Comment by modeless

20 hours ago

A big part of the problem here is that Del Monte was the victim of several leveraged buyouts that had executives walking away with millions while the company was saddled with debt.

5 comments

modeless

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BrenBarn  19 hours ago

Exactly. That is what is missing in this discussion. If you want to cut down the trees, fine, but those people who profited should pay for it.

  • robocat  17 hours ago

    I always wonder where consumer surplus fits into arguments about profit.

    Although in this particular situation clearly the consumer surplus wasn't enough to keep consumers buying Del Monte products.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus

    If we measure consumer surplus as a percentage, how would it compare to business profits as a percentage?

    Edit:

      Nobel laureate William Nordhaus studied the historical data of the U.S. economy and concluded that innovators and corporations capture only a tiny fraction of the total social value they create. Consumers capture ~98% of the value in the form of surplus. Producers capture ~2%.

    • imtringued  5 hours ago

      I'm not sure I understand your point? If you are private equity and do a leveraged buyout, the company is priced as if you could extract the current value of the company out of the acquisition. As if the company were a consumable basically, because that's how you're going to pay off the loan. If consuming the company requires mistreating customers (getting rid of consumer surplus), then that's what's going to happen. The way you're talking about this sounds like the cause is a lack of consumer surplus when that's just a symptom of a leveraged buyout.

      Also Nordhaus being a Sveriges Riksbank price laureate tells you how silly and meaningless the Sveriges Riksbank price in economics is. His work on climate change is so bad it's embarassing.