Star Member uponit7771 (63,980 posts)
14. Yep, toilet paper was the canary in the coal mine ... somethings wrong with grocery supply chain
Other than
Star Member uponit7771 being ignorant of grocery stores' business model, there's nothing wrong with the "grocery supply chain". At an Accounting 1B (C?) level:
* A store has $##M
invested in their stock.
* Each time they sell it, they make ~1% profit;
* They sell and replace that stock several times during the year;
* If the store turned over their stock 10 times (arbitrary number) during the year, they made 10% profit on their
investment.
Obviously, things like bread, produce, and dairy are sold-and-restocked 20-50 times a year, while other types of items turn over 3-7 times a year. What is actually done/happens is more complex than my description above, equally obviously. The whole supply chain from producer to store is built on relatively fast and frequent turn-over.
The big point of which Star Member uponit7771 is, apparently, ignorant is that stores and their producers do not keep mass quantities of stock squirreled away in warehouse. Stock in long-term storage is idle, not earning money. Similarly, trucking companies do not have vast numbers of trucks and drivers sitting idle somewhere in yards waiting for what might happen every 10 or 30 years. If stores and producers did squirrel away large amounts of stock, they would have to raise their prices to remain profitable and in business. There is some responsiveness built into the chain to handle demand surges, but when you have tens of thousands of people panic-buying years' worth of TP or canned goods or freeze-able goods, there will be shortages. And those shortages spur further panic buying.
But all
Star Moron uponit7771 sees is that (s)he is inconvenienced, and that has to be
Trump's, capitalism's, and
Trump's fault, somehow.