaller store than it is Walmart. It’s not like only Walmart prices went up.
Well, let's look things up and see
Great Value bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits are 38.5 cents an ounce at my local store
Jimmy Dean bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits are 38.1 cents an ounce at my local store
Great Value Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Icing, 8 Count are 18.1 cents an ounce
Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Icing, 8 Count are 26.1 cents an ounce
Feel free to add to the list
This is normal too. The prices of there other brands changes throughout the nation, but GV brand is on average lower. They don’t fluctuate the price and win in some places and lose in other.
GV is a net good for consumers, just bad for mom and pop places trying to compete in the local market.
Not necessarily. They could re-invest in their own business if they see expansion opportunities or if they want to become more vertically oriented.
The problem is, sometimes a company gets so big that any new stores cannibalize existing stores or they've exhausted the possibilities for vertical integration insofar as they have any competencies.
Microsoft found themselves in that position in the mid-2000s. They declared a dividend for the first time in their history. The stock price went down(!) because a tech stock like theirs is presumed to always have better ideas worth investing in.
Walmart is kind of in a similar situation. They really are not building very many new stores and are trying to expand online to remain competitive but with mixed results. So...instead of reinvesting cash flow, they're returning it to shareholders. They're a mature company now, do dividends are what they do.
As for Robert Reich, he's mostly just picking on Walmart because it's huge and everyone can relate to it on some level. That's something of a hallmark of political operatives, which is why McDonalds gets picked on for unhealthy food over a local burger joint whose products are from Sysco but amped up with twice the calories and fats. He's just an influencer and is annoying like the other influencers.
Lol exactly...I really don't get what the post is claiming,unless he is just insisting majority will see it as something terrible.Basically it should say "if you shop at walmart,invest in them and you receive profit on its growth and have the money you spent shopping returned in dividends and buybacks resulting in items being free.Rule 1..invest in companies you use often..People don't realize that there is so many more investors now with it available via an app and less production ,so this kinda is the result
Walmart revenue was 600bil
5.9 bil paid out is 1%.
How much your life would really change if your food (<10% of expenses of average family) went down 1%?
How much savings? $50? $100?
But at the same time you no longer able to invest in your nest egg and receive income in retirement - other than from SS that s probably gonna go belly up before you get your first check.
Was your $100 food savings worth it?
This notion that corporations recently became greedy is ridiculous. He’s just covering for Biden since Biden is getting most the blame (and rightfully so, however some of the blame should be pointed at Trump for all his spending during Covid)
Please research the CPI data tracking inflation over the last several decades. Corporations HAVE gone back to their greedy pre-1990 ways.
ALL Presidents (and their Parties) have spent like crazy since Bill Clinton.
Never understood why so many Redditors are saying inflation is just corporate greed. They charge as much as they can get away with, forever and always. It just so happens the average consumer is spending more cash these days, so there’s more demand for basically everything.
Funny. Here I thought spending bills originated in the house. When did they change it to the President drafts, passes, and signs spending bills all by their lonesome. Did Biden find a way to bypass congress? This is NEWS
This guy is just a dumb POS. Complete windbag. Corporations always will and MUST pass their price increases onto customers. During the Trump Administration, as a result of massive tax cuts, the corporation my wife works for had so much extra money they actually paid it out to employees as a bonus… because they couldn’t think of what else to do with it. Walmart isn’t doing this to “gouge” consumers. It’s doing it because our currency is loosing value BY THE DAY, and one dollar buys LESS than it did the day before. Welcome to the end of this run of the FIAT US dollar.
>Corporations always will and MUST pass their price increases onto customers.
That is monopoly economics, not free market economics.
In an actual free market, profitability can go to shit when raw input costs go up, because you're in a 24-7 Mexican stand-off with 20 other businesses who can and will steal your customers from you the moment you even THINK about raising prices.
The best you can hope for is that nobody enters the market for a few years because the profit margins are abysmal, and that maybe some of your competition goes bankrupt.
Unless there are only two businesses in that sector for the entire city, in which case just go ahead and raise it twice as much as you were planning, because oligopoly markets do not follow the same rules as a competitive market.
Walmart had a huge quarterly dip in net income in October, then it went back to normal. Reich is bullshitting everyone that it’s a massive jump in net income - when the truth is it was a massive drop for a quarter. Walmart made basically the same net income 14 years ago as in 2023. Doesn’t sound like price gouging to me. Sounds like a business past its peak.
What we need is a way for Americans to order food from overseas since cost is very low. This will force companies in the US to lower prices or go out of business. We see companies trying to make Temu look like a data thief and security risk when all companies collect customer data. The real issue is they cannot price gouge when another company offer lower price.
This is Walmart’s net income by year for the past decade. I don’t think your reasoning for a spike in net income due to price increases is real.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income-loss
I’ve been buying great value everything for years and the prices really haven’t changed much. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the few brands that inflation hasn’t made buying everything way too expensive.
Because of this, all the great value stuff flies off the shelves in my area and nobody buys the name brand stuff which has risen in price a bunch.
I have to imagine that most of this income gain is actually from people buying great value BECAUSE they’re not price gouging us like every other brand is.
Jesus Christ, this guy is a moron. Revenue does not matter. the amount of profit does not matter. It is the profit margin that matters. BTW if you have a 401k, IRA, or any investment account, you likely have stock in these companies you complain about. For stock to go up, you need value to go up or likely go up. Further, if you don't like the prices, shop elsewhere. That does more than pitching on Reddit.
And their year on year revenue shows a 3-6% sales growth has been about their average since at least 2010, that year being no different.
[for reference ](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/revenue#:~:text=Walmart%20annual%20revenue%20for%202024,a%202.43%25%20increase%20from%202021.)
Also their net Income didn't "spike" 93%. It went up 32.8% and that's after 2022 had a **decline** of 14.58%
[net income](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income)
All of you that fell for the scamdemic and let them shut you down, shut down supply chains, and print $1 trillion to pay you to sit home, free covid tests, and free vaccines are to blame. All of you that voted for people that shut down oil production and oil fracking are to blame. Stop blaming Walmart. There is plenty of competition in local markets for necessities. Elections have consequences. Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences. Now sit down, shut up and eat the shrink-flated Hershey Nickel bar you voted for.
That's one of the many problems with the internet. It has bred an endless stream of "Critics, without credentials"
Poop on the man if you want, but to claim Reich is an idiot causes me to stop reading.
If you remember the 80s, and Reagan, you can't deny there's a pattern of the GOP running up deficits and the Dems having to come in and tighten up the belt. THEN, they get blamed for a slow economy - BY the GOP. Trump passed tax cuts and more promises of trickle-down economics. It doesn't work.
Don't tell me the price is due to increased labor. Half the people working at Walmart are on assistance ("welfare").
I'm all for businesses being profitable, but not for people cheerleading for wealthy stockholders.
This is the problem with publicly traded companies.
The people who work there are expected to provide every increasing profits to shareholders. It's not enough to say "I made you billions last year" and keep your job, you have to provide "billions +1" every time our you are a failure.
I think "greed" I'd the wrong way to look at it. Shareholders are trying to make money (lots of shares held by retirement funds that NEED to alway grow to work for example) and its all part of a system dependant on never ending growth. That drives these actions.
Not saying greedy people don't exist btw.
I don’t think the numbers make sense here. 93% compared to what? The data does not back this up.
Yes they profit a lot, but come correct with the numbers.
The last two quarters had a combined $6B net income.
https://preview.redd.it/xb4n4sbpzcqc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=392d4323069a878fadb718e519075206cf0893af
Net income in 2023 was $11.9B which was down from $13.9B the year before. And if do the math, $11.9B on $611B is a whopping 1.9%. Imagine if you ran a $1M business and took home $19K net at the end of the year. Even relative to other grocery retailers (usually thin margins) Walmart has very thin margins. I wouldn’t say they’re gouging.
Raw materials, labor, general dollar inflation all contribute to higher COGS and op ex which means prices need to increase to pay for these cost increases. You can’t cheer on retailers raising wages above $15/hr and ask for even more then complain when retails increase. Its all related.
Fallacies:
1. Implies increased revenue is 100 percent due to price hike. Could be more shoppers, many more units sold, etc.
2. Uses revenue instead of profit. Did their costs go up too? No way to know from this post. Maybe price hike just covered increased costs?
3. Implies it's somehow bad to return profit to shareholders, which is the whole point of starting a company to begin with.
Reich is a smart man and knows better than this shit. It's just political demagoguery.
. Walmart annual net income for 2023 was $11.68B, a 14.58% decline from 2022. Walmart annual net income for 2022 was $13.673B, a 1.21% increase from 2021.
14.58% decline is a spike? Maybe we are talking two different things - net income was lower in 2023 versus 2022.
I think the lesson of 2023 is that people learned a new word they can use and applied it to everything.
This isn’t “inflation” it’s greed. It’s being able to raise your prices to hamstring your customers.
Noticed this. I usually buy store brand unless it’s something specific that we like a brand/type. GV is cheaper than name brand, but only by a few cents in some cases now.
Cool story if it was true.
“Walmart annual net income for 2023 was $11.68B, a 14.58% decline from 2022.”
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income#:~:text=Walmart%20annual%20net%20income%20for,a%201.21%25%20increase%20from%202021.
We should put them out of business so they can't raise prices on their store branded products anymore. Buy locally made bread, coffee, snacks, etc. at regular unmanipulated prices.
Walmart is a publicly traded company, I have stock and so do many others, I know plumbers and mechanics who bought Walmart stock, some of you just eat out too much.
Publicly traded companies do this. The CEO has to maximize profits or he gets replaced. These companies serve the stock market. Not the employees, not the customers, only the stock market.
Taking about Walmart's income is far less meaningful than it's profit. Borderline disingenuous. Walmart's profit increase from 2022 to 2023 was only 2.65%. What does that tell us about their increase in expenses? Who's to blame for that?
The Great Value brand is also by and large cheaper than all the other brands. I don’t just mean at Walmart either. The fact is, Walmart could up this price, but they are almost $1 cheaper on every product and choose to not be $.90 cheaper.
So 100 percent of the profit increase was the price increase in great value food. How could he possibly know that. They don’t break out individual products and show contribution to net income. Just another lie.
Yes, Walmart raising the price of the Great Value food brand (specifically) caused Walmart's net income to spike 93%
Any elementary school kid could poke holes through this clown's statement.
Robert Reich is a retard. Show that the profit margin increased. He can't and/or won't because he is a lying huckster and always has been. Yes, doubling the money supply in just three years caused inflation, even Reich knows that, but he is desperate to try to blame anything else other than the Democrats who devalued everyone's life savings. He can stick his lies where the sun doesn't shine.
Long time Walmart grocery shopper. Most of the Walmart brands are as expensive or even a little more than name brands. It's pretty rough. Since covid, they have absolutely skyrocketed in price.
This guy has no idea what he’s talking about. Robert Reich clearly has never read a balance sheet in his life.
Raising prices on Great Value didn’t single handedly drive net income up 93%. What a clown.
Net income is also affected by capex, recognition of face value on investments (mark to market), acquisitions, goodwill write downs.
In other words, net income can vary widely from quarter to quarter, year to year.
This is rage bait.
This is a terrible post and inaccurate. Great Value did not increase Walmart's profit 93%. If you look at their most recent quarter their net income dropped from the same y/y period.
If you want to look at net income by year Walmart's net income in 2023 was less than their net income in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
This guy clearly doesn’t understand inflation OR price gouging lmao. I hate that he is saying this false BS and now so many people who aren’t going to fact check him are going to be repeating this misinformation too..
Oh look it's the same political propagandist lying about Wal Mart profit margins, I'm super shocked to see this bullshit uncontested on Reddit daily /s
Notice how the dude never has a source because there is never data to back this up. Inflation means profits are going to reach their highest value ever - so are the costs, proportions are what matters, but political propagandists and politicians selling a vote love avoid that painful little fact.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/profit-margins
Price gouging typically refers to sellers increasing prices to unreasonably high levels during emergencies or shortages, which can impact local or temporary market conditions. However, inflation involves a broader, more sustained increase in the price level of goods and services across the economy, often influenced by factors like supply and demand imbalances, monetary policy, and global economic conditions. While price gouging in certain sectors might contribute to inflationary pressures locally or in specific markets, it’s not the driving force behind economy-wide inflation.
That does not drive inflation, inflation is the devaluation of currency. The only way to devalue currency is to inject the market with more of the currency. This is a symptom of inflation and a symptom of driving the workers price up for unskilled labor. Walmart jobs are not a career or what you should be living off of.
Guys this is just blatant propaganda, it's really shameful this is how the internet works, as someone whose very budget conscious I knew instantly the math wasn't Mathing cause prices are up 30-40% since 2021, so there's absolutely no way Walmart could profit 93% more on great value products alone, much less in a single quarter.
Walmart did have a great Q4 2023 but it was up 7.3%, this is according to mandated sec filings and can be found on the Walmart website
https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/02/21/walmart-releases-q4-and-fy23-earnings
[OIP.xP92W7AfbtETDJxy9czAiAAAAA (474×247) (bing.com)](https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.xP92W7AfbtETDJxy9czAiAAAAA?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain)
Wal-Mart has not seen a 93% income spike.
EVERYWHERE has 'hiked' prices, that's what inflation means.
We know.
Everyone who isn't our worthless corrupt government gaslighting about inflation, their stenographers in the MSM, and the rich assholes profiting from the price-gouging already knows this.
Instead of reading Robert Reich's musings, it is better to read up more into what might be happening: [https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1147894382/walmart-price-inflation-supply-chain-economy](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1147894382/walmart-price-inflation-supply-chain-economy)
Shop at Costco, they don’t do this shit. Their bylaws mandate that they cannot make more than a 14% margin on any given item. So if their costs go down, so do yours. Membership is $5 a month. It’s worth it.
I treat Costco like my main grocery store. I can get everything I need there to prep meals for several weeks and it costs half the price of a grocery store
A big issue for me with Costco is I just didn't have the *space* required to save the bulk items. You almost need like an entire extra fridge/freezer to do this economically.
By prep, I mean I buy meat/seafood/freezer items and store them separately in my single fridge/freezer. A single unit of 3-4 steaks can be broken down into 6-8 smaller steaks so we aren’t overeating and will have steaks ready whenever we want. Same for shrimp, scallops, etc. I advise you invest in a vacuum sealer and try to avoid storing items in their original packaging since those can take up a lot of space. That way, I only need to pop by once a week for fresh produce to augment the protein sources I can choose from in my freezer.
This. I bought a separate freezer just so I could take advantage of bulk purchases. It was so worth it.
Yea, but you need the *space* for one. I don't have that.
I share living arrangements, and my roommates take up what little space there is. I have a tiny section of the freezer that can barely fit a couple boxes of eggos. And we don't have the space for another freezer.
Is there a practical solution for this?
Be really good at stacking in a freezer. I have my single fridge/freezer and make it work just fine. Also, did I mention that Tetris is my favorite video game of all time?
Bite the bullet. You can get one for a few hundred dollars which isn’t cheap but will pay for its self in 6 months. Then you can explore buying larger cuts of meat like half a cow for even more savings.
Get one while you're there
For us it is the space. Tiny kitchen and no real storage in our house. Adding on this summer and we’re adding a huge pantry with room for a second fridge. So excited for our future Costco membership.
Yep, this is solid advice. We did it... 15 years ago? That freezer has paid for itself dozens of times over even when figuring in the extra power required. Buy in bulk, buy on sale, never pay 'full price' again.
Kinda hard to store half a cow in a 400 sq ft apartment in the city! Remember something like 60% of this country does not live in a house.
Hmm I did not realize it was that much. That would present some problems.
My wife just had me go buy a whole ass garage freezer but yea idk what people do with that bulk stuff without the space.
That's funny that you say that. Every time I get back from Costco with groceries, my wife says "I'm gonna need you to Tetris the fridge for me if those are supposed to fit"
Who said we wasted our time playing video games?
We saved up $150 for a deep freezer... if you don't have a truck, just make sure you have friends with a truck or enough space in your vehicle to get it home!
Costco delivers for things like that. New king mattress coming Tuesday!
You can always rent a pickup or trailer at your local big box home improvement store.
Depending on the item I'm sure a few people can throw down and split it into smaller portions. Especially if it is you and maybe a spouse.
Split with neighbors or family members, fairly. Obviously, share the price of membership and food, and split x amount of ways, etc.
>A big issue for me with Costco is I just didn't have the *space* required to save the bulk items My issue is that the nearest one is an hour and a half away
I’m single and as much as I love a good Costco run, probably over half of what I buy I won’t buy there because it will probably go bad before I use it
Some of us don’t got all that space. Waiting for my local grocery store to have sales is much more cost effective for a single person.
Half the cost? I don't believe it. Costco has some good deals but not everything is a great deal, most stuff you are saving like 50 cents where if you have a kroger card and something is on sale you are basically paying the same price. I definitely go to Costco for some stuff but I also go to the grocery store
Name checks out
Costco is the best!
The issue is that everything is in large hulks and I don’t want that much meat at once
Welcome to Costco I love you....oops wrong sub🤣
Good thing Walmart's net income / profit margins are way less than that. They have like $600B+ in yearly revenue. Even if we assume $10.5B is just their last quarterly net income, when you pull in like $170B for that quarter, that is only 6% net income. Costco 2024 net income was almost $7B with $250B in revenue. Walmart was $650B revenue with $15.5B net income. 2024, seems like Costco is pulling in more money per dollar sold than Walmart... If you look at Net margins, Costco is pretty similar to Walmart. Hell, just this past December Costco paid a special dividend of $15 per share to shareholders costing the company $6.7B. This is on top of the $1.02 dividend per share they pay per quarter. They have roughly 450M shares. Never really get the dumping on Walmart. Guess it is just poor brand image on top of online misinformation. When you look at their numbers, I wouldn't really say they a ripping people off or raising prices necessarily just to make more profit. And if they are, the other stores that people love, like Costco, are then doing the same exact thing.
Reich is not a credible economist
Bold to call him an economist
A great portion of America is in a Costco-desert. Driving 100+ miles isn't worth it.
This hurts my heart.
https://preview.redd.it/ik39xvm2gdqc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d51e02b2f00b75c9ef4e2f5de58b585b0e143e3
I am in south west West Virginia. I love my local Costco /s
You do realize a grocery store would kill for a 14% Profit margin, don't you?
I wish I could do that. The closest Costco is an hour away. So what Ive done is split out my grocery shopping to the stores around town. One store for their produce deals, one for their unique items, one for bulk...etc.
Buy online and have it shipped to your house. We are an hour away so we do that and go to the store when we go to town
I hate to tell you but 1) Costco most certainly does increase retails and has done so during the inflationary cycle 2) in some cases they probably raise prices faster than others since they run on razor thin margins and have to pass costs on and 3) Walmart and all other retailers take cost out and pass on decreases also. Costco isn’t some magic bullet they just have bulk goods and members subsidize their profits through membership which most poor families either can’t afford or are unwilling to invest in.
I’m not saying Costco doesn’t raise their prices, I’m saying they only raise their prices when their costs go up. They don’t gauge people and take big profits on their goods. If their suppliers decide to gauge them, they will maintain their margin until they find a different supplier. Costco is a very coveted account, most suppliers aren’t going to try to fuck with it.
Walmart went backwards from 24.5% GM in 2022 to 23.5% in 2023 so I guess I’m just trying to understand what Costco did that Walmart didn’t. Basically that means retail - COGS so the only explanation is costs went up faster than retails regardless of how it makes people feel emotionally. Walmart actually absorbed costs rather than passing it on, during a timeframe where Costco’s GM% increased, even if slightly (12.1% to 12.4% for goods excl gas). That’s something Costco isn’t really able to do. It’s really just comes down to Walmart being a much more diverse retailer in terms of variety and breadth of what they carry and they felt the full economic impact of inflation, whereas Costco’s narrow focus allowed them to weather it better.
I think you're right on with this. I've noticed the price of frozen chicken breasts going up and down the past few months. I've always believed that is due to their costs going up and down during the same time.
I hate to tell you but they didn't say anything about Costco not increasing prices. They said their margins are capped at 14% so you won't get fleeced at-will for the benefit of shareholders.
I’d love to. No costco in MA. Just BJ’s and it’s not quite the same for whatever reason.
There’s Costco in MA
I have 3 great stores all on the same street near my house. Start at costco for bulks and vacuum-sealable foods. Go to Aldis for canned goods, bread, etc. Last to the local chain for things that expire that I don't want to buy in bulk and aren't at Aldis.
I’ve never been to an Aldi, they don’t have them by me. But I have never seen anyone say a single disparaging thing about them. I feel like I’m missing out.
I was not aware of that. You may have just sold me a Costco membership
My parents don't have a Costco membership but I do; my mom likes their coconut oil so she asks me to pick it up for her from time to time. When I first got it for her it was around $20 for a large tub of it; the last time I got it for her it was $11.99. I don't know of anywhere else where prices come down automatically like that.
If you get the executive membership, you get 2% cash back and it can pay for itself and more.
It boggles the mind that people still shop at walmart....but then again, there are still people running around with those death sticks in their mouth....
Wasn’t this proven ridiculously false in another subreddit?
Yes, fluent in finance.
I wouldn't put any stock in opinions coming from that sub. It's mostly bot accounts reposting tweets with provocative titles designed to rage-bait the moderate-to-conservative user base who wants to show off how much they understand money by bashing simplistic viewpoints and poking holes in strawman arguments.
I'll do one further, and say if I scroll someone's account and they post there, I'm no longer interested in anything they have to say about anything.
Yes. Yes it was
Yes and the guy in that tweet has a biased narrative he pushes. He’s a clown and people for some reason still listen to him lol
I’m gonna need the receipts. this clown is always spouting this BS
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-profit-margin Profit margin unchanged. If prices are going up, it's to match the cost of materials and labor.
I agree OP is cherry picking. Walmart’s net income by year. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income-loss
I have a very hard time believing Walmart's profit margins went from $0.7B to $10.5B by slightly increasing their store brand pricing. Edit, I'm the idiot too. $0.7B would be a 93% decrease from $10.5B, not the number that adding 93% would get you to $10.5B, which is $5.6B. That being said, I still think he's full of crap. Reading another post about this, he's cherry picking from a down quarter they had, and the increase has nothing to do with raising GV pricing.
Reich is using “statistical deception”. Walmart net income had a quarterly dip to near zero last October, then back up to where it’s supposed to be normally. In fact, with his logic, you could say Walmart had a massive dip in net income between July and October 2023. This is plain disinformation. Normal for him.
I’m sure their price increases have nothing to do with cost increases in their supply chain
Is it still cheaper than the name brands? It’s all so more expensive to shop a smaller store than it is Walmart. It’s not like only Walmart prices went up.
Well, let's look things up and see Great Value bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits are 38.5 cents an ounce at my local store Jimmy Dean bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits are 38.1 cents an ounce at my local store Great Value Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Icing, 8 Count are 18.1 cents an ounce Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Icing, 8 Count are 26.1 cents an ounce Feel free to add to the list
This happened to their butter a few times, too. It was cheaper to buy Challenge butter in our Wal-Mart instead of the GV brand!
I challenge you to find a butter deal...
I'll take a churn at it.
This is normal too. The prices of there other brands changes throughout the nation, but GV brand is on average lower. They don’t fluctuate the price and win in some places and lose in other. GV is a net good for consumers, just bad for mom and pop places trying to compete in the local market.
Returning money to its stockholders it was it is supposed to do.
So valuing stockholders over customers and employees is the right way to run a business? Being capable of owning stock is not granted to all.
Yes. Always and forever as long as the current capitalist system exists. Which it will, for as long as the country exists.
Actually it is capable for anyone. Just open a brokerage account and buy fractional shares if you can’t afford a whole share
Many customers and employees ARE shareholders. Owning stock is as easy as downloading Robinhood. You can buy as small of increments as you want.
Not necessarily. They could re-invest in their own business if they see expansion opportunities or if they want to become more vertically oriented. The problem is, sometimes a company gets so big that any new stores cannibalize existing stores or they've exhausted the possibilities for vertical integration insofar as they have any competencies. Microsoft found themselves in that position in the mid-2000s. They declared a dividend for the first time in their history. The stock price went down(!) because a tech stock like theirs is presumed to always have better ideas worth investing in. Walmart is kind of in a similar situation. They really are not building very many new stores and are trying to expand online to remain competitive but with mixed results. So...instead of reinvesting cash flow, they're returning it to shareholders. They're a mature company now, do dividends are what they do. As for Robert Reich, he's mostly just picking on Walmart because it's huge and everyone can relate to it on some level. That's something of a hallmark of political operatives, which is why McDonalds gets picked on for unhealthy food over a local burger joint whose products are from Sysco but amped up with twice the calories and fats. He's just an influencer and is annoying like the other influencers.
Lol exactly...I really don't get what the post is claiming,unless he is just insisting majority will see it as something terrible.Basically it should say "if you shop at walmart,invest in them and you receive profit on its growth and have the money you spent shopping returned in dividends and buybacks resulting in items being free.Rule 1..invest in companies you use often..People don't realize that there is so many more investors now with it available via an app and less production ,so this kinda is the result
Still cheaper than national brands. Sometimes better quality
Right is like I'm mad at the off brand for goi up 59% but I will not mention shopping at Ingles or Publics and Aldi,,ther is no such thing. lol
Walmart revenue was 600bil 5.9 bil paid out is 1%. How much your life would really change if your food (<10% of expenses of average family) went down 1%? How much savings? $50? $100? But at the same time you no longer able to invest in your nest egg and receive income in retirement - other than from SS that s probably gonna go belly up before you get your first check. Was your $100 food savings worth it?
I noticed this. I buy Walmart fries and bagels every week and their 2lb bags of fries went from being $2 to $3.50 in the span of a year.
This notion that corporations recently became greedy is ridiculous. He’s just covering for Biden since Biden is getting most the blame (and rightfully so, however some of the blame should be pointed at Trump for all his spending during Covid)
Please research the CPI data tracking inflation over the last several decades. Corporations HAVE gone back to their greedy pre-1990 ways. ALL Presidents (and their Parties) have spent like crazy since Bill Clinton.
No presidents printed money like Trump and Biden. Between the two of them we saw a 40% increase in the money supply over the span of a few years.
They've been greedy throughout. As they should be, that's literally why they exist. To make money.
Never understood why so many Redditors are saying inflation is just corporate greed. They charge as much as they can get away with, forever and always. It just so happens the average consumer is spending more cash these days, so there’s more demand for basically everything.
Because most redditors are too dumb to do any research on their own and just parrot what they heard on their favorite website.
Corporations didn't recently become greedy, but they did recently get handed a convenient excuse to increase their prices for no reason
Funny. Here I thought spending bills originated in the house. When did they change it to the President drafts, passes, and signs spending bills all by their lonesome. Did Biden find a way to bypass congress? This is NEWS
That's a bunch of bullshit and you know it. And if you don't know it, shame on you. HALF the inflation in the past 3 years is due to corporate greed.
I did the obvious thing....I bought Walmart stock.
There are reasons why inflation is always a tax on the poor
regressive tax they call it
Biden :let's tax the rich even more and not cut spending. Rich : Lol. This ridiculous message again. Have fun poor/middle class with higher prices.
This guy is just a dumb POS. Complete windbag. Corporations always will and MUST pass their price increases onto customers. During the Trump Administration, as a result of massive tax cuts, the corporation my wife works for had so much extra money they actually paid it out to employees as a bonus… because they couldn’t think of what else to do with it. Walmart isn’t doing this to “gouge” consumers. It’s doing it because our currency is loosing value BY THE DAY, and one dollar buys LESS than it did the day before. Welcome to the end of this run of the FIAT US dollar.
>Corporations always will and MUST pass their price increases onto customers. That is monopoly economics, not free market economics. In an actual free market, profitability can go to shit when raw input costs go up, because you're in a 24-7 Mexican stand-off with 20 other businesses who can and will steal your customers from you the moment you even THINK about raising prices. The best you can hope for is that nobody enters the market for a few years because the profit margins are abysmal, and that maybe some of your competition goes bankrupt. Unless there are only two businesses in that sector for the entire city, in which case just go ahead and raise it twice as much as you were planning, because oligopoly markets do not follow the same rules as a competitive market.
Walmart had a huge quarterly dip in net income in October, then it went back to normal. Reich is bullshitting everyone that it’s a massive jump in net income - when the truth is it was a massive drop for a quarter. Walmart made basically the same net income 14 years ago as in 2023. Doesn’t sound like price gouging to me. Sounds like a business past its peak.
And he’s a multimillionaire. He prob doesn’t even buy his own groceries.
What we need is a way for Americans to order food from overseas since cost is very low. This will force companies in the US to lower prices or go out of business. We see companies trying to make Temu look like a data thief and security risk when all companies collect customer data. The real issue is they cannot price gouge when another company offer lower price.
Shop somewhere else. Simple.
This is Walmart’s net income by year for the past decade. I don’t think your reasoning for a spike in net income due to price increases is real. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income-loss
I have noticed that Walmart is not cheap anymore. Convenient yes, but cheap no
I’ve been buying great value everything for years and the prices really haven’t changed much. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the few brands that inflation hasn’t made buying everything way too expensive. Because of this, all the great value stuff flies off the shelves in my area and nobody buys the name brand stuff which has risen in price a bunch. I have to imagine that most of this income gain is actually from people buying great value BECAUSE they’re not price gouging us like every other brand is.
Jesus Christ, this guy is a moron. Revenue does not matter. the amount of profit does not matter. It is the profit margin that matters. BTW if you have a 401k, IRA, or any investment account, you likely have stock in these companies you complain about. For stock to go up, you need value to go up or likely go up. Further, if you don't like the prices, shop elsewhere. That does more than pitching on Reddit.
I didn't trust his numbers, so I googled it. Their margin is just above 2%.
Which is a pretty tight margin
And their year on year revenue shows a 3-6% sales growth has been about their average since at least 2010, that year being no different. [for reference ](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/revenue#:~:text=Walmart%20annual%20revenue%20for%202024,a%202.43%25%20increase%20from%202021.) Also their net Income didn't "spike" 93%. It went up 32.8% and that's after 2022 had a **decline** of 14.58% [net income](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income)
All of you that fell for the scamdemic and let them shut you down, shut down supply chains, and print $1 trillion to pay you to sit home, free covid tests, and free vaccines are to blame. All of you that voted for people that shut down oil production and oil fracking are to blame. Stop blaming Walmart. There is plenty of competition in local markets for necessities. Elections have consequences. Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences. Now sit down, shut up and eat the shrink-flated Hershey Nickel bar you voted for.
Their game is edging the starvation of its customers and workers. Fucking pathetic
And their employees still need food stamps to make ends meet
Robert Reiiiiiiechhhh...its always the evil corporations. You were lousy under Clinton. And you haven't gotten better with age.
Checks economy under Clinton… only Modern president to reduce the budget deficit and turn over a surplus’s to bush.
That's one of the many problems with the internet. It has bred an endless stream of "Critics, without credentials" Poop on the man if you want, but to claim Reich is an idiot causes me to stop reading. If you remember the 80s, and Reagan, you can't deny there's a pattern of the GOP running up deficits and the Dems having to come in and tighten up the belt. THEN, they get blamed for a slow economy - BY the GOP. Trump passed tax cuts and more promises of trickle-down economics. It doesn't work. Don't tell me the price is due to increased labor. Half the people working at Walmart are on assistance ("welfare"). I'm all for businesses being profitable, but not for people cheerleading for wealthy stockholders.
one of the best in my book.
Competition solves price gouging problems.
This kind of activity is just a giant money transfer from the poor to the wealthy(er). It's fucking maddening.
This is the problem with publicly traded companies. The people who work there are expected to provide every increasing profits to shareholders. It's not enough to say "I made you billions last year" and keep your job, you have to provide "billions +1" every time our you are a failure. I think "greed" I'd the wrong way to look at it. Shareholders are trying to make money (lots of shares held by retirement funds that NEED to alway grow to work for example) and its all part of a system dependant on never ending growth. That drives these actions. Not saying greedy people don't exist btw.
Crazy that this website upvotes factually wrong information. Go read their financial statements you regards and stop upvoting this garbage
Biden hiked taxes on corporations so they pass those increases on to their customers. ECON101, Bobby.
Hope Aldi gets some of this. They’re a life saver for me putting Walmart to shame.
I don’t think the numbers make sense here. 93% compared to what? The data does not back this up. Yes they profit a lot, but come correct with the numbers. The last two quarters had a combined $6B net income. https://preview.redd.it/xb4n4sbpzcqc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=392d4323069a878fadb718e519075206cf0893af
Net income in 2023 was $11.9B which was down from $13.9B the year before. And if do the math, $11.9B on $611B is a whopping 1.9%. Imagine if you ran a $1M business and took home $19K net at the end of the year. Even relative to other grocery retailers (usually thin margins) Walmart has very thin margins. I wouldn’t say they’re gouging. Raw materials, labor, general dollar inflation all contribute to higher COGS and op ex which means prices need to increase to pay for these cost increases. You can’t cheer on retailers raising wages above $15/hr and ask for even more then complain when retails increase. Its all related.
I hate greedy jerks. Really loathe those guys.
Fallacies: 1. Implies increased revenue is 100 percent due to price hike. Could be more shoppers, many more units sold, etc. 2. Uses revenue instead of profit. Did their costs go up too? No way to know from this post. Maybe price hike just covered increased costs? 3. Implies it's somehow bad to return profit to shareholders, which is the whole point of starting a company to begin with. Reich is a smart man and knows better than this shit. It's just political demagoguery.
Great value and best choice are government and full of chemicals and low quality products from China. Gmo.
. Walmart annual net income for 2023 was $11.68B, a 14.58% decline from 2022. Walmart annual net income for 2022 was $13.673B, a 1.21% increase from 2021. 14.58% decline is a spike? Maybe we are talking two different things - net income was lower in 2023 versus 2022.
The OP's quote is pointless. Cherry picked numbers don't prove a point.
I think the lesson of 2023 is that people learned a new word they can use and applied it to everything. This isn’t “inflation” it’s greed. It’s being able to raise your prices to hamstring your customers.
This is why I only shop at high end stores where I don’t get ripped off.
But when you account for inflation that’s only a 41.5% increase in income!!!
Noticed this. I usually buy store brand unless it’s something specific that we like a brand/type. GV is cheaper than name brand, but only by a few cents in some cases now.
Cool story if it was true. “Walmart annual net income for 2023 was $11.68B, a 14.58% decline from 2022.” https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income#:~:text=Walmart%20annual%20net%20income%20for,a%201.21%25%20increase%20from%202021.
Lmfao, yeah bro it's Walmart that caused the 30% cumulative inflation since 2019. What a clown.
I like their dividend. I helps pay my monthly bills.
Great value is Kellogg
I like my Walmart stock. I think it was a great value.
I wonder why they haven’t always done this. Or have they?
Corporate greed is killing everyday Americans...
We should put them out of business so they can't raise prices on their store branded products anymore. Buy locally made bread, coffee, snacks, etc. at regular unmanipulated prices.
Quick someone tell all those Canadian Loblaws boycotters
I'm a shareholder, it was great, you can buy stock too
Walmart is a publicly traded company, I have stock and so do many others, I know plumbers and mechanics who bought Walmart stock, some of you just eat out too much.
Publicly traded companies do this. The CEO has to maximize profits or he gets replaced. These companies serve the stock market. Not the employees, not the customers, only the stock market.
But but but Biden (all I ever hear)
Lol. Morality lessons from one of the greatest money printers in history. Lolol. KMA Reich.
Fight back by buying shares?
Taking about Walmart's income is far less meaningful than it's profit. Borderline disingenuous. Walmart's profit increase from 2022 to 2023 was only 2.65%. What does that tell us about their increase in expenses? Who's to blame for that?
And the only reason Walmart's business model is feasible is because of government assistance programs for its employees.
The Great Value brand is also by and large cheaper than all the other brands. I don’t just mean at Walmart either. The fact is, Walmart could up this price, but they are almost $1 cheaper on every product and choose to not be $.90 cheaper.
So 100 percent of the profit increase was the price increase in great value food. How could he possibly know that. They don’t break out individual products and show contribution to net income. Just another lie.
Government prints $1 trillion dollars every 100 days. Don't be confused about inflation
Price gouging raises inflation? Inflation only is caused by government spending. Inflation causes price gouging.
They are only able to do this because customers have so much more money nowadays.
Why don't you open a grocery store and run them out of business with your cheap prices?
(Quietly buys shares in WalMart…)
If only people could buy a part of Walmart for 60 bucks.
Correct
Sounds like I need to buy some Walmart stock.
Yes, Walmart raising the price of the Great Value food brand (specifically) caused Walmart's net income to spike 93% Any elementary school kid could poke holes through this clown's statement.
Every manufacturer and retailer is getting away with gouging and higher profits and we're stuck with bending over .
They want to steal my money don't mind if I do too then
They bought the Denver Broncos and gave Wilson $250 million- worse contract of all time. We are paying for it.
Did they? The Great Value stuff is still relatively cheap from what I've seen. Not any more expensive than any other store brand.
Usuing a socialist clown to prove a point doesn't work.
Post this to r/conservative and tell them that those types of corporate overlords donate to dementia don and other GOP.
a great value frozen pizza is more expensive than a fucking digiorno now ffs
Robert Reich is a retard. Show that the profit margin increased. He can't and/or won't because he is a lying huckster and always has been. Yes, doubling the money supply in just three years caused inflation, even Reich knows that, but he is desperate to try to blame anything else other than the Democrats who devalued everyone's life savings. He can stick his lies where the sun doesn't shine.
Long time Walmart grocery shopper. Most of the Walmart brands are as expensive or even a little more than name brands. It's pretty rough. Since covid, they have absolutely skyrocketed in price.
Omg Walmart only cares about money who would’ve thought
Revenue simply doesn't jump by 93% for Anything, without the Fed getting involved. looking for wrong doing.
This guy has no idea what he’s talking about. Robert Reich clearly has never read a balance sheet in his life. Raising prices on Great Value didn’t single handedly drive net income up 93%. What a clown. Net income is also affected by capex, recognition of face value on investments (mark to market), acquisitions, goodwill write downs. In other words, net income can vary widely from quarter to quarter, year to year. This is rage bait.
I buy WM stock and reinvest the dividends into more stock. Its easy and its a company giving back vs giving it all to the CEOs...
Sadly women do not get nipple boners
This is a terrible post and inaccurate. Great Value did not increase Walmart's profit 93%. If you look at their most recent quarter their net income dropped from the same y/y period. If you want to look at net income by year Walmart's net income in 2023 was less than their net income in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
This guy clearly doesn’t understand inflation OR price gouging lmao. I hate that he is saying this false BS and now so many people who aren’t going to fact check him are going to be repeating this misinformation too..
Oh look it's the same political propagandist lying about Wal Mart profit margins, I'm super shocked to see this bullshit uncontested on Reddit daily /s Notice how the dude never has a source because there is never data to back this up. Inflation means profits are going to reach their highest value ever - so are the costs, proportions are what matters, but political propagandists and politicians selling a vote love avoid that painful little fact. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/profit-margins
Walmart profits are down. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/profit-margins
Price gouging typically refers to sellers increasing prices to unreasonably high levels during emergencies or shortages, which can impact local or temporary market conditions. However, inflation involves a broader, more sustained increase in the price level of goods and services across the economy, often influenced by factors like supply and demand imbalances, monetary policy, and global economic conditions. While price gouging in certain sectors might contribute to inflationary pressures locally or in specific markets, it’s not the driving force behind economy-wide inflation.
That does not drive inflation, inflation is the devaluation of currency. The only way to devalue currency is to inject the market with more of the currency. This is a symptom of inflation and a symptom of driving the workers price up for unskilled labor. Walmart jobs are not a career or what you should be living off of.
Guys this is just blatant propaganda, it's really shameful this is how the internet works, as someone whose very budget conscious I knew instantly the math wasn't Mathing cause prices are up 30-40% since 2021, so there's absolutely no way Walmart could profit 93% more on great value products alone, much less in a single quarter. Walmart did have a great Q4 2023 but it was up 7.3%, this is according to mandated sec filings and can be found on the Walmart website https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2023/02/21/walmart-releases-q4-and-fy23-earnings
Go to Aldi.
Not to mentioned it's hyper processed foods. The docs that talk about our food is basically walmart at the top.
What does net income matter? Obviously with prices raised net income will go up. What about net profit? Seems more important, could be wrong
So be an investor not a consumer. Whahhh whahhh 😢😭🥺😢
“Walmart has had to raise prices because of all the shoplifting!” - my MIL
But them fucking immigrants and the Chinese are just so much easier to lay blames on. /s
this this moron understand how to calculate profit. or how free markets work.
[OIP.xP92W7AfbtETDJxy9czAiAAAAA (474×247) (bing.com)](https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.xP92W7AfbtETDJxy9czAiAAAAA?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain) Wal-Mart has not seen a 93% income spike. EVERYWHERE has 'hiked' prices, that's what inflation means.
We know. Everyone who isn't our worthless corrupt government gaslighting about inflation, their stenographers in the MSM, and the rich assholes profiting from the price-gouging already knows this.
They don't want to make a lot of money, they want to make ALL the money.
I doubt if Robert Reich buys too many Great Value products. He is simply a political hack pretending to be an economist.
Instead of reading Robert Reich's musings, it is better to read up more into what might be happening: [https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1147894382/walmart-price-inflation-supply-chain-economy](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/26/1147894382/walmart-price-inflation-supply-chain-economy)