Bend Over America! The Fuckers are STILL at It

[GoatSoup]

https://www.rawstory.com/psst-you-want-to-know-the-truth-about-inflation-it-s-not-what-the-fed-thinks-it-/

Psst: You want to know the truth about inflation? (It's not what the Fed thinks it is.)

The underlying problem is not inflation. It’s lack of competition. Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits.
The reason it could raise prices and rake in more money is P&G faces almost no competition. The lion’s share of the market for diapers (to take one example) is controlled by just two companies – P&G and Kimberly-Clark – which coordinate their prices and production. It was hardly a coincidence that Kimberly-Clark announced price increases similar to P&G’s at the same time P&G announced its own price increases.

You see the same pattern all over the American economy.

Since the 1980s, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated. Monsanto now sets the prices for most of the nation’s seed corn. Wall Street has consolidated into five giant banks. Airlines have merged from 12 carriers in 1980 to four today, which now control 80 percent of domestic seating capacity. The merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas has left the US with just one large producer of civilian aircraft — Boeing. Three giant cable companies dominate broadband: Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. A handful of drug companies control the pharmaceutical industry: Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.


And so the very consolidated Dark Lords are still sucking the life blood out of America. What do we do about it???

So what’s the appropriate government response? Not slowing down the economy. This will only hurt millions of workers, who are just beginning to get the raises they deserve. The problem at the heart of the economy is amenable to only one thing: the aggressive use of antitrust laws to bust up monopolies.

Imagine if ILGM was in control of 90% of the seed market???

 

[hanimmal]

I think the highlight of that story is this:

"This will only hurt millions of workers, who are just beginning to get the raises they deserve."

 

[GoatSoup]

Right about that. Real wages are still shit for much of blue collar and white collar jobs. Only Executives are overly paid much.

 

[HGCC]

https://www.rawstory.com/psst-you-want-to-know-the-truth-about-inflation-it-s-not-what-the-fed-thinks-it-/

Psst: You want to know the truth about inflation? (It's not what the Fed thinks it is.)

The underlying problem is not inflation. It’s lack of competition. Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits.
The reason it could raise prices and rake in more money is P&G faces almost no competition. The lion’s share of the market for diapers (to take one example) is controlled by just two companies – P&G and Kimberly-Clark – which coordinate their prices and production. It was hardly a coincidence that Kimberly-Clark announced price increases similar to P&G’s at the same time P&G announced its own price increases.

You see the same pattern all over the American economy.

Since the 1980s, two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated. Monsanto now sets the prices for most of the nation’s seed corn. Wall Street has consolidated into five giant banks. Airlines have merged from 12 carriers in 1980 to four today, which now control 80 percent of domestic seating capacity. The merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas has left the US with just one large producer of civilian aircraft — Boeing. Three giant cable companies dominate broadband: Comcast, AT&T and Verizon. A handful of drug companies control the pharmaceutical industry: Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck.


And so the very consolidated Dark Lords are still sucking the life blood out of America. What do we do about it???

So what’s the appropriate government response? Not slowing down the economy. This will only hurt millions of workers, who are just beginning to get the raises they deserve. The problem at the heart of the economy is amenable to only one thing: the aggressive use of antitrust laws to bust up monopolies.

Imagine if ILGM was in control of 90% of the seed market???

Worker shortages and people fleeing shit jobs for greener pastures needs to continue. Wages need to rise and this seems the best mechanism for it. It's great, hasn't trickled to the middle of income earners yet, but hopefully.

I harp on it all the time, but it does highlight the issue with raising the minimum wage squeezing people in the middle who are seeing the bottom floor raise towards them. If you make 20 bucks an hour in some semi skilled field, that looks a lot different now that McDonald's pays 17 or 18 vs the 12.50 they paid a year ago.

 

[captainmorgan]

Looks like a lot of the supply chain issues were greedy fucks too. They made things worse so they could raise prices,Biden threatened them with fines and suddenly like a miricle things improved.

 

[CatHedral]

I think the highlight of that story is this:

"This will only hurt millions of workers, who are just beginning to get the raises they deserve."

I think wages should be pinned against the costs of a serious hospital stay and/or a criminal defense. Ivy League tuition?
How about a year of insurance? Not sure, haven’t looked at the trend.

 

[Rob Roy]

The less free a market is, the fewer opportunities for wage earners. As well consumers have fewer options in a tightly controlled market too.

This is pretty basic supply and demand stuff. Pontificating on the best way to polish the turd of governmental controls sometimes passes as a discussion on "economics" but it's really alot like watching a room full of drunks when you're sober.

I think wages should be whatever is agreed upon between the parties involved. I think wage earners have more leverage if the market is free and they can seek alternative employment if they choose or start their own competitive business unimpeded. The reason I think that is it's self evident.

Supply chain issues are sometimes (often) artificial crises to ensure the right people make money and keep any competition minimal. It's pretty fucking ironic when governments announce some kind of "free trade" agreement this or "free trade" agreement that. If they're involved, it ceases to be free trade. Dumb.

A world that features actual free trade is more likely to be peaceful. Again, that is self evident too.

Speaking of supply and demand, get your kids out of college, for the most part those watered down degrees are a badge of "I don't know how to fix anything, but I have this piece of paper, so you should give me lot's of money" .

 

[Rob Roy]

The parallels between pot prohibition prices and unfree markets in other areas are not a coincidence when considering the impact of restricted competition on wages and prices.

Also seeking the government to be the solution of the problems government policy has created is a form of ignorance that is fascinating to observe.
I contend this is a kind of stockholm manifestation mixed with some kind of Pavlovian conditioning.

It's like watching a race to the bottom of the intellectual swamp by some creatures from the Island of Dr. Moreau.

 

[injinji]

There is no doubt that big business is a bunch of fucks. But supply and demand is driving inflation. Folks are not going out to eat or take vacations so they are rolling in cash. They are spending it on stuff now. And all that stuff is made in Asia. Factories in Asia are not fully manned due to covid, so they are not making as much stuff as we are trying to buy. Almost every week we are breaking records for the amount of shipping containers the west coast ports are handling. It will take at least a year for the market to equal out.

 

[HGCC]

Funny you mention Asia, was just at the Asian grocery store and there were some wild price jumps and purchase limits (the popular brands mostly). Fish sauce had more than doubled, soy sauce and sweet chili up like 25%, rice up and had purchase limits. Hadn't been in a while so it was very noticeable. Had to forgo my normal adventure buying of just picking a couple random items and trying to figure out what they are and what to do with them.

I really don't worry about inflation, don't have nearly enough money for it to matter. Something to think about is that there are different parts to the broad topic of inflation. Wages lag prices, but should normalize eventually. That wage vs price relationship is kind of an ongoing thing, it could be an opportunity or threat, granted it doesn't ever actually work out to be an opportunity in reality, but in theory wages could grow faster than prices (productivity gap eats the difference in reality). There's events and such that occur like the supply chain issues, inflation adapts and accounts for it, just not evenly.

The Productivity–Pay Gap

The huge gap between rising incomes at the top and stagnating pay for the rest of us shows that workers are no longer benefiting from their rising productivity. Before 1979, worker pay and productivity grew in tandem. But since 1979, productivity has grown eight times faster than typical worker...

www.epi.org

How inflation is impacting your paycheck: 'The earnings of workers have eroded in recent months'

The BLS estimates that between August and September of 2021, the cost of goods and services that the average American buys increased by 5.4%.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Rob Roy]

There is no doubt that big business is a bunch of fucks. But supply and demand is driving inflation.

Big business fuckery is a symptom, not a cause. The cause is the alignment big business has with government.

What drives inflation is the mechanisms of the Federal Reserve and persistent money supply expansion. Stimulus checks. lay on your ass and get covid money etc. increased the supply of dollars to a degree that inflation wasn't a possibility, it was a certainty.

Yes, there is no doubt big business by and large are a bunch of fucks.

 

[hanimmal]

Only the mega rich and the cult that they brainwash want us to go back to the days that there was a recession about 50% of the time so that they can take advantage of those buying opportunities of all those people going bankrupt.

 

[Rob Roy]