How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

All around the "developed world", the shop/retailer/supermarket/distribution part of the price of a product is around 50%. Whatever the product or its price.

I'm wondering if part of our issue with crazy inflated prices despite low margin for industry and manufacturing actors is not because of this abused margin for retailers. That have also a huge power as it is difficult to negotiate when you depend on your product to be buyable in the market.

To me, that explain a big difference with asian world, where you notice, even for asian shops in western countries that prices are still quite cheap.

Something parallel to that that I have noticed is that decades ago we were used to buy from small individual shops, but now a few retailers and chains have almost a monopoly on the market.

I see the same pattern for movie theaters. They used to be independent mostly with affordable prices. Now 2 or 3 big chains bought them all, and it is very rare to still encounter independent movie theater. And once they got a good monopoly, ticket prices skyrocketed to insane levels.

A lot of that retailer margin goes into (a) wages, i.e. the jobs that everyone is supposedly trying to create, and (b) rent.