Comment by WalterBright

> This isn't government setting prices. It's just government outlawing a certain form of price discrimination.

I.e. the government is regulating prices, yet another attempt going on for 4,000 years of trying and failing to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand.

> The grocery stores aren't going to raise the overall price to compensate for losing the ability to price discriminate: that would result in less profit for them.

Allow me to explain how prices are set:

Consider an appliance store. They want to sell refrigerators. What do they do? They have 3 refrigerator lines - the stripper, the midline, and the lux. The purpose of the stripper is that is what they advertise, to bring customers into the store. The purpose of the midrange is to upsell those who come for the stripper, as they think the extra features are worth it. The lux is sold to the wealthy customers who just want to buy the best. (Not having a lux is means the retailer is throwing easy money away.)

The moneymaker is the midrange.

You'll see the same thing in the grocery store. The store advertises the price of milk, which is likely at below cost (called a "loss leader"). People come to buy the milk, which is always on the back wall of the store. The customer has to pass by all kinds of things to get to the milk, and they'll buy it. The most overpriced stuff will be next to the checkout line.

Cheeses come in cheap, midrange, and lux, too.

There's been an extensive amount of research on exactly how to set up the store to maximize profits, which is necessary as grocery stores have razor thin margins.

BTW, the article is paywalled. I have no idea how a grocery store is going to adjust prices at checkout, as the prices are marked.