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Links for Columbus Day!

by: Eric B.

Mon Oct 08, 2012 at 11:36:08 AM EDT


The fact that there are links and the fact that today is Columbus Day are entirely coincidental. I don't intend to celebrate Columbus Day with a collection of links. By the way, if you think Christopher Columbus was a bloodthirsty, genocidal maniac not worthy of rememberance, you should know that the county in which I live -- Isabella County -- was named for the lady who first helped bankroll his expeditions to this here New World.

Food for thought.

Onward!

*--The Freep yesterday endorsed two of the three Democratic-nominated justices for the Supreme Court. The editorial is notable for its thoughtfulness in addressing what's gone wrong with how we view the court, although there could have been some mention that the state Supreme Court is quickly taking on another, unintended role ... final arbiter of political matters. Meanwhile, this morning the News published a highly comical endorsement editorial of Oakland County offices that could have merely said, "We endorse all Democrats Republicans," and been done with it. I won't link because it is that valueless.

*--I've had this open a couple of days. It's the first glimpse at the post-item pricing world. Guess what? Shelf prices have gone up, not down as promised. Know what else has changed? Customer service is now a thing of the past, since there's never anyone around to ask questions about shelf pricing. That, you can't quantify.

*--A guest commentary about the Legislature's assault on a conservation program that everyone but Republican lawmakers agrees is a universal success ... nature conservancies. I do have to point out that benevolent overlord Rick Michigan has a history with the Nature Conservancy, since it's usually received bipartisan accolades because it's an agreement property owners can enter into willingly. Expect the private property rights wing of the Mackinac Center to leap onto this issue very, very soon. Or, not.

*--Jeff Wattrick takes a shot at ethanol and ethanol subsidies.

P.S. This is from Friday, when the latest jobs report was released. It was, by all accounts, good news. Except to the right wing, which immediately declared it all part of a conspiracy. That was too looney for the few remaining serious people on the right, who denounced the latest conspiracy theory as loony. My point? One of the places where the conspiracy theory was promoted was Henry Payne's Museum for Half-Formed Thoughts.

Eric B. :: Links for Columbus Day!
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I would question the claim on shelf prices
The article you linked to regarding shelf prices concerns a study conducted by Michigan Citizen Action. And the report they published contains a large number of issues that leads me to question its veracity. And two of these issues were massive, so I'll discuss them briefly.

First of all, the data from the Consumer Price Index reports (which the report itself references) shows that in the Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint area, grew at a lower rate than the national average, decreased in months that their data recorded a spike in prices, and, in the case of food-based groceries, increased a total of 0.0024% over the period the study. During this period, the study reported a net increase of ~7.5% in grocery prices statewide and a temporary spike at ~20% of the study's starting point. Seeing as they are attributing these increase to the new item-pricing law, which should affect prices statewide, it is unlikely that both of these observations are accurate.

Secondly, the report had a very vague description on the survey methodology. It doesn't disclose what items they bought, whether any of them were on sale at any point, how the items were selected, whether or not they gave any observations different weights, whether or not they were overcharged at any point, etc. Furthermore, it did not attempt justify any of the choices and assumptions made that it did discuss in the methodology. And it inexplicably does not include any numbers regarding price increases (I had to guess from their graphs to get the numbers used above), never mind any actual data. It would be helpful, for instance, to compare how prices differed from store to store when evaluating this survey.

It could well be the Michigan Citizen Action is right and the Item Pricing Law repeal has increased retail prices. However, based on the flawed report they released, I would not make that conclusion.


Re-butt-al
Well, first off, I buy groceries and I'm poor, so when the shelf price on groceries goes up, I notice.  The shelf price of groceries has definitely increased since the item pricing law was repealed. In fact, I can't think of anything that's gotten cheaper to buy in the last two years, and a bunch of stuff that's gotten more expensive.

But, the study didn't say that repealing item pricing would cause prices to go up. The study said that prices have gone up, not down. And, down is what we were told would happen.

We were sold repealing the item pricing law based on the idea that it would allow grocery chains to reduce prices by not having so many employees on the floor making sure that price tags were accurate. The store could reduce labor costs, and then pass that along to consumers.

That hasn't happened.  Prices have gone up, not down. Now, you can argue that food prices are affected by a lot of things not controllable at the state level. That's especially true with food, which is traded as a global commodity. The price of bacon over the next year is expected to go up a little bit thanks to a global shortage of pig feed, for example. But, we were very specifically told that shelf prices would go down as a result of repealing item pricing, and that hasn't happened.

And, neither has there been an improvement in customer service.  In fact, customer service is a lot worse now, because you don't have a bunch of employees out making sure that price tags are up to date.  At Meijer, for instance, used to be that if you wanted to buy a fishing license that there was someone in sporting goods to help you. Now, you have to call customer service on a little red phone and wait the five or 10 minutes it takes for someone to come back and help you.  That was my experience this year, both in buying in restricted license and again when I bought the all-species license.

So, to sum up, higher prices and worse customer service ... that's what we've gotten since item pricing was repealed.

Among the Trees


[ Parent ]
Huh?
Really confused about your description of the News endorsements...

I'm guessing he meant Republicans
It would have been one thing if they endorsed all the incumbents. The fact that they endorsed two Republican challengers to Democratic incumbents doesn't help them when it comes to looking like an unbiased source for news.

Not that anything has, but...

Great Lakes, Great Times, Great Scott


[ Parent ]

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