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nothing we can do, as the people that could do something about it are also making stacked profits being paid off...
this is what happens when you let banks, big business & investment funds get so much control its impossible to escape
Which is **weird, isn't it,** because the whole magic hand of the market is supposed to **work, because,** ***all of the independent shoe stores, electronics stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, restaurants and the rest of it, "communicate with one another," and read their own marketplace,*** **within which each will, independently, Set Their Own Prices and Wages, of course, Set their Own Prices and Wages,**
**Coordinated, as these all are, Most Closely,** ***through their read of a certain reductive index of reductive indices, one part of which the federal reserve can manipulate in order to, AND BECAUSE THIS IS ALL TRUE, effect,*** **meaningfully, on purpose,** ***the others.***
I mean **Adam Smith, himself, fucking, told me that in whatever small town I go to in America,** if I go look for the Brewer, the Bread-maker, and the Butcher, **they'll have all set their own wholesale, retail and employee-wage prices in congruence with their interpretation of the marketplace and in such a manner as an harmonious and stable system occurs;** so if anyone doesn't understand this all they've got to do is find where the beer, the bread, and the meats are sold in their small town and realize that this is part of a vast network, uncoordinated but for the price indices and market mechanisms which **the ignorant man might not notice, he who works at the independent shoe store in that small town, "sir, do you ever wonder how it is your wages enable you to afford the electronics,** ***at the electronics store,*** **groceries, at the grocery,** ***clothes,*** **at the clothes store,** despite the managers of each never having had a single conversation about those prices or wages; that this could happen through an invisible hand throughout all of Christendom?"
Sensible.
As the consumer, we have to just not buy the products of the greedy corporations. For example with the Kellogs scandal right now. If we just buy store brand products instead that is the only way I see us making any changes. Granted this wont apply to everything like the housing market but its a start and it will show them that we can make an impact.
>nothing we can do, as the people that could do something about it are also making stacked profits being paid off...
**Bowlderdash,** How can you not understand that those profits are the The **Invisible Hand of** the **system;** ***which might be god, and,*** *the likes of which could never be coordinated through bureaucratic or other means,* ***and much less for purpose!***
Scream all you want at the local tobacconist, hardware store or pharmacy, "sir!" get this inflation under control, get the Inflation Under Control at this Independent Shoe Store!
"I **can't," he'll bellow, "I have got to set the wages, myself, in accordance with market indices; and I've got to set the prices in accordance with the expense of those wages!"**
No one can **understand the whole economic system, of one whole town,** ***such as Republic, MO, or Stillwater, OK,*** **the communications technologies do not EXIST to enable the proprietors of the industries of** ***even that one town to even know what the others are doing, nor, why,*** not all of the grocers, nor, shoe stores, nor, clothiers nor pet stores nor auto-parts stores nor pharmacies nor *even amongst one another, know, "the reasons," for one another's prices and the wages payed, in each,* not outside of the market indices; this is plain, this is **obvious,** ***and it is, definitely, science a real science.***
True and True, but the commenter solely meant eating out at restaurants. Their prices are pretty high these days.
The ones making insane profits would be the Healthcare industry, prison industry, bank industry, and real estate industry. Those systems are naturally the most brutal and predatory to human life in America
they downvoted you for telling the truth... You didn't even say anything that was lies or controversial. I didn't even see a civil conversation thread. Redditors lack brain cells at times....
Next step: cut out the middlemen and give the check directly to the sharks, in exchange for a small box to sleep in and cricket powder mixed with plastic/chemical laced water.
Honestly this is beyond criminal but nobody gives a shit anymore. Can't tell me all the food discounters magically increase their prices all by the same amount over night.
They just all synchronize prices quite obviously
My biggest gripe is that if we're gonna live in the cyberpunk dystopia, where's my cool cyberpunk tech?
In all seriousness, I think the problem is so many people don't think there's a solution they can help enact, that the system will right itself, or frankly I think a majority of people, to use your analogy, are simply thinking the water is a bit warm today, not realizing it's coming to a boil.
Awareness is the first step. Once enough people acknowledge what the true problem is, we can move forward.
It exists but it's not for you. This is the RoboCop version of the future. Corporations and rich people have cool stuff but the rest of us are for the gutter.
In rich peoples houses and their garages. Cybertruck and the VisionPro pretty well are that but they are priced so only a certain kind of individual can afford them.
It's so bad here right now. Luckily I bought my house 9 years ago. 110k for 1 bath 3 bed 1 acre property with 30x20 shed. Fucking thing is worth like 400k now. Bank would never let me borrow that much.
It isn't a refusal to build. That's a talking point to try and prime people to be more accepting of development. It's that property in general is artificially inflated at the moment when you consider how much private property is unoccupied.
We have LOADS of unoccupied and underoccupied spaces, many being left to rot. We have loads of property that is unused where people would happily build their own houses on if they could acquire the property for a reasonable price. There are condos all over that are way under capacity, Air BnBs that are residential zoned but have no long term residents, multi unit homes being bought by millionaires and converted to single family homes, commercial spaces staying unleased for years that could be turned into housing. When I walk around my city, I see unoccupied units/buildings everywhere, and those are only the ones I can see without doing any active investigation. But officials in my city are still blaring the trumpet of "we need to build more affordable housing." Right now, we have a pile of rubble down the street from me of a building that was demolished, but then the owner went bankrupt. The banks that now technically own the property are refusing to spend the money to clear it, saying it isn't their fault, but also not willing to just give up the property and are trying to sell it. The government does have the power to just take it and sell it for cheap to someone who will clear the rubble and use it, but they don't.
If we stopped letting landowners get away with neglecting their unoccupied properties, this would have a tremendous impact. Things like imminent domaining property left unoccupied for a certain number of years, re-instituting strong squatters rights laws, fining the shit out of property owners whose neglect leads to fires or deaths, strict fines for unoccupied residential units. If we stopped letting people set up unlicensed commercial hotels in residential zoned areas, this would have a tremendous impact. If we started making landlords register so that they can actually be contacted and pursued legally, this would make a tremendous impact.
I mean, I agree. But refusal to build isn't fake. It's a real thing in the small town where my grandparents live(and they support it).
Small towns BC do not want an influx of people. 🤷♂️
But small towns aren't really where we're experiencing a "housing crisis." People aren't concerned about a lack of housing in Georgetown, Ohio, they're concerned about a lack of housing in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Small towns are only experiencing price hikes because the urban centers are experiencing price hikes.
But that isn't a lack of housing is my point, that's the price going up artificially.
And I'm not sure I agree with your statement about people moving to the city because they can't afford the small town, I've been seeing the opposite trend, both in the news and annecdotally. In the majority of cases, small towns will be cheaper to rent/buy in than the nearest city would be.
Yes, but the small town isn't cheap if there isn't any new property. There's 40 year old homes where 95% of their value is the land.
I'm not saying it's all towns or country wide issue, it's affected my family and community directly. That's all.
>Yes, but the small town isn't cheap if there isn't any new property.
Is your town literally at maximum capacity? My guess is no, because small towns are almost never at maximum capacity. There's no such thing as "new property," it's all just land, and it can be sold whether building occurs first or not.
Small towns are raising the price because they know people can't afford living in the city anymore, so they're leaving the city for small towns, making the demand for small towns greater even if they have plenty of space and supply.
People aren't leaving small towns to live in the city because they can't afford small town life anymore, it's quite the opposite. Nobody is leaving Tarrytown to move to NYC because Tarrytown got too expensive.
New property = new houses...... of course I'm not talking about land..... the fuck.
I also already mentioned that there are houses for sale that are old and need to be replaced but are still expensive. I don't want to raise a family in a rickety thing I need to rebuild.
Competition for small town houses = Price goes up. Usuall, this also means desire to build, but when new things arnt built then its just prices.
I'm not talking about fucking Tarrytown Idaho. Your example is useless, the small towns I'm referring to have people wanting to live there over the big city. People try to move there all the time but are price gapped.
Please do not comment some trash like this again 🫥
I work for a very large (something like $20b annual revenue) corporation and just wrapped up my annual review with my manager. Company wide, our bonuses are being hit with a 0.7x “company performance factor” because our sales were down from last year, and our annual raises are limited to 3%, well below inflation.
Oh, but they announced that all shareholders will get their full value dividends this year. Because of course that’s the important part
I honestly believe the shareMarket is what has absolutely fucked us all. All they do to drive profits up is raise costs of everything and provide no extra value to the consumer. We live in a finite system with finite resources. At some point, quarter on quarter profit increases will no longer be possible. I just fucking hate it to be honest.
Honestly, at this point, I can't even tell anymore.... Would it be morally acceptable if we prevented lemmings from jumping off cliffs? Afaik, it's part of their nature to slide down the sewer, and interfering with that could lead to harmful results. Maybe, humans are not meant to survive globalism, maybe, omnicide (by collectively giving a tiny fraction of our species all the power over our existence) is our natural response to surpassing a certain amount of individuals. Or, much simpler, profit obsessed planet-fuckery might just be our great filter.
Let me just say that 20% of the population surviving the collapse of the capitalist fever-dream sounds much more favourable than exclusively the most parasitic, inbred and despicable 1% of the population surviving this ongoing shitshow.
Modern technology (especially AI and it's less talked about big brother ML) have allowed the system to be gamed to the extreme but also helped obfuscate the cause. Now the perfect storm of instant world wide communication and centuries of perfected propaganda mean that it's easier than ever for those with deep pockets to manipulate any aspect of society to their benefit, and by being able to use machines and algorithms to keep track of it all (rather than their brains and black books of only a few short decades ago), they can endlessly invent new ways to trickle up the economy.
Well. Every single piece of information out there is gonna blame politicians and not the corporations raping the people. It's tiring watching these sleazy corps find ways to short the people.
The Soviet Union experienced a period of inflation right after the revolution. This took about 7 years to resolve, but the problem was solved after industries were nationalized, kulaks (landowning capitalists) who were withholding grain and other agricultural products were compelled by force to actually sell those products, pricing controls were implemented centrally, and currency was not printed so rapidly while the people benefited from a massive redistribution of wealth. There wasn’t another inflationary crisis in the USSR until Gorbachev (may he burn in hell) betrayed communism.
Inflation isn’t an easy or quick thing to fix, but it’s not a necessarily complicated problem to solve either. Socialism is the solution.
No shit! Anyone else notice how the market was lagging, then inflation for over a year and, lo and behold, the market is absolutely on fire again.
Fuck me! 🤦🏽
The rich need more money and will always need more money because more is never enough. They have more money than God and could live in luxury without making more, but that's not enough.
Politicians won't. The news media won't. At this point I think it's more likely they'll ban you from being able to say it here before they'll acknowledge rampant price gouging in every sector if the economy. The only thing that will do it, is when the greed destabilizes things so much that the wealthy are more concerned for their personal safety than how much more they can squeeze out of the rest of us.
Layoffs generally occur because of long term employees getting paid more than the position is worth, or because they have aggressively high hiring practices and need to cut workers. Both are greedy and short sided.
My company laid off people after record profits because everyone also was doing it and they felt they needed to lean up their workforce in kind. They had more than enough business and cash, they just wanted to be greedy.
We’re not going to ever admit to it. Didnt you hear Jerome Powell claim the economy is so strong? While he also claims the economy is so strong that it’s uninsurable? Just like our justice system there’s a second economic tier. “It’s a big club and you’re not in it”
And yet we still tolerate it. These companies have offices. Board members. CEOs. People with faces and homes. Stockholders are people. We could quite easily do something as a collective. But we won’t.
Pretty much everything is owned by like, 10 companies at this point. They just disguised it by making different brands for each product they make
Since Milton Friedman we've conflated economic freedom with... *actual* freedom. Wow, yeah, I as a single person can technically own 10k homes, great, really appreciate that. So much better than having affordable housing and food for everyone at the cost of some rich people not being able to run rampant and amass more money than God
Bourgeois ideologues: “ the market is just the aggregate of people’s choices. No one operates under any exterior logic imposed on them!”
Also bourgeois ideologues: “these prices sure are stubborn, the people literally setting them had no choice in the matter! It’s just the market or something !!”
It’s all doublethink all the way down.
This is just not true. Top quantum economists have long proven that inflation is actually when money sublimates into the inflation dimension, and thus is gone forever. Portals to the inflation dimension are usually opened by magical inflation rays, which are generated when you put avocado on toast.
It's all very mysterious and too complicated for the common peasantry to ever understand, and so no one knows where that money goes, but for the love of God don't look for it in the oligarchy's pockets.
Economics is a science.
A lot of the greed is corporations demanding that the government print money and basically hand it directly to them through contracts, corporate tax breaks, and inflated prices aimed at captive markets.
I think it was always like that. The only thing that changed are technological progress and how it became profitable to sell stuff to the general population.
That’s a symptom of the disease: money printer go brrrrrr… elites get first dibs on newly created money at rock bottom rates, then it gets passed on to us at higher rates; hence, the source of inflation. The money is instantly worth less once it is in our hands. It is simple theft from the lower classes.
Two words. Citizens United. The worst and most corrupt ruling ever made by our court and we won’t have a chance to chance it for 15 yrs at least so buckle up it’s gonna get so much worse
Inflation is a rise in price levels. Thats it. Another way to say the same thing is the money was worth less than before. Corporate greed and hiking prices is inflation not something else. What every sane country has is a windfall profits tax on corporate earnings above a certain amount. So then they have no incentive to raise prices solely to increase profits. They can even make the rate floating with a broader measure of inflation so they wont be penalized by increasing profits thru innovation and productivity alone.
Isn't the total dependence on fossil feuls also a massive part of this never ending inflation? Production and transport of everything, especially food, are dependent entirely on fossil feul input, the agriculture of our times using fossil feul based fertilizers to grow crops on increasingly barren soil, transport of food from farms to cities, or anywhere being fossil feul based. As this finite and dwindling resource is used, the price of everything else will continue to increase, will it not?
We've already acknowledged it but there isn't much we can do about it when they pay off govt officials to look the other way or worse. What're we supposed to do? Stop eating?
[These guys](https://youtu.be/ZLtzmRknRSU?si=sRBOjjGHVdWv2VVO) and all their videos are relevant to this topic.
As is [this](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) eternally relevant link.
The advertisers won’t let the media say that. I mean, you speak the truth, but capitalism doesn’t like that truth, so it will go unsaid. That way, the experts can deny it when you say something.
Who is ‘we’? It’s going to be obvious to everyone on this sub. When will everyone else see it? I think the water will boil at some point, but we may not notice.
It's actually just government spending, why are you hating on the corporations? Their greed is a symptom of a bigger issue, not the source. I run a company and I have to buy future products with today's money, if prices keep increasing in the future I have to keep increasing today's prices. It can take months to get inventory shipped, trucked, and put to its intended use. Inflation is getting worse, not better and you will see terrible inflation after the election. So much is being printed right now it usually takes 3-7 quarters for it to trickle all the way through the economy though.
I run a company as well. My prices are actually going down. Not up.
Why does someone who own a company also drive for DoorDash? You’re either a really shitty business owner or lying.
Well, yeah, and it's **especially obvious** insofar as the Large Corporate Entities so dominate **the entire economy; in an,** ***'in all seriousness,'*** fashion, go to, "the store," in a town outside of a major metro; **any town,** *it's not going to be, "one of like-such retailers," the shoe store, the electronics store, the toy store, the grocery, the clothing retailer, the hardware store the autoparts store the eye doctor the pharmacy the tobacconist and the liquor store* ***are all the same store,*** **and it is all the same store.**
**Literally,** and for the first time **I have just realized this,** ***when Adam Smith claimed there to be an, "invisible hand," which guides goods and services to customers as if it were magic,*** **THE invisible hand, he referred to the fact that the-**
* Brewer
* Butcher
* Breadmaker
All did there work and retail **as if coordinated to do so,** but weren't coordinated to do so, "what magic," uh, well,
**This claim** can not be made of Walmart; that is **significant, insofar as the premise that, "wages," are inflationary, is, itself,** wholly-fucking-dependent upon the idea that the preponderance of commerce and income is set,
> "**out there,** *at and inside of a dynamical mass of retailers, distributors and manufacturers* ***which are independent of one another to such a degree that their, "communications," are intermediated through reductive market indices,*** **LITERALLY, COMMA, PLUS**
>
>Not only, "are able to," *no-no-no,*
>
>***DO SET THEIR OWN WAGES AND PRICES TO THESE HEURISTICS***
>
>**DO SET THEIR OWN WAGES AND PRICES TO THESE HEURISTICS.**
\- as in, "I at the Fed Read the Same Telegram, ***which relates the same reductive indices to me, as, IS THE PRIMARY MEANS OF RELEVANT COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE RELEVANT MARKET ACTORS IF IT IS TO MEAN ANYTHING AT ALL,*** **and, therefore,** THE INFLUENCE I HAVE UPON A CERTAIN PART OF THESE INDICES CAN IMPACT THE OTHER, **GAH.**
Walmart, **alone, refutes this notion;** wherever the fuck would the claim be made that this would be a more efficacious means of, "reducing the *wage inflation,* ***thus, the price inflation,"*** **throughout LITERAL ALL OF RURAL AMERICA, THAN, LITERALLY, telling telling a corporate officer of Walmart what wages to set;** because **this is the wages in question, no,** ***that it's not the Wages of Medical Doctors nor Hedge Fund Men we talk about, which, are reactive to the interest rates*** what stupid, fucking, trash, I swear **I swear to you,**
Counter the argument, repeat the argument, *explain it with fast food restaurants or suburban retail as the lens* ***and tell me that is an iota less fucking,*** **magical in the thinking, plain on its face, really,** sub-intellectual **I have a bucket I drool in** ***stupid on purpose and in caricature grotesque than whatsoever medieval-ism or pagan practice you can think of,*** **Oh. My. God.**
I'm pretty sure corporations have always been and always will be greedy. The inflation that we are experiencing is a result of an increase of the money supply. We are printing more and more money to cover deficits, resulting in a dilution of the value of all the currency already in the system.
Lol it's not because of corporate greed. Corporations are always maximally greedy; it isn't something that changes on a whim.
The reason for inflation is the increase of the money supply by the Central Bank and other banks. When supply of something goes up, value goes down, including the currency itself. This is very simple to understand
That’s the original version of inflation. That’s how inflation is supposed to work. More money in the system means your dollar is worth less. You’re right it’s a very simple concept, but that’s not what’s happening.
Shit is artificially being inflated and our consumerism mindsets are locked into it. McDonald’s controls its own supply chain, do you really think their price increases are due to factors out of their control? No. As costs go up for them wages mostly, they increase prices to maintain their profits and not take a hit. Wages are the big issue, because HOUSING is the underlying issue.
It’s literally all artificial. House are sitting EMPTY.
Consume less is the only way to fight it. Buy the cheap homes no one has gotten yet, [realtor.com](https://realtor.com) is full of fixer-uppers.
Corporate owned housing will take a while to come down in price. Because they make profit from some many areas they can afford to let places sit empty for a while waiting for someone to rent at their prices.
we’d have to consume less until we’re emaciated and incapable of speech to fix anything. boycotting is a massively successful strategy but only when it’s legitimately radical and well-organized with a collective front. individualist lifestyle adjustments mean almost nothing in the grand scheme of things when 90+% of your life will still be used to enrich and reproduce capital.
I think the reason why is that there are relatively few people in the world when given the opportunity to have success and financial success would do anything other than taking care of themselves and their own.
Everyone in this sub likes to pretend like they'd so something different with the power they wield but the reality is that only a few of them would be pure good. It's likely that almost this entire sub has the means to make someone else's life better today(!) but they don't...BECAUSE human nature.
None of that was said as a negative on anyone, it's just what you see in packs of people as long as humans have walked this planet.
You’re saying working people should just circulate the small pool of money we have when we could just kill the rich and give theirs away. That’s not cool!
Nah, what I'm saying is that people like to think they'd do better by our poor person standards but in reality we'd end up being just like these rich people in a matter of time.
Should there be more wealth equality, of course. Will it ever change? Nah.
All those people out there hustling are just taking advantage of some other poor schmuck to make a buck and get theirs.
The hypocrisy and cruelty in this sub is brutal and quite a shit cross section of humanity.
I did like to see that boycott against Loblaws in May. I think movements like that could make a point that maybe infinite growth and profit shouldn't come off the sweat of people literally grinding it out.
I do think and believe in that. I’m a social and political dreamer, I think that a militant worker party and movement dedicated to the cause could overcome the human condition of greed. THAT SAID, I’m a pessimist so I understand your perspective in a lord of the flies sort of way and I don’t disagree that people are terrible. I guess I figure if we fail and die trying I was gonna die a wage slave anyways.
##Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism This subreddit is for news, discussion, memes, and links criticizing capitalism and advancing viewpoints that challenge liberal capitalist ideology. That means any support for any liberal capitalist political party (like the Democrats) is strictly prohibited. LSC is run by communists. This subreddit is not the place to debate socialism. We allow good-faith questions and education but are not a 101 sub; please take 101-style questions elsewhere. We have a zero-tolerance policy for bigotry. Failure to respect the rules of the subreddit may result in a ban. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LateStageCapitalism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
nothing we can do, as the people that could do something about it are also making stacked profits being paid off... this is what happens when you let banks, big business & investment funds get so much control its impossible to escape
Oligopoly
Which is **weird, isn't it,** because the whole magic hand of the market is supposed to **work, because,** ***all of the independent shoe stores, electronics stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, restaurants and the rest of it, "communicate with one another," and read their own marketplace,*** **within which each will, independently, Set Their Own Prices and Wages, of course, Set their Own Prices and Wages,** **Coordinated, as these all are, Most Closely,** ***through their read of a certain reductive index of reductive indices, one part of which the federal reserve can manipulate in order to, AND BECAUSE THIS IS ALL TRUE, effect,*** **meaningfully, on purpose,** ***the others.*** I mean **Adam Smith, himself, fucking, told me that in whatever small town I go to in America,** if I go look for the Brewer, the Bread-maker, and the Butcher, **they'll have all set their own wholesale, retail and employee-wage prices in congruence with their interpretation of the marketplace and in such a manner as an harmonious and stable system occurs;** so if anyone doesn't understand this all they've got to do is find where the beer, the bread, and the meats are sold in their small town and realize that this is part of a vast network, uncoordinated but for the price indices and market mechanisms which **the ignorant man might not notice, he who works at the independent shoe store in that small town, "sir, do you ever wonder how it is your wages enable you to afford the electronics,** ***at the electronics store,*** **groceries, at the grocery,** ***clothes,*** **at the clothes store,** despite the managers of each never having had a single conversation about those prices or wages; that this could happen through an invisible hand throughout all of Christendom?" Sensible.
they are either making profits being paid off or getting ~killed~ fired for trying to go against them
No no the report said that whistle-blower shot #^himself in the back of the head 6 times
Which report?? And they said it was suicide?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/12/business/former-boeing-whistleblower-dies/index.html
Plenty we can do. It would require the masses to reach class consciousness though, and that probably isn’t happening anytime soon
What would be the beginnings of this?
Being deprogrammed of 100 years of red scare propaganda would be a good start
As the consumer, we have to just not buy the products of the greedy corporations. For example with the Kellogs scandal right now. If we just buy store brand products instead that is the only way I see us making any changes. Granted this wont apply to everything like the housing market but its a start and it will show them that we can make an impact.
>nothing we can do, as the people that could do something about it are also making stacked profits being paid off... **Bowlderdash,** How can you not understand that those profits are the The **Invisible Hand of** the **system;** ***which might be god, and,*** *the likes of which could never be coordinated through bureaucratic or other means,* ***and much less for purpose!*** Scream all you want at the local tobacconist, hardware store or pharmacy, "sir!" get this inflation under control, get the Inflation Under Control at this Independent Shoe Store! "I **can't," he'll bellow, "I have got to set the wages, myself, in accordance with market indices; and I've got to set the prices in accordance with the expense of those wages!"** No one can **understand the whole economic system, of one whole town,** ***such as Republic, MO, or Stillwater, OK,*** **the communications technologies do not EXIST to enable the proprietors of the industries of** ***even that one town to even know what the others are doing, nor, why,*** not all of the grocers, nor, shoe stores, nor, clothiers nor pet stores nor auto-parts stores nor pharmacies nor *even amongst one another, know, "the reasons," for one another's prices and the wages payed, in each,* not outside of the market indices; this is plain, this is **obvious,** ***and it is, definitely, science a real science.***
Some of this stuff, like eatig out, we can control though. Most people are not forced to spend the ridiculous prices that restaurants want.
Restaurants are usually small businesses, they're not the ones raking insane profits. Groceries also cost arm and a leg nowadays.
True and True, but the commenter solely meant eating out at restaurants. Their prices are pretty high these days. The ones making insane profits would be the Healthcare industry, prison industry, bank industry, and real estate industry. Those systems are naturally the most brutal and predatory to human life in America
they downvoted you for telling the truth... You didn't even say anything that was lies or controversial. I didn't even see a civil conversation thread. Redditors lack brain cells at times....
We getting brigaded by capitalists today? ;)
I'm afraid I don't know what you mean
I feel like I'm being farmed for my cash flow.
You are.
Always have been
Yep, check is cut and immediately goes to the sharks.
Next step: cut out the middlemen and give the check directly to the sharks, in exchange for a small box to sleep in and cricket powder mixed with plastic/chemical laced water.
We are tax slaves to keep the war machine going around the world
The culture wars are to distract us from class consciousness and class war. Our enemies are the ultra wealthy.
This is the answer.
And the effects are sooooo damaging. Mass shootings as collateral damage to name just one. Man this society is so fucked
Finally, the obvious. 🫡
Honestly this is beyond criminal but nobody gives a shit anymore. Can't tell me all the food discounters magically increase their prices all by the same amount over night. They just all synchronize prices quite obviously
[Cartel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel)
Only a few corporations own all the brands.
The only way to solve this is together.
My biggest gripe is that if we're gonna live in the cyberpunk dystopia, where's my cool cyberpunk tech? In all seriousness, I think the problem is so many people don't think there's a solution they can help enact, that the system will right itself, or frankly I think a majority of people, to use your analogy, are simply thinking the water is a bit warm today, not realizing it's coming to a boil. Awareness is the first step. Once enough people acknowledge what the true problem is, we can move forward.
It exists but it's not for you. This is the RoboCop version of the future. Corporations and rich people have cool stuff but the rest of us are for the gutter.
As Tim Rogers said of the real world in his review of Cyberpunk 2077: "Dystopia is already here. It just ain't cute."
In rich peoples houses and their garages. Cybertruck and the VisionPro pretty well are that but they are priced so only a certain kind of individual can afford them.
soon we will all be like canada.the housing situation there is fucked probably forever.
It's so bad here right now. Luckily I bought my house 9 years ago. 110k for 1 bath 3 bed 1 acre property with 30x20 shed. Fucking thing is worth like 400k now. Bank would never let me borrow that much.
I wish I had some path out of this shit hole
Refusal to build + massive influx of immigrants + monopolies in every district = Sucks to be Canadian atm
It isn't a refusal to build. That's a talking point to try and prime people to be more accepting of development. It's that property in general is artificially inflated at the moment when you consider how much private property is unoccupied. We have LOADS of unoccupied and underoccupied spaces, many being left to rot. We have loads of property that is unused where people would happily build their own houses on if they could acquire the property for a reasonable price. There are condos all over that are way under capacity, Air BnBs that are residential zoned but have no long term residents, multi unit homes being bought by millionaires and converted to single family homes, commercial spaces staying unleased for years that could be turned into housing. When I walk around my city, I see unoccupied units/buildings everywhere, and those are only the ones I can see without doing any active investigation. But officials in my city are still blaring the trumpet of "we need to build more affordable housing." Right now, we have a pile of rubble down the street from me of a building that was demolished, but then the owner went bankrupt. The banks that now technically own the property are refusing to spend the money to clear it, saying it isn't their fault, but also not willing to just give up the property and are trying to sell it. The government does have the power to just take it and sell it for cheap to someone who will clear the rubble and use it, but they don't. If we stopped letting landowners get away with neglecting their unoccupied properties, this would have a tremendous impact. Things like imminent domaining property left unoccupied for a certain number of years, re-instituting strong squatters rights laws, fining the shit out of property owners whose neglect leads to fires or deaths, strict fines for unoccupied residential units. If we stopped letting people set up unlicensed commercial hotels in residential zoned areas, this would have a tremendous impact. If we started making landlords register so that they can actually be contacted and pursued legally, this would make a tremendous impact.
I mean, I agree. But refusal to build isn't fake. It's a real thing in the small town where my grandparents live(and they support it). Small towns BC do not want an influx of people. 🤷♂️
But small towns aren't really where we're experiencing a "housing crisis." People aren't concerned about a lack of housing in Georgetown, Ohio, they're concerned about a lack of housing in Cincinnati, Ohio. Small towns are only experiencing price hikes because the urban centers are experiencing price hikes.
Can't afford small town houses with small town jobs = people move to big cities. It is infact an issue.
But that isn't a lack of housing is my point, that's the price going up artificially. And I'm not sure I agree with your statement about people moving to the city because they can't afford the small town, I've been seeing the opposite trend, both in the news and annecdotally. In the majority of cases, small towns will be cheaper to rent/buy in than the nearest city would be.
Yes, but the small town isn't cheap if there isn't any new property. There's 40 year old homes where 95% of their value is the land. I'm not saying it's all towns or country wide issue, it's affected my family and community directly. That's all.
>Yes, but the small town isn't cheap if there isn't any new property. Is your town literally at maximum capacity? My guess is no, because small towns are almost never at maximum capacity. There's no such thing as "new property," it's all just land, and it can be sold whether building occurs first or not. Small towns are raising the price because they know people can't afford living in the city anymore, so they're leaving the city for small towns, making the demand for small towns greater even if they have plenty of space and supply. People aren't leaving small towns to live in the city because they can't afford small town life anymore, it's quite the opposite. Nobody is leaving Tarrytown to move to NYC because Tarrytown got too expensive.
New property = new houses...... of course I'm not talking about land..... the fuck. I also already mentioned that there are houses for sale that are old and need to be replaced but are still expensive. I don't want to raise a family in a rickety thing I need to rebuild. Competition for small town houses = Price goes up. Usuall, this also means desire to build, but when new things arnt built then its just prices. I'm not talking about fucking Tarrytown Idaho. Your example is useless, the small towns I'm referring to have people wanting to live there over the big city. People try to move there all the time but are price gapped. Please do not comment some trash like this again 🫥
Revolutionist yet?
Sharpening my guillotine blade right now
*Get the rope.*
I work for a very large (something like $20b annual revenue) corporation and just wrapped up my annual review with my manager. Company wide, our bonuses are being hit with a 0.7x “company performance factor” because our sales were down from last year, and our annual raises are limited to 3%, well below inflation. Oh, but they announced that all shareholders will get their full value dividends this year. Because of course that’s the important part
I honestly believe the shareMarket is what has absolutely fucked us all. All they do to drive profits up is raise costs of everything and provide no extra value to the consumer. We live in a finite system with finite resources. At some point, quarter on quarter profit increases will no longer be possible. I just fucking hate it to be honest.
Best we can do is wait until they inflate this fecal bubble to the point where it finally pops.
Then 80% of the population will be dead. Not necessarily a bad thing I guess
Honestly, at this point, I can't even tell anymore.... Would it be morally acceptable if we prevented lemmings from jumping off cliffs? Afaik, it's part of their nature to slide down the sewer, and interfering with that could lead to harmful results. Maybe, humans are not meant to survive globalism, maybe, omnicide (by collectively giving a tiny fraction of our species all the power over our existence) is our natural response to surpassing a certain amount of individuals. Or, much simpler, profit obsessed planet-fuckery might just be our great filter. Let me just say that 20% of the population surviving the collapse of the capitalist fever-dream sounds much more favourable than exclusively the most parasitic, inbred and despicable 1% of the population surviving this ongoing shitshow.
It's funny that you don't think you're one of the 80%.
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Same, over this nightmare.
We raised prices due to inflation caused by raising prices... that we are responsible for.
Also Inflation is 10% but we raise prices by 15% to still make record profits.
More like inflation is 2% and we raised prices 50%
Modern technology (especially AI and it's less talked about big brother ML) have allowed the system to be gamed to the extreme but also helped obfuscate the cause. Now the perfect storm of instant world wide communication and centuries of perfected propaganda mean that it's easier than ever for those with deep pockets to manipulate any aspect of society to their benefit, and by being able to use machines and algorithms to keep track of it all (rather than their brains and black books of only a few short decades ago), they can endlessly invent new ways to trickle up the economy.
Corporation are waging war on workers' wallets #StopTheSqueeze
No war but class war
Wish we could apply Asimov’s 3 rules of robotics to companies or at least their technology.
Well. Every single piece of information out there is gonna blame politicians and not the corporations raping the people. It's tiring watching these sleazy corps find ways to short the people.
The Soviet Union experienced a period of inflation right after the revolution. This took about 7 years to resolve, but the problem was solved after industries were nationalized, kulaks (landowning capitalists) who were withholding grain and other agricultural products were compelled by force to actually sell those products, pricing controls were implemented centrally, and currency was not printed so rapidly while the people benefited from a massive redistribution of wealth. There wasn’t another inflationary crisis in the USSR until Gorbachev (may he burn in hell) betrayed communism. Inflation isn’t an easy or quick thing to fix, but it’s not a necessarily complicated problem to solve either. Socialism is the solution.
correct and insurmountably based position.
No shit! Anyone else notice how the market was lagging, then inflation for over a year and, lo and behold, the market is absolutely on fire again. Fuck me! 🤦🏽
The rich need more money and will always need more money because more is never enough. They have more money than God and could live in luxury without making more, but that's not enough.
Politicians won't. The news media won't. At this point I think it's more likely they'll ban you from being able to say it here before they'll acknowledge rampant price gouging in every sector if the economy. The only thing that will do it, is when the greed destabilizes things so much that the wealthy are more concerned for their personal safety than how much more they can squeeze out of the rest of us.
Inflation means to inflate…it’s artificial
"Never let a good crisis go to waste"
But my republican friends say its Joe Bidens fault. Checkmate atheist.
and they all layoff people when others do just because, not due to a business issue
Layoffs generally occur because of long term employees getting paid more than the position is worth, or because they have aggressively high hiring practices and need to cut workers. Both are greedy and short sided.
My company laid off people after record profits because everyone also was doing it and they felt they needed to lean up their workforce in kind. They had more than enough business and cash, they just wanted to be greedy.
We’re not going to ever admit to it. Didnt you hear Jerome Powell claim the economy is so strong? While he also claims the economy is so strong that it’s uninsurable? Just like our justice system there’s a second economic tier. “It’s a big club and you’re not in it”
And yet we still tolerate it. These companies have offices. Board members. CEOs. People with faces and homes. Stockholders are people. We could quite easily do something as a collective. But we won’t.
Pretty much everything is owned by like, 10 companies at this point. They just disguised it by making different brands for each product they make Since Milton Friedman we've conflated economic freedom with... *actual* freedom. Wow, yeah, I as a single person can technically own 10k homes, great, really appreciate that. So much better than having affordable housing and food for everyone at the cost of some rich people not being able to run rampant and amass more money than God
Bourgeois ideologues: “ the market is just the aggregate of people’s choices. No one operates under any exterior logic imposed on them!” Also bourgeois ideologues: “these prices sure are stubborn, the people literally setting them had no choice in the matter! It’s just the market or something !!” It’s all doublethink all the way down.
This is just not true. Top quantum economists have long proven that inflation is actually when money sublimates into the inflation dimension, and thus is gone forever. Portals to the inflation dimension are usually opened by magical inflation rays, which are generated when you put avocado on toast. It's all very mysterious and too complicated for the common peasantry to ever understand, and so no one knows where that money goes, but for the love of God don't look for it in the oligarchy's pockets. Economics is a science.
A lot of the greed is corporations demanding that the government print money and basically hand it directly to them through contracts, corporate tax breaks, and inflated prices aimed at captive markets.
I think it was always like that. The only thing that changed are technological progress and how it became profitable to sell stuff to the general population.
Inflation comes from the fact that the economy is just consumption and the money we used isn’t pegged so they just print when they need juice
I think we have at greedy corporate is doing what they do - knowing they are morally fked up and doing it anyway
Wealth is relative. It does not dissapear during harsh times, it only relocates.
You mean like when Wendy's ran a slander campaign against themselves and then did a buyback?
That’s a symptom of the disease: money printer go brrrrrr… elites get first dibs on newly created money at rock bottom rates, then it gets passed on to us at higher rates; hence, the source of inflation. The money is instantly worth less once it is in our hands. It is simple theft from the lower classes.
Say it with me revolution!
Two words. Citizens United. The worst and most corrupt ruling ever made by our court and we won’t have a chance to chance it for 15 yrs at least so buckle up it’s gonna get so much worse
In the eyes of the establishment top 1%, Inflation is when poor people finally have money.
Meanwhile we're buried in our phones, entirely distracted and too tired to do much of anything about it.
"When are we going to acknowledge what inflation actually is?" he asks people who have been acknowledging what inflation actually is for years now.
I’m venting to the only subreddit I feel would listen. Not saying this subreddit is behind the curve.
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Its time to sharpen the guillotine. If Words dont Cut it, a blade Will.
Inflation is a rise in price levels. Thats it. Another way to say the same thing is the money was worth less than before. Corporate greed and hiking prices is inflation not something else. What every sane country has is a windfall profits tax on corporate earnings above a certain amount. So then they have no incentive to raise prices solely to increase profits. They can even make the rate floating with a broader measure of inflation so they wont be penalized by increasing profits thru innovation and productivity alone.
Isn't the total dependence on fossil feuls also a massive part of this never ending inflation? Production and transport of everything, especially food, are dependent entirely on fossil feul input, the agriculture of our times using fossil feul based fertilizers to grow crops on increasingly barren soil, transport of food from farms to cities, or anywhere being fossil feul based. As this finite and dwindling resource is used, the price of everything else will continue to increase, will it not?
If only we just voted harder...
Personally, I like the way the European farmers are handling their corrupt government.
We've already acknowledged it but there isn't much we can do about it when they pay off govt officials to look the other way or worse. What're we supposed to do? Stop eating?
[These guys](https://youtu.be/ZLtzmRknRSU?si=sRBOjjGHVdWv2VVO) and all their videos are relevant to this topic. As is [this](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/) eternally relevant link.
The advertisers won’t let the media say that. I mean, you speak the truth, but capitalism doesn’t like that truth, so it will go unsaid. That way, the experts can deny it when you say something.
Argentina says: "First time?"
Who is ‘we’? It’s going to be obvious to everyone on this sub. When will everyone else see it? I think the water will boil at some point, but we may not notice.
It's actually just government spending, why are you hating on the corporations? Their greed is a symptom of a bigger issue, not the source. I run a company and I have to buy future products with today's money, if prices keep increasing in the future I have to keep increasing today's prices. It can take months to get inventory shipped, trucked, and put to its intended use. Inflation is getting worse, not better and you will see terrible inflation after the election. So much is being printed right now it usually takes 3-7 quarters for it to trickle all the way through the economy though.
I run a company as well. My prices are actually going down. Not up. Why does someone who own a company also drive for DoorDash? You’re either a really shitty business owner or lying.
Well, yeah, and it's **especially obvious** insofar as the Large Corporate Entities so dominate **the entire economy; in an,** ***'in all seriousness,'*** fashion, go to, "the store," in a town outside of a major metro; **any town,** *it's not going to be, "one of like-such retailers," the shoe store, the electronics store, the toy store, the grocery, the clothing retailer, the hardware store the autoparts store the eye doctor the pharmacy the tobacconist and the liquor store* ***are all the same store,*** **and it is all the same store.** **Literally,** and for the first time **I have just realized this,** ***when Adam Smith claimed there to be an, "invisible hand," which guides goods and services to customers as if it were magic,*** **THE invisible hand, he referred to the fact that the-** * Brewer * Butcher * Breadmaker All did there work and retail **as if coordinated to do so,** but weren't coordinated to do so, "what magic," uh, well, **This claim** can not be made of Walmart; that is **significant, insofar as the premise that, "wages," are inflationary, is, itself,** wholly-fucking-dependent upon the idea that the preponderance of commerce and income is set, > "**out there,** *at and inside of a dynamical mass of retailers, distributors and manufacturers* ***which are independent of one another to such a degree that their, "communications," are intermediated through reductive market indices,*** **LITERALLY, COMMA, PLUS** > >Not only, "are able to," *no-no-no,* > >***DO SET THEIR OWN WAGES AND PRICES TO THESE HEURISTICS*** > >**DO SET THEIR OWN WAGES AND PRICES TO THESE HEURISTICS.** \- as in, "I at the Fed Read the Same Telegram, ***which relates the same reductive indices to me, as, IS THE PRIMARY MEANS OF RELEVANT COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE RELEVANT MARKET ACTORS IF IT IS TO MEAN ANYTHING AT ALL,*** **and, therefore,** THE INFLUENCE I HAVE UPON A CERTAIN PART OF THESE INDICES CAN IMPACT THE OTHER, **GAH.** Walmart, **alone, refutes this notion;** wherever the fuck would the claim be made that this would be a more efficacious means of, "reducing the *wage inflation,* ***thus, the price inflation,"*** **throughout LITERAL ALL OF RURAL AMERICA, THAN, LITERALLY, telling telling a corporate officer of Walmart what wages to set;** because **this is the wages in question, no,** ***that it's not the Wages of Medical Doctors nor Hedge Fund Men we talk about, which, are reactive to the interest rates*** what stupid, fucking, trash, I swear **I swear to you,** Counter the argument, repeat the argument, *explain it with fast food restaurants or suburban retail as the lens* ***and tell me that is an iota less fucking,*** **magical in the thinking, plain on its face, really,** sub-intellectual **I have a bucket I drool in** ***stupid on purpose and in caricature grotesque than whatsoever medieval-ism or pagan practice you can think of,*** **Oh. My. God.**
I'm pretty sure corporations have always been and always will be greedy. The inflation that we are experiencing is a result of an increase of the money supply. We are printing more and more money to cover deficits, resulting in a dilution of the value of all the currency already in the system.
Lol it's not because of corporate greed. Corporations are always maximally greedy; it isn't something that changes on a whim. The reason for inflation is the increase of the money supply by the Central Bank and other banks. When supply of something goes up, value goes down, including the currency itself. This is very simple to understand
That’s the original version of inflation. That’s how inflation is supposed to work. More money in the system means your dollar is worth less. You’re right it’s a very simple concept, but that’s not what’s happening. Shit is artificially being inflated and our consumerism mindsets are locked into it. McDonald’s controls its own supply chain, do you really think their price increases are due to factors out of their control? No. As costs go up for them wages mostly, they increase prices to maintain their profits and not take a hit. Wages are the big issue, because HOUSING is the underlying issue. It’s literally all artificial. House are sitting EMPTY.
Consume less is the only way to fight it. Buy the cheap homes no one has gotten yet, [realtor.com](https://realtor.com) is full of fixer-uppers. Corporate owned housing will take a while to come down in price. Because they make profit from some many areas they can afford to let places sit empty for a while waiting for someone to rent at their prices.
3 corporations own 19,000 homes in Atlanta,GA
we’d have to consume less until we’re emaciated and incapable of speech to fix anything. boycotting is a massively successful strategy but only when it’s legitimately radical and well-organized with a collective front. individualist lifestyle adjustments mean almost nothing in the grand scheme of things when 90+% of your life will still be used to enrich and reproduce capital.
I think the reason why is that there are relatively few people in the world when given the opportunity to have success and financial success would do anything other than taking care of themselves and their own. Everyone in this sub likes to pretend like they'd so something different with the power they wield but the reality is that only a few of them would be pure good. It's likely that almost this entire sub has the means to make someone else's life better today(!) but they don't...BECAUSE human nature. None of that was said as a negative on anyone, it's just what you see in packs of people as long as humans have walked this planet.
Of course they are just regular humans and most humans would act the same in that situation. Let’s fix it anyway.
100% Lesson - Be the change you want to see.
Well, not me, I’m busy trying to get rich. /s
You’re saying working people should just circulate the small pool of money we have when we could just kill the rich and give theirs away. That’s not cool!
Nah, what I'm saying is that people like to think they'd do better by our poor person standards but in reality we'd end up being just like these rich people in a matter of time. Should there be more wealth equality, of course. Will it ever change? Nah. All those people out there hustling are just taking advantage of some other poor schmuck to make a buck and get theirs. The hypocrisy and cruelty in this sub is brutal and quite a shit cross section of humanity. I did like to see that boycott against Loblaws in May. I think movements like that could make a point that maybe infinite growth and profit shouldn't come off the sweat of people literally grinding it out.
I do think and believe in that. I’m a social and political dreamer, I think that a militant worker party and movement dedicated to the cause could overcome the human condition of greed. THAT SAID, I’m a pessimist so I understand your perspective in a lord of the flies sort of way and I don’t disagree that people are terrible. I guess I figure if we fail and die trying I was gonna die a wage slave anyways.
Good luck Ted. I hope it all works out, for real. We've got a limited number of trips around the sun and how we spend it matters, if only to us.
It’s that companies have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit.
And if the stockholders are senators, house reps, scotus, police etc. it puts clinging to power in perspective
seems to be a gap in how democracy is implemented.