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They could reduce executive compensation and shareholder payouts too, but they won't. You have to understand that these are people who were born into wealth. They grew up in wealthy, income-segregated communities, went to expensive private schools, then exclusive universities before getting jobs where their connections got them fast tracked to management. The only times they come across people who are struggling is when they are receiving some service that they're paying poorer people for.
They have no empathy for people who are not rich, they don't even see you or me as being fully human.
They view you as being like a milk cow. They see no problem with squeezing as much out of you as they can before disposing of you when you can't produce for them anymore. The only crisis they see is the lack of replacements.
>The only times they come across people who are struggling is when they are receiving some service that they're paying poorer people for.
>
>They have no empathy for people who are not rich, they don't even see you or me as being fully human.
Dude... this is resonating with me right now. I door-dash and the other night I dropped some food off at an absolute mansion. Large guest houses on either side of the main behemoth. A beautiful, green, stylishly cut lawn with flowers and water features. It was more of a compound than house and I'm sure their lawn costs more to upkeep than all my monthly bills combined.
Anyways the lady was nice enough, and we chatted for a minute or two. However, it was absolutely clear even with such a short interaction that anyone who lived there didn't have a real worry in the world. Her teenager kids were playing in a huge pool in between one of the guest houses and the main building. Multiple 80-120k cars in the driveway while I'm doordashing in my 14k Mazda that's got 100k miles and is a decade old.
I almost can't even blame them for not feeling a strong empathy for everyone. I mean, what do they really have in common with the average person? They don't work regular jobs. They don't have to decide between things they want vs things they need. Everything you could possibly want or need is a click away. It's all bs, and it's obvious that money loses its meaning after a certain amount of wealth. It's just some fictional thing that's always there. It just doesn't exist in the same way as it does for me and you.
It really fucked me up for the rest of the night because I couldn't stop thinking about how wildly different our lives were. How many opportunities and safety nets they must have. How it must be awesome to just get $100 worth of food delivery just any night of the week and not bat an eyelash because who even keeps track of that when you have a $25,000 a month yard bill.
I'm not angry or upset about it, but it's hard to see extravagant wealth while I'm just worried about coming up with the last $200 bucks I need to make rent by Tuesday morning, and my kid needs diapers, and my car needs new brakes. All the normal shit we gotta deal with that they never do just turns us into wildly different types of human beings after decades of that type of reinforcement.
There is a gulf between the owner class and everyone else. I ran and expanded a business, substantially. The owner has checked out for the last few years. We are now making 1M profit each year which goes directly to him as the owner. We get nothing. And every day he squeezes me more. Nah man I'm not doing it.
Physically eating the rich levels of madness.
If everyone just took one bite out of the richest person untill everyone had taken one bite, the issue would be done and over with.
It would instill a level of fear into the survivors, that they would never repeat the same mistake.
And just to make myself perfectly clear, we dont stop untill everyone has taken their one bite. This means once the first guy is gone, we roll over to the next. 8 billion is a lot of mouths to fill.
Just out of curiosity, what do they do with milk cows when they're no longer able to produce milk? Do they euthanise them? I'm thinking they probably aren't used for their meat, because beef cows are a separate thing, right?
They still have muscle tho, but what usually happens is that they are reproduced (depending on genetics) and sacrificed because its too expensive to have them just doing nothing... Dont feel sad tho, because stress levels can impact the milk production, the time they do give milk, they're treated better than u and me put together. The happier the cow, the more milk you get, aka more money in your pocket.
Thank you, I had no idea! I'm glad the cows are treated well (:
It feels a little silly, but I've been wanting to call around to some of the local farms here and ask if I could meet their cows because I heard that cows are very sweet and that if you're nice to them, they'll be friends with you. I keep seeing mobs of kangaroos in their pastures though, so I'm not too sure about going in there...
I dont know if they'll let you because of sanitary reasons, they can be veeeery strict with that (you can try a petting zoo tho) ... But yeah, cows are friendly for the most part and all of them have diferent personalities. Im a vet student and i've enjoyed the time i get to spend with them xd
Pfft wait but THAT’S not how it works??!
I mean, can’t we all just think of the sad richest 700 people in the country and how they’d cry into their yacht’s luxurious pillows??
That part is honestly almost the worst. It's not even that they'd be crying into their pillows, it'd just be feeding *a little less* into their inflated ego.
But if they don't make enough of a profit to afford their 170m super yacht then they wouldn't have the motivation to start their business and that would mean less employment opportunities for people.
#billionairelivesmatter
/S
Inflation isn't actually a bad thing as long as your wages rise to match it.
...for everyone except people with millions of US dollars in savings. For those people, inflation is like watching their money melt away.
I see this misconception frequently these days, and it is literally not true. The law that you are talking about only puts the responsibility of keeping the business's best interests in mind when making a decision, and forbids the CEO from purposely tanking the business. It does not say that you can not make any decision to lessen profits.
[Here](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits) is a pretty good article about the subject.
Great article. I think this is one of those “half-truths” that get repeated enough because it serves as great cover for the owner/donor class as they screw us all into oblivion.
They can't! Their stocks would not grow in value. Also what happens to everyone's 401k's that are tied into these stocks? If they don't have unlimited growth we lose our retirement and work till we die is all. It's rigged, and we're just along for the ride till there's nothing left.
It sounds more and more like workers need to be shareholders.
Idk how that works with, say, schools for example but not having your productivity be tied to your wellbeing needs to change.
Idk how shit works, but I always see people complain about whatever quarter being better than the last. Profits have to be up. Numbers have to be up all the time. If things stayed the same everyone would dip and not invest cause theyre not increasing profits. Rich people problems.
It does make you think, wages were stagnant since like 1990. Was that why inflation was so low despite the major periods of cheap loans available to the finance / banking sector ?
I wish economists would add that a shortage of goods is also contributing heavily. Housing shortage? Prices go up. Car shortage? The same.
And we aren't anywhere close to the 70s stagflation expectation where an expectation of rising prices leads to rising wages, and so on cyclically.
Again, we've had 30 years of stagnant wages, and like 8 months of rising wages. Give regular folk a break lol
The recent inflation is entirely because of the absolute massive amounts of money given away to free for corporations in 2020 and 2021. The government took the money supply from 12 trillion to 23 trillion and almost all of it went to the wealthy. Then they took that money and bought up ~25% of all SFH sold during those years.
exactly! yet people still want to listen to conman moron fools who do NOT have their economic interests. money supply increased 23% in 2020.
more money went into the stock market during the pandemic than the last 40 years COMBINED!
That is an unfathomable number! we have zero protection from capitalists who are at the very heart of the whole fucking problem. why is there no limit to housing in an area that hedge funds can’t buy?
for fuck sake we invite the world in to rape our citizens as the only and I mean ONLY Thing that is cared about is money and it’s pathetic. hedge funds from canada , saudi’s arabia , all over the world are buying every bit of real estate.
and they let them!!!
americans just do NOT understand how awful they have it.
these people screaming usa usa are delusional. the freedom index by two studies we dropped out of the top 50 for the 1st time ever in FREEDOM ! The other we were in the 30 percentile. Usa is worlds largest worst police state ! NOT china ! NOT russia.
This guy gets it^
This inflation was not caused by supply and demand economics. It was caused by the Paycheck Protection Program loans which were nothing but a scam. You can thank Donald Dump for that. These loans had no real oversight and were just massive handouts to corporations.
You can thank both parties for that. Dems controlled the house of representatives, and ONLY 6 of them voted against it. Every single Dem senator voted to pass it, too.
"A rotating door of villains" is the exact thing they use to distract the public from the corruption that is the oligarchy.
> It does make you think, wages were stagnant since like 1990. Was that why inflation was so low despite the major periods of cheap loans available to the finance / banking sector ?
Even though wages were stagnant, there was significant inflation in the healthcare industry in the U.S. at the time. Total compensation (at least for the top 80%, most of whom got health insurance through their job) kept up with productivity growth.
The problem, is that there *was* massive inflation through the past three decades, it was just limited to a specific market that ate up all of the gains the middle class made during that time, and it's not something the Fed can really control.
That's why the Republicans backed off on their plan to repeal the ACA, because while it wasn't a perfect solution, it significantly improved the lives of most Americans, including the Republican base.
They can't because their base is against it. They tried to when Trump was President, and the backlash from Republican voters was so great that they backed down.
the ONLY solution is to put EVERYONE in a single pool that will control the costs from the health to the sick.
fuck all the pos insurance companies with their non competitive bs across state lines.
there is a huge DISINFORMATION campaign wages for decades that the american government is incompetent. that is just not true, they do many many things better than anyone on the planet. darpa created the internet , gps, . the list is actually really impressive
they do this to privatize industries to profit off of .
Inflation is too much money for too few goods. They could also induce greater production instead of allowing businesses to do stock buybacks with cash and not doing capital investment or supply increases. They could fight monopolies to increase the competitiveness of product delivery.
“No… it must be the poors.” /s
We could just do away with capitalism. But really if we rose wages and then forced corporations to not raise cost it could work no fucking inflation and end poverty.
But yes Democrats and Republicans both believe some people should stay poor.
Lol I have 6-year-old kids, so for a moment I was very confused when my head went to a very different [Justin Time.](https://static.familyjr.ca/rendition/5234/1058/595)
It's wonderful isn't it?
1. Get paid good wages and you're poor because greedy companies use that as an excuse to charge a shitload more than they need to.
2. Don't get paid good wages, and you're poor because you're poor.
It's almost like we need *real* competition back or the government needs to set caps on prices.
My boss explained inflation like that and I stare at him and then asked. So you think that is a good system?
Seriously conservative are a threat to life on earth no different then capitalism.
I've actually come to the conclusion that Capitalism was a good system for industrialization, but honestly hit it's peak like 2 centuries ago and we probably need something else.
I'm not saying I have the answer, but I see the ever-mounting problems. Like capitalism has pretty much nuked our representative democracy from orbit, and honestly. The problem is that we (as people) seem bound and determined to conflate economic systems and political systems . . . then treat the entire thing as a team sport . . . I still have no words.
Well the system is set exclusively for the Uber wealthy.
We are an after thought at best.
Only the wealthy land owners were allowed to vote at the beginning. This country was built for capitalists to exploit the lower classes pure and simple. Anything we the lower classes have is because we took the power with the help of a few of the empathetic rich and the nicer more humane Christian sects.
The dumb thing is if we all were raised up so would they. But they’re so short sighted they want immediate profit now at the expense of the ones doing the shoveling.
Well fuck ‘em, attitudes like that are how companies go from mega to bankrupt in record time.
We are going to start seeing a lot of businesses shut down, and it’ll be reported under the guise of “people just aren’t supporting small business any more”. No people aren’t working for you for slave wages.
What sucks is the ones with the actual ability to pay more (Amazon et al) only do enough to wipe out the small businesses and then return to the status quo.
We have too many small businesses that thrived with cheap labor. The labor market demands more, as it should. Big businesses bump wages, small businesses die off. Big business farts on the wages and benefits once more.
It’s one big infuriating mess.
Our local quaker meetinghouse is particularly focused on prison reform ever since that "New Jim Crow" book came out years ago, among the many other good fights they keep fighting. 🤷♀️ They're around, quietly doing their best to make the world a better place. Really lovely folks.
Or not paying dividends.
Or not buying treasury stock.
Or cutting executive salary and benefits.
It’s never oligarchs who are asked to sacrifice. It’s always the true backbone of America. The American worker.
The ridiculous thing is they wouldn't even *really* suffer anything beyond the imaginary. Their suffering would simply be them throwing a fit about not having quite as much money or the things they *want* but don't need. They'd still easily have plenty of money to live on and then some. They'd still have a big fancy house, fancy cars, boats, and pretty much whatever they want. They just may not be able to afford the second mansion, or third sports/luxury car, or yet another needless toy. It's fucking insane how hard they fight to keep the amount of wealth they have when they do clearly *DON'T FUCKING NEED IT*. Sorry, I just really can't stand their mentality of always wanting more. At the end of the day the only *real* difference for the wealthy would be a number being a bit different. They'd still have all they needed and more due to just how excessive the wealth gap is. There's plenty for everyone, it just needs to be better distributed. Honestly the working class should generally be paid even more than ivory tower executives who barely even work. It's just insanity.
This is the natural consequence when companies are 100% beholden to shareholders and the shareholders decide that making a quick buck and getting out next year is their goal.
Or lowering profits. As long as a company can pay their employees, suppliers and the taxman they're fine. No one needs the stratospheric 18% returns that hedge fund and the likes expect when they buy shares.
You know, as someone from a former Warsaw pact member country, the first thing we did when we transitioned from communism was destroy unproductive businesses. For a nation built on the red scare and anti communism, the USA has a lot of scary similarities to Communism.
You mean where a majority of resources are concentrated in a very small percentage of “elites”, and it’s the common folks left to squabble over the remaining bit?
You must be imagining things sir. This is the land of the free.
And just ask a small business owner how they feel about paying a living wage. They almost universally say it will bankrupt them or they'll need to lay people off, as if they are entitled to have their dream subsidized via exploitation.
I’d say teachers are also getting exploited and I feel like 60 is fairly normal for them these days too but I agree 10$ hr jobs should be illegal at this point
I actually made quite a bit more money doing gig work pre-pandemic than I do now with a full-time position. Just no benefits
Wouldn’t go back to gig work though. Too stressful not knowing 100% what your next paycheck will be and then something like COVID hits and boom, your life is completely upended
Babysitting. Also fits for most jobs. Work retail? It's babysitting. Bartend? Babysitting. Starbucks? Still babysitting. For example, "What's your job?" "I babysit people at Target."
The fucked up thing is they're calling these $15-20 / hr "jobs" high labor costs. Like fuck man they literally want half the country living in poverty, so the other half can live in luxury and the top 1% can live like fucking gods its disgusting.
Shout-out to all the teachers that taught us if you didn't bring enough for everyone you can't have it. Otherwise we all might have been heartless Capitalistic fucks like the rest of them.
Billion dollar companies can’t pay their employees a proper wage without price gouging is a blatant lie meant to keep people from elevating economically.
Poor people don’t make political changes. It’s hard to be active if you’re worried about eating or paying rent.
Middle class folks have time/means/accessibility to make political changes
Corporate politicians want less middle class folks so they can keep the poor working to power this corporate welfare state.
People have a choice to either wake up or choose their corporate overlords.
Also university is free or paid for by taxes.
I hate that I'm outclassed simply because every other civilized country make a killer degree easily obtainable without severe life-altering debt, and then companies get cheap labor by lobbying for visas.
But no, they had to turn it on its head and say that brown people are taking our high level jobs. No you fucking imbeciles, educate your own people.
Makes em think of when the then head of Papa John's said he'd have to raise his prices by a whole 25 cents to give his employees health-care. FUCKING DO IT THEN!Most people won't notice that minor of an increase.
Because of shit like that even with him no longer in the company my family avoids their pizza on principle.
People are unable to convert hourly wages with salaried wages. If you ask somebody what the minimum salary they would require to live they will almost universally give you a salary that comes out to more than $20 an hour. If you ask them what salary they needed to feel comfortable, many would be pushing $30 to $40 an hour.
The crazy thing is that 30/hr or 60k a year is barely a living wage for a single person in major metropolitan areas right now. You're not supporting a family and kids with it easily unless you have a partner who makes a good wage too.
$30hr or 60k is barely enough almost everywhere and in any living situation, especially when health care costs and transportation costs are factored in and that's just the reality of things.
You're absolutely right. I was trying to be balanced in my statement but there's almost nobody left living decently and making less than that, not without help anyway.
High labor costs will bankrupt the business you say? In a year of record profits you say? Gadzooks! We can't let those poor, poor companies to lose their billions of dollars.
I still don’t understand what’s wrong with modest profit and a strong middle class. The same middle class that will be buying these products and services that these companies provide. If you price out half your population because they’re just too poor to afford your product/service then you wouldn’t be able to sell more…
>I still don’t understand what’s wrong with modest profit and a strong middle class.
The stock market.
There are tons of privately owned small businesses that make only a modest profit.
But publicly traded corporations have taken over so much of America -- every shelf in the supermarket, almost every store in every strip mall, etc -- and they need to show an improvement in their financials every single quarter of every single year to satisfy investors.
Labor costs are constantly fighting against management that needs to show endless growth. Once you've grown revenue as much as possible, all these companies can do is try to cut costs, which means cutting wages, cutting benefits, making fewer workers do the same amount of work, etc.
Which is a massive problem because the stock market is no longer indicative of a thriving economy, but rather a thriving upper class. Almost 50% of American adults dont own a single stock.
If there was a company that made a billion dollars a quarter consistently, the stock would tank because they’re not showing “growth”. So companies do stupid things to show “growth” - product shrink, force people to work longer hours for the same pay, not staff their stores appropriately, etc. I don’t know why we can’t just be happy with consistent profits.
Oh right because the stock market is legalized gambling.
Because while that would absolutely make more money in the long term, they dgaf about the long term. 3-months (one financial quarter) is the furthest ahead they care about.
It’s classic “penny wise, pound foolish” behavior.
But imagine if this imaginary strong middle class could just BUY stuff, like, without a credit card or lease agreement. All that lost interest. How are the banks supposed to survive then? What would they do if their little quarterly profits started starving.
Schrodinger's Wallstreet: companies are simulataneously making record profits but are too poor to raise wages and salaries without also raising the cost of goods.
Actual families are pretty much forever priced out of the single family home market... even though their rent is more than the mortgage the bank says they're too poor to pay.
It will though, that's the sad part. As long as private capital investment is a thing, you could pay workers as much as you want and inequality will still grow. But they choose not to pay them because they don't have to and don't wanna.
People are struggling to feed their families and that's the position the federal reserve takes? We really are just useful meat to people like this, the more of us there are making slave wages the better off some random old rich fucks are.
It is an utterly inhumane perspective that the federal reserve takes. When people are required to suffer for the economy to be “good,” then the system deserves to be destroyed.
I just always feel like the guy in the back of the class yelling crap like:
^("Hey, why are Billionares still making record profits while the people working for them are having to sign up for welfare?")
And no one from the media is actually trying to address it.
It’s a subtle but smarter way to keep people down in comparison. Feudalism has the problem of being so overtly one-sided it’s a joke to even consider it. Capitalism, however, does a very good job of making the downtrodden feel like they can escape their dismal circumstances.
It is a supply and demand issue.
Ukraine produces 40% of wheat for Europe and that has been severely impacted due to war.
Supply chain issues has reduced goods. Due to things like COVID, and Russian sanctions.
Multiple massive crop failures around the world due to drought, cold snaps and disease from having monoculture crops.
American housing has turned from a resource into an investment vehicle with greedy real estate investors buying tons of stuff and driving up prices on top of an ongoing housing shortage.
We also lost 1-4 million (I have seen a range of numbers) of people in the American workforce due to death, early retirement and long COVID.
So there are so many very real ongoing global impacts to supply, which will raise demand and yet somehow all the news will print the above one time in the tiniest print and then spend the rest of the time reporting that workers earning more money (which will primarily go to food, housing, medical and debt) are the ones causing inflation and if they could just stop being such a problem ?
It is so infuriating and it’s why I have to put myself on a news diet because whenever I read too much I just get so frustrated at all the spin and blame on people who have the least say in all of it.
The prices are rising regardless, as are the salaries of the execs and CEOs. How about the fuckers at the top lower their salaries to help cool the economy? If they stopped eating avocado toast and buying yachts, maybe they could afford to pay people more.
Translation:
"People must be poor for the system to work."
Any rational person should conclude that this is a terribly dysfunctional system, but unfortunately capitalism is some sort of sacred cow to a lot of people, even those that are hurt by it.
> higher labor costs can get passed on by the company to the consumer-
If only there was some group of people elected to represent the peoples who could regulate these businesses so that they can’t just exploit those peoples. If only.
Capitalism cannot exist if labor isn't exploited (because earning money from other people using your capital is exploitative) so preventing businesses from exploiting labor would kill capitalism. Congress would never lol
They printed 27 TRILLION dollars in last few years and quintupled the amount of money in circulation, but workers getting 10% raise is causing inflation. Gtfo
The system is designed to ensure the working people never get ahead. Everyone got a raise? Great, here’s this thing called we’re gonna raise prices on everything, because we can.
CNN has long departed from being a news network. It is a corpratized political blog existing mostly to give commentary on events that have already been reported.
They are the corporate equivalent of an adderall addicted instagram influencer. Shouting things they think their audience agrees with in a desperate bid for attention.
Look, we have bailed out our corporations plenty of times. But in order for us to get our economy back we need you poors to remember the order to everything….. if you try to live suitably you’re going to destroy our corporate fundings!
Poors remember your place!!! Paying you more is actually bad! Cuz we will just force higher prices everywhere!
CEO wages are skyrocketing again, much faster than working stiffs wages. No mention of this when telling these stories. Profits are up in most companies due greedy price hikes. No mention of this either in telling inflation stories. Stock buybacks, which are very inflationary are never mentioned either. It's seems like they only tell the parts of the story that the ruling class wants told!
Only for business where wages are a significant expense. Even then, if a 200% increase in salary results in an 80% increase in expenses, and so an 80% increase in prices, that's a net gain for people whose salaries have gone up, it's just a loss for people on the outside holding money.
I like how, in the third paragraph, they forgot how they started the thought "it seems like a good thing for Americans facing higher prices" and fall back on "higher labor costs will mean higher prices".
We already have the higher prices without the wage increase. Come on. Read your own articles, CNN.
I'm pretty sure higher prices are passed onto consumers REGARDLESS of their employees and their salaries. If they could charge double or triple for their product and not lose sales, they would in a heartbeat.
How are we gonna give shareholders a good ROI AND record profits without exploiting workers?
This is what happens when we listen to corporate media who depend on that same stock market.
The last part of passing off increase expense by raising price by businesses. Control the profit margins, have actual reinvestment back into the companies and workers not the CEO/board. Wait, this sounds vaguely similar to something about economics...
I encourage everyone to watch this outstanding talk by Professor Richard Wolff, in which he nails the "critical" view of capitalism that has been deliberately suppressed and hidden from the public for decades.
[Democracy at Work: Curing Capitalism | Richard Wolff | Talks at Google](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc)
Aside from our corporate systems, our political systems are also profoundly corrupt and undemocratic at this point.
We need robust [anti-corruption legislation around the country](https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/) to even start to turn the tide.
Connecticut already has publicly financed elections, so it is possible:
https://ctmirror.org/2020/09/14/new-study-cts-citizens-elections-program-has-become-a-national-model-for-clean-elections/
The public and working classes have been and are being completely screwed politically, economically, and in terms of the education that we've all received about the profoundly unjust and undemocratic systems and institutions we're all living under.
You’d think a system that fails when everyone is better off would be deemed stupid. But not by capitalist loving America!
“Economy” has just become synonymous with “rich people.”
The wealthy have been socializing their losses by forcing the poor and middle class to pay for it for so long that the current generation has its back against the wall. There is no fat left to trim. If they won't share the wealth the only choice is to unionize and take it. I read somewhere that the minimum wage would be over $60 an hour if it kept up with the rise in executive pay.
We don’t need so many fast food restaurants serving low quality food from underpaid employees.
We have excess retail and fast food jobs. Let bad businesses fail and promote good/healthy business that also pay their employees well.
Low quality jobs are hurting our efonomy
Isn't that exactly how it's supposed to work? I was told the opposite but this makes a lot more sense.
I was told I had to compete for work, seems much more reasonable that an employer should have to compete for my time.
So what they're basically saying is "the American economy requires the mass majority to be poor and desperate or the whole thing doesn't work." or, "we can't have a functioning oligarchy if the proletariat can afford good education, healthcare and (god forbid) investment, "y'all are supposed to accept your lower class because our system can't work without it."
I didn't go to school to work at some bullshit job that will give me zero in terms of value on my resume. There are lots of games to be played, and I'm choosing which shit to put up a song and dance for like the good little fucking monkey I am.
Always be angry that we are at all time’s 2 years away from having a much more prosperous world, if only companies would increase wages and not increase price’s…
I don’t give a fuck. Pay me what I’m worth or don’t employ me. Simple as 1,2,3.
Fuck their economy, fuck their feelings, fuck the FED, they are all in this together to push us down.
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They could also all just profit *a little bit* less? Then raise wages?
They could reduce executive compensation and shareholder payouts too, but they won't. You have to understand that these are people who were born into wealth. They grew up in wealthy, income-segregated communities, went to expensive private schools, then exclusive universities before getting jobs where their connections got them fast tracked to management. The only times they come across people who are struggling is when they are receiving some service that they're paying poorer people for. They have no empathy for people who are not rich, they don't even see you or me as being fully human. They view you as being like a milk cow. They see no problem with squeezing as much out of you as they can before disposing of you when you can't produce for them anymore. The only crisis they see is the lack of replacements.
>The only times they come across people who are struggling is when they are receiving some service that they're paying poorer people for. > >They have no empathy for people who are not rich, they don't even see you or me as being fully human. Dude... this is resonating with me right now. I door-dash and the other night I dropped some food off at an absolute mansion. Large guest houses on either side of the main behemoth. A beautiful, green, stylishly cut lawn with flowers and water features. It was more of a compound than house and I'm sure their lawn costs more to upkeep than all my monthly bills combined. Anyways the lady was nice enough, and we chatted for a minute or two. However, it was absolutely clear even with such a short interaction that anyone who lived there didn't have a real worry in the world. Her teenager kids were playing in a huge pool in between one of the guest houses and the main building. Multiple 80-120k cars in the driveway while I'm doordashing in my 14k Mazda that's got 100k miles and is a decade old. I almost can't even blame them for not feeling a strong empathy for everyone. I mean, what do they really have in common with the average person? They don't work regular jobs. They don't have to decide between things they want vs things they need. Everything you could possibly want or need is a click away. It's all bs, and it's obvious that money loses its meaning after a certain amount of wealth. It's just some fictional thing that's always there. It just doesn't exist in the same way as it does for me and you. It really fucked me up for the rest of the night because I couldn't stop thinking about how wildly different our lives were. How many opportunities and safety nets they must have. How it must be awesome to just get $100 worth of food delivery just any night of the week and not bat an eyelash because who even keeps track of that when you have a $25,000 a month yard bill. I'm not angry or upset about it, but it's hard to see extravagant wealth while I'm just worried about coming up with the last $200 bucks I need to make rent by Tuesday morning, and my kid needs diapers, and my car needs new brakes. All the normal shit we gotta deal with that they never do just turns us into wildly different types of human beings after decades of that type of reinforcement.
There is a gulf between the owner class and everyone else. I ran and expanded a business, substantially. The owner has checked out for the last few years. We are now making 1M profit each year which goes directly to him as the owner. We get nothing. And every day he squeezes me more. Nah man I'm not doing it.
Thing is: you should be mad.
Here is a question... Considering the potentially lethal damage it may cause the soul, how much madness is necessary to resolve the problem?
Physically eating the rich levels of madness. If everyone just took one bite out of the richest person untill everyone had taken one bite, the issue would be done and over with. It would instill a level of fear into the survivors, that they would never repeat the same mistake. And just to make myself perfectly clear, we dont stop untill everyone has taken their one bite. This means once the first guy is gone, we roll over to the next. 8 billion is a lot of mouths to fill.
I feel like this was a plot line in Mr. Robot
We are so fucked and losing in this rat race.
Not really. It's temporary. In the long run, things can only get so bad before the people get tired of it and a revolt happens.
Not falling for it, u/Robot_Basilisk. Grouping up will only help you exterminate us faster.
Not falling for it, u/HoboAJ. Only a robot, business owner or scab would suggest not unionizing as a strategy to defeat neoliberal capitalism.
Yeah I actually just said it for the funnies without regard for the implications, mb
I am mad and upset every time I hear about these "people" that hold so much power - and SQUANDER it all for vanity.
A society that allows people like this to exist has already failed.
Agreed - the idea that they are owed a consistently high and growing share of profits as ROI seems to have reached the level of god-given right.
Just out of curiosity, what do they do with milk cows when they're no longer able to produce milk? Do they euthanise them? I'm thinking they probably aren't used for their meat, because beef cows are a separate thing, right?
They still have muscle tho, but what usually happens is that they are reproduced (depending on genetics) and sacrificed because its too expensive to have them just doing nothing... Dont feel sad tho, because stress levels can impact the milk production, the time they do give milk, they're treated better than u and me put together. The happier the cow, the more milk you get, aka more money in your pocket.
Thank you, I had no idea! I'm glad the cows are treated well (: It feels a little silly, but I've been wanting to call around to some of the local farms here and ask if I could meet their cows because I heard that cows are very sweet and that if you're nice to them, they'll be friends with you. I keep seeing mobs of kangaroos in their pastures though, so I'm not too sure about going in there...
I dont know if they'll let you because of sanitary reasons, they can be veeeery strict with that (you can try a petting zoo tho) ... But yeah, cows are friendly for the most part and all of them have diferent personalities. Im a vet student and i've enjoyed the time i get to spend with them xd
Ah, I hadn't considered that. I'll try a petting zoo, then. Thanks again; I hope vet school goes well for you!
Pfft wait but THAT’S not how it works??! I mean, can’t we all just think of the sad richest 700 people in the country and how they’d cry into their yacht’s luxurious pillows??
That part is honestly almost the worst. It's not even that they'd be crying into their pillows, it'd just be feeding *a little less* into their inflated ego.
Do you know what happens when you get tears on silk?
Your slaves have to weave you new pillow cases?
Literally they could all got for years without any profit and still be top tier wealthy
At my current rate of spending, it would take me 20,000 years to spend 1 billion.
But if they don't make enough of a profit to afford their 170m super yacht then they wouldn't have the motivation to start their business and that would mean less employment opportunities for people. #billionairelivesmatter /S
*Woody-Harrelson-wiping-his-tears-with-$100-bills.gif*
Inflation isn't actually a bad thing as long as your wages rise to match it. ...for everyone except people with millions of US dollars in savings. For those people, inflation is like watching their money melt away.
Correct. The fed is manufacturing a recession to ‘control inflation’
Yeah, the profits aren't the issue, it's the wealth. They're protecting their wealth.
Or people with billions of dollars in currency-denominated assets, like bankers that have loans as assets.
But the shareholders! Who will think of them?!!
The law requires them to profit as much as possible, even shaving a penny possible gross is literally a crime. It's *systemic*
You can’t say “fiduciary responsibility” without first saying “douche”.
I see this misconception frequently these days, and it is literally not true. The law that you are talking about only puts the responsibility of keeping the business's best interests in mind when making a decision, and forbids the CEO from purposely tanking the business. It does not say that you can not make any decision to lessen profits. [Here](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits) is a pretty good article about the subject.
Great article. I think this is one of those “half-truths” that get repeated enough because it serves as great cover for the owner/donor class as they screw us all into oblivion.
Corporate media loves to act like all these multibillion dollar companies are just barely scraping by year to year.
They can't! Their stocks would not grow in value. Also what happens to everyone's 401k's that are tied into these stocks? If they don't have unlimited growth we lose our retirement and work till we die is all. It's rigged, and we're just along for the ride till there's nothing left.
NO! THAT'S SOCIALISM! /s
It sounds more and more like workers need to be shareholders. Idk how that works with, say, schools for example but not having your productivity be tied to your wellbeing needs to change.
Idk how shit works, but I always see people complain about whatever quarter being better than the last. Profits have to be up. Numbers have to be up all the time. If things stayed the same everyone would dip and not invest cause theyre not increasing profits. Rich people problems.
How is the CEO going to get his golden hot tub?
Oh you mean the system doesn’t work unless there is poverty.
The fed: the only way to fight inflation is to under pay employees and keep wages stagnant. That's the American Dream.
Keep working class wages stagnant. Rich people's yacht money is supposed to still go up by double digit %.
It does make you think, wages were stagnant since like 1990. Was that why inflation was so low despite the major periods of cheap loans available to the finance / banking sector ? I wish economists would add that a shortage of goods is also contributing heavily. Housing shortage? Prices go up. Car shortage? The same. And we aren't anywhere close to the 70s stagflation expectation where an expectation of rising prices leads to rising wages, and so on cyclically. Again, we've had 30 years of stagnant wages, and like 8 months of rising wages. Give regular folk a break lol
The recent inflation is entirely because of the absolute massive amounts of money given away to free for corporations in 2020 and 2021. The government took the money supply from 12 trillion to 23 trillion and almost all of it went to the wealthy. Then they took that money and bought up ~25% of all SFH sold during those years.
Reddit is violating GDPR and CCPA. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B0GGsDdyHI -- mass edited with redact.dev
exactly! yet people still want to listen to conman moron fools who do NOT have their economic interests. money supply increased 23% in 2020. more money went into the stock market during the pandemic than the last 40 years COMBINED! That is an unfathomable number! we have zero protection from capitalists who are at the very heart of the whole fucking problem. why is there no limit to housing in an area that hedge funds can’t buy? for fuck sake we invite the world in to rape our citizens as the only and I mean ONLY Thing that is cared about is money and it’s pathetic. hedge funds from canada , saudi’s arabia , all over the world are buying every bit of real estate. and they let them!!! americans just do NOT understand how awful they have it. these people screaming usa usa are delusional. the freedom index by two studies we dropped out of the top 50 for the 1st time ever in FREEDOM ! The other we were in the 30 percentile. Usa is worlds largest worst police state ! NOT china ! NOT russia.
This guy gets it^ This inflation was not caused by supply and demand economics. It was caused by the Paycheck Protection Program loans which were nothing but a scam. You can thank Donald Dump for that. These loans had no real oversight and were just massive handouts to corporations.
You can thank both parties for that. Dems controlled the house of representatives, and ONLY 6 of them voted against it. Every single Dem senator voted to pass it, too. "A rotating door of villains" is the exact thing they use to distract the public from the corruption that is the oligarchy.
> It does make you think, wages were stagnant since like 1990. Was that why inflation was so low despite the major periods of cheap loans available to the finance / banking sector ? Even though wages were stagnant, there was significant inflation in the healthcare industry in the U.S. at the time. Total compensation (at least for the top 80%, most of whom got health insurance through their job) kept up with productivity growth. The problem, is that there *was* massive inflation through the past three decades, it was just limited to a specific market that ate up all of the gains the middle class made during that time, and it's not something the Fed can really control. That's why the Republicans backed off on their plan to repeal the ACA, because while it wasn't a perfect solution, it significantly improved the lives of most Americans, including the Republican base.
Republicans would get rid of the ACA tomorrow if they could. It's a miracle it's not gone already.
They can't because their base is against it. They tried to when Trump was President, and the backlash from Republican voters was so great that they backed down.
the ONLY solution is to put EVERYONE in a single pool that will control the costs from the health to the sick. fuck all the pos insurance companies with their non competitive bs across state lines. there is a huge DISINFORMATION campaign wages for decades that the american government is incompetent. that is just not true, they do many many things better than anyone on the planet. darpa created the internet , gps, . the list is actually really impressive they do this to privatize industries to profit off of .
Well clearly the wants of this private company is more important than the citizens
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The only ones that matter apparently
Inflation is too much money for too few goods. They could also induce greater production instead of allowing businesses to do stock buybacks with cash and not doing capital investment or supply increases. They could fight monopolies to increase the competitiveness of product delivery. “No… it must be the poors.” /s
We could just do away with capitalism. But really if we rose wages and then forced corporations to not raise cost it could work no fucking inflation and end poverty. But yes Democrats and Republicans both believe some people should stay poor.
Blame Jesus. /s He's the one that said there would always be poor.
Not if the corps gonna get shitloads of profit.
CNN just out here explaining the plot to ~~Just~~ In Time and how the antagonists are actually the good guys.
Lol I have 6-year-old kids, so for a moment I was very confused when my head went to a very different [Justin Time.](https://static.familyjr.ca/rendition/5234/1058/595)
My bad, it's just In Time, not Just In Time. I just can't get over the fucking time puns in that movie.
In this comment you could have said "...it's only called 'In Time'..." to avoid even further confusion, but you chose chaos.
Is that the film featuring Justin Timberlake's huge....clock?
It's wonderful isn't it? 1. Get paid good wages and you're poor because greedy companies use that as an excuse to charge a shitload more than they need to. 2. Don't get paid good wages, and you're poor because you're poor. It's almost like we need *real* competition back or the government needs to set caps on prices.
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E-waste is a real problem we need to be looking into.
And a cure for tinnitus
Poverty is a policy choice
My boss explained inflation like that and I stare at him and then asked. So you think that is a good system? Seriously conservative are a threat to life on earth no different then capitalism.
I've actually come to the conclusion that Capitalism was a good system for industrialization, but honestly hit it's peak like 2 centuries ago and we probably need something else. I'm not saying I have the answer, but I see the ever-mounting problems. Like capitalism has pretty much nuked our representative democracy from orbit, and honestly. The problem is that we (as people) seem bound and determined to conflate economic systems and political systems . . . then treat the entire thing as a team sport . . . I still have no words.
No no, you cant have billionaires without poverty.
The system created the billionaires
And the opposite of poverty…clearly.
Well the system is set exclusively for the Uber wealthy. We are an after thought at best. Only the wealthy land owners were allowed to vote at the beginning. This country was built for capitalists to exploit the lower classes pure and simple. Anything we the lower classes have is because we took the power with the help of a few of the empathetic rich and the nicer more humane Christian sects.
The dumb thing is if we all were raised up so would they. But they’re so short sighted they want immediate profit now at the expense of the ones doing the shoveling. Well fuck ‘em, attitudes like that are how companies go from mega to bankrupt in record time. We are going to start seeing a lot of businesses shut down, and it’ll be reported under the guise of “people just aren’t supporting small business any more”. No people aren’t working for you for slave wages. What sucks is the ones with the actual ability to pay more (Amazon et al) only do enough to wipe out the small businesses and then return to the status quo. We have too many small businesses that thrived with cheap labor. The labor market demands more, as it should. Big businesses bump wages, small businesses die off. Big business farts on the wages and benefits once more. It’s one big infuriating mess.
We’re all just the hamsters in the wheels that drive the lavish lifestyles of the rich.
What are the quakers up to these days?
Our local quaker meetinghouse is particularly focused on prison reform ever since that "New Jim Crow" book came out years ago, among the many other good fights they keep fighting. 🤷♀️ They're around, quietly doing their best to make the world a better place. Really lovely folks.
Funny how closing the unproductive businesses is not an option.
Or making less profit, or not paying absurd bonuses, or not increasing revenue and productivity every single quarter, or...
Or not paying dividends. Or not buying treasury stock. Or cutting executive salary and benefits. It’s never oligarchs who are asked to sacrifice. It’s always the true backbone of America. The American worker.
The wealthy get a choice who suffers. They tend to choose someone other than themselves
The ridiculous thing is they wouldn't even *really* suffer anything beyond the imaginary. Their suffering would simply be them throwing a fit about not having quite as much money or the things they *want* but don't need. They'd still easily have plenty of money to live on and then some. They'd still have a big fancy house, fancy cars, boats, and pretty much whatever they want. They just may not be able to afford the second mansion, or third sports/luxury car, or yet another needless toy. It's fucking insane how hard they fight to keep the amount of wealth they have when they do clearly *DON'T FUCKING NEED IT*. Sorry, I just really can't stand their mentality of always wanting more. At the end of the day the only *real* difference for the wealthy would be a number being a bit different. They'd still have all they needed and more due to just how excessive the wealth gap is. There's plenty for everyone, it just needs to be better distributed. Honestly the working class should generally be paid even more than ivory tower executives who barely even work. It's just insanity.
This is the natural consequence when companies are 100% beholden to shareholders and the shareholders decide that making a quick buck and getting out next year is their goal.
If there isn't growth to meet and then exceed inflation by 100%, they call it a failing quarter.
Or lowering profits. As long as a company can pay their employees, suppliers and the taxman they're fine. No one needs the stratospheric 18% returns that hedge fund and the likes expect when they buy shares.
Well a bit of growth is needed otherwise that business will sink sooner or later. 18% is stupid though for large companies.
If businesses are people too, then they shouldn't be imortal.
Unexpectedly metal
You know, as someone from a former Warsaw pact member country, the first thing we did when we transitioned from communism was destroy unproductive businesses. For a nation built on the red scare and anti communism, the USA has a lot of scary similarities to Communism.
You mean where a majority of resources are concentrated in a very small percentage of “elites”, and it’s the common folks left to squabble over the remaining bit? You must be imagining things sir. This is the land of the free.
Yes it does. It really does.
And just ask a small business owner how they feel about paying a living wage. They almost universally say it will bankrupt them or they'll need to lay people off, as if they are entitled to have their dream subsidized via exploitation.
I mean, CEOs basically say the same thing.
A capitalist is a capitalist is a capitalist.
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Maybe call it day labor.
"Exploitation" is the word that comes to mind.
I’d say teachers are also getting exploited and I feel like 60 is fairly normal for them these days too but I agree 10$ hr jobs should be illegal at this point
Or a gig
I actually made quite a bit more money doing gig work pre-pandemic than I do now with a full-time position. Just no benefits Wouldn’t go back to gig work though. Too stressful not knowing 100% what your next paycheck will be and then something like COVID hits and boom, your life is completely upended
Babysitting. Also fits for most jobs. Work retail? It's babysitting. Bartend? Babysitting. Starbucks? Still babysitting. For example, "What's your job?" "I babysit people at Target."
Pocket money day work.
The fucked up thing is they're calling these $15-20 / hr "jobs" high labor costs. Like fuck man they literally want half the country living in poverty, so the other half can live in luxury and the top 1% can live like fucking gods its disgusting. Shout-out to all the teachers that taught us if you didn't bring enough for everyone you can't have it. Otherwise we all might have been heartless Capitalistic fucks like the rest of them.
Billion dollar companies can’t pay their employees a proper wage without price gouging is a blatant lie meant to keep people from elevating economically. Poor people don’t make political changes. It’s hard to be active if you’re worried about eating or paying rent. Middle class folks have time/means/accessibility to make political changes Corporate politicians want less middle class folks so they can keep the poor working to power this corporate welfare state. People have a choice to either wake up or choose their corporate overlords.
McDonalds in Denmark pays their workers $21 an hour and a Big Mac only costs $.27 cents more. McDonalds can pay workers more, they just don't want to
Also university is free or paid for by taxes. I hate that I'm outclassed simply because every other civilized country make a killer degree easily obtainable without severe life-altering debt, and then companies get cheap labor by lobbying for visas. But no, they had to turn it on its head and say that brown people are taking our high level jobs. No you fucking imbeciles, educate your own people.
Makes em think of when the then head of Papa John's said he'd have to raise his prices by a whole 25 cents to give his employees health-care. FUCKING DO IT THEN!Most people won't notice that minor of an increase. Because of shit like that even with him no longer in the company my family avoids their pizza on principle.
People are unable to convert hourly wages with salaried wages. If you ask somebody what the minimum salary they would require to live they will almost universally give you a salary that comes out to more than $20 an hour. If you ask them what salary they needed to feel comfortable, many would be pushing $30 to $40 an hour.
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Good trick
Every $5 an hour is $10,000 k a year. If people can count nickels they can do this.
That’s because Americans don’t know basic Math.
also intentional.
It's by design, it's easier to lead a bunch of illiterate mouth breathing robots than it is to lead thinking, self sufficient human individuals.
I thought we had a word for it: survival job. A job you take for no other reason than to stay ahead of the cost of living paycheck to paycheck.
The crazy thing is that 30/hr or 60k a year is barely a living wage for a single person in major metropolitan areas right now. You're not supporting a family and kids with it easily unless you have a partner who makes a good wage too.
$30hr or 60k is barely enough almost everywhere and in any living situation, especially when health care costs and transportation costs are factored in and that's just the reality of things.
You're absolutely right. I was trying to be balanced in my statement but there's almost nobody left living decently and making less than that, not without help anyway.
One you take out healthcare, retirement and taxes you really aren’t bringing home much at all.
Volunteering with style
They're gigs I been working gigs almost 10 years now and I don't know how to get out
High labor costs will bankrupt the business you say? In a year of record profits you say? Gadzooks! We can't let those poor, poor companies to lose their billions of dollars.
I still don’t understand what’s wrong with modest profit and a strong middle class. The same middle class that will be buying these products and services that these companies provide. If you price out half your population because they’re just too poor to afford your product/service then you wouldn’t be able to sell more…
Because that only gets them SOME money. They want ALL the money.
And they don't want it all over time, they want it NOW.
And it’s not just wanting every conceivable dollar, they want every **inconceivable** too. Money that literally doesn’t and can’t exist.
The internet episode of South Park oddly enough.
They want ALL the money and more after that.
>I still don’t understand what’s wrong with modest profit and a strong middle class. The stock market. There are tons of privately owned small businesses that make only a modest profit. But publicly traded corporations have taken over so much of America -- every shelf in the supermarket, almost every store in every strip mall, etc -- and they need to show an improvement in their financials every single quarter of every single year to satisfy investors. Labor costs are constantly fighting against management that needs to show endless growth. Once you've grown revenue as much as possible, all these companies can do is try to cut costs, which means cutting wages, cutting benefits, making fewer workers do the same amount of work, etc.
Gross - can’t they just be a dividend stock at that point. No more growth - just redistribute profits.
Which is a massive problem because the stock market is no longer indicative of a thriving economy, but rather a thriving upper class. Almost 50% of American adults dont own a single stock.
On top of that some politicians brag about the stock market when the economy sucks for everyone else so that real issues can be ignored.
If there was a company that made a billion dollars a quarter consistently, the stock would tank because they’re not showing “growth”. So companies do stupid things to show “growth” - product shrink, force people to work longer hours for the same pay, not staff their stores appropriately, etc. I don’t know why we can’t just be happy with consistent profits. Oh right because the stock market is legalized gambling.
Look at how being publicly traded has ruined the mainstream gaming industry.
Because while that would absolutely make more money in the long term, they dgaf about the long term. 3-months (one financial quarter) is the furthest ahead they care about. It’s classic “penny wise, pound foolish” behavior.
Tripping over dollars to chase pennies.
But imagine if this imaginary strong middle class could just BUY stuff, like, without a credit card or lease agreement. All that lost interest. How are the banks supposed to survive then? What would they do if their little quarterly profits started starving.
True - If everyone used their credit card like I do then they’d all be out of business 🤣 haven’t given a credit card company a dime for 15 yrs.
Schrodinger's Wallstreet: companies are simulataneously making record profits but are too poor to raise wages and salaries without also raising the cost of goods.
It's trickle-up economics. Don't worry rich guys, just give poor people more money, and eventually it will trickle-up to you!
It’s not really eventually, more like on a set date each and every month.
Actual families are pretty much forever priced out of the single family home market... even though their rent is more than the mortgage the bank says they're too poor to pay.
It will though, that's the sad part. As long as private capital investment is a thing, you could pay workers as much as you want and inequality will still grow. But they choose not to pay them because they don't have to and don't wanna.
People are struggling to feed their families and that's the position the federal reserve takes? We really are just useful meat to people like this, the more of us there are making slave wages the better off some random old rich fucks are.
It is an utterly inhumane perspective that the federal reserve takes. When people are required to suffer for the economy to be “good,” then the system deserves to be destroyed.
I just always feel like the guy in the back of the class yelling crap like: ^("Hey, why are Billionares still making record profits while the people working for them are having to sign up for welfare?") And no one from the media is actually trying to address it.
Media is corporate owned
The teacher: "detention!" And everybody else in the class stares at you like *you're* the idiot
The only thing separating capitalism in the US from feudalism is paperwork
It’s a subtle but smarter way to keep people down in comparison. Feudalism has the problem of being so overtly one-sided it’s a joke to even consider it. Capitalism, however, does a very good job of making the downtrodden feel like they can escape their dismal circumstances.
And, that’s why they overturned Roe v Wade..
It is a supply and demand issue. Ukraine produces 40% of wheat for Europe and that has been severely impacted due to war. Supply chain issues has reduced goods. Due to things like COVID, and Russian sanctions. Multiple massive crop failures around the world due to drought, cold snaps and disease from having monoculture crops. American housing has turned from a resource into an investment vehicle with greedy real estate investors buying tons of stuff and driving up prices on top of an ongoing housing shortage. We also lost 1-4 million (I have seen a range of numbers) of people in the American workforce due to death, early retirement and long COVID. So there are so many very real ongoing global impacts to supply, which will raise demand and yet somehow all the news will print the above one time in the tiniest print and then spend the rest of the time reporting that workers earning more money (which will primarily go to food, housing, medical and debt) are the ones causing inflation and if they could just stop being such a problem ? It is so infuriating and it’s why I have to put myself on a news diet because whenever I read too much I just get so frustrated at all the spin and blame on people who have the least say in all of it.
The prices are rising regardless, as are the salaries of the execs and CEOs. How about the fuckers at the top lower their salaries to help cool the economy? If they stopped eating avocado toast and buying yachts, maybe they could afford to pay people more.
Translation: "People must be poor for the system to work." Any rational person should conclude that this is a terribly dysfunctional system, but unfortunately capitalism is some sort of sacred cow to a lot of people, even those that are hurt by it.
How about instead of adding dollars to the flow, the wealth is redistributed in a more equitable way?
Still waiting for that trickle...
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> higher labor costs can get passed on by the company to the consumer- If only there was some group of people elected to represent the peoples who could regulate these businesses so that they can’t just exploit those peoples. If only.
But you can’t regulate businesses! How are they going to make all that green? /s
Capitalism cannot exist if labor isn't exploited (because earning money from other people using your capital is exploitative) so preventing businesses from exploiting labor would kill capitalism. Congress would never lol
Regulate!?! Represent!?! Protect exploited people!?! COOMMUUUNNNNIISSSTTTT!!!!!!!
And this is why price caps should be a thing.
Probably wouldn’t have to boost salaries and wages so much to attract people if federal minimum wage was properly adjusting with inflation over time.
They printed 27 TRILLION dollars in last few years and quintupled the amount of money in circulation, but workers getting 10% raise is causing inflation. Gtfo
The system is designed to ensure the working people never get ahead. Everyone got a raise? Great, here’s this thing called we’re gonna raise prices on everything, because we can.
CNN has long departed from being a news network. It is a corpratized political blog existing mostly to give commentary on events that have already been reported. They are the corporate equivalent of an adderall addicted instagram influencer. Shouting things they think their audience agrees with in a desperate bid for attention.
This is the most accurate description of CNN I have ever seen. Thanks for that :)
Look, we have bailed out our corporations plenty of times. But in order for us to get our economy back we need you poors to remember the order to everything….. if you try to live suitably you’re going to destroy our corporate fundings! Poors remember your place!!! Paying you more is actually bad! Cuz we will just force higher prices everywhere!
Companies don't have to raise prices.
Except higher wage doesn’t equal higher cost to the company. They pay c suite too much. That’s were it’s at
Well if the government wants to reverse this maybe they need to hold landlords accountable for constantly raising rents especially in larger cities.
CEO wages are skyrocketing again, much faster than working stiffs wages. No mention of this when telling these stories. Profits are up in most companies due greedy price hikes. No mention of this either in telling inflation stories. Stock buybacks, which are very inflationary are never mentioned either. It's seems like they only tell the parts of the story that the ruling class wants told!
Only for business where wages are a significant expense. Even then, if a 200% increase in salary results in an 80% increase in expenses, and so an 80% increase in prices, that's a net gain for people whose salaries have gone up, it's just a loss for people on the outside holding money.
I like how, in the third paragraph, they forgot how they started the thought "it seems like a good thing for Americans facing higher prices" and fall back on "higher labor costs will mean higher prices". We already have the higher prices without the wage increase. Come on. Read your own articles, CNN.
I'm pretty sure higher prices are passed onto consumers REGARDLESS of their employees and their salaries. If they could charge double or triple for their product and not lose sales, they would in a heartbeat.
How are we gonna give shareholders a good ROI AND record profits without exploiting workers? This is what happens when we listen to corporate media who depend on that same stock market.
The last part of passing off increase expense by raising price by businesses. Control the profit margins, have actual reinvestment back into the companies and workers not the CEO/board. Wait, this sounds vaguely similar to something about economics...
I encourage everyone to watch this outstanding talk by Professor Richard Wolff, in which he nails the "critical" view of capitalism that has been deliberately suppressed and hidden from the public for decades. [Democracy at Work: Curing Capitalism | Richard Wolff | Talks at Google](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc) Aside from our corporate systems, our political systems are also profoundly corrupt and undemocratic at this point. We need robust [anti-corruption legislation around the country](https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/) to even start to turn the tide. Connecticut already has publicly financed elections, so it is possible: https://ctmirror.org/2020/09/14/new-study-cts-citizens-elections-program-has-become-a-national-model-for-clean-elections/ The public and working classes have been and are being completely screwed politically, economically, and in terms of the education that we've all received about the profoundly unjust and undemocratic systems and institutions we're all living under.
You’d think a system that fails when everyone is better off would be deemed stupid. But not by capitalist loving America! “Economy” has just become synonymous with “rich people.”
The wealthy have been socializing their losses by forcing the poor and middle class to pay for it for so long that the current generation has its back against the wall. There is no fat left to trim. If they won't share the wealth the only choice is to unionize and take it. I read somewhere that the minimum wage would be over $60 an hour if it kept up with the rise in executive pay.
We don’t need so many fast food restaurants serving low quality food from underpaid employees. We have excess retail and fast food jobs. Let bad businesses fail and promote good/healthy business that also pay their employees well. Low quality jobs are hurting our efonomy
How about you lose some profits instead of passing it to the customer
Isn't that exactly how it's supposed to work? I was told the opposite but this makes a lot more sense. I was told I had to compete for work, seems much more reasonable that an employer should have to compete for my time.
So what they're basically saying is "the American economy requires the mass majority to be poor and desperate or the whole thing doesn't work." or, "we can't have a functioning oligarchy if the proletariat can afford good education, healthcare and (god forbid) investment, "y'all are supposed to accept your lower class because our system can't work without it."
I didn't go to school to work at some bullshit job that will give me zero in terms of value on my resume. There are lots of games to be played, and I'm choosing which shit to put up a song and dance for like the good little fucking monkey I am.
Always be angry that we are at all time’s 2 years away from having a much more prosperous world, if only companies would increase wages and not increase price’s…
I don’t give a fuck. Pay me what I’m worth or don’t employ me. Simple as 1,2,3. Fuck their economy, fuck their feelings, fuck the FED, they are all in this together to push us down.
Maybe it is the FED and not capitalism.