Interest rate hikes have brought Canada’s cost-of-living crisis to a fever pitch. And while workers are feeling the squeeze, energy corporations are reaping superprofits.
Job losses in oil and gas is fine and everyone involved should keep that in mind. Colleges and universities should be steering stem kids out of pero-engineering, and tradeschools should be pointing people away from fuckin Fort McMurray. In Ontario though there are still loads of millwrights/plumbers/electricians being told that they can go work 5 years in the oil patch then come back home, buy a house and put their feet up.
the level of concentration in grocery distribution is worse than the telecoms.
Telecoms can fall into being natural monopolies for technical reasons, like there only being so much radio spectrum to go around. Grocery distribution, not so much. Literally anyone can start selling groceries right now.
Which, during the height of COVID, when going to restaurant was not allowed, we saw exactly that – a number of restaurants transitioned into being grocery stores.
We had our chance to change our ways. Nobody wanted to. There is concentration in the grocery business because that's what we desire. Plain and simple.
That's hilarious. The formal definition of shortage is a situation where an external mechanism, such as government intervention, prevents price from rising. This is literally looking to create a shortage (a real shortage, not the pretend kind we talk about when it comes to labour) of food and energy.