I've gotten a lot of little tidbits from my boss that are interesting, but I just learned something that blows all that out of the water and reframes everything.
The store I work in, a convenience store/pharmacy of medium size in a spot somewhere between the suburbs and the city, pays $50k a month in rent.
Think about how much more you're charged for products than they cost to produce. Set aside the actual Capitalists in the process, they at least facilitate production. Think about how much extra money you've been spending just so that retailers can meet the demands of some company that has a piece of paper that says they own the land.
Apparently in big cities, the rent can get over $200k a month.
Or how much trash ships with supposedly green brands, what the wholesale to retail markup is vs the production to wholesale market where a lot of price inflation (depending on the product of course) actually begins.
The whole notion of ecologically or socially responsible brands is mostly propaganda.
Speaking of waste, when I temped at a Marriott as a dishwasher, I saw that they threw away an ungodly amount of food every single day. Probably 5-10 lbs of bacon alone.
Oh yeah and catering companies for big events can be even worse percentage wise.