Oh no, this is such a shock. No shit they were lying about inflation. Those bastards were reporting record highs while the average Joe was struggling to pay rent.
To be pedantic, a business that’s keeping the same percentage margins will always post record profits in an inflationary economy.
To be pedantic, all other things being equal, like quantity sold. Riiiiiight?
The best kind of correct.
To be pedantic, profit is theft.
Do you have a job?
If so, do your expect your employer to pay you only the cost of your commute and nothing else?
Do you have a dictionary?
If so, why have you confused revenue with profit?
Profit is the stolen excess after all the shareholders, workers, suppliers and producers have been paid their fair share. If you want to argue that they aren’t being paid a fair share then why is there a profit margin?
Revenue is income. Profit is income minus expenses. Without ANY profit there no motivation to operateva business.
Getting paid a multimillion dollar salary is ‘not motivation’ to run companies like Google and Sony? Huh, could have fooled me. You do know wages are expenses right? Including those of the owners and ceo’s and board, right?
You’re not so stupid as to not know what the definition of profit is in the dictionary, right? You can look it up instead of continuing to be wrong you know.
Let’s say you have an idea for a product that will change the world, but you have no capability to produce it because you’d need access to hundreds of workers and billions’ worth of machinery?
Even supposing you want to be paid nothing for your invention, how do you get it made?
You have to have someone else partner with you to do it. But why should they? If nobody is allowed to profit, then there’s no business reason for an existing company to innovate or change.
The Nordics I think figured out a solution to this,
You might be familiar with all the classic arguments decrying rent controls for causing supply shortages as people refuse to give up their RCd housing,
Well up in northern Europe they don’t have rent control, they have rent hike control, basically you can only raise rent by a given percentage at most per year, in the US, we could tie that percentage cap to the percent change change in federal interest rates, pass some of that market rally back to the consumers since a rate drop leads to a mandatory profit margin drop to match.
This exists in a few places in the US under the term “rent stabilization” but it is not tied to interest rates or inflation and exactly who qualifies gets a little murky. Considering that housing is a basic human necessity I think some form of rent stabilization should exist everywhere. Market forces have their place but they are often disadvantageous to lower incomes and should be curtailed when we’re talking something that people can’t do without.
Well see that’s why I tied it to be directly related to the federal interest rate, as a balance to create class interests for both courses of action.
Basically it’d be a way to ensure the fed doesn’t get pressured too much to pursue bad interest rate policy like never raising it over 20 years until it’s too late and everyone’s mad about it.
The Nordics I think figured out a solution to this,
The French did too, it’s called the guillotine.
That actually didn’t help much of anything
Catharsis may feel nice but prioritizing feeling validated over addressing the problems you want to feel so valid about just leaves you feeling valid about a still festering wound.
Can we do both? Murder some of the ultra wealthy and also make systemic improvements?
An environment that allows the indiscriminate murder of an entire class is one that is inherently too lawless to organize systemic improvements to the root causes of institutional problems.
Like I said Catharsis feels nice but helps nothing.
I believe that would be called “redistributing the wealth” given how many stupidly wealthy people claim they couldn’t live on any less.
Literally anyone with a functioning brain already knew this. And yet, there will be no penalty for this bullshit.
Eh with how this conversation has been evolving lately I’d say this is the worst time to be pessimistic about the possibility of regulation. Is a good time to be loud and angry about it tho
They’re not going to change anything because people still need to buy stuff.
no, be pessimistic, the optimistic stance is that hey will magically self regulate
I can be pessimistic AND loud & angry.
Loud pessimist is pretty much my entire state of being.
My friends and family must find me exhausting.
Bread and circuses only work when people can afford the bread and circuses. But capitalism demands growth at the cost of all else. The only way out of this mess is when it eats its own tail I imagine. Some say the inevitable collapse of society should be hastened for the greater good. Obviously that’s far too simple a statement, but I’m not well versed on it. Someone hit me with your 2 cents.
Lotta people are gonna die when society collapses. Maybe let’s not rush that.
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Duh. Finance bros will still tell you different though.
They will tell you it’s because of the increase in wages, and then refuse to believe the data when you show them that wages have stagnated.
Surely it’s not the shambolic government monetary policy of the same period, the companies were just being way greedier than normal. This study was run by the IMF.
The beginnings of a list:
“The biggest perpetrators were energy companies like Shell, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron, which were able to enjoy massive profits last year”
If you can find any way to go electric, use petrol less, ride a bike, walk, use a train, avoid a plane, etc, go for it. Prolly the petrol corps won’t notice your individual actions, but the carbon you’ll keep out of the atmosphere might just help to keep our planet’s ecosphere viable.The Study itself: INFLATION, PROFITS AND MARKET POWER TOWARDS A NEW RESEARCH AND POLICY AGENDA - https://www.ippr.org/files/2023-12/1701878131_inflation-profits-and-market-power-dec-23.pdf - Jeebus, 32 pages!
I drive electric and in my home state of Georgia, USA they have an ad valorem tax of 239 dollars or there abouts for people that drive Evs and plug in hybrids.
My theory is that they’re missing out on the taxes I would normally pay if I bought gas and need to recoup their losses.
I used to live in Texas and they did the same shit there. Tax EVs more because their owners weren’t “paying their fair share on the highway tax”
My theory is that they’re missing out on the taxes I would normally pay if I bought gas and need to recoup their losses.
I don’t think you need to refer to that as a theory. Taxes on fuel for motor vehicles go towards road maintenance. Vehicles that drive on the roads but don’t burn gas or diesel, don’t pay their share of the road maintenance costs. That’s why states want to tax EVs.
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but the carbon you’ll keep out of the atmosphere might just help to keep our planet’s ecosphere viable.
This is only if nations stop burning oil even if it’s cheap.
Nations aren’t going to stop burning oil until it’s too expensive.
That’s why oil should have the cost of climate change and healthcare from pollution added to it. If oil was as expensive as the true cost, we’d have ditched it decades ago.
I totally agree, but the people we put in power don’t care about the true cost because we don’t.
Collectively speaking, anyways.
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Well they got told to knock it off nicely. So I guess they will lower prices now. 🙄
Pretty please? And no crossies!
The egg producers already have.
The “bird flu” was nowhere significant enough to cause the price spike on its own. It was an attempt to determine “what the market will allow”. And it turns out people can do without eggs quite comfortably.
They just went too far too fast and found out they aren’t the staple they thought they were. They also didn’t have enough market penetration when some stores had protected supply lines and did not raise their egg price.
Gotta boil the frog slowly
I know I did. Those eggs went sky high and I didn’t buy them for months.
No shit.
No shit.
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Ah, yes, thank you. I’ll just stop eating. Why didn’t I think of that?
My consumer right to be homeless and starving. Yay!
Any more great insights?
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Upvoting.
I feel so empowered.
It’s just business, they say.
No way
They were also lying about closing stores because of too much shoplifting
What do you mean?
Probably something like this.
Also Walgreens.
Walmart claimed it as well.
Ah, gotcha. That’s pretty fucked up
