That’s kind of the only way it could work.
Grocery stores average margins of ~3%. They can’t do universal 10% discounts.
Comment on They eliminated cashiers and keep the profits. NY Democrats are fighting back.
just2look@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
It seems like they will just mark everything up by 10% and then give that discount at self checkout. So they will pocket even more while harming those who don’t use self checkout.
Or eliminating cashiers altogether.
Steve@communick.news 15 hours ago
just2look@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
The CEO of Kroger made $15.63 million in 2024. Pretty sure there are lots of ways they could make it work. They choose not to.
Steve@communick.news 13 hours ago
That’s not how math works.
2024
Revenue was $147B
Profit was $3.8B or 2.8%The lowest estimate of sales volume through self checkout is 38%.
So a 10% self checkout discount is 3.8% hit to revenue. When profits are only 2.8% they’ll take a 1% loss.The CEO pay being only 0.4% of that $3.8B profit. Isn’t remotely enough to matter.
just2look@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
Do you think the CEO compensation is the only place they are siphoning off funds to the oligarchs? And even with all the greed, they are still admitting to robbing $3.8B from the working class. That’s all profits are.
The system rewards greed and corruption. So that’s what they do. They conspire with other corporations to inflate prices. They take advantage of disasters to gouge consumers. These aren’t conspiracies, they are things that have been admitted to under oath and discovered through investigation.
Artisian@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
That’s an abysmally small number compared to the amount of product they move.
Yes, sure, CEO’s should make less. But that amounts to fractions of a percent on the typical purchase, not 10%.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 8 hours ago
Sure they can. They hike prices 11.11% and the 10% discount brings them right back to their original price. Their 3% margin stays a 3% margin. They can even post the “discounted” price on the shelves to make it seem like customers are getting a good deal.
Steve@communick.news 4 hours ago
Yah. That’s what was already pointed out.
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
You’re pretending that stores can just arbitrarily raise prices. They already set their prices as the maximum the market will bear. And yes, ultimately the point is to make self-checkout cheaper than regular.
just2look@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
They arbitrarily raise prices all the time. Have you not noticed? And are you going to just stop eating food if it suddenly costs 10 percent more?
isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
You think that was arbitrary? Do you have any idea how much work stores put in to setting prices? It’s more complex than this, but to illustrate, companies will maximize for total revenue, so quantity sold times price. And they know that whenever they raise the price, even by ten cents, some number of people will not purchase that item. They only raise prices if they predict the decline in sales will be more than offset by the increase in revenue per item.
It may seem arbitrary to you, but it’s anything but. The prices in the store are already at what the company estimates to be the optimum total revenue level.
Artisian@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Note that cheaper self-checkout means more demand for it (and less demand for cashiers). So we’ll have fewer jobs, and worse service for those who can’t (for w/e reason) use self-checkout.
Most of its happening anyway.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
It also doesn’t really make sense to do it as a percentage. A cashier’s wage is hourly, and the labor market has settled on a particular wage for cashiers in this area - say $15/hr.
If I have a $150 grocery bill, a 10% discount would be $15. For maybe 5 minutes of work. Working out to an hourly wage of $180/hr (60/5 = 12, 12 * 15 = 180).
So if they’re saying “we should be compensating customers for being made to do labor”, they’d be compensating them at roughly 12x the going rate for cashiers in this example, which doesn’t really make sense.
Now if it’s just meant to be punitive, OK. But then why not actually address the real issue: displacement of workers by technology and passing the labor burden on to unpaid consumers - either make that illegal or tax the company to help mitigate the harm it’s causing by eliminating jobs.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
For the last point, it is easier to tax unfavored behavior into the ground than it is to outright forbid it. That’s why sin taxes exist after all.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
I don’t think it would be difficult to forbid self-checkout at all, actually.
There’s a difference between enforcing laws on individuals and enforcing laws on businesses. Businesses can’t exactly run and hide, if they’re using self-checkout they’re going to get found out. That’s distinct from something like the drug trade, which is all underground and hidden.
teslekova@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Some people fucking love self checkout. If you ban it, you’ll have disability advocacy groups up your arse on behalf of autistic people and others with social anxiety.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
We’ve given up so much as consumers. There was a time when people would be pissed that the store was making them do unpaid labor. Now we don’t bat an eye.
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
My concern here is less about enforcement and more about getting the law passed and through the court system in the first place.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
Do sin taxes really stop anything though?
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
They definitely have some effect, simply because they push prices up.
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 8 hours ago
If you have a $150 grocery bill, it’s being hiked to ~$166.66 before you get to the checkout. Then the 10% discount is bringing it back down to the $150 you were paying before. The net discount is zero: you’re paying exactly what you’re paying now.
If you keep going to the cashier after this, you’re paying the company the hiked price, which gives them an extra $16.66 for maybe 5 minutes of cashier labor. The company turns around and pays the cashier $1.66, netting an extra $15 from you for their shareholders.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
Cost of labor, overhead, and profit are already accounted for in that $150 price of the goods. That’s why the store charges $150 for them - because that’s what covers the wages, overhead, and includes the maximum markup they can get away with (~3% margin for grocery stores afaik).
All I’m saying is, they do have to be able to cover costs. So because of that and their thin margins, they’d just hike prices (probably more than they’d need to take advantage of the situation).
So it makes more sense to either tax them for avoiding using human labor and passing that labor on to customers (to help pay for the drain they’re placing on the economy by not hiring people), or just ban the practice outright. Couple that with price controls to ensure they can’t unfairly inflate prices. Things they can’t avoid rather than a fee they can hike prices to avoid.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
The problem with your logic is that I can scan the items slower and make the compensation more fair, if I scan the items 12x slower then I’m being paid a fair wage for that 150$ purchase.
So am I being punished for being fast?
queermunist@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
Well. Discounting items in self-checkout is actually a tax on the company for using self-checkout.
ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
But not one that relates to the thing that we’re trying to stop them from doing. Cashiers aren’t paid per item scanned, they don’t get commission. They are paid an hourly wage.
If you wanted to pay customers a rebate for their labor at the market rate for a cashier, or one set by the state, that’d make sense to eliminate the gains the company receives from automation.
So 5 minutes of work at $15/hr = $1.25. So not much, but it mitigates the benefit of not hiring people.
Though, it’s still a benefit because you pay a person whether they’re actively working or not and you have to pay tax on human labor (contributing to social security, etc) so maybe hiking it higher than whatever the typical wage is for cashiers would make sense.
But either way, 10% doesn’t make sense.