People are getting laid off, hours are getting cut, everyone is losing their healthcare, wages are going down, stores are closing, and it's all because these companies are worried about short term profits and short term share values and they don't give two shits about the lives that get ruined over in the process.

As much as I share your dismay about how workers are getting treated, and as much as I don't like how large companies have gained so much power to treat workers so poorly, I don't think the problem is centralized with these two companies or even retail companies in general.

Some of it has to do with the shifting trends of consumers to order online instead of going into brick and mortar retail outlets. People still generally go to grocery stores to get food, but for other things, many people have shifted to online ordering. I guess you could say that's Amazon's fault since they started the trend, but if they didn't someone else would have.

On the other side, the other way to make money is to overcharge customers. That's what Whole Foods was charged with doing. Both NYC and CA brought claims of overcharging.

The co-CEOs admitted it. It wasn't much of an admission, but the same happened in CA, so it probably happened in other places.

People say that the Whole Foods model died because it was too ethical or too local focused. I don't buy it. It failed because they overcharged customers, which made it easy for other chains to undercut their prices. Whole Foods excelled when they had the monopoly on organic and vegetarian/vegan food. When other chains could bring in the same items much cheaper, Whole Foods lost a lot of their customer base.

As for the acquisition, I'll be curious to see how it goes. On the face of it, it seems like an odd matching. Whole Foods has the reputation of overpricing. Amazon has the reputation of undercutting prices. Will they try to keep the Whole Foods branding or just use the stores and create their own branding?

I also noticed an article that Aldi's is planning on opening 900 stores in the next 5 years. I'm wondering how that will impact the market.

I just saw this video on the acquisition, so I thought I'd toss it in the mix. It's an analyst from Yahoo on CBS news talking about the acquisition.