I mean kinda? There’s a natural price cap in place for basic needs like this because of their relationship to labor. People need to eat to live and work, and if they can’t afford to, must riot or die. This places a limit on the allowable range of grocery praces in relation to wages. If there was 10% slack to raise prices, they would’ve done it already. 'course, that doesn’t account for the effects of benefits like SNAP, if those rise to match.

(Not that can’t do it, if they’ve morons. it would just turn out to be an enormous mistake. 💀)

I guess they could still do it “safely” if everyone switches to using the self-checkout? Then the rise would only hit people on normal checkout. I guess what this does is unevenly distribute the cost of groceries between people that can use the self-checkout and those that can’t. So it like, harms old and disabled people mostly? And people that shop during peak hours when there’s a self-checkout queue.

And also it incentives supermarkets to fire cashiers, like a Pigouvian tax on hiring them. Fuck.