People act like inflation is the invisible hand of the market, this is capitalism, companies will charge whatever they want to maximize profits, and that rarely results in a lower price.
Like, if you made thingamajigs, and if you made as many as you could (10 million) and sold as much as you could to saturate the market and end up making 10 million, that’s less profit than if you charged $5 a piece and only sold 2 million. Same income, much lower overhead.
So you cut staffing and make 1/5th of what you can because that maximizes profit.
Which is fine until your thingamajig is something that people need like food, water, or shelter. If you’re putting profit over production, then people who can’t afford it have to go without.
It’s literally what’s going on with insulin. This is t a hypothetical, this is what’s been happening for a long time.
It’s just with the same few giant corporations making everything, if just one does, the other 2-4 giant corporations crunch the same numbers and come up with the same plan.
Something that used to be called price fixing is suddenly just “internal analytics”
wait, all we have to do is make more than what the optimal profit supply/demand curve dictates, and we can get rid of homelessness? maybe do the same with food so no one has to starve?
Windfall taxes are reactive and bad policy in general.
What we need is a return to pre-Reagan tax policy. Higher upper tax brackets, corporate taxes, and the closing of loopholes that allow the rich to hide their wealth offshore.
What word do you prefer to use to describe people who hoard more wealth than they or their children can spend in a lifetime while the vast majority of workers are on the edge of financial ruin? Why can’t they be satisfied with just having one mega yacht? One giant mansion? If not “greed” what do you call it?
Are you being sarcastic? I’ve seen a lot of sarcasm in my days, and this looks a lot like that. Nah, who’d be sarcastic on the internet without a “/s“? Everyone would just assume you’re not being sarcastic, and then the whole conversation would devolve.
Anyways, I’m not sure how neo-feudalism is charming. Could you expand on that a bit?
there is no such thing as a morally agnostic system, you either agree with or disagree with the outcome of the economic system, it is moral or immoral.
True, a system whose only imperative is personal upside maximization with no consideration for anybody else is morally agnostic if you put aside the moral dimensions of having no consideration for anybody else whilst acting for personal upside maximization.
Same as murder being morally agnostic if you put aside the moral dimensions of killing another human being.
Consider the possibility that you’re confusing familiarity, common use in your environment and even normalization of something with it actually being devoid of a moral component: just because people around you got used to act in some way without questioning such way of acting doesn’t mean it’s morally agnostic: after all, slavery too used to be normal.
The system isn’t morally agnostic dumbass, it literally is greed. It was created for the purpose of greed and it continues funnel all the wealth to the greedy. Loopholes are found around all the rate limiters and speed governors that get designed into the law and federal agencies. They’re trying “company store” tactics again. Fucking child labor is back.
“The system is morally agnostic” imagine the fucking Stockholm Syndrome (yes I’ve heard it’s not actually real stfu)
So many people seem to have mistaken what you said for a defense of capitalism.
I think a better way to say it is that greed isn’t a useful way to explain any particular thing that happens in a capitalist system, because everything that happens in capitalism is driven by greed. Saying one particular problem is caused by greed is like a doctor saying someone’s illness is a symptom of being alive; it’s true, but it explains nothing.
I could have bought a decent house alone, albeit uncomfortably. But I was happy enough in my condo. Now I have a wife and dual income, and we’d have to really stretch for a shitty house on the outskirts. And neither of our wages have changed much.
The advice in that article is primo out of touch and humorous. They give statistics that people’s savings and assets are down X amount, and the first advice is save for an emergency. Running out of savings?! Just save more, five head.
I love that the guy who penned that gold was one of the world’s richest people, and not that long ago called for increasing unemployment, so that the worker learns his place again.
I am reminded of that quote along the lines of “it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.” I did everything right, and had a more than adequate emergency fund.
But then my house vaporized that emergency fund… and only then did COVID happen and I lost my job twice. So that’s roughly three “holy shit thank god we saved for a rainy day” events in three years.
I’m sure I will be in “just save money” mode some day in the future. Lots of shit left to clean up right now though.
and only then did COVID happen and I lost my job twice. So that’s roughly three “holy shit thank god we saved for a rainy day” events in three years.
You just explained the last three years of my life. I have no savings left. Period. If anything happens to the car, or either one of us loses our jobs, we're done. That's it.
Well, you aren’t “done”. Life continues.
Even when the state conspires against you having shelter from weather when you’re homeless. Life still goes on.
Until it doesnt.
yeah, I'm seeing discretionary spending right there that could be accruing interest instead. and judging by your profile pic I think you know what I'm suggesting.
I agree, I was pretty pro-guillotine till that was pointed out to me. Redistribute their wealth and tell them where it’s all going too.
“Congratulations Jeff Bezos, you donated $1.3 billion to various labor organizations.” “Congratulations Richard Branson, you donated $1.21 billion to climate change initiatives.” “Congratulations Warren Buffet, you donated $1.14 billion to support low income people.”
Knowing where their money is going to support society in general will fucking kill them. Each of these shit bags all think that they are needed for civilization. Let’s watch them put that delusion to the test on an island penal colony that gets bombarded with artillery shells every once and awhile.
They should have been born to billionaire parents. I didn’t think it was necessary at the time and was born to average parents, and while I regret my decision, I don’t think I have the right to complain.
I think some people, myself included, managed to stay stable, so that’s probably a big chunk of it. I got a new job in June 2020 that was enough of a raise to make up for inflation, so while I’m not ahead of where I was 3 years ago, I was at least in the same mediocre position I started in. That said, I’ve had $3k in dental bills since July because dental insurance is pretty much a scam, soooo I’m now officially fucked, but I was doing ok.
What costs double? I track my expenses very closely and have for about a decade and my essentials are up 10% at most, 7% on average. That’s food, transportation, home expenses and cloth. My recreation expenses were actually down or flat.
I feel like sit down restaurants and fast food have gone way up. Maybe not double but it feels like it. Rent is also way up. Again not double but it seems that way. Maybe that’s just my area in South Florida though.
But yeah if you own your own home and cook all of your meals at home, really this inflation hasn’t hit you as hard.
I’m in a similar situation up here in Canada. Back then I could afford a house at a reasonable distance from town, even at current interest rates and with my significantly lower salary. Now I can maybe look at a small bungalow 1h out or more… if I assume I can keep working remotely indefinitely. Groceries just skyrocketed. Had to move in between, with high interest and low vacancy rates, we had to eat a big rent hike despite us moving way out of town.
The poorest 40% of households suffered an 8% drop in cash savings and the middle 40% (the U.S. middle class) also saw their bank deposits and other liquid assets topple. Only the wealthiest 20% of households are still enjoying the extra cash they stockpiled during the pandemic, with their savings about 8% above where they were in March 2020.
I’m not disbelieving your personal experience, but the article does indeed say it’s the top quintile who benefited.
A lot of us in healthcare stayed pretty stable. I don’t know of any that did “better”, but other than elective stuff, day to day dropped only a little. About 9-10% of Americans are in healthcare. I do know a lot of delivery services did well too.
And we now have the career experience from working Covid front lines combined with the aftermath of the Great Resignation, making us even more in demand. Yeah, I’m also one of the few doing better financially after Covid than before.
Well if your income increased more than inflation you might be fine. For my family this was the case and we have a fixed income mortgage as well so our expenses as a whole have gone up a lot less than inflation. I think this is true for a substantial minority of people.
Spending an extra 8% on groceries just means a bit less to savings? IDK, I kind of feel like the opposite. Economic dooming ahead of an election is as natural as the sunrise, especially when there’s a Democrat in office.
I may be a 1%er in this context. 49 at the start, had just scored a job paying double salary and benefits both (<-worked hard for this bit, for many years), Habitat for Humanity mortgage (no interest or land taxes), all that.
COVID killed mom (grandma really), got some inheritance, bought a couple of acres of swamp. It’s mine and I play there every weekend. Long story, but the land is a big deal in my life.
Went nuts buying stuff I always wanted and couldn’t afford before inflation really set in. I wouldn’t/couldn’t buy most of that stuff at these prices.
And now I’m about to get paid on the last of the inheritance and pay my little house off.
I know this sort of comment isn’t welcome, but you asked. Dumb luck mostly, and I recognize that.
And speaking of dumb luck, I’m getting married in 2-weeks to the finest woman I’ve ever met. (OK. I made a LOT of effort, but still, lots of luck as well) Been with a lot of women, so I’ve failed a lot, not this time. She’s gushing to her Filipina friends ATM. I don’t speak Tagalog or I might relate a bit of the conversation, all sounds good though. (Nothing private of course.)
People like me and my wife. Wife is in healthcare and I am in automation. Wife gets as much overtime as she wants and I got several pay raises as suddenly companies found that they couldn’t depend on just buying the same things forever and ran out of workers.
Oh don’t worry I am sure the boot is ready to crush us both like a bug. Just ignoring us for the time being.
So my wife and I are one of them. I’ll call it as it is, we got lucky, and both work in tech.
Now that said, I “rent” (rent in quotes because the amount is almost exactly what the increase in food costs was) out a room to a good friend because she was struggling, and just last week got another friend couch surfing for who knows how long until she can get her feet under her.
Evidence shows the government stimulus contributed to only a small portion of the inflation, and the largest portion stemmed from companies using inflation as an excuse to raise prices. I mean, have you looked at individual candy bar prices? They went from under $2 each to over $3 within the last 24 months! Individual soda bottles are getting close to $3 each as well, and don’t get me started on the cost of bags of chips. These are discretionary items and treats that saw a significant jump in price very recently that was far larger than inflation. I’m pretty frugal and my regular bi-weekly(ish) grocery bill has grown from ~$70 to ~$110 in the same period, a growth rate about inline with inflation, but when you look at individual items prices you can see a clear predatory “inflation adjustment”
I canceled all our streaming services and Amazon prime. I canceled my phone service and opted for a $15/month plan (Mint). I buy a cheap phone, about $70 bucks. I asked my wife to stop buying me snack foods at the grocery store to save ~$50/week. All told I think we are not spending ~$300/month that I can now put towards our cars that are starting to break down. Someone said something about savings but I only cultivate dust and stones there.
if your cars are totaled one day, definetely buy a toyota made around 2000-2015. those things are modern but still indestructible. (but definetely don’t cheap out on maintenance, oil is especially important)
Especially with the war on work from home that seems to be going on at the moment.
Can’t you guys just apply to work for European companies remotely wouldn’t that be a workaround? I know my company has a few remote American employees and they’re not totally useless.
Most companies would rather not perform the hassle of hiring international workers. Taxes are… Complicated. The only reason it makes sense is to save a shit ton of money - see India.
The other time would be for high demand skills that they can’t staff locally which only applies to certain industries like tech, etc. Even then it usually only makes sense if they’re getting top quality talent in those industries.
I consider myself to be a decent software engineer which is fairly in demand (even with recent layoffs imo), but even then I think I’d have a hard time finding a remote European job.
Oh and let’s not forget that for most engineering positions the salaries are usually lower in European companies. Unless they’d be willing to pay relative to where I live, it would probably mean a pay cut. And I doubt even the benefits would make it worth it given I’d still be living in the US with our private health insurance system, terrible/expensive transportation, etc.
If it offered relocation then that could make it worth it but that’s probably even more difficult to get hired for and has obvious downsides
Weird how when it comes to helping the working class, taxing the rich is never an option. But when it comes to helping the ruling class, you can tax the working class and print money.
You don't give money to the bums
on a corner with a sign bleeding from their gums
Talking about you don't support a crackhead
What you think happens to the money from your taxes
Shit the governments an addict
With a billion dollar a week kill brown people habit
Didn’t it just come from taxes. I know they claim there’s never any money but there’s always money, they just don’t to use any of it.
They’re always claiming they need to raise taxes but they don’t, they just need to spend them. Also possibly maybe they shouldn’t give contracts to their chums as backhanders. Maybe then they get better deals.
Every dollar they can save by not spending on making US citizens lives better can be used to buy another missile or drone. The Ukrainian and Israeli armies have benefitted more from our tax dollars than US citizens have in recent times, it seems.
I’m all for weakening our second biggest potential enemy, who got into their current situation through an act of baseless aggression, by spending tax money supplying high tech weaponry to an ally willing to spend it’s populations lives in defense of their country and ideals. That is a win-win.
I’m not so much ok with spending tax dollars to support a genocide.
No, Treasury directed the fed to issue bonds and run those loans through banks and businesses. When Congress spends money, it spends it into existence- it doesn’t have a pool of dollars that people have sent in somewhere. For that matter, when you pay your taxes, the money is used to zero out the bonds (again, in the Fed’s ledger) used to issue it. Remember, money in circulation is (from the POV of the fed) a liability on its books.
the problem is that one small group is holing the rest of us hostage, we needed to do the whole spending to ensure people could continue to afford food/housing etc… and that ended up going to everyone, just when it comes to repaying it, the hostage takers threatened to upend the economy if they have to pay it back, so it falls on the rest of us.
record profits as the average American is struggling to get by
Government spending is not the root cause. If that was the case, we would have seen inflation much sooner, since we’ve been in the era of quantitative easing ever since 2008. The fed was starting to raise interest rates even before covid because the post-2008 recovery was turning into an expansion; we are still in that expansion phase, and covid fucked up our supply chains which kick started the inflation that would have accompanied the expansion regardless, but would have been easier to control in normal times.
Yes. No doubt the economy took a hit at the start/height of the pandemic, but using that as a blanket statement to explain the linked article is unsubstantiated.
Edit:
Could also read the article.
The poorest 40% of households suffered an 8% drop in cash savings and the middle 40% (the U.S. middle class) also saw their bank deposits and other liquid assets topple. Only the wealthiest 20% of households are still enjoying the extra cash they stockpiled during the pandemic, with their savings about 8% above where they were in March 2020.
Given the American wealth distribution in 2023, just the top 10% of people hold 69% of wealth.
The article mentions the top 20% saw their savings increase.
I think it’s fair to extrapolate that America “as a whole” got richer (e.g. the economy is “doing better”), at the small cost of 80-90% of its inhabitants.
The pandemic has been a disaster for the average person, yet the wealthy used it as another opportunity to exploit them.
^(sidenote, “stockpiled” is a very apt descriptor…)
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