What makes you say that? Clearly food prices aren’t at the point of unaffordability now. UBI also wouldn’t really create new customers, as people already need food now, UBI just guarantees they won’t have to go into debt to afford it.
What you’re describing makes more sense in an economic context where food is scarce, eg once a retailer has enough customers, they could sell all of their stock. In this scenario, jacking prices makes more sense, because you’re not getting any more customers by lowering them. But food generally isn’t scarce (in the developed world at least), meaning you’re always going to have excess stock. Now, the way to earn more money is to find a delicate balance between lowering prices and gaining more customers (but less revenue per sale, but have more sales and less waste to handle) or increasing prices but losing customers (meaning fewer sales, but more revenue per sale).
UBI isn’t really a factor in that last calculation, because it’s mostly dependent on the prices of your competitors. Of course, in a monopolistic market things are different, but then the price jacking can also happen independently of UBI.
To show a real-life example, take a look at Belgium. The price of food there has been quite low relative to other countries. Why? Because Ahold-Delhaize entered the market and tried competing heavily with existing brands there. The way to do that was through lowering prices, which forced other supermarkets to follow suit. Ahold could afford this, because they own a very significant market share in the Netherlands, where they could in fact increase prices (which is the semi-monopolistic behaviour I mentioned) and offset the cost. Their competitors are less well established or cannot compete at scale, so customers have fewer alternatives (and in locations where they do the prices are lowered a bit again to retain customers).
What makes you say that? Clearly food prices aren’t at the point of unaffordability now. UBI also wouldn’t really create new customers, as people already need food now, UBI just guarantees they won’t have to go into debt to afford it.
What you’re describing makes more sense in an economic context where food is scarce, eg once a retailer has enough customers, they could sell all of their stock. In this scenario, jacking prices makes more sense, because you’re not getting any more customers by lowering them. But food generally isn’t scarce (in the developed world at least), meaning you’re always going to have excess stock. Now, the way to earn more money is to find a delicate balance between lowering prices and gaining more customers (but less revenue per sale, but have more sales and less waste to handle) or increasing prices but losing customers (meaning fewer sales, but more revenue per sale).
UBI isn’t really a factor in that last calculation, because it’s mostly dependent on the prices of your competitors. Of course, in a monopolistic market things are different, but then the price jacking can also happen independently of UBI.
To show a real-life example, take a look at Belgium. The price of food there has been quite low relative to other countries. Why? Because Ahold-Delhaize entered the market and tried competing heavily with existing brands there. The way to do that was through lowering prices, which forced other supermarkets to follow suit. Ahold could afford this, because they own a very significant market share in the Netherlands, where they could in fact increase prices (which is the semi-monopolistic behaviour I mentioned) and offset the cost. Their competitors are less well established or cannot compete at scale, so customers have fewer alternatives (and in locations where they do the prices are lowered a bit again to retain customers).