rxansmithmedia: “You’re not paying for food. You’re paying for a system engineered to extract from you at every step—while calling it a free market. The conversation about grocery prices in America gets framed as economics. Supply and demand. Inflation. Bird flu. Ukraine. Pick a villain. Blame the moment. Move on. But the real problem isn’t a moment. It’s the architecture. This isn’t an essay about egg prices.
- It’s about a pipeline: Production → Processing → Distribution → Retail → Finance → Policy
- At every stage, the incentive is the same: extract as much margin as possible.
- No one had to sit in a room and design it this way. The incentives did the work. What follows is a structural breakdown. Not vibes. Numbers. 70 cents of every grocery dollar now flows to four companies.
- Walmart
- Kroger
- Albertsons
- Costco
