Replace "inflation" with corporate greed to understand the true problem.
They've lobbied they way into creating a system there they have practically no bounds.
I mean, they even found a way around human rights and labor laws with prison slave work and even getting laws signed in some states in favor of child labor in the US. And that's only in the US. In some other countries where manufacturing was moved there are literal slaves and children doing the work.
Then there's the whole enshittification where they change the ingredients or the process to use the least material as possible to cut costs, selling food that barely passes for food and products that fall apart and break faster. Or hell, even have services now provided by some stupid AI. Oh and they also slightly reduce the amount per packaging as well thinking we won't notice.
Then after they turn around and charge big bucks for that crap. It's shameful. But they got the governments in their pocket.
I mean, they even found a way around human rights and labor laws with prison slave work
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (emphasis added)
I don't think they really "found a way" around it insomuch as they explicitly continued to allow it in the text of the 13th Amendment. It's not a bug, it's a feature!
even that doesnt tell the story well enough, blaming "corporate greed" is too impersonal. corporations are made up of flesh and blood real people making conscious choices that help themselves and hurt others. the greed is human and the humans have names, THEY are collectively AND INDIVIDUALLY responsible.
Do we get out the guillotines yet?
FFS. We're just gonna take this lying down, aren't we?
Dammit.
When I want to make money, it isn't greed. When someone else wants to make money, it is.
Interesting take
When the cost of essential goods is increased beyond the rate of inflation and the company in question subsequently reports all-time record profits, and those profits are going to people who are already in the top 10% of wealth holders whose daily lives aren't actually impacted by not having that extra wealth, that's greed harming the lives of everybody else. When someone working a standard 40 hours a week is asking for a cost of living raise because their current wage is below poverty income (which current federal minimum wage current is below that line), it's basic human need to survive.
When the cost of essential goods is increased beyond the rate of inflation
Inflation is the measure of the cost of goods. You have cause and effect backwards here.
and those profits are going to people who are already in the top 10% of wealth holders
Wages are up across the board. Do you resent suppliers, warehouse staff, truck drivers, grocery employees, and distributors for making more money?
The only significant life changes that happened during the post-covid inflation was wages increasing. Hiring is up, wage pressure is up, union membership is way the fuck up.
Inflation happens because people have the money to support higher prices. It's no more greed to raise prices there than it is for you to want to make more money.
We do have an issue in our society of wealth capture, and that's a fixable problem we've seen steps toward. Wealth capture and inflation aren't directly related or correlated, however.
Inflation is the measure of the cost of goods. You have cause and effect backwards here.
Inflation is the devaluation of currency due to increased supply of it. And you're ignoring that price increases outpaced inflation and resulted in record profits. Companies used rising inflation as a cover to simply increase profits.
Wages are up across the board. Do you resent suppliers, warehouse staff, truck drivers, grocery employees, and distributors for making more money?
You may be forgetting all the unionization and strikes that helped with those increases. And you can't refute that there are still people making federal minimum wage, or that it is a poverty wage.
The only significant life changes that happened during the post-covid inflation was wages increasing.
If you're asserting that companies have not been raising prices beyond inflationary rate I can only conclude you're willfully ignorant on this topic or commenting in bad faith.
Inflation happens because people have the money to support higher prices. It's no more greed to raise prices there than it is for you to want to make more money.
Inflation happens because the government puts more money into circulation. Raising prices at a rate consistent with inflation is not wealth-hoarding greed. Raising prices well beyond inflation just because you can blame it on inflation and raking in the profits is.
Inflation is the devaluation of currency due to increased supply of it
This is simply not correct. Increased supply of currency relative to the actual amount of goods and services in an economy is probably the most prominent cause of inflation, but it's not the only cause. Inflation itself is the actual generalized rise in prices, which can be caused by a variety of factors. Find a basic econ textbook, or just read the Wikipedia article on inflation.
Yes I have acknowledged that technical definition in another comment.
Inflation happens because the government puts more money into circulation.
No. The government is constantly putting more.money into circulation without inflationary effects. We literally had suboptimal inflation for almost a decade.
Inflation is a measurement of price increases over time. Inflation happened this time due to COVID causing pent up demand, a glut of credit and cash on hand, and supply chain issues across the board.
Companies making more profits is hardly surprising given that people wanted to go buy a ton of shit because they finally could.
If you’re asserting that companies have not been raising prices beyond inflationary rate
Again this is literally impossible because whatever they raise prices to is where we derive the inflation rate from
Nobody is surprised about it companies wanting more money. We're just angry about it (the whole dark cloud thing the article is about). Nobody is out here complaining that a Lamborghini costs $20k more. It's about housing and groceries. The record profits aren't from introducing a new kind of egg or lowering the cost of production and distribution. The profits are from raising the prices on the same goods because people got stimulus money
Yes, you have the technical economist definition of inflation correct. But, my dude, people are out here saying "our basic necessities like staple groceries are still more expensive even though inflation has gone down and we see that the companies producing those goods have reported their highest profits in 70 years" and you're telling them "no, no, they're not being greedy, it's your fault for being willing to spend so much money on basic survival goods and that's causing inflation". There was no negotiating the cost of eggs and milk at the grocery store. The price was just set higher and consumers had to either pay it or starve.
Housing costs arent even companies being greedy, but homeowners.
I honestly think people don't even know what they're mad at they're just mad. This is why the real problems struggle to get fixed.
I'm not being pedantic here - if you don't understand the problem, you're part of the problem, by definition. Fixing housing requires changing local zoning laws and depowering current homeowners from the ability to pull the ladder up after them to protect their investment. They will never back that en masse on their own, because they benefit.
Housing costs arent even companies being greedy, but homeowners.
I honestly think people don't even know what they're mad at they're just mad
Renters looking to buy a home are mad at investors who can buy up inventory with cash (which in this context I'm including individuals buying up single-family houses to rent out, not just companies), and afford to leave the property vacant rather than accepting less profit by lowering the rent on it.
People trying to buy groceries are mad that wages increased 4-5% in 2022 while Tyson chicken prices went up 20% in 2021, and then in 2022 agreed to pay over $220M for price fixing while reporting $6.5B in profit that year.
This is why the real problems struggle to get fixed.
When you have unlimited corporate dark money going into politics, you get a government that seeks to obfuscate the issues to keep the population blaming the wrong things, to keep the money flowing into their "campaign funds."
Fixing housing requires changing local zoning laws and depowering current homeowners from the ability to pull the ladder up after them to protect their investment. They will never back that en masse on their own, because they benefit.
I don't disagree with that. And I'm in the minority of homeowners who do try and vote for making things more accessible knowing it will increase my own tax burden to pay for it, because I will benefit from having a more stable society around me even if my house doesn't appreciate another $100k.
People who are trying to buy a home are having to get into bidding wars with investors, who are buying 1/4 homes sold in the last ~9 months.
This only happens because we already have such a shortage that there is guaranteed ROI.
And I’m in the minority of homeowners who do try and vote for making things more accessible knowing it will increase my own tax burden to pay for it, because I will benefit from having a more stable society around me even if my house doesn’t appreciate another $100k.
Same dude! We just gotta keep trying to change more minds.
I mean that would make sense if corporations were posting record profits and the federal interest rates weren't at astronomical levels for the last 12+ months.
True. And government inflation does directly put money into banks, leading to more corporate profits
It turns out when you measure "the economy" with old metrics that only really impact rich people there is a disconnect between "the economy" and how everyone experiences the actual economy.
Replace 'The Economy' with 'Rich People's Yacht Money' and everything starts to make more sense.
Replace 'nation' with 'fiefdom' and everything starts to make a lot more sense.
The word is "serfdom", and these days we have less free time than those peasants back when. Something about idle hands leading to successful uprisings, I guess. Go figure.
America is a corporate feudal state propped up by a priesthood of politicians, lawyers, and economists
It's not inflation when the cost to the companies doesn't go up and they keep reporting record profits...
Record profits (and expenses) are exactly what you'd expect given inflation.
Say you make widgets as a side gig. You spend $500 a month on supplies and manage to get $750 in revenue, yielding $250 in profit each month. Then, the ghost of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe is somehow elected to chair the Federal Reserve, and after a year passes, we see 100% inflation, causing your expenses to blow up to $1000 a month. You raise your prices to match, giving you $1500 a month in revenue. You now have record profit of $500 a month! Of course, each dollar is worth half as much as was a year ago, so despite these literal record profits, you're in the exact same financial situation as before. My general understanding is that supply-side costs have increased quite a lot, which accounts for a lot, but probably not all, of the higher costs for consumer goods. I know people in my family talked about how wood and other home supplies got a lot more expensive, and the owner of a local cafe told me about how he was seeing significantly higher costs for basic things like cups and lids.
This is not to say that things like greed don't apply as well, but record profits during inflation aren't an indicator of this (and it's not as if greed is a particularly new discovery). To put it another way, record employee wages during inflation also don't mean very much if the cost of everything else rises to match those gains.
Let me put it this way,
When there was a shortage on that important computer chip that all cars need now days, cars were more expensive. So dealerships tried to inflate the price even more and push terrible financial choices. One straight up said "we can charge whatever we want" when I pointed out the multi-thousand difference from the same brand new vehicle online.
I think it is more like what you say is technically true, but human nature and greed leads to it happening to a more artificial degree, and at an accelerated rate. And the thing is, prices don't really go back down unless it was something where the price fluctuated anyway such as produce and oil.
Why be proud of an economy when it does nothing to help you stop suffering? That's something that touches probably 80-90% of people.
It's not inflation. It's greedflation. I live in Denmark, where greedflation is increasing, but nothing like in Norway! Also, Norwegian companies were complaining about electricity prices last year and got a shit-tonne of money to not go bankrupt. Turns out, many of the companies had record profits - we're talking more than doubling their previous record (in the billions...).
Eat the rich!!
if 'the economy' is not really a metric the common man should care about in any capacity, why do news agencies push it like its the new god?
It’s political propaganda.
Eh, I also think all the people with $300k+ houses are interested in 'the economy.'
It's the rest of us that are hung out to dry.
If you think millionaires are the only issue, you're part of the problem.
I hear you but that number needs to be much higher these days. They've fucked the housing market too.
Eh, I bought my house for $60k and it's 1,200 sq ft.
The "economy" means the stock market. It's what is important for capital gains. Guess who owns the news?
The stock market was doing fine even when the economy was at its worst. 2008, this was not.
why do news agencies push it like its the new god?
Because it is the new god. Praise The Holy Economy and Its Invisible Hand!
I pretty much don't spend money unless I absolutely need to.
Fuck this shit.
If I don't need it, I don't buy it. If I do need it, I make it. If I can't make it, I'll buy it second hand.
Because people see prices go up all the time and rarely see them go back down.
Replace "inflation" with corporate greed to understand the true problem.
They've lobbied they way into creating a system there they have practically no bounds.
I mean, they even found a way around human rights and labor laws with prison slave work and even getting laws signed in some states in favor of child labor in the US. And that's only in the US. In some other countries where manufacturing was moved there are literal slaves and children doing the work.
Then there's the whole enshittification where they change the ingredients or the process to use the least material as possible to cut costs, selling food that barely passes for food and products that fall apart and break faster. Or hell, even have services now provided by some stupid AI. Oh and they also slightly reduce the amount per packaging as well thinking we won't notice.
Then after they turn around and charge big bucks for that crap. It's shameful. But they got the governments in their pocket.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (emphasis added)
I don't think they really "found a way" around it insomuch as they explicitly continued to allow it in the text of the 13th Amendment. It's not a bug, it's a feature!
even that doesnt tell the story well enough, blaming "corporate greed" is too impersonal. corporations are made up of flesh and blood real people making conscious choices that help themselves and hurt others. the greed is human and the humans have names, THEY are collectively AND INDIVIDUALLY responsible.
Do we get out the guillotines yet?
FFS. We're just gonna take this lying down, aren't we?
Dammit.
Interesting take
When the cost of essential goods is increased beyond the rate of inflation and the company in question subsequently reports all-time record profits, and those profits are going to people who are already in the top 10% of wealth holders whose daily lives aren't actually impacted by not having that extra wealth, that's greed harming the lives of everybody else. When someone working a standard 40 hours a week is asking for a cost of living raise because their current wage is below poverty income (which current federal minimum wage current is below that line), it's basic human need to survive.
Inflation is the measure of the cost of goods. You have cause and effect backwards here.
Wages are up across the board. Do you resent suppliers, warehouse staff, truck drivers, grocery employees, and distributors for making more money?
The only significant life changes that happened during the post-covid inflation was wages increasing. Hiring is up, wage pressure is up, union membership is way the fuck up.
Inflation happens because people have the money to support higher prices. It's no more greed to raise prices there than it is for you to want to make more money.
We do have an issue in our society of wealth capture, and that's a fixable problem we've seen steps toward. Wealth capture and inflation aren't directly related or correlated, however.
Inflation is the devaluation of currency due to increased supply of it. And you're ignoring that price increases outpaced inflation and resulted in record profits. Companies used rising inflation as a cover to simply increase profits.
You may be forgetting all the unionization and strikes that helped with those increases. And you can't refute that there are still people making federal minimum wage, or that it is a poverty wage.
If you're asserting that companies have not been raising prices beyond inflationary rate I can only conclude you're willfully ignorant on this topic or commenting in bad faith.
https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-pocket-largest-profits-in-70-years-amid-inflation-complaints-2021-12
https://thehill.com/business/3756457-corporate-profits-hit-record-high-in-third-quarter-amid-40-year-high-inflation/
(paywall on this one) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-25/us-corporate-profits-soar-taking-margins-to-widest-since-1950
Inflation happens because the government puts more money into circulation. Raising prices at a rate consistent with inflation is not wealth-hoarding greed. Raising prices well beyond inflation just because you can blame it on inflation and raking in the profits is.
This is simply not correct. Increased supply of currency relative to the actual amount of goods and services in an economy is probably the most prominent cause of inflation, but it's not the only cause. Inflation itself is the actual generalized rise in prices, which can be caused by a variety of factors. Find a basic econ textbook, or just read the Wikipedia article on inflation.
Yes I have acknowledged that technical definition in another comment.
No. The government is constantly putting more.money into circulation without inflationary effects. We literally had suboptimal inflation for almost a decade.
Inflation is a measurement of price increases over time. Inflation happened this time due to COVID causing pent up demand, a glut of credit and cash on hand, and supply chain issues across the board.
Companies making more profits is hardly surprising given that people wanted to go buy a ton of shit because they finally could.
Again this is literally impossible because whatever they raise prices to is where we derive the inflation rate from
Nobody is surprised about it companies wanting more money. We're just angry about it (the whole dark cloud thing the article is about). Nobody is out here complaining that a Lamborghini costs $20k more. It's about housing and groceries. The record profits aren't from introducing a new kind of egg or lowering the cost of production and distribution. The profits are from raising the prices on the same goods because people got stimulus money
Yes, you have the technical economist definition of inflation correct. But, my dude, people are out here saying "our basic necessities like staple groceries are still more expensive even though inflation has gone down and we see that the companies producing those goods have reported their highest profits in 70 years" and you're telling them "no, no, they're not being greedy, it's your fault for being willing to spend so much money on basic survival goods and that's causing inflation". There was no negotiating the cost of eggs and milk at the grocery store. The price was just set higher and consumers had to either pay it or starve.
Housing costs arent even companies being greedy, but homeowners.
I honestly think people don't even know what they're mad at they're just mad. This is why the real problems struggle to get fixed.
I'm not being pedantic here - if you don't understand the problem, you're part of the problem, by definition. Fixing housing requires changing local zoning laws and depowering current homeowners from the ability to pull the ladder up after them to protect their investment. They will never back that en masse on their own, because they benefit.
Investment firms buying and holding homes are, by definition, homeowners, making them part of the problem. People who are trying to buy a home are having to get into bidding wars with investors, who are buying 1/4 homes sold in the last ~9 months.
Renters looking to buy a home are mad at investors who can buy up inventory with cash (which in this context I'm including individuals buying up single-family houses to rent out, not just companies), and afford to leave the property vacant rather than accepting less profit by lowering the rent on it.
People trying to buy groceries are mad that wages increased 4-5% in 2022 while Tyson chicken prices went up 20% in 2021, and then in 2022 agreed to pay over $220M for price fixing while reporting $6.5B in profit that year.
When you have unlimited corporate dark money going into politics, you get a government that seeks to obfuscate the issues to keep the population blaming the wrong things, to keep the money flowing into their "campaign funds."
I don't disagree with that. And I'm in the minority of homeowners who do try and vote for making things more accessible knowing it will increase my own tax burden to pay for it, because I will benefit from having a more stable society around me even if my house doesn't appreciate another $100k.
This only happens because we already have such a shortage that there is guaranteed ROI.
Same dude! We just gotta keep trying to change more minds.
I mean that would make sense if corporations were posting record profits and the federal interest rates weren't at astronomical levels for the last 12+ months.
True. And government inflation does directly put money into banks, leading to more corporate profits
It turns out when you measure "the economy" with old metrics that only really impact rich people there is a disconnect between "the economy" and how everyone experiences the actual economy.
Replace 'The Economy' with 'Rich People's Yacht Money' and everything starts to make more sense.
Replace 'nation' with 'fiefdom' and everything starts to make a lot more sense.
The word is "serfdom", and these days we have less free time than those peasants back when. Something about idle hands leading to successful uprisings, I guess. Go figure.
America is a corporate feudal state propped up by a priesthood of politicians, lawyers, and economists
"Economist" is just the word for court wizard.
It's not inflation when the cost to the companies doesn't go up and they keep reporting record profits...
Record profits (and expenses) are exactly what you'd expect given inflation.
Say you make widgets as a side gig. You spend $500 a month on supplies and manage to get $750 in revenue, yielding $250 in profit each month. Then, the ghost of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe is somehow elected to chair the Federal Reserve, and after a year passes, we see 100% inflation, causing your expenses to blow up to $1000 a month. You raise your prices to match, giving you $1500 a month in revenue. You now have record profit of $500 a month! Of course, each dollar is worth half as much as was a year ago, so despite these literal record profits, you're in the exact same financial situation as before. My general understanding is that supply-side costs have increased quite a lot, which accounts for a lot, but probably not all, of the higher costs for consumer goods. I know people in my family talked about how wood and other home supplies got a lot more expensive, and the owner of a local cafe told me about how he was seeing significantly higher costs for basic things like cups and lids.
This is not to say that things like greed don't apply as well, but record profits during inflation aren't an indicator of this (and it's not as if greed is a particularly new discovery). To put it another way, record employee wages during inflation also don't mean very much if the cost of everything else rises to match those gains.
Let me put it this way, When there was a shortage on that important computer chip that all cars need now days, cars were more expensive. So dealerships tried to inflate the price even more and push terrible financial choices. One straight up said "we can charge whatever we want" when I pointed out the multi-thousand difference from the same brand new vehicle online.
I think it is more like what you say is technically true, but human nature and greed leads to it happening to a more artificial degree, and at an accelerated rate. And the thing is, prices don't really go back down unless it was something where the price fluctuated anyway such as produce and oil.
Why be proud of an economy when it does nothing to help you stop suffering? That's something that touches probably 80-90% of people.
It's not inflation. It's greedflation. I live in Denmark, where greedflation is increasing, but nothing like in Norway! Also, Norwegian companies were complaining about electricity prices last year and got a shit-tonne of money to not go bankrupt. Turns out, many of the companies had record profits - we're talking more than doubling their previous record (in the billions...).
Eat the rich!!
if 'the economy' is not really a metric the common man should care about in any capacity, why do news agencies push it like its the new god?
It’s political propaganda.
Eh, I also think all the people with $300k+ houses are interested in 'the economy.'
It's the rest of us that are hung out to dry.
If you think millionaires are the only issue, you're part of the problem.
I hear you but that number needs to be much higher these days. They've fucked the housing market too.
Eh, I bought my house for $60k and it's 1,200 sq ft.
The "economy" means the stock market. It's what is important for capital gains. Guess who owns the news?
The stock market was doing fine even when the economy was at its worst. 2008, this was not.
Because it is the new god. Praise The Holy Economy and Its Invisible Hand!
I pretty much don't spend money unless I absolutely need to.
Fuck this shit.
If I don't need it, I don't buy it. If I do need it, I make it. If I can't make it, I'll buy it second hand.
Because people see prices go up all the time and rarely see them go back down.
The job market is ass right now
My $300 average supermarket shopping every two weeks is now at $400.
Who would have thought that people would have negative views of the economy after banks fuck it up.
Am I supposed to be grateful for the banking industry destroying the economy? What a god damn joke.
CNBC can lick my nuts.
Economy? Who has faith in any aspect of humanity these days...
People that don't read too much news. Which is also usually owned by for-profit companies, incidentally, who get money when we consume their content.