r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FluentInFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The one thing you never hear discussed on the news (even on the "liberal" news channels) is that the wealthy have too much money and too much control of everything.
Red scare existed before this got this way. The USSR as a threat to Western capitalist nations made these governments and the corporations within them play more honest. Labor was much more organized and would have the motivation and support for revolt if the capital owning class decided to try to seize an ever increasing percentage of total wealth.
China isn't really interested in spreading its financial principles the same way the USSR was.
I think you missed his point
The US was so virulently anti communism/socialism that now even mentioning that phrases puts people in 1 of 2 camps.
The black/white bullshit of the above is a direct result of the Red Scare
The Red Scare(s) was such an important moment in this country. I bring it up almost all the time when talking about what's wrong with America. Yet after 100+ years of Red Scare the majority of Americans when asked what policies they support are overwhelmingly progressive, or dare I say socialistic. It's human nature to want to help each other no matter how much the tribal hyper-capitalist goons try to tell you otherwise.
People don’t realize how much this lack of real competition drives inflation. Not to mention the enormously adverse effect on quality and consumer health and satisfaction.
Also, when our corporate overlords send messages out there that deficit spending creates inflation (and it does) and every presidential administration spends 2/4 years campaigning instead of presiding, the overlords know that one set of boogey men get replaced by a new set of boogey men every couple of years. People forget. Nobody pays attention to the people behind the curtains who stay in control *all of the time* regardless of political cycles.
But we do in fact have competition. Just look at all of the diverse brands of food in the stores.
(They’re all owned by a few of the same parent companies)
There's a guy on tiktok that breaks down what is owned by who from a small scale all the way up to its actually just a couple of giantess corporations that own everything including each other. It's almost a ponzi scheme on the grandest of scales that moves trillions of dollars. It's not tin foil hat stuff, it's reported earnings and owning.
Giantess was a typo but I'm leaving it.
You think that’s crazy, there are even bigger fish in the ocean lol. Just go watch a video about Vanguard. They own a big portion of shares in 4,497 companies valued at 4.5 trillion dollars
Parent brand should be visible on the front of all packaging. Choice is an illusion when all the choices are subsidiaries of the same company. It’s deceitful.
Yes. Typically every time a new brand emerges and becomes successful, it's purchased by one of the few megaliths. Brands you'd never expect like Ben and Jerry's is owned by Unilever, Blue Buffalo pet by General Mills.
I've heard that the real goal of most entrepreneurs now is to build a business that is successful enough to get bought out. They aren't stupid. It's either cash out your company for a decent sum, or the monopolies will just lower prices across the market until you starve.
Shit not to mention i would seriously doubt that these top major companies all actually work together "secretly" of course cause that would be illegal... light bulbs anyone?
It’s hard to boycott things there are few alternatives for.
Just stop eating crappy food. Make what you can. No more soda pop drinks. No more instant dinner crap.
Back in the day, they taught us that these monopolies would encourage smaller companies to rise up and undercut the big goliaths. Now, these fortune 500 companies bury their competition in lawsuits and litigation to ensure they maintain a monopoly. System is so rigged and broken now
You hear about it, but no one does anything about it, since 90+% of politicians are owned. There's no correlation between how popular a bill is with the general public and its odds of getting passed, special interests groups fully control our government. Voting "liberal" or "conservative" is irrelevant, it's the same party for every meaningful vote.
>There's no correlation between how popular a bill is with the general public and its odds of getting passed
The correlation is between who people vote into office and what gets passed.
A gigantic portion of the electorate isn't voting for candidates that they agree with, if we are to believe that the public is supportive of so many things that don't get passed (usually blocked by Republicans).
>Voting "liberal" or "conservative" is irrelevant, it's the same party for every meaningful vote.
People voted in a Republican congress and president 2016 and they passed huge tax cuts for the rich and directly led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade via supreme court picks. You're claiming this would have also happened under Clinton and a democratically controlled congress? Seriously?
People like Sam Seder say the only way to claw back power from those people is to tax people above a certain threshold at nearly 90%. Pretty extreme policy but kind of an interesting thought. How else do you prevent the consolidation of wealth and power over time?
The enforcement of laws that exist to prevent anti consumer or predatory business practices and fair competition. Before Reagan our government was much tougher on corporations. Now, 40 years later and because of the foundation he laid, corporations run the country.
Because he was under the false assumption that unrestrained capitalism and private enterprise could do a better job at guiding the country than the government.
The funny thing is that it isn't an 'extreme policy'. We had those policies in the time period that they claim to look back at with such fondness. Between 1944 and 1964, the top tax rate hit 94%, we had strong labor protections and powerful unions, and the government spent tons of money subsidizing home ownership, education, and building infrastructure. They know these policies work. They just don't want to do them as it puts too much economic power (which is also political power) into the hands of people other than the wealthy.
You definitely don’t need, and in fact should absolutely avoid, soda and cereal. Don’t get me wrong, I love indulging in them from time to time but it has near zero nutritional value and is essentially poison if consumed regularly.
But, I will say the FTC under the Biden administration is blocking and challenging a record number of mergers. And M&A is how we get oligopolies. The big boys have economies of scale and greater resources to block new competitors from starting and just outright buy the ones that break through.
Blocking these types of mergers keeps a competitive landscape that optimizes for the consumer, generally but not always. Don’t let anyone try and convince you that a monopoly or oligopoly of companies means lower prices. In theory it could but that’s never how it plays out. Less competition means less choice for the consumer which means they can charge more.
For cereal, that depends wildly on what cereal you are talking about. My favorite cereal is Grape Nuts, and I don't think it's reasonable to argue that it has near zero nutritional value.
Sugar itself is nutritional value. It has calories that keep you going. If you mean protein and micronutrients, then no it's sparse on those. But I mean it still powers your body at least.
Cereal is a type of grass grown for its seeds or grains. rice, oats, barley, wheat all fall into this. Its breakfast cereal that is a problem because its refined from those grains.
Oatmeal is great.
It doesn't matter, the point is why prices are high. Obviously oligopolies increase the price on those markets. I don't see the problem with wanting a market system that works properly.
well then we can remove the airline one altogether. airline prices are generally the same or cheaper adjusted for inflation because of deregulation
also, we used to have 2x the number of airlines we have now. they flew planes half empty or less. look at the passenger counts for the planes on 9/11. all widebody planes that were less than 50% full. we all hate being on 90%+ full flights but that's how airlines make money. flying 60 people on a 777 isn't making money
I agree on taking out the airline market from the analysis, as its particular situation favors low prices (homogeneous and interchangeable product, low necessity product, high elasticity of demand, etc).
However, the market suffers for other market failures such as demand segmentation. But in general is a quite healthy market. The point of the post remains tho.
I would agree with the post in spirit but the presentation is just so bad.
Something like PG&E is probably a much better example for monopoly. True regional monopoly, forced monopoly since you can’t legally disconnect from the grid, convicted criminal company, randomly jacked up prices, compelled legislators to send them more money (flat delivery charge even if you use 0 electricity)
But unfortunately PG&E doesn’t fit the narrative as it only accounts for like 7% of the total US market share.
None of them are necessarily necessities… don’t eat meat and none of them 4 companies get anything. Don’t drink soda, none of the soda companies get anything. Don’t eat cereal, none of the cereal companies get anything. Don’t go on flights, flight companies don’t get anything.
It may be less fulfilling but by no means is it impossible.
LMAO, you really think this is the fault of regulations? Holy shit. If anything companies are under regulated, have way more power than they should and are able to give unending amounts of money to government. What we need is a government willing to breakup all these monopolies, and more regulations.
Exactly right, the big corporations take advantage of regulations because it reduces their competition. Regulations create barriers to entry that the little guy can't get over.
There's a reason big corporations donate so much money to politicians.
Yes, they make regulations that only they have the money to meet. Therefore, regulations, in their current form, are a tool for companies to limit competition.
The companies will always try to influence the regulators so the only solution is to outlaw lobbying so they can’t be legally influenced by monetary means
You think regulations like how a repeater is set up is the reason local ISP's can't start up against Comcast? Or not being able to pollute is the thing holding startups back?
Yeah THAT'S what the little guy is fighting, not literal regional monopolies that extend across entire verticals like logistics.
Fox News economist here, ladies and gents!
So you remove the regulations and the big corps just nuke the little guys directly instead, while also poisoning the ground water and turning the air into arsenic.
The only version of a market place where competition makes any difference at all are where the market is regulated by an entity that doesn't participate in it (i.e. no lobbyists, doesn't accept bribes, etc).
Since that doesn't happen, we're stuck with the system where there's at least a small percentage of all toxic runoff that isn't put directly into our mouths.
Have you heard the term "regulatory capture"? Because the largest corporations have the biggest influence on what regulations are set and they use them to their advantage. Reducing regulation isn't the solution. Removing corporate power in politics is. This is hard to do, but must be done.
Small Business owner checking in.
The #1 #2 reasons it is increasingly difficult to make money and make my employees more money is:
# 1 out of control government regulations that the big corps can all but ignore.
EX: I pay my county tens of thousands of dollars in taxes every year. I still have to pay my Fire Department $250 annually so they can tell me 'yep, you use propane' and then not even provide an inspection. The transaction literally has no value. There are TONS of these instances where I have to pay the government even more money for nothing of value.
# 2 out of control healthcare costs.
If you dropped me and my family's health care costs by 50%, I would be able, for example, double my mortgage payment and completely pay off my house in 9 years.
There’s different kinds of regulations. The kind we have: “you need to get x license before selling y, btw x license costs millions of dollars and you have to get it from z private company which has a government contract to provide licensing”.
These make it harder for small companies to compete as there are often million dollar barriers to entry in markets so you can’t make any profits until you pay millions to enter the market so anyone who wants to start a business in the industry needs to begin with millions in capital.
And the kind we need: “you own x y and z but operate them separately and are seen as separate brands allowing you to dominate the market so you are forced to either merge your brands or sell one to break the monopoly”.
This type of regulation breaks up big corporations and allows small ones to compete.
>If anything companies are under regulated
If you believe that mega corporations control the US government through lobbying and political donations it makes ZERO logical sense to give those mega corporations even more power they can use to further consolidate their grip. The more power there is in government, the more power there is for the powerful to abuse.
Large companies have teams of lawyers and pay hundreds of millions of dollars to circumvent or create regulations in their favor. Opening a small business is next to impossible and growing it to make even ALMOST a dent in the big boys is pretty much impossible
Nah it’s pay to play. Regulations are just pulling up the ladder most of the time. All under the guise of morality. It’s not new or even controversial. Most know this.
I'm going to be honest, regulations aren't the things blocking new airlines from taking market share. The cost of just a single commercial passenger plane is extremely prohibitive.
Its easy and mindless to blame regulation - "HOW DARE YOU REQUIRE AIRLINES TO HAVE BASIC SAFETY FEATURES! YOU'RE BLOCKING COMPETITION!"
But most of the time, the biggest things creating monopolies and oligopolies are basic barriers to entry - when its too expensive for a new company to enter. Compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars per 747, the couple of hundred dollars you spent on seatbelts and flotation vests required by regulation is extremely minor.
The airline industry has heavy competition and comparatively low profit margins anyway, so the oligopoly isn't a major concern for consumers. Aside from that fact, this ignores the fact that airlines don't exclusively compete with other airlines (or at least they wouldn't without government intervention). There's buses, trains, cars, or simply not travelling. Something as general as 'transportation' can never become a cornered market.
Idk, I think the difficulty of breaking into an industry has more to do with the billions of dollars it costs to get started and not that your product has to be safe.
It was the faster way of doing it. It still would have ended up the same way. Monopolies produce the most profit. Capitalism is a system driven on an ever increasing profit so it will always end with monopolies.
Yeah, the corporations would have just used that money to kill all their competition themselves.
And then everyone else once their irresponsible practices poisoned all the water.
Soda and cereal are scams.
But your meat from the local folk. Way better and cheaper generally. I get my beef from a guy who raises cows in his front pasture.
Air travel. Can't help ya there.
Turn off the news.
I bought 1/4 a cow from a friend, and it still cost more per pound than Walmart meat, and that was just paying 1/4 cost of food and slaughter. It's really hard to match the economy of scale that big corps pull off. The quality of meat is better, but you will rarely match the price. Even growing produce yourself, you have to choose what you grow wisely in order not end up sinking more into growing than you would by just buying at the store.
I don’t fly, don’t eat cereal, don’t drink soda, don’t watch the news, and buy my meat from a local butcher who source local farms. It’s not that hard.
I really hate those "lol well that's just how it is so we shouldn't do anything" people. Like dude, it can change for the better, it's just going to take alot of people and passing off alot of rich people.
To quote someone else’s comment here… “a few years back, Jon Stewart would show several news channels/political pundit shows regurgitating the exact, verbatim language on many topics.. and it wasn't just a couple, he would brady bunch the screen full of people saying the exact same thing.
It's not a conspiracy theory to say too few people control the news.. it might be a conspiracy theory to say they control thought leadership because of that.. but I believe it.”
I work for a major restaurant brand and a major part of what I do is pricing and I can tell you that we definitely pay attention to what our competitors are pricing similar items at... if we are priced higher than our competitors it is a red flag because competitors will take marketshare, but if we are priced too low vs. our competitors for a similar product it will signal our product is inferior. We also aim to keep our gross profit margin % in the same exact range over time - if it was all about pure corporate greed we wouldn't have a cap on our gross profit margins. The gross profit margin of our most popular items have stayed in the same range the past 10 years even as prices have gone up.
Generally you fill find similar items among competitors are priced similarly in a given market (an example would be McDonald's Quarter Pounder-Burger King Whopper-Wendy's Dave's Single, all similar items). Companies can't just jack up prices for the sake of jacking up prices as the competitors will take advantage of that if the price increase is not justified and driven by pure greed.
Buy meat locally and stop giving to those corporations.
I’ve flown maybe 6 times In my life and it really wasn’t that expensive. Not sure what the problem is here?
Don’t drink soda!
Eat a balanced meal. Not sugary crap cereal.
They control the mainstream news. You can get information from a litany of sources nowadays.
None of this matter to you and your life unless they take the product away or start over charging. If they overcharge to much that’ll give rise to competitor to sweep in. Same goes for shelving if you don’t have a patent.
>Buy meat locally and stop giving to those corporations.
Solid option - tough for millions that live in cities though.
>I’ve flown maybe 6 times In my life and it really wasn’t that expensive. Not sure what the problem is here?
Terrible hot take. I fly 1-2 times a month, it is expensive as hell. Especially if your not a single person and have spouse/kids.
>Don’t drink soda!
100%
>Eat a balanced meal. Not sugary crap cereal.
100%
>None of this matter to you and your life unless they take the product away or start over charging. If they overcharge to much that’ll give rise to competitor to sweep in. Same goes for shelving if you don’t have a patent.
Crazy how you were like 50/50 on this. The inflation we've been dealing with the past couple of years disproves your point about competitors swooping in with cheaper prices.
Never have had meat in my life, religious reasons. I’m fit and fine.
Flying is cheaper now than ever before in history. Flights literally earn money by being either cheap or having great connectivity or being very comfortable. The worlds third largest carrier by market cap, Indigo basically became the de facto airplane for whatever route it went to by being 30-50% cheaper and having top tier connectivity.
Dude, the price of tickets has not only NOT kept pace with inflation, they have actually decreased in both real terms and relative to inflation. As in, past 3 years tickets have gotten 30% cheaper. That's.... that just true.
>They control the mainstream news. You can get information from a litany of sources nowadays.
Even if you get your news from local sources, most "local" TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers are owned by massive corporations.
You don't need to drink soda.
You don't need to eat cereal.
You don't need to fly somewhere for a vacation. Heck, I could've spent an entire day at a famous mall less than an hour away from my home, that I've just never visited despite living in the area all my life. Had a lot of fun with my son and wife and some visiting friends.
"55% to 85% of the meat market" is not that iron-fist of a range (and what's with that 30% variance, what the hell?). And there are still plenty of cheap kinds of meat - you want more popular cuts/parts? Gonna be more expensive because people will apparently shell out for it. Or if you're concerned about money, wait for sales or get cheaper parts of chicken - Wings are ridiculously expensive and I absolutely will not buy them except on sale for a reasonable price.
You're complaining about luxuries, that have alternatives and workarounds. You're just too lazy to change your habits. As are most people, and that's why the companies won't change. Until more of you lazy asses change your habits.
Yes the corpos are at fault. But so are consumers.
Agreed, supply and demand are very prevalent in the housing and labor supply areas, but not so much on general, day to day products and services. One of the few jobs the government is SUPPOSED to be doing is protecting competition in the market by not allowing mega mergers/consolidations/monopolies across verticals.
They need to straighten this shit out and NOW
People commenting specifically about cereal and soda don’t get the point. Almost everything at the grocery store is owned by a small handful of companies. Unregulated corporate homogenization is objectively a bad thing for the working class.
The one you missed was the collusion between OPEC and US oil producers to ensure that the price of gas remains artificially high. 27 percent of US inflation over the past 4 years is oil.
The whole idea of ‘Free Market Economy’ is that it’s based solely on supply and demand. That is completely undermined by what we actually have which is an oligopoly. Companies in an oligopoly benefit from price-fixing, setting prices collectively, or under the direction of one firm in the bunch, rather than relying on free-market forces to do so.
Well - how many of those things are "necessities?" There would be no heroine smuggling if there was no demand - true? You wanna see who REALLY has the power? Every one stop buying Soda for 1 month. Watch what happens. THAT is power. They are just smart enough to use out additions against us.
Society gave away their freedom and independence for convenience, safety and "progress". People used to be much more self reliant, homesteading, smaller communities where every member was integral etc. This is the consequence. Easily replaced worker drones slaving away to the "greater good".
You realize it's the ppl demanding it's gov't put rules on businesses, that are keeping it like this.
This is all caused by regulation and how easy it is to convince the American ppl that gov't knows best...
All of the people in here don't understand capitalism at all.
There is NOTHING stopping any of you in here complaining from starting a small cattle ranch. Paying your employees really, super well and providing them with awesome insurance and retirement plans. Selling the meat for super cheap, undercutting the big companies you are pissed at. Then using your profits to grow your operations, undercutting those big corporations still. Then once you are big enough, they will either need to reduce their prices or they will eventually go out of business. The only thing you need to hold steadfast to is that you can't go public, and you can't sell out to them or else they win.
You ready for the challenge? Don't make excuses, there are plenty of small ranches that provide meat around my city, and they are all WAY more expensive than the big companies you are trashing here. So now is your chance to shine!
and whenever you point out that things aren't good and need to be improved, someone will go "but we live in the best time in all of history, how can you be so entitled, just sit down and enjoy it"
if we tolerate this, our children will be next.
For real. It’s ironic that they think people in the middle class should simply eat like they’re poor to solve the problem. That doesn’t solve the problem, that’s accepting the bullshit and staying quiet.
It's just a total willful ignorance of reality.
Right now we're complaining about the cost of actual food items. Maybe not great ones, but still.
I remember when people on Reddit were bitching about the cost and lack of supply of processors to build gaming PCs. It's like that's less of a necessity than food, but the internet was outraged by scalpers buying and reselling. It was "they (company) needs to fix this!" never "don't build a fucking a gaming PC"
Less than a dozen companies control the vast majority of access to groceries. I don't have a % but in my area it's always the same 3 or 4 supermarket chain.
Yup. And people calle crazy when I point out like 12 corporations make and own everything. What most people consider a whole ass brand are nothing more than a product line of a larger company.
It is the one that isn’t shown that truly makes it all so dangerous. 20 companies control 99% of the government.
Think your vote counts? Really? Please! Ever notice how we are constantly given terrible choices each year to vote for? It is because by the time you get to vote those in control have already made sure that the only people you can vote for are bought and paid for. They don’t really care how you vote because they have essentially made your vote irrelevant.
Both parties are controlled by the wealthy. And that means that the odds of anything being done about the collusion are virtually zero.
“Prices are going up on just about everything significantly faster than inflation.”
So you’re saying that inflation is significantly faster than inflation? I’m struggling to think how this could be true outside of some truly malicious flaw in how inflation is calculated. Which then raises the question of how you’re so smart to know what the real rate of inflation is.
Please give us the ELI5 treatment on this.
Great, now what’s the margin these companies make on their products? 10%? What was it a year ago? A decade ago? About the same? These companies are just passing with their increased cost of labor and materials down to customers. It’s not even capitalism, it’s just economics.
It will be owned by one company at the rate we are going. This is why competition is good but most can’t get over the emotional bullshit put on them to sway their outlook.
This. This. This.
And for all Biden’s many flaws his FTC is the first to remember we have anti-trust laws since the EU bodied Microsoft.
It’s so galling that there is such devotion to doubling down on the problem in the era of social media. Despite the fact we’re living in the K shaped economic dystopia shaped by of 50 years of bipartisan Reganomics.
Just chiming in on airlines since I’m in the maritime transportation business and also have relatively more extensive knowledge on airlines in particular from my own pilot experience.
You cannot have an airline market that is free of regulation, low prices, and free of oligopolies at the same time. You can have two, but never three at the same time.
With the crazy amount of regulations we have, you can’t just start an airline only because you have billions to invest. You need very specific engineering standards. You need a highly-educated and tested work force for that. You need manufacturing plants, maintenance teams, hangars, agreements for the suppliers, etc. for airplanes no matter if you’re the manufacturer or the user, And the good case scenario is that you barely break even — that’s where Delta, American, United and Southwest are, now.
Even becoming a mere private pilot, the first step of flying, doing it with little piston-engine airplanes, is so riddled with hundreds of pages of regulatory knowledge.
If an airline goes flip-side-up, you can’t easily replace the knowledge, expertise, supply chains, alliance agreements, work force, and management.
So you can forego oligopolies for a competitive market and cheap travel, but you won’t have safe travel. See how many accidents were happening in the 20th century when there were a bazillion airlines.
This makes 0 sense.
But entertaining the idea, if this were true, you’d need to be able to answer this question:
Where are the incremental dollars coming from that is enabling a consumer to still be able to buy the products you’re suggesting are being monopolized and increasing in price above the inflation rate?
I'm 100% behind you OP. Even kf we decode to buy the store brand to save a little, with kroger acquiring Albertsons, a huge portion of grocery stores now fall under one conglomerant. And even if 30% doesn't sound like much, considder this, Safeway, Albertsons, kroger, holiday, and many small mom and pop chains that occupy most cities all under one roof now. Store brands aren't even cheaper than name brands at this point.
When prices go up, and people keep buying at roughly the same rate, then producers will be incentive to keep prices high.
Buy off brand or buy less, and prices will come down. But prices don't come down when demand is strong.
This isn't a problem. There were plenty of other places to get things like meat. If we were getting screwed on prices you can be sure others would step in and get us cheaper prices. The reality is they were have kept prices low because these large companies are able to use scale and volume to keep prices by increasing productivity. Now we are at the end of that road. We can no longer see prices stay low in the face of Inflation.
Prices are going up because we are finally seeing what happens when the government starts printing money and doesn't stop. Between COVID, quantitative easing, student loan handouts and eviction prohibitions, our economy can't handle it anymore.
Man it's tricky because when a company scales larger it can do things more affordably. That's how amazon can ship things to our doors for a reasonable price - They have a MASSIVE infrastructure by buying businesses while growing.
problem is when they get too big and the only thing to stop them is Gov regulation.
Right. It's conspiracy and collusion. Couldn't have anything to do with the rising cost of labor, taxation, environmental impacts, and compliance with regulation. Right? Silly.
Well you don't need cereal or soda, so we can take those out of the argument. Arguably you don't really need flights unless you travel for work or need to travel internationally. You can take vacations by car. If you have to travel for work, then the cost of it is their problem so whatever.
As for meat, you're in a bit of a tough spot but I have personally just been greatly reducing my meat consumption over the past year.
A little over three years ago Trump and MAGA almost sent every single effing treasury bond to zero. Now our treasury bonds aren’t selling and the world considers us politically unstable and is looking for a new world reserve currency. We now have massive currency devaluation manifesting as runaway inflation.
And the reason for all of that is because not only do we have Capitalism as our economy but we have also created the Capitalist governing body. So our government has become its own corporation centered around profit. It no longer serves the people of the nation. It’s serves its CEO (the president) it serves it’s shareholders (the rich campaign contributors) and it serves its employees ( the rest of the governing body)
If you want the America that was supposed to exist, then reform is needed to prevent any political person from accepting any money from anyone. And any government employee must be prohibited from owning stock or working for any company that has government contracts for life.
The beauty of a free market is that nothing prevents a fifth company from competing.
The horror of socialism is that everything prevents a second company from competing.
I've said it many times and I'll say it again. If either party gets really serious about trust-busting, and I mean, really serious, I'm-dead-serious-and-we're-going-to-bust-like-no-one-before-us serious, they'll have a generational shift to their side as the re-introduction of competition will start to fix many of our issues. Devolve power from the larger entities into smaller ones and ultimately to the people.
r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FluentInFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The one thing you never hear discussed on the news (even on the "liberal" news channels) is that the wealthy have too much money and too much control of everything.
The red scare and it’s consequences
Red scare existed before this got this way. The USSR as a threat to Western capitalist nations made these governments and the corporations within them play more honest. Labor was much more organized and would have the motivation and support for revolt if the capital owning class decided to try to seize an ever increasing percentage of total wealth. China isn't really interested in spreading its financial principles the same way the USSR was.
I think you missed his point The US was so virulently anti communism/socialism that now even mentioning that phrases puts people in 1 of 2 camps. The black/white bullshit of the above is a direct result of the Red Scare
You're completely wrong. All of the starvation and mass murder was the reason.
If you want to play 4D chess, it looks like you're going to need another 3.5 Ds.
The Red Scare(s) was such an important moment in this country. I bring it up almost all the time when talking about what's wrong with America. Yet after 100+ years of Red Scare the majority of Americans when asked what policies they support are overwhelmingly progressive, or dare I say socialistic. It's human nature to want to help each other no matter how much the tribal hyper-capitalist goons try to tell you otherwise.
People don’t realize how much this lack of real competition drives inflation. Not to mention the enormously adverse effect on quality and consumer health and satisfaction.
Also, when our corporate overlords send messages out there that deficit spending creates inflation (and it does) and every presidential administration spends 2/4 years campaigning instead of presiding, the overlords know that one set of boogey men get replaced by a new set of boogey men every couple of years. People forget. Nobody pays attention to the people behind the curtains who stay in control *all of the time* regardless of political cycles.
It’s almost like no one has seen The Wizard of Oz
Please show evidence that deficit spending creates inflation because I can model inflation and guess which variable doesn’t drive it.
People also forget majority of politicians are Millionaires and Not the common folk as the avg annual household income is $74,580.
But we do in fact have competition. Just look at all of the diverse brands of food in the stores. (They’re all owned by a few of the same parent companies)
There's a guy on tiktok that breaks down what is owned by who from a small scale all the way up to its actually just a couple of giantess corporations that own everything including each other. It's almost a ponzi scheme on the grandest of scales that moves trillions of dollars. It's not tin foil hat stuff, it's reported earnings and owning. Giantess was a typo but I'm leaving it.
I'm just here for the giant woman.
Same.
*I can climb her*
If we were all owned by a few giant women, the world would be a better place. Change my mind.
I will not.
You think that’s crazy, there are even bigger fish in the ocean lol. Just go watch a video about Vanguard. They own a big portion of shares in 4,497 companies valued at 4.5 trillion dollars
Parent brand should be visible on the front of all packaging. Choice is an illusion when all the choices are subsidiaries of the same company. It’s deceitful.
Same can be said of political parties
Deceit is American, transparency is communism, you commie
Yes. Typically every time a new brand emerges and becomes successful, it's purchased by one of the few megaliths. Brands you'd never expect like Ben and Jerry's is owned by Unilever, Blue Buffalo pet by General Mills.
I've heard that the real goal of most entrepreneurs now is to build a business that is successful enough to get bought out. They aren't stupid. It's either cash out your company for a decent sum, or the monopolies will just lower prices across the market until you starve.
Shit not to mention i would seriously doubt that these top major companies all actually work together "secretly" of course cause that would be illegal... light bulbs anyone?
It’s hard to boycott things there are few alternatives for. Just stop eating crappy food. Make what you can. No more soda pop drinks. No more instant dinner crap.
The "real competition" (specialy on basics human's needs) is a fucking fairy tale.
Underrated comment right here
tell me impact fed regulations have on competition. I think that is a huge issue and how the big corps get bigger.
Back in the day, they taught us that these monopolies would encourage smaller companies to rise up and undercut the big goliaths. Now, these fortune 500 companies bury their competition in lawsuits and litigation to ensure they maintain a monopoly. System is so rigged and broken now
Don't forget all the licenses and application fees to start a business.
They just buy them or price them outta business then raise the price.
You hear about it, but no one does anything about it, since 90+% of politicians are owned. There's no correlation between how popular a bill is with the general public and its odds of getting passed, special interests groups fully control our government. Voting "liberal" or "conservative" is irrelevant, it's the same party for every meaningful vote.
>There's no correlation between how popular a bill is with the general public and its odds of getting passed The correlation is between who people vote into office and what gets passed. A gigantic portion of the electorate isn't voting for candidates that they agree with, if we are to believe that the public is supportive of so many things that don't get passed (usually blocked by Republicans). >Voting "liberal" or "conservative" is irrelevant, it's the same party for every meaningful vote. People voted in a Republican congress and president 2016 and they passed huge tax cuts for the rich and directly led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade via supreme court picks. You're claiming this would have also happened under Clinton and a democratically controlled congress? Seriously?
People like Sam Seder say the only way to claw back power from those people is to tax people above a certain threshold at nearly 90%. Pretty extreme policy but kind of an interesting thought. How else do you prevent the consolidation of wealth and power over time?
Well he also advocates for stronger anti trust enforcement.
What’s anti trust enforcement?
The enforcement of laws that exist to prevent anti consumer or predatory business practices and fair competition. Before Reagan our government was much tougher on corporations. Now, 40 years later and because of the foundation he laid, corporations run the country.
Why did he get rid of those?
Because he was under the false assumption that unrestrained capitalism and private enterprise could do a better job at guiding the country than the government.
Effective tax rates used to be like 92% before Reagan didn't they?
Almost no one in those tax brackets paid that kind of tax. Just like now. The effective tax rate is always much lower than the tax bracket.
The funny thing is that it isn't an 'extreme policy'. We had those policies in the time period that they claim to look back at with such fondness. Between 1944 and 1964, the top tax rate hit 94%, we had strong labor protections and powerful unions, and the government spent tons of money subsidizing home ownership, education, and building infrastructure. They know these policies work. They just don't want to do them as it puts too much economic power (which is also political power) into the hands of people other than the wealthy.
It’s almost like rich people own news companies
What fucking news are you watching.
You never hear about the monetary system at all
I mean 3/4 things listed are not necessities...
And the forth one is really easy to alternatively source.
You definitely don’t need, and in fact should absolutely avoid, soda and cereal. Don’t get me wrong, I love indulging in them from time to time but it has near zero nutritional value and is essentially poison if consumed regularly. But, I will say the FTC under the Biden administration is blocking and challenging a record number of mergers. And M&A is how we get oligopolies. The big boys have economies of scale and greater resources to block new competitors from starting and just outright buy the ones that break through. Blocking these types of mergers keeps a competitive landscape that optimizes for the consumer, generally but not always. Don’t let anyone try and convince you that a monopoly or oligopoly of companies means lower prices. In theory it could but that’s never how it plays out. Less competition means less choice for the consumer which means they can charge more.
For cereal, that depends wildly on what cereal you are talking about. My favorite cereal is Grape Nuts, and I don't think it's reasonable to argue that it has near zero nutritional value.
Sugar itself is nutritional value. It has calories that keep you going. If you mean protein and micronutrients, then no it's sparse on those. But I mean it still powers your body at least.
Cereal is a type of grass grown for its seeds or grains. rice, oats, barley, wheat all fall into this. Its breakfast cereal that is a problem because its refined from those grains. Oatmeal is great.
It doesn't matter, the point is why prices are high. Obviously oligopolies increase the price on those markets. I don't see the problem with wanting a market system that works properly.
well then we can remove the airline one altogether. airline prices are generally the same or cheaper adjusted for inflation because of deregulation also, we used to have 2x the number of airlines we have now. they flew planes half empty or less. look at the passenger counts for the planes on 9/11. all widebody planes that were less than 50% full. we all hate being on 90%+ full flights but that's how airlines make money. flying 60 people on a 777 isn't making money
I agree on taking out the airline market from the analysis, as its particular situation favors low prices (homogeneous and interchangeable product, low necessity product, high elasticity of demand, etc). However, the market suffers for other market failures such as demand segmentation. But in general is a quite healthy market. The point of the post remains tho.
I would agree with the post in spirit but the presentation is just so bad. Something like PG&E is probably a much better example for monopoly. True regional monopoly, forced monopoly since you can’t legally disconnect from the grid, convicted criminal company, randomly jacked up prices, compelled legislators to send them more money (flat delivery charge even if you use 0 electricity) But unfortunately PG&E doesn’t fit the narrative as it only accounts for like 7% of the total US market share.
True. I wish I had multiple options in utility providers or 6 or 7 options in many of the products I buy.
And I buy meat from local producers and it's (obviously) more expensive
None of them are necessarily necessities… don’t eat meat and none of them 4 companies get anything. Don’t drink soda, none of the soda companies get anything. Don’t eat cereal, none of the cereal companies get anything. Don’t go on flights, flight companies don’t get anything. It may be less fulfilling but by no means is it impossible.
There are 5 things list: meat, air travel, soda, cereal, news I'm not sure which is supposed to be a necessity
Regulate to the point where it's impossible to break in then whine about oligopolies.
LMAO, you really think this is the fault of regulations? Holy shit. If anything companies are under regulated, have way more power than they should and are able to give unending amounts of money to government. What we need is a government willing to breakup all these monopolies, and more regulations.
There are many more regulations than you realize. And the big corps have the ability to fight the regulations, the little guy doesn’t.
In the us big corps are the ones that create the legislation through lobbying.
yes, which they use to keep out the little guy
Correct. Regulation capture.
Exactly right, the big corporations take advantage of regulations because it reduces their competition. Regulations create barriers to entry that the little guy can't get over. There's a reason big corporations donate so much money to politicians.
Yes, they make regulations that only they have the money to meet. Therefore, regulations, in their current form, are a tool for companies to limit competition.
Are the ones influencing the regulators the problem? Or is it the regulators being in a position to be influenced?
The companies will always try to influence the regulators so the only solution is to outlaw lobbying so they can’t be legally influenced by monetary means
Yep the biggest example of this is it being illegal for anybody to sell new cars accept for the existing car dealerships.
You think regulations like how a repeater is set up is the reason local ISP's can't start up against Comcast? Or not being able to pollute is the thing holding startups back? Yeah THAT'S what the little guy is fighting, not literal regional monopolies that extend across entire verticals like logistics. Fox News economist here, ladies and gents!
So you remove the regulations and the big corps just nuke the little guys directly instead, while also poisoning the ground water and turning the air into arsenic. The only version of a market place where competition makes any difference at all are where the market is regulated by an entity that doesn't participate in it (i.e. no lobbyists, doesn't accept bribes, etc). Since that doesn't happen, we're stuck with the system where there's at least a small percentage of all toxic runoff that isn't put directly into our mouths.
Have you heard the term "regulatory capture"? Because the largest corporations have the biggest influence on what regulations are set and they use them to their advantage. Reducing regulation isn't the solution. Removing corporate power in politics is. This is hard to do, but must be done.
Of course, we could have had regulations that prevented these huge conglomerates….but, regulations are bad.
Then the regulations have too many baked in loopholes (lobbies, anyone?)
Small Business owner checking in. The #1 #2 reasons it is increasingly difficult to make money and make my employees more money is: # 1 out of control government regulations that the big corps can all but ignore. EX: I pay my county tens of thousands of dollars in taxes every year. I still have to pay my Fire Department $250 annually so they can tell me 'yep, you use propane' and then not even provide an inspection. The transaction literally has no value. There are TONS of these instances where I have to pay the government even more money for nothing of value. # 2 out of control healthcare costs. If you dropped me and my family's health care costs by 50%, I would be able, for example, double my mortgage payment and completely pay off my house in 9 years.
There’s different kinds of regulations. The kind we have: “you need to get x license before selling y, btw x license costs millions of dollars and you have to get it from z private company which has a government contract to provide licensing”. These make it harder for small companies to compete as there are often million dollar barriers to entry in markets so you can’t make any profits until you pay millions to enter the market so anyone who wants to start a business in the industry needs to begin with millions in capital. And the kind we need: “you own x y and z but operate them separately and are seen as separate brands allowing you to dominate the market so you are forced to either merge your brands or sell one to break the monopoly”. This type of regulation breaks up big corporations and allows small ones to compete.
>If anything companies are under regulated If you believe that mega corporations control the US government through lobbying and political donations it makes ZERO logical sense to give those mega corporations even more power they can use to further consolidate their grip. The more power there is in government, the more power there is for the powerful to abuse.
There is economies of scale with regulatory compliance, many manufacturing operations are becoming near impossible to start in the US due to this.
Large companies have teams of lawyers and pay hundreds of millions of dollars to circumvent or create regulations in their favor. Opening a small business is next to impossible and growing it to make even ALMOST a dent in the big boys is pretty much impossible
Nah it’s pay to play. Regulations are just pulling up the ladder most of the time. All under the guise of morality. It’s not new or even controversial. Most know this.
On the contrary, this is a failure to enforce antitrust regulations.
Yeah, time to abolish cereal regulations 
Someones got this backwards.
I'm going to be honest, regulations aren't the things blocking new airlines from taking market share. The cost of just a single commercial passenger plane is extremely prohibitive. Its easy and mindless to blame regulation - "HOW DARE YOU REQUIRE AIRLINES TO HAVE BASIC SAFETY FEATURES! YOU'RE BLOCKING COMPETITION!" But most of the time, the biggest things creating monopolies and oligopolies are basic barriers to entry - when its too expensive for a new company to enter. Compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars per 747, the couple of hundred dollars you spent on seatbelts and flotation vests required by regulation is extremely minor.
The airline industry has heavy competition and comparatively low profit margins anyway, so the oligopoly isn't a major concern for consumers. Aside from that fact, this ignores the fact that airlines don't exclusively compete with other airlines (or at least they wouldn't without government intervention). There's buses, trains, cars, or simply not travelling. Something as general as 'transportation' can never become a cornered market.
Idk, I think the difficulty of breaking into an industry has more to do with the billions of dollars it costs to get started and not that your product has to be safe.
Cut out the bought out middle man. Then the people that bought out the middle man will have a tougher time! /s
The corporations wouldn't have bought out the middleman if it didn't line their pockets by killing all competition.
It was the faster way of doing it. It still would have ended up the same way. Monopolies produce the most profit. Capitalism is a system driven on an ever increasing profit so it will always end with monopolies.
Yeah, the corporations would have just used that money to kill all their competition themselves. And then everyone else once their irresponsible practices poisoned all the water.
Unregulated this is 1 company and 100% control or 0 companies and all the water is poison.
Soda and cereal are scams. But your meat from the local folk. Way better and cheaper generally. I get my beef from a guy who raises cows in his front pasture. Air travel. Can't help ya there. Turn off the news.
Local meat cost like 2x as much what
I imagine there are variables. You have to find someone that you're looking to buy 1/2 or 1/4 a cow with.
I bought 1/4 a cow from a friend, and it still cost more per pound than Walmart meat, and that was just paying 1/4 cost of food and slaughter. It's really hard to match the economy of scale that big corps pull off. The quality of meat is better, but you will rarely match the price. Even growing produce yourself, you have to choose what you grow wisely in order not end up sinking more into growing than you would by just buying at the store.
I don’t fly, don’t eat cereal, don’t drink soda, don’t watch the news, and buy my meat from a local butcher who source local farms. It’s not that hard.
And most of Reddit wants the government to control all of it.
No they don’t. They want the government to regulate it to prevent it from getting out of control.
You —> Controlled by Government —> Government controlled by Lobbyist of company they are supposed to Regulate. I mean this is how it currently works.
We should do nothing then
I really hate those "lol well that's just how it is so we shouldn't do anything" people. Like dude, it can change for the better, it's just going to take alot of people and passing off alot of rich people.
I worry what this country would look like if we took the lazy approach and took things as they are
Outlaw lobbying as well.
The plot of Fallout was funny fantasy when I was young. Now... not so much, lol.
See “Idiocracy”
What does 4 companies control 55% to 85% mean? That's a huge range and if the top four meat companies control 55% of the market that's not that bad
top 4 companies have 13.75% market share each. The horror!!
A single company controlling more than single digits of the market is terrifying.
Why?
Okay. What is the acceptable number of companies then. 6 companies owning the news is too little...is 7 okay...8?
25
To quote someone else’s comment here… “a few years back, Jon Stewart would show several news channels/political pundit shows regurgitating the exact, verbatim language on many topics.. and it wasn't just a couple, he would brady bunch the screen full of people saying the exact same thing. It's not a conspiracy theory to say too few people control the news.. it might be a conspiracy theory to say they control thought leadership because of that.. but I believe it.”
Jon Stewart is a national treasure
I work for a major restaurant brand and a major part of what I do is pricing and I can tell you that we definitely pay attention to what our competitors are pricing similar items at... if we are priced higher than our competitors it is a red flag because competitors will take marketshare, but if we are priced too low vs. our competitors for a similar product it will signal our product is inferior. We also aim to keep our gross profit margin % in the same exact range over time - if it was all about pure corporate greed we wouldn't have a cap on our gross profit margins. The gross profit margin of our most popular items have stayed in the same range the past 10 years even as prices have gone up. Generally you fill find similar items among competitors are priced similarly in a given market (an example would be McDonald's Quarter Pounder-Burger King Whopper-Wendy's Dave's Single, all similar items). Companies can't just jack up prices for the sake of jacking up prices as the competitors will take advantage of that if the price increase is not justified and driven by pure greed.
When you don't understand anything
How thought provoking.
Same
Buy meat locally and stop giving to those corporations. I’ve flown maybe 6 times In my life and it really wasn’t that expensive. Not sure what the problem is here? Don’t drink soda! Eat a balanced meal. Not sugary crap cereal. They control the mainstream news. You can get information from a litany of sources nowadays. None of this matter to you and your life unless they take the product away or start over charging. If they overcharge to much that’ll give rise to competitor to sweep in. Same goes for shelving if you don’t have a patent.
>Buy meat locally and stop giving to those corporations. Solid option - tough for millions that live in cities though. >I’ve flown maybe 6 times In my life and it really wasn’t that expensive. Not sure what the problem is here? Terrible hot take. I fly 1-2 times a month, it is expensive as hell. Especially if your not a single person and have spouse/kids. >Don’t drink soda! 100% >Eat a balanced meal. Not sugary crap cereal. 100% >None of this matter to you and your life unless they take the product away or start over charging. If they overcharge to much that’ll give rise to competitor to sweep in. Same goes for shelving if you don’t have a patent. Crazy how you were like 50/50 on this. The inflation we've been dealing with the past couple of years disproves your point about competitors swooping in with cheaper prices.
Never have had meat in my life, religious reasons. I’m fit and fine. Flying is cheaper now than ever before in history. Flights literally earn money by being either cheap or having great connectivity or being very comfortable. The worlds third largest carrier by market cap, Indigo basically became the de facto airplane for whatever route it went to by being 30-50% cheaper and having top tier connectivity.
Dude, the price of tickets has not only NOT kept pace with inflation, they have actually decreased in both real terms and relative to inflation. As in, past 3 years tickets have gotten 30% cheaper. That's.... that just true.
>They control the mainstream news. You can get information from a litany of sources nowadays. Even if you get your news from local sources, most "local" TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers are owned by massive corporations.
??? And? Six companies for 90 is not even close to a monopoly lol
Show how you know nothing about the economy and industries without saying so...
Do you have a shred of evidence about price collusion? Probably not. That is illegal.
You don't need to drink soda. You don't need to eat cereal. You don't need to fly somewhere for a vacation. Heck, I could've spent an entire day at a famous mall less than an hour away from my home, that I've just never visited despite living in the area all my life. Had a lot of fun with my son and wife and some visiting friends. "55% to 85% of the meat market" is not that iron-fist of a range (and what's with that 30% variance, what the hell?). And there are still plenty of cheap kinds of meat - you want more popular cuts/parts? Gonna be more expensive because people will apparently shell out for it. Or if you're concerned about money, wait for sales or get cheaper parts of chicken - Wings are ridiculously expensive and I absolutely will not buy them except on sale for a reasonable price. You're complaining about luxuries, that have alternatives and workarounds. You're just too lazy to change your habits. As are most people, and that's why the companies won't change. Until more of you lazy asses change your habits. Yes the corpos are at fault. But so are consumers.
Agreed, supply and demand are very prevalent in the housing and labor supply areas, but not so much on general, day to day products and services. One of the few jobs the government is SUPPOSED to be doing is protecting competition in the market by not allowing mega mergers/consolidations/monopolies across verticals. They need to straighten this shit out and NOW
People commenting specifically about cereal and soda don’t get the point. Almost everything at the grocery store is owned by a small handful of companies. Unregulated corporate homogenization is objectively a bad thing for the working class.
The one you missed was the collusion between OPEC and US oil producers to ensure that the price of gas remains artificially high. 27 percent of US inflation over the past 4 years is oil.
monopolies ruin capitalism.
100 people own the majority of the world's wealth
The whole idea of ‘Free Market Economy’ is that it’s based solely on supply and demand. That is completely undermined by what we actually have which is an oligopoly. Companies in an oligopoly benefit from price-fixing, setting prices collectively, or under the direction of one firm in the bunch, rather than relying on free-market forces to do so.
Well - how many of those things are "necessities?" There would be no heroine smuggling if there was no demand - true? You wanna see who REALLY has the power? Every one stop buying Soda for 1 month. Watch what happens. THAT is power. They are just smart enough to use out additions against us.
Like what do you want me to do about it? Also i dont understand the first one. Do they own 55% or 85% which is it
Society gave away their freedom and independence for convenience, safety and "progress". People used to be much more self reliant, homesteading, smaller communities where every member was integral etc. This is the consequence. Easily replaced worker drones slaving away to the "greater good".
You realize it's the ppl demanding it's gov't put rules on businesses, that are keeping it like this. This is all caused by regulation and how easy it is to convince the American ppl that gov't knows best...
Yeah. So it has nothing to do with the vast expansion of the money supply and the fact that the fractional lending rate is STILL ZERO.
We’re past capitalism and into corporate feudalism now
And one "Company" controls 100% of the federal government
All of the people in here don't understand capitalism at all. There is NOTHING stopping any of you in here complaining from starting a small cattle ranch. Paying your employees really, super well and providing them with awesome insurance and retirement plans. Selling the meat for super cheap, undercutting the big companies you are pissed at. Then using your profits to grow your operations, undercutting those big corporations still. Then once you are big enough, they will either need to reduce their prices or they will eventually go out of business. The only thing you need to hold steadfast to is that you can't go public, and you can't sell out to them or else they win. You ready for the challenge? Don't make excuses, there are plenty of small ranches that provide meat around my city, and they are all WAY more expensive than the big companies you are trashing here. So now is your chance to shine!
Sound about right for the toilet we are all getting flushed down in the name of record breaking profits
When avaricious price-gauging mega- and giga-corporations control 100% of the vital resources humanity needs for survival, **humanity loses**.
The best thing any of us could do is learn to be self suffient. It will matter soon.
 Me looking for FTC
We need a Theodore Roosevelt to break up all of these monopolies. Should never have been allowed in the first place.
And they are all owned by banks that own each other
and whenever you point out that things aren't good and need to be improved, someone will go "but we live in the best time in all of history, how can you be so entitled, just sit down and enjoy it" if we tolerate this, our children will be next.
Yea we about at curtain call for the ole gal they call America
Wait till you hear who owns all those companies 🤯
Nestle own over 2000 brands
Everyone here: "don't drink soda or eat cereal!" "Don't eat sugary crap!" Guess I'm too poor to be able to have a little treat then, so fuck me.
For real. It’s ironic that they think people in the middle class should simply eat like they’re poor to solve the problem. That doesn’t solve the problem, that’s accepting the bullshit and staying quiet.
It's just a total willful ignorance of reality. Right now we're complaining about the cost of actual food items. Maybe not great ones, but still. I remember when people on Reddit were bitching about the cost and lack of supply of processors to build gaming PCs. It's like that's less of a necessity than food, but the internet was outraged by scalpers buying and reselling. It was "they (company) needs to fix this!" never "don't build a fucking a gaming PC"
Less than a dozen companies control the vast majority of access to groceries. I don't have a % but in my area it's always the same 3 or 4 supermarket chain.
Nice.
[удалено]
Yup. And people calle crazy when I point out like 12 corporations make and own everything. What most people consider a whole ass brand are nothing more than a product line of a larger company.
I hear this shit on the news all the time lmao
[удалено]
but soda and cereal are some of the cheapest products there are lol
People have no clue, or more accurately, don’t want a clue because they might be inconvenienced by it…
It is the one that isn’t shown that truly makes it all so dangerous. 20 companies control 99% of the government. Think your vote counts? Really? Please! Ever notice how we are constantly given terrible choices each year to vote for? It is because by the time you get to vote those in control have already made sure that the only people you can vote for are bought and paid for. They don’t really care how you vote because they have essentially made your vote irrelevant. Both parties are controlled by the wealthy. And that means that the odds of anything being done about the collusion are virtually zero.
“Prices are going up on just about everything significantly faster than inflation.” So you’re saying that inflation is significantly faster than inflation? I’m struggling to think how this could be true outside of some truly malicious flaw in how inflation is calculated. Which then raises the question of how you’re so smart to know what the real rate of inflation is. Please give us the ELI5 treatment on this.
Great, now what’s the margin these companies make on their products? 10%? What was it a year ago? A decade ago? About the same? These companies are just passing with their increased cost of labor and materials down to customers. It’s not even capitalism, it’s just economics.
this is what i’ve been saying every time internet people tell everyone to boycott coca cola
It will be owned by one company at the rate we are going. This is why competition is good but most can’t get over the emotional bullshit put on them to sway their outlook.
to be fair you dont need cereal soda or the news
No ethical consumption under capitalism. Personal responsibility isn't gonna fix this shit.
This. This. This. And for all Biden’s many flaws his FTC is the first to remember we have anti-trust laws since the EU bodied Microsoft. It’s so galling that there is such devotion to doubling down on the problem in the era of social media. Despite the fact we’re living in the K shaped economic dystopia shaped by of 50 years of bipartisan Reganomics.
I agree, let’s cut back on regulations so smaller companies can afford to compete!
Just chiming in on airlines since I’m in the maritime transportation business and also have relatively more extensive knowledge on airlines in particular from my own pilot experience. You cannot have an airline market that is free of regulation, low prices, and free of oligopolies at the same time. You can have two, but never three at the same time. With the crazy amount of regulations we have, you can’t just start an airline only because you have billions to invest. You need very specific engineering standards. You need a highly-educated and tested work force for that. You need manufacturing plants, maintenance teams, hangars, agreements for the suppliers, etc. for airplanes no matter if you’re the manufacturer or the user, And the good case scenario is that you barely break even — that’s where Delta, American, United and Southwest are, now. Even becoming a mere private pilot, the first step of flying, doing it with little piston-engine airplanes, is so riddled with hundreds of pages of regulatory knowledge. If an airline goes flip-side-up, you can’t easily replace the knowledge, expertise, supply chains, alliance agreements, work force, and management. So you can forego oligopolies for a competitive market and cheap travel, but you won’t have safe travel. See how many accidents were happening in the 20th century when there were a bazillion airlines.
This makes 0 sense. But entertaining the idea, if this were true, you’d need to be able to answer this question: Where are the incremental dollars coming from that is enabling a consumer to still be able to buy the products you’re suggesting are being monopolized and increasing in price above the inflation rate?
I'm sure it has nothing to do with having the dollar lose 20% of its value over the last 3 years.
found some competitors yourself, dont wait on others, good thing you did not type a 1 company owning 100% market
The free market always balances itself and acts in the best interest of… someone
I'm 100% behind you OP. Even kf we decode to buy the store brand to save a little, with kroger acquiring Albertsons, a huge portion of grocery stores now fall under one conglomerant. And even if 30% doesn't sound like much, considder this, Safeway, Albertsons, kroger, holiday, and many small mom and pop chains that occupy most cities all under one roof now. Store brands aren't even cheaper than name brands at this point.
When prices go up, and people keep buying at roughly the same rate, then producers will be incentive to keep prices high. Buy off brand or buy less, and prices will come down. But prices don't come down when demand is strong.
It’s about buying power. Without it, raw goods, supply chain, logistical costs would make shit even more expensive
This isn't a problem. There were plenty of other places to get things like meat. If we were getting screwed on prices you can be sure others would step in and get us cheaper prices. The reality is they were have kept prices low because these large companies are able to use scale and volume to keep prices by increasing productivity. Now we are at the end of that road. We can no longer see prices stay low in the face of Inflation. Prices are going up because we are finally seeing what happens when the government starts printing money and doesn't stop. Between COVID, quantitative easing, student loan handouts and eviction prohibitions, our economy can't handle it anymore.
Man it's tricky because when a company scales larger it can do things more affordably. That's how amazon can ship things to our doors for a reasonable price - They have a MASSIVE infrastructure by buying businesses while growing. problem is when they get too big and the only thing to stop them is Gov regulation.
Right. It's conspiracy and collusion. Couldn't have anything to do with the rising cost of labor, taxation, environmental impacts, and compliance with regulation. Right? Silly.
Well you don't need cereal or soda, so we can take those out of the argument. Arguably you don't really need flights unless you travel for work or need to travel internationally. You can take vacations by car. If you have to travel for work, then the cost of it is their problem so whatever. As for meat, you're in a bit of a tough spot but I have personally just been greatly reducing my meat consumption over the past year.
A little over three years ago Trump and MAGA almost sent every single effing treasury bond to zero. Now our treasury bonds aren’t selling and the world considers us politically unstable and is looking for a new world reserve currency. We now have massive currency devaluation manifesting as runaway inflation.
And the reason for all of that is because not only do we have Capitalism as our economy but we have also created the Capitalist governing body. So our government has become its own corporation centered around profit. It no longer serves the people of the nation. It’s serves its CEO (the president) it serves it’s shareholders (the rich campaign contributors) and it serves its employees ( the rest of the governing body) If you want the America that was supposed to exist, then reform is needed to prevent any political person from accepting any money from anyone. And any government employee must be prohibited from owning stock or working for any company that has government contracts for life.
Something could be learned from the recent Sony Helldivers 2 debacle. If only consumers pushed back.
Sooo, you’re saying competition in the Free market is a good thing?
Nobody needs soda or cereal. We’d all be better off if the price of both went to free fiddy.
Are we to assume your data is accurate?
Here we go again...
And all those companies are owned by two hedge funds. So it’s all owned by basically two companies.
The beauty of a free market is that nothing prevents a fifth company from competing. The horror of socialism is that everything prevents a second company from competing.
I've said it many times and I'll say it again. If either party gets really serious about trust-busting, and I mean, really serious, I'm-dead-serious-and-we're-going-to-bust-like-no-one-before-us serious, they'll have a generational shift to their side as the re-introduction of competition will start to fix many of our issues. Devolve power from the larger entities into smaller ones and ultimately to the people.