Companies continue to raise prices to unheard of levels to keep raking in obscene profits. They brag about it on their earnings calls.
Inflation isn’t the problem. Corporate greed is. Yet again.
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
168 points (97.2% liked)
News
31486 readers
3023 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Greed was always there. Such a constant does not explain why now prices are rising.
Because when supply chains got fucked up during COVID, they raised their prices for legitimate reasons, and found to their delight that people kept on buying, and In fact, because people were panic shopping, and stuck at home bored, they actually bought more.
So when things calmed down, instead of lowering prices, they continued to rise. because if they didn't, they'd be making less profit than last quarter (which is unacceptable)
Combine that with the wage stagnation that's been going on for decades and a housing shortage and you now have an economy where people can't afford rent, food, or basic goods
It’s greed plus tacit coordination. If all the companies in an industry raise prices at the same time, and almost none of them defect by unilaterally lowering prices, then they can all increase prices together. One theory is that markets are too concentrated now so tacit coordination during inflationary periods are easier.
They noticed that everybody else was rising the prices and that they can get away with it.
When you get fit everyone a board room table, you don't have competition. You have an oligopoly. At the highest level of these companies, everyone knows everyone. They all go to the same events, people have moved around between the companies, and they all run in the same social circles.
Such a constant does not explain why now prices are rising.
Because they can. People have more to spend, so businesses charge more.
It's called "maximizing profit."
🌍👨🚀🔫🧑🚀
I dunno. Do we expect corporations not to be greedy?
I think a bigger problem is people are proud to be ripped off because it helps them fit in with others.
What I really need right now is yet another article explaining to me how I'm actually better off now than I was a year or two ago, I'm just too stupid or whatever to realize it. Inflation was kicking our ass, and then we had two separate student loans kick in at once, on top of taking on a shitton of debt to take care of some of the broke boomers in our lives.
Have you tried any of the following:
- Stop buying avocado toast
- Pull yourself up by your bootstrap
- Not being poor
/s
20% inflation since the start of the pandemic (higher on necessities like food and shelter), stagnant wages, massive wealth concentration and transfer from the poor and middle class to the rich… not surprising at all. Between wealth inequality, climate change, and political unrest, we are heading towards major societal collapse.
Makes me wonder how people are managing it.
I get paid every 2 weeks and I go through and pay down or pay off all my cards every payday.
When I put them back in my wallet, I put the paid off cards in first, and the not paid off cards upside down so I don't unintentionally add more debt to them.
As of last Friday, I have two cards that are not fully paid off. One with a 0% loan on a large electrical project, the 0% deal expires in April, but I expect to pay it off in January.
The other has a brand new $1,000 debt because I just paid my Christmas lights install company.
You really aren't the average person if you can pay $1000 to have your Christmas lights installed. I'm trying to even envision the Christmas light situation at your house that could possibly cost that much to put up. It must be impressive.
There's some custom work done because we have this awesome round window that's hard to work with.
This was last year:
Interesting. Most people don't have any round windows!
I know, right? It was the first thing that made this house stand out.
tl;dr: increased credit card usage