I am not entirely certain I have parsed all of this correctly, but I am just going to throw out some random objections. First of all, people gotta eat, so there's some issues with the idea that prices would come down if people can't afford groceries. We can't afford housing and prices rarely come down, we just get more homeless people. If you can't afford groceries you end up at the food bank. Mostly, though, maybe we buy more of some things and less of others, and more of our paycheck goes into groceries and less of it into restaurants or buying new electronics or whatever, which impacts those other things but the grocery stores don't notice. Also, I don't know about up there, but it is definitely true down here that we are beginning to have a serious grocery store monopoly issue. Within a few miles of me I have 5 large grocery stores (three Safeways, an Albertsons, and a Haggen) that are all owned by the same company, and two more (two Fred Meyers) that are about to merge with that same company. We have some others - Costco, Target, Walmart, Trader Joe's, the local food co-op, the tiny Asian market...but for my everyday staples, its mostly an illusion of choice. And of course those staples themselves are owned by about 5 large companies.