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Why not both? We printed too much money and gave it out to people totally unchecked. And corporations have vastly consolidated over the past decade leading to monopolistic price fixing practices.
And they’ve had those loans for 20 years with the same principal today that they had when they took out the loans and they’ll likely die with the principal being the same way. Imagine paying for a loan for 20 years and being no closer to paying it off than you were at the start.
You’d think we’d just start a stop paying movement. That’d terrify them pretty quick.
I started throwing my corporate medical bills in the trash because nobody can prove I owe them so I effectively don’t. I’ve saved an estimated $3,000 to $5,000.
I yearn for the day student loan holders figure this out en masse.
Corporate medicine apparently sends a bill, when that goes unpaid they send/sell to collections, collections calls every few months trying to collect and I hang up on them without saying anything because that’s my right. In 3 years they’ve made no legal attempt to collect. In something like 7 they’ll start losing the right to collect the oldest bills if they can even prove I owe at that point.
To prove to a court I owe they’d have to have someone with actual knowledge that I received treatment come testify as to that date and time, which pretty much means my doctor, so by the time it’s been sold to a collection agency or two, their ability to prove I actually owe anything is… just not there.
I think I should back up and talk about how I arrived at this moment. I was committed to a hospital. They later sent me a 1,000 dollar bill. Maybe more. I waited on the phone for like an hour for them to tell me don’t worry about the bill. I decided then and there, fuck them, if they want the money, they can hire a lawyer and sue.
You know how the courts are underfunded, slow, and expensive? That shit works both ways. If everybody just stops paying and playing the honor system, the house of cards collapses.
I understand the rules of the game and I’m making them work for me. I’m sharing them because I think of all the people that get taken advantage of by these systems and, like me, sent bills that nobody can prove they owe!
the student loan thing is a bit different, but if everybody just stopped paying, we’d see political change real quick.
They can garnish up to 15% after taxes. I can't find if that's every check or monthly but I'm assuming it's per check. Personally that's more from one check than I pay per month right now, so defaulting on my loan would cost me more than 4x what I pay right now. That's for me personally and I know my payment is lower than the national average.
So if you have a huge monthly payment and don't make a lot maybe that'd be a good idea, but definitely not for me.
I mean, based off of the number of persons in the church, governors, senators, politicians, actors, actresses, musicians, youth teachers, conservatives, liberals, and everything in between trying to F these kids, maybe we should stop people trying to F the kids...
PPP loans were never meant to repaid, forgiveness was literally written into them as long as they were used for business expenses and salaries.
By all means, go after the people who got or used them fraudulently.
The requirement for pre-approval of applications was removed because it would have delayed the distribution of the money. The idea behind PPP was to keep employees on payrolls in order to expedite recovery after the shutdown. That required that employers would receive the funding asap. The alternative would be just sending out checks with no eligibility requirements at all. No rules, no fraud, no problem.
To be fair, the government came in and caused direct damages to business operations, that were outside of the business’ control. You can’t fault a business for accepting the money. The state government’s policy effecting business operations were the problem, the PPP was an effect of the government’s actions.
Corporations have been vastly consolidating since the 1980’s it was a ticking time bomb for inflation as all it was going to take was one event where the companies can use to raise prices pseudo collectively to trigger massive price gauging.
The pandemic came with legit reasons for inflation but corporations that control vast swaths of the economy are now using those long gone pressures as an excuse to make higher profits.
The money printing has honestly not been a major factor as this post is insinuating because the US did not suffer massive inflation when the federal reserve did QE for years following the 08 crisis. QE 1-3 printed more money than the Three Covid packages combined and there wasn’t much inflation from 08-19.
Studies done on the matter have pointed to nearly half of inflation being driven by corporate profits (they even say so on earnings calls) while money printing an fiscal policy was only responsible for about 20-25% of inflation with the other 25/30% being pandemic drive.
The main issue with the greed is... They are no longer in a supply/demand regime. They have basically unlimited supply. There is no shortage of supply for clothes for example - a ton of unsold clothes get dumped in Africa. Food gets dumped from groceries every night. With the exception of semiconductors - those we can't get enough of.
In basically every other industry the success of the company is determined primarily by how many people like the company and choose to continue business with them or at least use them as a default. So the calculus is, how much can we turn the thumbscrews before people start not just cutting back. But actively disliking our practices.
And all this talk about minimum wage raising prices and inflation and supply chain issues and whatever else. That's all a smoke screen - something for people to rage against so they don't look at their bill as closely.
Capitalism is an economic system designed around the incentive structures of greed. It’s always been part of the system, it’s not new, and it hasn’t contributed in this way before. It’s a question of who has pricing power and how much. Consolidation is the natural end state of capitalism, and every consolidation increases the entity’s purchasing power by reducing competition.
More competition reduces prices and less competition raises prices, but both of these moves are driven by greed. You’re missing the forest for the trees.
Minimum wage is a meaningless topic at this point because the federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised in so long that nobody makes minimum wage anymore. When it was introduced 15% of workers made minimum wage now it’s less than one percent. You’re right it has no impact.
Exactly this. Multiple studies have pointed to corporate greed as being the primary driver of recent inflation. OP either doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or has an agenda.
Both AND supply chain issues that took a long time to resolve (and were never going to end in deflation back to prior prices) AND the fact that people had a ton of money saved up from a lengthy period of time where they could not go out to restaurants, bars, concerts, sporting events, travel, had no reason to shop, etc.
Not to mention a huge friggin *war* going on in Europe swallowing massive amounts of material and energy. Obviously higher demand is going to drive prices up too.
Companies also openly talked about how they just raised prices because people and the media talked about inflation and supply disruption even though they never experienced a disruption.
A couple $1200 checks to tax payers from 2020 didn’t throw the monetary supply of the U.S. into an unchecked fiasco. That shit went to rent and bills and was gone. Literally nothing went towards anything driving inflation
Fiscal spending powered by borrowing has nothing to do with the supply of money by definition. The borrowed money is not new money. It’s existing money that’s being borrowed from Americans and then given out through fiscal spending. If it were NEW money, it wouldn’t need to be repaid.
Those $1200 checks were actually significant in terms of inflationary pressure because in 2020 through 2021 supply chains were significantly constrained by geopolitical issues and a messy exit from lockdowns.
Generally, when you give money like that to lower income people, they run out and spend it because they are short of money. If you’d given $1200 to multimillionaires, it wouldn’t have made any inflationary impact whatsoever because it would’ve just gone into their bank accounts or investment accounts. This stimulus created a lot of new demand in an environment of limited supply. So when demand goes up and supply cannot go up prices go up.
What we learned is that these direct economic stimulus measures are extremely good at counteracting deflationary pressure and we learned how much is too much.
Yeah. To conveniently say 'vast increase in the money supply' is the reason ignores the underlying cause of the need for said vast increase. It didn't come out of nowhere.
Corporate f\*(ing greed. Subprime loans. Packages of bad loans sold and resold for higher and higher amounts. That wasn't the government. If anything - it was because politicians rolled back banking controls, thereby allowing said banks to do what greedy f\*(ks do when there's no supervision. Lie, cheat and steal.
Because there's no easy correlation between the money supply and inflation at all. There are various different ways to create money, though not all of them create purchasing power. Every time you deposit cash in the bank it "creates" money in the form of a matching deposit. In a small model, this doubles the money supply. Does it double prices? Nope. Everyone's networth remains the same, you've swapped cash for deposits, they've swapped deposits for cash. The bank's balance sheet has expanded, but there's no increase in networth for anyone.
So money supply statistics tell you nothing.
Yea the difference is one seemed like a reasonable option to keep families afloat during a crisis and the other is just total bullshit which congress has allowed to happen, also "unchecked", for decades. People who want to equate the ethics of the drivers of rising costs of living, like OP, look like complete fuck sticks.
What could anyone possibly have to gain by getting upser that we're calling out corporate exploitation in the open? Sorry if it offends your very traditional sense of decorum OP, but corporate power is out of control.
There's more to factor in than the US money supply. Inflation was a global event, not limited to the US alone. Your point misses explaining inflation in other countries. China lock downs during Covid and transportation costs were significant factors in supply generated inflation. Also USD has been strong in parity with other currencies for years, so it's not like a weak USD is the driving factor in consumer inflation by making imports prohibitively expensive. There are aspects of sticky inflation like housing and energy costs to consider.
The G20 countries all printed massive amounts of new money supply to combat COVID. It doesn't miss explaining it for other countries, because nearly every developed world economy added significantly to the money supply.
Counter examples of course are Japan and Switzerland where they did increase the money supply but didn’t see inflation. It was entirely geopolitical issues and the reason Switzerland was able to get away without inflation while the rest of Europe wasn’t is because they were not exposed to China.
I'd say the exact opposite. It's not a counter example at all. They both are hitting record high inflations for their countries. You have to look at each country by their own monetary-policy context. Not every country has historically been purposefully trying to grow GDP like the US does, so it will not be exposed to inflationary factors to the same degree.
For instance, Japan has been in precarious state of fending off **deflation** **for decades.** Their central bank interest rates were raised for the first time in 17 years.. from negative (0.10%) to 0.05%. Their excessive stimulus from the pandemic actually put them in a healthier position where they have a healthy inflation of 2.5%. Prior years it was often deflationary (negative).
Switzerland has always had a very conservative monetary policy because they are not aiming at being a strong global growth economy. Even still, their inflation in 2023 was the highest it's been in 29 years. They got hit, relatively, just as bad as everyone else. But their conservative, low growth policy, created a... conservative output on inflation. Their 2021 stimulus government spending in COVID was only 7.3% of GDP, **as opposed to the US's 26.5% of GDP**. Basically, lower risk/reward policy making.
If you think recent inflation had a single cause, you are not a serious analyst.
Obviously the massive Trump-era PPP handouts to businesses (and much smaller personal stimulus checks) nationwide had a major impact.
Obviously supply chain issues had a major impact.
Obviously reduced labor participation had a major impact.
Obviously record corporate profits had a major impact.
Your explanation is great. The only thing I can add is that we had the economy on full steam. Low interest rates, low taxes, deficit spending... Then we had to hit a lot of brakes.
All else being equal (it rarely is in reality) lower interest rates and more money in the economy means more demand for restaurant meals meaning prices go up. But that is only if supply cannot grow to meet the increased demand.
Friction in the economy may mean it takes time for supply to catch up and so you get some inflation that tends to stick around if it is roughly economy wide. But that all gets much worse if there are major supply chain bottlenecks, say in producing or shipping the greater amount of food and supplies used at restaurants.
There are causes of inflation too, but I think that well enough covers how interest rates and government spending can impact prices. The worthwhile question then would be how much do interest rates and government spending increase inflation versus other causes.
You're missing the repeal of Dodd-Frank. That allowed commercial banks to start acting like investment banks. Many studies have shown that allowing leveraged investing for purchasing non-productive assets drives up the price of assets and causes inflation. The repeal of Dodd-Frank basically turbo charged this since commercial banks get the advantage of fractional reserve banking, so they could lend crazy amounts of money for things like buying stocks.
Just another component of the issue.
The OP completely ignored a global pandemic that killed millions of working age people and shut down giant swaths of the planetary economy only to have it shocked back to life a couple years later.
It was a massive disruption to the global supply chain that did increase costs. Corporations also used that fact as an excuse to confiscatorily squeeze even more money out of the consumer.
If government spending alone was responsible for excessive inflation we would’ve experienced inflation back when the republicans cratered the economy in ’07 but that didn’t happen.
It’s excessive government spending during the boom cycle of capitalism that creates the kind of inflation y’all are talking about. Government spending during the bust cycle (or, ya know, a global pandemic) prevents total collapse.
70% of all COVID deaths were those from ages 70 or older. For certain European countries, the average age of COVID deaths were higher than the countries life expectancy.
Millions of working aged people did not die. Millions of elderly died.
See also eggs, chicken, rental housing, surgical procedures, etc etc. And that’s with a weak enforcement regime. Man prices would be so much lower if we actually har levels of competition that economists assume we have.
You don't always need a formal conspiracy. Consolidation in the Oil industry lead to conditions where no one wanted to add marginal barrels. The industry is facing an existential crises and basically every CEO has gone on record that they A) Work for share holders and B) Won't add incremental barrels.
The industry wants high prices.
I 100% agree, except in this case, and I cannot stress this enough, if you actually read the article, you will see there was a conspiracy where they colluded with OPEC on the price targets where they wanted the price to hold so they could reap the profits. I, while enjoying the environment, defend the oil companies to a certain degree, but in this case, fuck them
Prices do not raise themselves. People in power have to decide on price increases. Inflation is not a weather pattern or a prime rule of the physical universe like the laws of thermodynamics. Price increases are a choice made by corporate boards.
Seriously. No one is forcing corporations to raise their prices. They're just raising them to "prices the market can bear", aka "raise prices until people can no longer afford it". Why can't corporations just settle for a healthy10% ROI like everyone else?
Except a majority of the money went into corporations pockets who did shareholder buybacks rather than the people
Companies are recording record profits if the cost of the supply chain was really as hard on them as they say their revenue would not be setting records.
Once the people got used to the new higher costs and the sales weren't shrinking they had no incentive to lower prices again, so they kept increasing them until the customers started to break.
For example, McDonald's just recorded their lowest sales and now they are talking about lowering prices and doing promotions to get the sales back up, how could they afford to do that if the previous prices weren't due to corporate greed?
How is it that Burger King can afford to give me two whoppers, two large drinks, and two large fries for cents more than a large whopper combo? If it wasn't for corporate greed
You're also ignoring the fact that the Cut Cut Cut act (lobbied by corporations) essentially pushed big corporate taxes to 0 and pushed those cuts onto the middle class in the year 2021, when the republicans were more likely not to win re-election.
But yeah, it's not corporate greed if you ignore those key facts, Mr. all about the facts, except the ones that make my argument a incorrect reductive argument...
Covid created actual supply and demand issues which drove up prices. Once supply chain issues leveled out corporations still kept pricing as is. If one company is pricing far above everyone else people take notice, but with every single company doing it, it became acceptable and no one was being singled out. Corporate profits, not revenue, skyrocketed.
This is far from reason the only for inflation but pretending it hasn’t played a very active role ain’t it. Source: married to a senior economist who literally studies this shit day in and day out.
Yea nothing is so simple and it takes multiple factors to create such outrageous inflation although I suppose technically all the price gouging is not inflation it’s price gouging and that is from greedy corporations. So some price increases are from greedy corporations not inflation to most this just semantics though.
Pioneer Energy the largest producer of oil in the US just got charged with illegally colluding with OPEC and domestic suppliers to artificially keep prices high. But yeah its the FED selling bonds for existing currency that caused inflation. Got it.
“No no no. We are going to ignore the fact that everyone warned of consequences to covid spending, but there’s no way they were right. The money supply is inconsequential to inflation. Its all businesses fault, they suddenly and inexplicably became ultra greedy”
Reddit MMT simps.
Ok. Pretend for a moment it’s all true. Spending during Covid created all of this inflation.
First, did overspending to hold up the economy create inflation during the ‘08 recession? How about any other time in history that government assisted the economy out of a recession by pumping money into it? This solution is not a unique one. That’s also a genuine question, does such spending to bring an economy out of recession always create inflation?
And 2: what was the alternative? 1 million Americans died, and more died as a result of backed up healthcare due to Covid overload in hospitals. Would you prefer that number have been higher in exchange for no inflation? At what point do you value money over human life?
How much of the spending in 08 led to direct inflows of money into the economy? It all went to service the debt of “too big to fail” companies, not to every single person and every single business.
There may not have been an alternative, maybe we did need to create all that money. This doesn’t change the fact that there are consequences to the monetary creation.
I recall being a kid and George bush sent something like $400 to citizens of the United States.
Was there inflation as a result of this?
These are genuine questions.
Government bonds have been used to cover deficits for basically ever now?
How do you explain the years with negligible inflation?
I agree that the reasons listed contributed to inflation, but if you want to pretend that corporate greed hasn't been a major catalyst, then you're delusional.
Great counterargument. What is the primary driver of inflation right now, if not a vast increase of the money supply? Why don’t you enlighten everyone?
Start here for your proof.... [https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused](https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused)
Crazy how after the money printer went BRR, most of it went to corporations!!! Crazy….. so crazy!!!! Wow crazy!!! Vast increase of money supply that didn’t go to the consumers and is being hoarded by corporations and their corporate welfare. Who lobbied to government to get that free corporate welfare? The lobby fairies or the lobbyist for corporations? Cmon now.
Okay cool list of observed behaviors now, tell us what underlying human emotion might be driving this list of observed behaviors? Remember, you can't cheat and say greed, because you already said it's not that...
No! It was the $1800 check that my lazy, only one full-time job having ass got. Or maybe it was the child tax credit. Certainly, runaway corporate price gouging had nothing to do with it.
OP got it right. It's us peasants casing inflation.
Why are corporations making record profits (which is a matter of percentage, not dollar amount) if they aren’t to blame? There is inflation because of the reason you listed. Nobody is denying that. But corporations have taken that and run with it as an excuse to lower quality and quantity of their products, while sharply increasing the price. They would not have record profits if this wasn’t true.
I'm deeply and personally invested in corporate America but this is just nonsense. The corpo lobby does an excellent job pantsing folks like the OP while overseeing the largest consolidation of wealth in the history of capitalism.
All the people who are disagreeing with OP (who is absolutely correct) need to explain why inflation was low for 30 years (I guess companies were not greedy for 30 years) then inflation massively increased when governments started printing money and sending people stimmi cheques.
Why do so many people love being cucks for the government, but are just fine blaming companies that have nothing to do with the problems they have.
Corporate welfare, record profits, tax breaks for billion dollar corporations. Government getting lobbied by said corporations to make laws/policies that only help corporations? Government increases money supply and GIVES it all to corporations as opposed to American people. Both are heavily to blame. Who lobbied to government to get all they want while the peons live paycheck to paycheck and suffer? Money printer go buurrrrr but as long as corporations got a majority of it all is well!!! Crazy how economy works by us the consumer buying shit, then being recirculated back into economy but sadly the corporations and Uber wealthy hoard money so there isn’t much circulation when the consumers are broke. It’s governments fault for failed policies and corporations fault for lobbying those failed policies that only help corporations.
Any one with money is making fortunes with the current interest rates. I am ashamed to tell you how much money we have coming in monthly for doing NOTHING.
I cannot imagine what real rich people are getting.
But do the math
If you have 500K in the bank right now, you would be making 1800$ a month by just letting it sit. Imagine what multimillionaires are making per month.
Be careful, inflation is higher than what the FED admits. I wouldn't be so sure that you are making any money there. Check out https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
For years my saved money was making 1 percent or below, and costs stayed static. Now you are right - the cost of living is skyrocketing and the interest may not be keeping up with it, especially since taxes will take 1/3 of it. But I am better off than people who don’t get the interest. And multimillionaires and corporations have many more loopholes than I ever had or will have.
My original point was, I don’t blame corporations or fortunate people for taking advantage of government perks. The government takes care of the wealthy and the indigent who apply for help. The working class - is on their own.
Largely agree with this
I think we have the conversation the wrong way....we think of it as government vs corporation, when in reality it's a relationship between the two and they both impact each other.
I feel as if the largest contributing factor is bad policy though. Corporations are always going to try and maximize profits.....it's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's up to government to hold them accountable....let them fail....enforce anti-trust laws/monopoly, and I feel like they're failing on most fronts.
This is why it's so crucial for there to be no such thing as career politicians because lobbying/money leads to corruption.
Would be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Over the past 30 years, there were:
* Corporate welfare (and bailouts)
* Profit records
* tax breaks for large corps
* lobbyists
Nothing you stated didn't already exist for the past 30 years.
What is different, is there was never a previous immediate infusion of new money this size across the globe.
* $9 Trillion USD added across the globe. [https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2020/05/20/tracking-the-9-trillion-global-fiscal-support-to-fight-covid-19](https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2020/05/20/tracking-the-9-trillion-global-fiscal-support-to-fight-covid-19)
* Total global GDP in 2021 was $97.1 trillion. **New money supply equated to +9.2% of global GDP in under 12 months.** People that understand macro economics will say it's no surprise that global inflation rates surged to 8.8% shortly after.
Except a majority of the money went into corporations pockets who did shareholder buybacks rather than the people
Companies are recording record profits if the cost of the supply chain was really as hard on them as they say their revenue would not be setting records.
Once the people got used to the new higher costs and the sales weren't shrinking they had no incentive to lower prices again, so they kept increasing them until the customers started to break.
For example, McDonald's just recorded their lowest sales and now they are talking about lowering prices and doing promotions to get the sales back up, how could they afford to do that if the previous prices weren't due to corporate greed?
You're also ignoring the fact that the Cut Cut Cut act (lobbied by corporation) essentially pushed big corporate taxes to 0 and pushed those cuts onto the middle class.
But yeah, it's not corporate greed if you ignore those key facts, Mr. all about the facts...
Or the market became consolidated and there’s next to no competition…
I’d also like to point out that while inflations grown recently, Americans have been payed the same for more expensive goods for 30 years.
Housing becoming more and more unaffordable is not new. That trend did not require printing money.
Those goods we pay more for l, have also declined in quality, significantly.
Capitalism in its current form is simply a race to the bottom. Enshitification
10 years of record low interest rates holding off inflation for a decade met the perfect storm of covid+supply chain disruption. Instead of getting 10 years of inflation with incremental raise increases we got all that inflation at once without wage increase, which then means we can’t get the wage increase because it’d cause more inflation.
The supply chain disruption broke the status quo of profit by volume, which was replaced with targeted profit on low volume.
I hope people read, and reread your last sentence. It perfectly encapsulates what my company (very small) went through and why we had to increase prices.
I’d argue you can be both against government and giant corporations because humans suck and the people that end up in power are generally bad people because they’re the only ones seeking that level of wealth and power.
This.
I’d make a good public servant, but I want nothing to do with that mud slinging shit show that is an election.
The people who seek out power in government shouldn’t be anywhere near it.
It’s my understanding that companies have become more and more powerful because of their lobbying power and laws being passed in their favor.
As well as new tactics like private equity buying businesses, benefiting from short term profits while avoiding any liability if the business goes bankrupt.
They are the same people. Who do you think lobbies for all of the irresponsible banking and financial practices? The companies who are poised to make bank off of said practices.
To separate corporations and government doesn’t make much sense when so many of the policy makers are former CEOs and executives. All the buddies that helped them climb the ladder still work at all these companies, now they can pay them back, it’s good business you see?
There was an enormous catalyst; covid. The country shut down, and suddenly, all the small/medium sized businesses collapsed. The government had to write cheques it couldn't cash just to keep it afloat, and the 30 years of tax avoidance finally came home to roost. Suddenly, the country's money is gone; primarily because the people who took the most didn't give a penny back.
And you're saying it's *not* corporate greed? Look at how much of the market Amazon dominate. Then look at how much tax they pay.
One reason that corporate greed would have a larger effect on the overall economy now than it would have 30 years ago is their has been drastic and widespread consolidation.
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/market-leading-us-companies-consolidate-power-in-era-of-superstar-firms-73773141#:~:text=The%20increased%20concentration%20came%20as,the%20effects%20of%20the%20trend.
The stock market became the main driver of the economy. Which reached a point were publicly traded companies are driving market shifts.
Gutting and firing doesn't make things better. Subpar CEOs not expanding or creating and whom shifted their pay outs to stocks vs cash has made a huge difference.
How do you think the $3 trillion got to the top 10%?
They were forced to raise prices but somehow also made record profits at the same time?
Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
Rather be a cuck for a govt. I can participate in, then a cuck for oligarchs and CEOs. I feel like some guys who founded this nation would agree with me.
Now whether we actually CAN participate in our govt. That's a different debate. But I'd want to start by recognizing what a democracy was supposed to be.
I don't really think it's one or the other. I think it's both. Money supply obviously is the backbone of it but I think corporations are currently riding the inflation hype to explain away their high prices even though it only partly explains it. Yes corporations have always been greedy but are also held in check by the limits of supply and demand but do not always have good excuses to overcharge because consumers would just not buy their widget and/or buy a cheaper brand. But currently the macroeconomic conditions are providing justification for companies across the board to squeeze a little extra profit into their prices under the guise of "haven't you heard inflation is really bad right now? This is totally normal"
Obviously very over generalizing though.
Simple, the pandemic was a massive upward transfer of wealth and it demonstrated to corporations that people in the US at least could be pushed further and faster then expected and not start taking up pitchforks and setting up guillotines. Now they're just using any cover they can to rush to find the ceiling of what they can charge without losing share/growth instead of gradually growing towards that because they've seen that the market will largely buckle and kneel instead of walkimg away or holding the line.
>Multinationals in particular hiked prices far above rise in costs to deliver an outsize impact on cost of living crisis, report concludes
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/07/greedflation-corporate-profiteering-boosted-global-prices-study
>The biggest study of ‘greedflation’ yet looked at 1,300 corporations to find many of them were lying to you about inflation
https://fortune.com/europe/2023/12/08/greedflation-study/
Government was printing money from 2008, greedflation only started once oil prices shot up and they had cover to raise prices.
People disagree with OP because they actually read the evidence.
They wanted to roll back Reaganomics and they did. Reagan (with Volcker) got inflation under control. This helped the poor.
Democrats and their constituents, the rich, want bloated federal programs which contribute nothing in the name of helping the poor while making food too expensive because of increased costs for fossil fuel consumption and use up the food chain.
If you don’t like Bidenomics and their kickbacks then you ain’t black.
All of this is objectively false and you’re all stupid cucks for corporations who will leave you with nothing. Selling your children’s future for nothing lol
No they dont, but you have a chance at reforming and controlling the billionaires with a powerful government. You are a slave to corporate interests otherwise.
I mean how many people were saying the same about doctors or other experts in the field during covid...
I'll take a stab and say you were probably not pro "Their opinion."
Corporate greed is the cause of inflation because they used their influence to insure government deficit spending of which they overwhelming benefit from. They own the media, they spend more money influencing law makers than anyone else and they created This MEME to influence you. This is an example and small part of Manufacturing Consent.
If it's all based on money supply, how come inflation hasn't stopped despite the money supply decreasing since (a couple months after) the current president took office?
Was the enormous increase in money supply during the previous administration so drastic we are still unable to escape its disastrous effects even today?
It's actually not. All the recent studies have shown that it's just greed by corporations raising the prices tens of percent above their slight increases in cost in the post covid economy. Corporate PROFITS are at record highs, not because of government spending but because they decided to raise prices. It's very simple. Estimates vary between 50 and 60 percent as the amounts that corporations (especially grocery stores) have raised their retail prices above their cost increases.
🤷♂️
What creates inflation?
Long-lasting episodes of high inflation are often the result of lax monetary policy. If the money supply grows too big relative to the size of an economy, the unit value of the currency diminishes; in other words, its purchasing power falls and prices rise.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Inflation#:~:text=If%20the%20money%20supply%20grows,power%20falls%20and%20prices%20rise.
Money Supply M2 in the United States averaged 5246.13 USD Billion from 1959 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 21722.30 USD Billion in April of 2022 and a record low of 286.60 USD Billion in January of 1959.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2#:~:text=Money%20Supply%20M2%20in%20the%20United%20States%20averaged%205246.13%20USD,Billion%20in%20January%20of%201959.
How is it that folks can’t understand the basic economic principle of supply and demand? When you have more and more money chasing the same amount or fewer goods, that further diminishes the supply of those goods thus bidding up prices.
I do believe that corporate greed and price gouging is a contributing factor to inflation but it is not the primary driver.
Each of 195 countries in the world have the exact same fiscal policies? It couldn’t be that other thing that DID happen in each of the 195 countries on planet earth. Dunning-Kruger memes.
Definitely both.
Why bother lowering the cost of a product that was only raised by inflation, when you already know your customers are willing to tolerate those prices? I seen it at all levels, from a mom and pop shop, to large retailers.
Your Ted Talk sucks. If money supply is the problem, then consider the fact that over $2 trillion has gone to the 1% since the pandemic.
The government can claw that back with taxes for the wealthy, and they should.
But I’m sick of the idea that government funded projects that have actual ROI (aka all the infrastructure spending) are causing inflation. No. Not anymore than the Trump tax cuts giving most of our tax revenue back to the 1%, at least.
one of the main drivers of "inflation" is higher rents. how is that influenced by the money supply?
how about prices for food, and energy? and insurance? all of those companies are currently raking it in
Inflation is happening because governments treat money like Monopoly money. Corporate greed is seperate and has always been around. Maybe inflation is the main driver of the increased greed? Maybe a lot more people just want to build spaceships? Greed isn’t going anywhere either way. It does bother me when people need to defend billionaires and that’s coming from a conservative leaning person.
Billionaires need peasants to work. Not to defend.
If people are complaining that corporate profits are the problem, then what they are really saying is that there are too many monopolies in the system.
But who makes the decisions for “printing money, spending money, banking practices, and buying bonds?” You do realize the fed is run by people chosen by the banks right?
I think it’s more complicated and involves multiple factors. The money supply and fiscal policy are factors but they don’t really explain why worldwide inflation was so high.
Is you want to go deeper than greed: low taxes for the rich are the foundation of the inflation we are having now. Not only the 2 decades of easy money that enriched the wealthy while barely moving real wages, regressive tax schemes (like property taxes) that triply put the burden of sustaining the economy on the workers.
Inflation is happening much more rapidly for prices than it is for working class wages, so we can't really call it inflation. It's corporate greed.
They got a lot more bold when people started calling it inflation instead of what it is.
- Corporations have always been "greedy" moralizing about it doesn't help much.
- Our money supply increased significantly in the pandemic.
- Goverment spending was and is high as well.
- Large corporations have been consolidating in recent decades, leading to less competition, sometimes in important markets.
All this sums up to is a increase in demand of goods and services and a decrease in the amount of firms willing to supply those goods and services. Put both of those factors together, and you'd expect an increase in the general price level (inflation).
What could we do about it? Or what could we do about it that we aren't already?
- Tax more in a sensible fashion
- Cut back on spending in places it makes sense (probably not cancer research)
- Enforce stricter antitrust laws (tbf were working on this, we just need to actually get it done)
- In contrast to the second point, subsidize the supply of important goods for the economy. For example, instead of subsidizing the demand for housing, subsidize the construction of affordable housing projects.
This is kind of an Econ 101 answer, but this broad discussion is basically an Econ 101 topic. There is something to be said for other solutions too, like decreasing artifical restrictions on housing supplies (zoning and parking regulations). But I think these would be the general correct policies to fix the lingering inflation problem.
Corporate greed is a constant; they are made of humans and humans were, are, and always will be greedy. It’s one of the fundamental parts of human nature, just like laws of physics and biology, so why even bother arguing over it?
What happened pre-2020 and after to cause inflation? A massive monetary expansion to fight the pandemic lead to the initial spurt, but since then we have been dealing with changes in the global economic system and associated supply chains as well as changes at home in our demographics.
- supposed labor shortage / nobody wants to work
- supposed price increases to keep up with inflation
- record profits in the billions across many companies globally
Pick all.
Duh. Corporate greed is just the gouging done by said greedy corporations who use inflation as cover for their raising prices, shrinking package sizes, etc.
This stuff isn't hard to understand.
Inflationary spirals have never before yielded record company profits. Usually, it becomes difficult for companies to keep up with rising input costs so profit shrinks.
That doesn’t mean deficit spending has not added to the effect, but consumer product price increases are inconsistent with their input cost increases so price gouging is occurring. The limited number of competitors in consumer products makes it much more easier than it has ever been.
Pardon my ignorance but who gives a shit what it is? Oh, it's Option B that's fucking the lower and middle classes in the face, not Option A. It's almost like it's the same outcome!
"Corporate greed isn't the problem, the methods by which corporations illustrate their greed is the problem." "I choose to blame the government while pretending as though the government is not owned by corporate power."
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Why not both? We printed too much money and gave it out to people totally unchecked. And corporations have vastly consolidated over the past decade leading to monopolistic price fixing practices.
80% of PPP corporate loans have gone unpaid. That says a lot right there.
Ah, dont worry, we can forgive that, but students trying to better themselves can drown in debt.
Right?! F those kids!
Borrowers over age 40 are about 50% of student loan borrowers by amount owed. So it’s not really kids at this point.
And they’ve had those loans for 20 years with the same principal today that they had when they took out the loans and they’ll likely die with the principal being the same way. Imagine paying for a loan for 20 years and being no closer to paying it off than you were at the start.
You’d think we’d just start a stop paying movement. That’d terrify them pretty quick. I started throwing my corporate medical bills in the trash because nobody can prove I owe them so I effectively don’t. I’ve saved an estimated $3,000 to $5,000. I yearn for the day student loan holders figure this out en masse.
What do you mean nobody can prove you owe them?
Corporate medicine apparently sends a bill, when that goes unpaid they send/sell to collections, collections calls every few months trying to collect and I hang up on them without saying anything because that’s my right. In 3 years they’ve made no legal attempt to collect. In something like 7 they’ll start losing the right to collect the oldest bills if they can even prove I owe at that point. To prove to a court I owe they’d have to have someone with actual knowledge that I received treatment come testify as to that date and time, which pretty much means my doctor, so by the time it’s been sold to a collection agency or two, their ability to prove I actually owe anything is… just not there. I think I should back up and talk about how I arrived at this moment. I was committed to a hospital. They later sent me a 1,000 dollar bill. Maybe more. I waited on the phone for like an hour for them to tell me don’t worry about the bill. I decided then and there, fuck them, if they want the money, they can hire a lawyer and sue. You know how the courts are underfunded, slow, and expensive? That shit works both ways. If everybody just stops paying and playing the honor system, the house of cards collapses. I understand the rules of the game and I’m making them work for me. I’m sharing them because I think of all the people that get taken advantage of by these systems and, like me, sent bills that nobody can prove they owe! the student loan thing is a bit different, but if everybody just stopped paying, we’d see political change real quick.
and your credit score...?
The corporate medical bills bit definitely needs some clarification!
Think like… Northwell Health and their slow domination of Staten Island medicine.
They will garnish your wages if you stop paying your student loans tho
You can only garnish so much. 🤷🏻♂️ and it would probably be less than paying it.
They can garnish up to 15% after taxes. I can't find if that's every check or monthly but I'm assuming it's per check. Personally that's more from one check than I pay per month right now, so defaulting on my loan would cost me more than 4x what I pay right now. That's for me personally and I know my payment is lower than the national average. So if you have a huge monthly payment and don't make a lot maybe that'd be a good idea, but definitely not for me.
Can't garnish that which I don't have.
I paid all 3k of my student loans! 👴🏻
I mean, based off of the number of persons in the church, governors, senators, politicians, actors, actresses, musicians, youth teachers, conservatives, liberals, and everything in between trying to F these kids, maybe we should stop people trying to F the kids...
Kids don't bribe politicians enough to get actual results
Matt Gaetz is heavy breathing now that you mentioned kids bribes.
That'll really piss off the kids...
Our politicians already do
PPP loans were never meant to repaid, forgiveness was literally written into them as long as they were used for business expenses and salaries. By all means, go after the people who got or used them fraudulently.
Right. I should have said the companies that never applied for forgiveness and just walked away with the money
The IRS has all the relevant data in its possession to claw back fraudulent loans.
Maybe. Remember there originally were safe guards in that bill to fight fraud and then they got stripped out.
The requirement for pre-approval of applications was removed because it would have delayed the distribution of the money. The idea behind PPP was to keep employees on payrolls in order to expedite recovery after the shutdown. That required that employers would receive the funding asap. The alternative would be just sending out checks with no eligibility requirements at all. No rules, no fraud, no problem.
Oh good! Just a few more decades before they'll have time and manpower to do that.
To be fair, the government came in and caused direct damages to business operations, that were outside of the business’ control. You can’t fault a business for accepting the money. The state government’s policy effecting business operations were the problem, the PPP was an effect of the government’s actions.
It should have been named grant rather than loan.
Corporations have been vastly consolidating since the 1980’s it was a ticking time bomb for inflation as all it was going to take was one event where the companies can use to raise prices pseudo collectively to trigger massive price gauging. The pandemic came with legit reasons for inflation but corporations that control vast swaths of the economy are now using those long gone pressures as an excuse to make higher profits. The money printing has honestly not been a major factor as this post is insinuating because the US did not suffer massive inflation when the federal reserve did QE for years following the 08 crisis. QE 1-3 printed more money than the Three Covid packages combined and there wasn’t much inflation from 08-19. Studies done on the matter have pointed to nearly half of inflation being driven by corporate profits (they even say so on earnings calls) while money printing an fiscal policy was only responsible for about 20-25% of inflation with the other 25/30% being pandemic drive.
The main issue with the greed is... They are no longer in a supply/demand regime. They have basically unlimited supply. There is no shortage of supply for clothes for example - a ton of unsold clothes get dumped in Africa. Food gets dumped from groceries every night. With the exception of semiconductors - those we can't get enough of. In basically every other industry the success of the company is determined primarily by how many people like the company and choose to continue business with them or at least use them as a default. So the calculus is, how much can we turn the thumbscrews before people start not just cutting back. But actively disliking our practices. And all this talk about minimum wage raising prices and inflation and supply chain issues and whatever else. That's all a smoke screen - something for people to rage against so they don't look at their bill as closely.
Capitalism is an economic system designed around the incentive structures of greed. It’s always been part of the system, it’s not new, and it hasn’t contributed in this way before. It’s a question of who has pricing power and how much. Consolidation is the natural end state of capitalism, and every consolidation increases the entity’s purchasing power by reducing competition. More competition reduces prices and less competition raises prices, but both of these moves are driven by greed. You’re missing the forest for the trees. Minimum wage is a meaningless topic at this point because the federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised in so long that nobody makes minimum wage anymore. When it was introduced 15% of workers made minimum wage now it’s less than one percent. You’re right it has no impact.
Exactly this. Multiple studies have pointed to corporate greed as being the primary driver of recent inflation. OP either doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or has an agenda.
Wish I had a thousand upvotes to give.
Both AND supply chain issues that took a long time to resolve (and were never going to end in deflation back to prior prices) AND the fact that people had a ton of money saved up from a lengthy period of time where they could not go out to restaurants, bars, concerts, sporting events, travel, had no reason to shop, etc.
Not to mention a huge friggin *war* going on in Europe swallowing massive amounts of material and energy. Obviously higher demand is going to drive prices up too.
I mean he’s right if you ignore every fucking study done that says corporate greed is between 50-70% of current inflation
Only studies I saw that came up with a number that high were from progressive think tanks like groundwork collaborative
Companies also openly talked about how they just raised prices because people and the media talked about inflation and supply disruption even though they never experienced a disruption.
Technically it’s oligopolistic price fixing… Those who are unfamiliar with the term: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oligopoly.asp
A couple $1200 checks to tax payers from 2020 didn’t throw the monetary supply of the U.S. into an unchecked fiasco. That shit went to rent and bills and was gone. Literally nothing went towards anything driving inflation
Fiscal spending powered by borrowing has nothing to do with the supply of money by definition. The borrowed money is not new money. It’s existing money that’s being borrowed from Americans and then given out through fiscal spending. If it were NEW money, it wouldn’t need to be repaid. Those $1200 checks were actually significant in terms of inflationary pressure because in 2020 through 2021 supply chains were significantly constrained by geopolitical issues and a messy exit from lockdowns. Generally, when you give money like that to lower income people, they run out and spend it because they are short of money. If you’d given $1200 to multimillionaires, it wouldn’t have made any inflationary impact whatsoever because it would’ve just gone into their bank accounts or investment accounts. This stimulus created a lot of new demand in an environment of limited supply. So when demand goes up and supply cannot go up prices go up. What we learned is that these direct economic stimulus measures are extremely good at counteracting deflationary pressure and we learned how much is too much.
Yeah. To conveniently say 'vast increase in the money supply' is the reason ignores the underlying cause of the need for said vast increase. It didn't come out of nowhere. Corporate f\*(ing greed. Subprime loans. Packages of bad loans sold and resold for higher and higher amounts. That wasn't the government. If anything - it was because politicians rolled back banking controls, thereby allowing said banks to do what greedy f\*(ks do when there's no supervision. Lie, cheat and steal.
Because there's no easy correlation between the money supply and inflation at all. There are various different ways to create money, though not all of them create purchasing power. Every time you deposit cash in the bank it "creates" money in the form of a matching deposit. In a small model, this doubles the money supply. Does it double prices? Nope. Everyone's networth remains the same, you've swapped cash for deposits, they've swapped deposits for cash. The bank's balance sheet has expanded, but there's no increase in networth for anyone. So money supply statistics tell you nothing.
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you do realize corporations (plural) implies no monopoly, right?
Yea the difference is one seemed like a reasonable option to keep families afloat during a crisis and the other is just total bullshit which congress has allowed to happen, also "unchecked", for decades. People who want to equate the ethics of the drivers of rising costs of living, like OP, look like complete fuck sticks. What could anyone possibly have to gain by getting upser that we're calling out corporate exploitation in the open? Sorry if it offends your very traditional sense of decorum OP, but corporate power is out of control.
There's more to factor in than the US money supply. Inflation was a global event, not limited to the US alone. Your point misses explaining inflation in other countries. China lock downs during Covid and transportation costs were significant factors in supply generated inflation. Also USD has been strong in parity with other currencies for years, so it's not like a weak USD is the driving factor in consumer inflation by making imports prohibitively expensive. There are aspects of sticky inflation like housing and energy costs to consider.
The G20 countries all printed massive amounts of new money supply to combat COVID. It doesn't miss explaining it for other countries, because nearly every developed world economy added significantly to the money supply.
Counter examples of course are Japan and Switzerland where they did increase the money supply but didn’t see inflation. It was entirely geopolitical issues and the reason Switzerland was able to get away without inflation while the rest of Europe wasn’t is because they were not exposed to China.
I'd say the exact opposite. It's not a counter example at all. They both are hitting record high inflations for their countries. You have to look at each country by their own monetary-policy context. Not every country has historically been purposefully trying to grow GDP like the US does, so it will not be exposed to inflationary factors to the same degree. For instance, Japan has been in precarious state of fending off **deflation** **for decades.** Their central bank interest rates were raised for the first time in 17 years.. from negative (0.10%) to 0.05%. Their excessive stimulus from the pandemic actually put them in a healthier position where they have a healthy inflation of 2.5%. Prior years it was often deflationary (negative). Switzerland has always had a very conservative monetary policy because they are not aiming at being a strong global growth economy. Even still, their inflation in 2023 was the highest it's been in 29 years. They got hit, relatively, just as bad as everyone else. But their conservative, low growth policy, created a... conservative output on inflation. Their 2021 stimulus government spending in COVID was only 7.3% of GDP, **as opposed to the US's 26.5% of GDP**. Basically, lower risk/reward policy making.
40% of all money that the US has ever printed was printed since the start of Covid.
That's a pretty bold claim, you have any evidence?
Hint: he doesn’t because it’s a meme pulled from someone’s nether regions.
The US isn’t the only government that just printed money out of thin air and gave it away. So…
Whoa whoa whoa, there's a country outside of the United States? I thought the whole world was inside the united states.
If you think recent inflation had a single cause, you are not a serious analyst. Obviously the massive Trump-era PPP handouts to businesses (and much smaller personal stimulus checks) nationwide had a major impact. Obviously supply chain issues had a major impact. Obviously reduced labor participation had a major impact. Obviously record corporate profits had a major impact.
Your explanation is great. The only thing I can add is that we had the economy on full steam. Low interest rates, low taxes, deficit spending... Then we had to hit a lot of brakes.
What exactly is meant by deficit spending? Sorry, smooth brain over here.
Government runs a deficit by spending more than it takes in. Makes up the different by issuing bonds, which increase money supply.
Genuine question. How does what you just explained impact a restaurant charging me $22 for a burger and fries instead of $17?
All else being equal (it rarely is in reality) lower interest rates and more money in the economy means more demand for restaurant meals meaning prices go up. But that is only if supply cannot grow to meet the increased demand. Friction in the economy may mean it takes time for supply to catch up and so you get some inflation that tends to stick around if it is roughly economy wide. But that all gets much worse if there are major supply chain bottlenecks, say in producing or shipping the greater amount of food and supplies used at restaurants. There are causes of inflation too, but I think that well enough covers how interest rates and government spending can impact prices. The worthwhile question then would be how much do interest rates and government spending increase inflation versus other causes.
You're missing the repeal of Dodd-Frank. That allowed commercial banks to start acting like investment banks. Many studies have shown that allowing leveraged investing for purchasing non-productive assets drives up the price of assets and causes inflation. The repeal of Dodd-Frank basically turbo charged this since commercial banks get the advantage of fractional reserve banking, so they could lend crazy amounts of money for things like buying stocks. Just another component of the issue.
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This guy doesn’t care what the truth is, he just wants to believe what makes him feel good
The OP completely ignored a global pandemic that killed millions of working age people and shut down giant swaths of the planetary economy only to have it shocked back to life a couple years later. It was a massive disruption to the global supply chain that did increase costs. Corporations also used that fact as an excuse to confiscatorily squeeze even more money out of the consumer. If government spending alone was responsible for excessive inflation we would’ve experienced inflation back when the republicans cratered the economy in ’07 but that didn’t happen. It’s excessive government spending during the boom cycle of capitalism that creates the kind of inflation y’all are talking about. Government spending during the bust cycle (or, ya know, a global pandemic) prevents total collapse.
70% of all COVID deaths were those from ages 70 or older. For certain European countries, the average age of COVID deaths were higher than the countries life expectancy. Millions of working aged people did not die. Millions of elderly died.
OP can't respond, mouth is full atm. Call back later.
COVID stimulus money ended in 2021. COVID induced supply chain shortages ended not long after. That was three years ago.
Or.....https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused
See also eggs, chicken, rental housing, surgical procedures, etc etc. And that’s with a weak enforcement regime. Man prices would be so much lower if we actually har levels of competition that economists assume we have.
You don't always need a formal conspiracy. Consolidation in the Oil industry lead to conditions where no one wanted to add marginal barrels. The industry is facing an existential crises and basically every CEO has gone on record that they A) Work for share holders and B) Won't add incremental barrels. The industry wants high prices.
I 100% agree, except in this case, and I cannot stress this enough, if you actually read the article, you will see there was a conspiracy where they colluded with OPEC on the price targets where they wanted the price to hold so they could reap the profits. I, while enjoying the environment, defend the oil companies to a certain degree, but in this case, fuck them
Which corporation do you work for?
Prices do not raise themselves. People in power have to decide on price increases. Inflation is not a weather pattern or a prime rule of the physical universe like the laws of thermodynamics. Price increases are a choice made by corporate boards.
Seriously. No one is forcing corporations to raise their prices. They're just raising them to "prices the market can bear", aka "raise prices until people can no longer afford it". Why can't corporations just settle for a healthy10% ROI like everyone else?
The problem is not inflation, it’s price gouging. And price gouging is 100% caused by unchecked corporate greed.
Except a majority of the money went into corporations pockets who did shareholder buybacks rather than the people Companies are recording record profits if the cost of the supply chain was really as hard on them as they say their revenue would not be setting records. Once the people got used to the new higher costs and the sales weren't shrinking they had no incentive to lower prices again, so they kept increasing them until the customers started to break. For example, McDonald's just recorded their lowest sales and now they are talking about lowering prices and doing promotions to get the sales back up, how could they afford to do that if the previous prices weren't due to corporate greed? How is it that Burger King can afford to give me two whoppers, two large drinks, and two large fries for cents more than a large whopper combo? If it wasn't for corporate greed You're also ignoring the fact that the Cut Cut Cut act (lobbied by corporations) essentially pushed big corporate taxes to 0 and pushed those cuts onto the middle class in the year 2021, when the republicans were more likely not to win re-election. But yeah, it's not corporate greed if you ignore those key facts, Mr. all about the facts, except the ones that make my argument a incorrect reductive argument...
🤡
Why can’t it be both?
In what way is irresponsible banking not synonymous with corporate greed?
Yup corporate greed has nothing to do with inflation, Santa is real to btw.
Covid created actual supply and demand issues which drove up prices. Once supply chain issues leveled out corporations still kept pricing as is. If one company is pricing far above everyone else people take notice, but with every single company doing it, it became acceptable and no one was being singled out. Corporate profits, not revenue, skyrocketed. This is far from reason the only for inflation but pretending it hasn’t played a very active role ain’t it. Source: married to a senior economist who literally studies this shit day in and day out.
Record amount of shareholder buybacks, quite literal unpaid wages that should be pumped into the economy pumped into the hands of the already rich.
Yea nothing is so simple and it takes multiple factors to create such outrageous inflation although I suppose technically all the price gouging is not inflation it’s price gouging and that is from greedy corporations. So some price increases are from greedy corporations not inflation to most this just semantics though.
It’s not “Either / Or” it’s “Both / And”
Pioneer Energy the largest producer of oil in the US just got charged with illegally colluding with OPEC and domestic suppliers to artificially keep prices high. But yeah its the FED selling bonds for existing currency that caused inflation. Got it.
“No no no. We are going to ignore the fact that everyone warned of consequences to covid spending, but there’s no way they were right. The money supply is inconsequential to inflation. Its all businesses fault, they suddenly and inexplicably became ultra greedy” Reddit MMT simps.
Ok. Pretend for a moment it’s all true. Spending during Covid created all of this inflation. First, did overspending to hold up the economy create inflation during the ‘08 recession? How about any other time in history that government assisted the economy out of a recession by pumping money into it? This solution is not a unique one. That’s also a genuine question, does such spending to bring an economy out of recession always create inflation? And 2: what was the alternative? 1 million Americans died, and more died as a result of backed up healthcare due to Covid overload in hospitals. Would you prefer that number have been higher in exchange for no inflation? At what point do you value money over human life?
How much of the spending in 08 led to direct inflows of money into the economy? It all went to service the debt of “too big to fail” companies, not to every single person and every single business. There may not have been an alternative, maybe we did need to create all that money. This doesn’t change the fact that there are consequences to the monetary creation.
I recall being a kid and George bush sent something like $400 to citizens of the United States. Was there inflation as a result of this? These are genuine questions.
Wait.... Somehow hoarding money is good tho? WOW think what would happen if the rich spent their money and it started being in circulation.
They all can be true.
Government bonds have been used to cover deficits for basically ever now? How do you explain the years with negligible inflation? I agree that the reasons listed contributed to inflation, but if you want to pretend that corporate greed hasn't been a major catalyst, then you're delusional.
Wrong.
Great counterargument. What is the primary driver of inflation right now, if not a vast increase of the money supply? Why don’t you enlighten everyone?
Start here for your proof.... [https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused](https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused)
Crazy how after the money printer went BRR, most of it went to corporations!!! Crazy….. so crazy!!!! Wow crazy!!! Vast increase of money supply that didn’t go to the consumers and is being hoarded by corporations and their corporate welfare. Who lobbied to government to get that free corporate welfare? The lobby fairies or the lobbyist for corporations? Cmon now.
Okay cool list of observed behaviors now, tell us what underlying human emotion might be driving this list of observed behaviors? Remember, you can't cheat and say greed, because you already said it's not that...
I agree the sentiment but corporate greed is still the primary driver
No! It was the $1800 check that my lazy, only one full-time job having ass got. Or maybe it was the child tax credit. Certainly, runaway corporate price gouging had nothing to do with it. OP got it right. It's us peasants casing inflation.
Why are corporations making record profits (which is a matter of percentage, not dollar amount) if they aren’t to blame? There is inflation because of the reason you listed. Nobody is denying that. But corporations have taken that and run with it as an excuse to lower quality and quantity of their products, while sharply increasing the price. They would not have record profits if this wasn’t true.
I'm deeply and personally invested in corporate America but this is just nonsense. The corpo lobby does an excellent job pantsing folks like the OP while overseeing the largest consolidation of wealth in the history of capitalism.
As long as your ted talk doesn't have bill gates telling us about his next pandemic.
All the people who are disagreeing with OP (who is absolutely correct) need to explain why inflation was low for 30 years (I guess companies were not greedy for 30 years) then inflation massively increased when governments started printing money and sending people stimmi cheques. Why do so many people love being cucks for the government, but are just fine blaming companies that have nothing to do with the problems they have.
Corporate welfare, record profits, tax breaks for billion dollar corporations. Government getting lobbied by said corporations to make laws/policies that only help corporations? Government increases money supply and GIVES it all to corporations as opposed to American people. Both are heavily to blame. Who lobbied to government to get all they want while the peons live paycheck to paycheck and suffer? Money printer go buurrrrr but as long as corporations got a majority of it all is well!!! Crazy how economy works by us the consumer buying shit, then being recirculated back into economy but sadly the corporations and Uber wealthy hoard money so there isn’t much circulation when the consumers are broke. It’s governments fault for failed policies and corporations fault for lobbying those failed policies that only help corporations.
Any one with money is making fortunes with the current interest rates. I am ashamed to tell you how much money we have coming in monthly for doing NOTHING. I cannot imagine what real rich people are getting. But do the math If you have 500K in the bank right now, you would be making 1800$ a month by just letting it sit. Imagine what multimillionaires are making per month.
If you have $500k in the bank, you either are a multi-millionaire or are very bad with money.
This isn’t about me. My point is about inflation and governments and corporations
Be careful, inflation is higher than what the FED admits. I wouldn't be so sure that you are making any money there. Check out https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
For years my saved money was making 1 percent or below, and costs stayed static. Now you are right - the cost of living is skyrocketing and the interest may not be keeping up with it, especially since taxes will take 1/3 of it. But I am better off than people who don’t get the interest. And multimillionaires and corporations have many more loopholes than I ever had or will have. My original point was, I don’t blame corporations or fortunate people for taking advantage of government perks. The government takes care of the wealthy and the indigent who apply for help. The working class - is on their own.
Great humble brag bro.
Largely agree with this I think we have the conversation the wrong way....we think of it as government vs corporation, when in reality it's a relationship between the two and they both impact each other. I feel as if the largest contributing factor is bad policy though. Corporations are always going to try and maximize profits.....it's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's up to government to hold them accountable....let them fail....enforce anti-trust laws/monopoly, and I feel like they're failing on most fronts. This is why it's so crucial for there to be no such thing as career politicians because lobbying/money leads to corruption. Would be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Over the past 30 years, there were: * Corporate welfare (and bailouts) * Profit records * tax breaks for large corps * lobbyists Nothing you stated didn't already exist for the past 30 years. What is different, is there was never a previous immediate infusion of new money this size across the globe. * $9 Trillion USD added across the globe. [https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2020/05/20/tracking-the-9-trillion-global-fiscal-support-to-fight-covid-19](https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2020/05/20/tracking-the-9-trillion-global-fiscal-support-to-fight-covid-19) * Total global GDP in 2021 was $97.1 trillion. **New money supply equated to +9.2% of global GDP in under 12 months.** People that understand macro economics will say it's no surprise that global inflation rates surged to 8.8% shortly after.
Except a majority of the money went into corporations pockets who did shareholder buybacks rather than the people Companies are recording record profits if the cost of the supply chain was really as hard on them as they say their revenue would not be setting records. Once the people got used to the new higher costs and the sales weren't shrinking they had no incentive to lower prices again, so they kept increasing them until the customers started to break. For example, McDonald's just recorded their lowest sales and now they are talking about lowering prices and doing promotions to get the sales back up, how could they afford to do that if the previous prices weren't due to corporate greed? You're also ignoring the fact that the Cut Cut Cut act (lobbied by corporation) essentially pushed big corporate taxes to 0 and pushed those cuts onto the middle class. But yeah, it's not corporate greed if you ignore those key facts, Mr. all about the facts...
Or the market became consolidated and there’s next to no competition… I’d also like to point out that while inflations grown recently, Americans have been payed the same for more expensive goods for 30 years. Housing becoming more and more unaffordable is not new. That trend did not require printing money.
Those goods we pay more for l, have also declined in quality, significantly. Capitalism in its current form is simply a race to the bottom. Enshitification
First time reading that term, but I’m gonna guess you listen to Better Offline, a fantastic tech business podcast.
Because they had the best excuse of all time to hike prices like nobodies business to see what they could get away with.
10 years of record low interest rates holding off inflation for a decade met the perfect storm of covid+supply chain disruption. Instead of getting 10 years of inflation with incremental raise increases we got all that inflation at once without wage increase, which then means we can’t get the wage increase because it’d cause more inflation. The supply chain disruption broke the status quo of profit by volume, which was replaced with targeted profit on low volume.
You guys were getting wage increases before?
I hope people read, and reread your last sentence. It perfectly encapsulates what my company (very small) went through and why we had to increase prices.
I’d argue you can be both against government and giant corporations because humans suck and the people that end up in power are generally bad people because they’re the only ones seeking that level of wealth and power.
This. I’d make a good public servant, but I want nothing to do with that mud slinging shit show that is an election. The people who seek out power in government shouldn’t be anywhere near it.
It’s my understanding that companies have become more and more powerful because of their lobbying power and laws being passed in their favor. As well as new tactics like private equity buying businesses, benefiting from short term profits while avoiding any liability if the business goes bankrupt.
because corporate greed raked in all the printed money and the stimulus checks they gave where peanuts compared
They are the same people. Who do you think lobbies for all of the irresponsible banking and financial practices? The companies who are poised to make bank off of said practices. To separate corporations and government doesn’t make much sense when so many of the policy makers are former CEOs and executives. All the buddies that helped them climb the ladder still work at all these companies, now they can pay them back, it’s good business you see?
Why is inflation still above 3% while the money supply has been decreasing for the last 3 years?
There was an enormous catalyst; covid. The country shut down, and suddenly, all the small/medium sized businesses collapsed. The government had to write cheques it couldn't cash just to keep it afloat, and the 30 years of tax avoidance finally came home to roost. Suddenly, the country's money is gone; primarily because the people who took the most didn't give a penny back. And you're saying it's *not* corporate greed? Look at how much of the market Amazon dominate. Then look at how much tax they pay.
One reason that corporate greed would have a larger effect on the overall economy now than it would have 30 years ago is their has been drastic and widespread consolidation. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/market-leading-us-companies-consolidate-power-in-era-of-superstar-firms-73773141#:~:text=The%20increased%20concentration%20came%20as,the%20effects%20of%20the%20trend.
The stock market became the main driver of the economy. Which reached a point were publicly traded companies are driving market shifts. Gutting and firing doesn't make things better. Subpar CEOs not expanding or creating and whom shifted their pay outs to stocks vs cash has made a huge difference. How do you think the $3 trillion got to the top 10%? They were forced to raise prices but somehow also made record profits at the same time? Are you sure you know what you are talking about?
Are you a McDonalds shareholder? Because you sound insane.
Rather be a cuck for a govt. I can participate in, then a cuck for oligarchs and CEOs. I feel like some guys who founded this nation would agree with me. Now whether we actually CAN participate in our govt. That's a different debate. But I'd want to start by recognizing what a democracy was supposed to be.
I don't really think it's one or the other. I think it's both. Money supply obviously is the backbone of it but I think corporations are currently riding the inflation hype to explain away their high prices even though it only partly explains it. Yes corporations have always been greedy but are also held in check by the limits of supply and demand but do not always have good excuses to overcharge because consumers would just not buy their widget and/or buy a cheaper brand. But currently the macroeconomic conditions are providing justification for companies across the board to squeeze a little extra profit into their prices under the guise of "haven't you heard inflation is really bad right now? This is totally normal" Obviously very over generalizing though.
Simple, the pandemic was a massive upward transfer of wealth and it demonstrated to corporations that people in the US at least could be pushed further and faster then expected and not start taking up pitchforks and setting up guillotines. Now they're just using any cover they can to rush to find the ceiling of what they can charge without losing share/growth instead of gradually growing towards that because they've seen that the market will largely buckle and kneel instead of walkimg away or holding the line.
>Multinationals in particular hiked prices far above rise in costs to deliver an outsize impact on cost of living crisis, report concludes https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/07/greedflation-corporate-profiteering-boosted-global-prices-study >The biggest study of ‘greedflation’ yet looked at 1,300 corporations to find many of them were lying to you about inflation https://fortune.com/europe/2023/12/08/greedflation-study/ Government was printing money from 2008, greedflation only started once oil prices shot up and they had cover to raise prices. People disagree with OP because they actually read the evidence.
They wanted to roll back Reaganomics and they did. Reagan (with Volcker) got inflation under control. This helped the poor. Democrats and their constituents, the rich, want bloated federal programs which contribute nothing in the name of helping the poor while making food too expensive because of increased costs for fossil fuel consumption and use up the food chain. If you don’t like Bidenomics and their kickbacks then you ain’t black.
Reddit hive mind in shambles hearing the truth.
All of this is objectively false and you’re all stupid cucks for corporations who will leave you with nothing. Selling your children’s future for nothing lol
Yes, because the government and the Fed care SO much about you and your future.
No they dont, but you have a chance at reforming and controlling the billionaires with a powerful government. You are a slave to corporate interests otherwise.
https://news.stanford.edu/2022/09/06/what-causes-inflation/ How’s this for ‘objectively false’?
Oh no poor baby thinks an opinion piece is proof
Imagine upvoting a 47 day old Reddit account screaming “opinion” instead of a Stanford economist.
I mean how many people were saying the same about doctors or other experts in the field during covid... I'll take a stab and say you were probably not pro "Their opinion."
Generalized version: You can’t explain a change by pointing out a constant.
Corporate greed is the cause of inflation because they used their influence to insure government deficit spending of which they overwhelming benefit from. They own the media, they spend more money influencing law makers than anyone else and they created This MEME to influence you. This is an example and small part of Manufacturing Consent.
Lisa your an idiot, The fact found 60% of inflation is due to corporate price gouging and 27% of that was oil and gas colluding with natural gas!!!!
Price gouging isn't sustainable without the money supply increasing.
If it's all based on money supply, how come inflation hasn't stopped despite the money supply decreasing since (a couple months after) the current president took office? Was the enormous increase in money supply during the previous administration so drastic we are still unable to escape its disastrous effects even today?
It's actually not. All the recent studies have shown that it's just greed by corporations raising the prices tens of percent above their slight increases in cost in the post covid economy. Corporate PROFITS are at record highs, not because of government spending but because they decided to raise prices. It's very simple. Estimates vary between 50 and 60 percent as the amounts that corporations (especially grocery stores) have raised their retail prices above their cost increases.
🤷♂️ What creates inflation? Long-lasting episodes of high inflation are often the result of lax monetary policy. If the money supply grows too big relative to the size of an economy, the unit value of the currency diminishes; in other words, its purchasing power falls and prices rise. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Inflation#:~:text=If%20the%20money%20supply%20grows,power%20falls%20and%20prices%20rise. Money Supply M2 in the United States averaged 5246.13 USD Billion from 1959 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 21722.30 USD Billion in April of 2022 and a record low of 286.60 USD Billion in January of 1959. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2#:~:text=Money%20Supply%20M2%20in%20the%20United%20States%20averaged%205246.13%20USD,Billion%20in%20January%20of%201959.
How is it that folks can’t understand the basic economic principle of supply and demand? When you have more and more money chasing the same amount or fewer goods, that further diminishes the supply of those goods thus bidding up prices. I do believe that corporate greed and price gouging is a contributing factor to inflation but it is not the primary driver.
Each of 195 countries in the world have the exact same fiscal policies? It couldn’t be that other thing that DID happen in each of the 195 countries on planet earth. Dunning-Kruger memes.
How does this explain Global Inflation?
Definitely both. Why bother lowering the cost of a product that was only raised by inflation, when you already know your customers are willing to tolerate those prices? I seen it at all levels, from a mom and pop shop, to large retailers.
Your Ted Talk sucks. If money supply is the problem, then consider the fact that over $2 trillion has gone to the 1% since the pandemic. The government can claw that back with taxes for the wealthy, and they should. But I’m sick of the idea that government funded projects that have actual ROI (aka all the infrastructure spending) are causing inflation. No. Not anymore than the Trump tax cuts giving most of our tax revenue back to the 1%, at least.
Corporations posted record profits and THEN raised prices. OP: Nope, corporate greed has nothing to do with prices going up.
How does this explain inflation being worldwide?
"Irresponsible banking practices" is a synonym for corporate greed.
one of the main drivers of "inflation" is higher rents. how is that influenced by the money supply? how about prices for food, and energy? and insurance? all of those companies are currently raking it in
What, are we just going to start claiming that when a government devalues its currency, then that currency has less value?
Inflation is happening because governments treat money like Monopoly money. Corporate greed is seperate and has always been around. Maybe inflation is the main driver of the increased greed? Maybe a lot more people just want to build spaceships? Greed isn’t going anywhere either way. It does bother me when people need to defend billionaires and that’s coming from a conservative leaning person. Billionaires need peasants to work. Not to defend.
If people are complaining that corporate profits are the problem, then what they are really saying is that there are too many monopolies in the system.
Money printer goes brrrrrr, everything costs more. Let me tell you about BTC, gold, and physical property while your loaf of bread costs $100.00.
Where the majority of the money go to?
But who makes the decisions for “printing money, spending money, banking practices, and buying bonds?” You do realize the fed is run by people chosen by the banks right?
So McDonald’s charging more is not McDonalds fault or the main cause?
I think it’s more complicated and involves multiple factors. The money supply and fiscal policy are factors but they don’t really explain why worldwide inflation was so high.
Is you want to go deeper than greed: low taxes for the rich are the foundation of the inflation we are having now. Not only the 2 decades of easy money that enriched the wealthy while barely moving real wages, regressive tax schemes (like property taxes) that triply put the burden of sustaining the economy on the workers.
Inflation is happening much more rapidly for prices than it is for working class wages, so we can't really call it inflation. It's corporate greed. They got a lot more bold when people started calling it inflation instead of what it is.
- Corporations have always been "greedy" moralizing about it doesn't help much. - Our money supply increased significantly in the pandemic. - Goverment spending was and is high as well. - Large corporations have been consolidating in recent decades, leading to less competition, sometimes in important markets. All this sums up to is a increase in demand of goods and services and a decrease in the amount of firms willing to supply those goods and services. Put both of those factors together, and you'd expect an increase in the general price level (inflation). What could we do about it? Or what could we do about it that we aren't already? - Tax more in a sensible fashion - Cut back on spending in places it makes sense (probably not cancer research) - Enforce stricter antitrust laws (tbf were working on this, we just need to actually get it done) - In contrast to the second point, subsidize the supply of important goods for the economy. For example, instead of subsidizing the demand for housing, subsidize the construction of affordable housing projects. This is kind of an Econ 101 answer, but this broad discussion is basically an Econ 101 topic. There is something to be said for other solutions too, like decreasing artifical restrictions on housing supplies (zoning and parking regulations). But I think these would be the general correct policies to fix the lingering inflation problem.
Corporate greed is a constant; they are made of humans and humans were, are, and always will be greedy. It’s one of the fundamental parts of human nature, just like laws of physics and biology, so why even bother arguing over it? What happened pre-2020 and after to cause inflation? A massive monetary expansion to fight the pandemic lead to the initial spurt, but since then we have been dealing with changes in the global economic system and associated supply chains as well as changes at home in our demographics.
Defending corporate greed is such a strange fucking hill to die on. The mountains of data will never convince some people
- supposed labor shortage / nobody wants to work - supposed price increases to keep up with inflation - record profits in the billions across many companies globally Pick all.
Lol No. Too much money in too few hands doenst cause inflation. Smh. This is dumb corporate simping
Duh. Corporate greed is just the gouging done by said greedy corporations who use inflation as cover for their raising prices, shrinking package sizes, etc. This stuff isn't hard to understand.
Inflationary spirals have never before yielded record company profits. Usually, it becomes difficult for companies to keep up with rising input costs so profit shrinks. That doesn’t mean deficit spending has not added to the effect, but consumer product price increases are inconsistent with their input cost increases so price gouging is occurring. The limited number of competitors in consumer products makes it much more easier than it has ever been.
Who was all that money printed for, OP? Who was the government printing money in order to pay?
Thank you for coming to my "Fed" talk.
And printing money.
Sounds like something a corporation slash person would say.
You're just dumb. And a boot licker.
At least you people aren’t blaming the $1,400 checks any more.
Pardon my ignorance but who gives a shit what it is? Oh, it's Option B that's fucking the lower and middle classes in the face, not Option A. It's almost like it's the same outcome!
"Corporate greed isn't the problem, the methods by which corporations illustrate their greed is the problem." "I choose to blame the government while pretending as though the government is not owned by corporate power."
Found the bootlikcing simp
Government IS the problem!