Letter to the Editor: Corporate Greed in Iowa

Several recent news items seem unrelated but have a common foundation, corporate greed.

Red Lobster, in business since 1968, has filed for bankruptcy. While the company’s decline has been attributed to the pandemic, inflation, and poor management (including the $20 “endless shrimp” promotion), a major root cause goes back ten years. In 2014, Red Lobster was sold for $2.1 billion to a private equity firm which quickly spun off the land on which the restaurants were located to a sister corporation. The landowners soon increased the lot rents to absorb almost 50% of Red Lobster’s annual earnings.

This scheme will sound very familiar to residents of manufactured home parks in Iowa. Out-of-state investors have been buying up these parks only to raise the lot rents, often 30-70%, on captive homeowners.

Although the pandemic is no longer a major economic factor and inflation is coming under control, the cost of many everyday items has remained high. Walmart, Target, Aldi, IKEA, H&M, and Michaels, among others, recently announced that they are planning to lower prices on thousands of items while still expecting to be profitable. Why have prices been so high for so long? Answer - price gouging.

Let’s put the blame for high prices where much of it belongs – not on political leaders, but on rich, out-of-state, money-hungry corporate executives and investors who don’t care at all about the cost of living, about affordable housing, or about the price of a shrimp dinner in Iowa.

Thomas Cook, Iowa City