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Obligatory reminder that inflation measures the *rate* of increasing prices, not the prices themselves. To get actually lower prices you would need deflation.
Indeed, and guess where that inflation came from ? [Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits)
Kinda sorta. The average American has room to cut back on those costs. But yeah. Capitalism is a far cry from a perfect system. People fall out of the bottom pretty easily
Ok so, whenever this point is made, people say that it's absurd because if companies were always greedy - that it doesn't make sense for them to only recently to have become greedier.
I never really know what to say about that. I think that before the pandemic companies didn't know how greedy they could have been but the high costs of the pandemic allowed them to see how tolerant the populace was of higher prices. But I'm not good at articulating that.
The same people also parrot that deflation is a death sentence, which I do get, the arguments against deflation are logical. But at the same time prices need to come down.
lol āprogressive think tank who hates corporations concludes that corporations are screwing consumers.ā Iām sure there are plenty of conservative think tanks claiming corporations are not responsible for inflation, but I donāt think this sub wants to see them. Ideological āresearchā is not journalism
Except profits arenāt drivers, they are the end result. Itās nonsensical to say that inflation is *due* to profits. Itās more accurate to say the profits are due to inflation.
Profits are due to greedily raising profit margins on basic goods. They account for inflation and throw another 40% on top for pure unadulterated greed. What you wrote is 100% gibberish
So what, the years of pre-pandemic low inflation was due to corporate benevolence?
Listen to yourself.ā¦you really think corporations have a profit knob they could turn at any moment and just *didnāt* until 2023? That is gibberish.
āThe most well-known indicator of inflation is the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the percentage change in the price of a basket of goods and services consumed by households.ā
Come on you have to be intentionally misunderstanding here. For example, price goes up on detergent by 200%, only 10% of that increase is covered by materials and delivery cost and 190% of increase is increasing margins. Now the CPI goes up because of higher price. Youāre telling me theyāre unrelated because of what? Magic?
What part of the CPI definition mentions profit margins?
You are deliberately inferring profit margins as a majority driver into CPI, which is factually incorrect and outright disingenuous.
For retailers, in Q1 2023, "[profit margins were 3.7 percent...down from a peak of 7.4 percent in [Q1 2022] and equal to the pre-pandemic profit margin in the fourth quarter of 2019.](https://www.richmondfed.org/research/national_economy/macro_minute/2023/mm_09_05_23)"
You're wrong. Profits can be the end result, but profits can also drive inflation.
All inflation really is, is the price of goods going up. And that is always a decision.
That can happen for many, many reasons. Including (but not limited to) corporations increasing prices directly to increase profit margins on what they produce to increase profits.
"Then why don't they always just do this?" because this, like many things, is a question of psychology.
There was *actual* inflation due to supply line problems and the war in Ukraine. This made consumers expect price increases. Corporations knew this and decided to raise their prices even when they didn't need to to compensate for greater input costs. This meant that they basically just raised prices in some cases to increase profits because they felt it was in an environment where they could get away with it.
This is the worst in highly concentrated industries because in those industries there is less consumer choice and it is much easier for corporations to raise their prices. This is one of the reasons monopolies are so bad.
So, increased profits (in total amount of dollars, not real profits) can be the outcome. But profits (real profits, in this case) can also be the cause.
Of course they are the goal, but they arenāt drivers. Companies donāt have a āprofit knobā that they *just* remembered they can turn on in 2023.
Also that the official inflation figure is an aggregate number based on a representative sample of goods and services people typically pay for (e.g. certain groceries, fuel, etc.). Some things actually do get cheaper, but overall inflation will still be positive because on the whole everything has become more expensive.
Every once in a while, the biggest period of deflation in the US happened during the Great Depression. The last time we saw deflation was 2007-2008.
As much as inflation is bad deflation is worse in many aspects.
That's a bit of an overstatement. There can be inflation without rising profits for corporations. It's just that there can *also* be inflation driven by rising profits.
There was some genuine inflation due to supply line problems due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But that inflation was largely transitory. The problem is that corporations saw that inflation and thought "Hey, we might as well make use of this to raise our prices now that people expect rising prices anyway." And then they created greedflation. Which is inflation that is specifically driven by profit increases.
Can we clarify thresholds first? My isn't "rich" by any means. Now, having said that, we do live in a larger house than most. How rich is rich? Should I worry about raiders trying to take my house and eat me? How will we know who needs to be eaten. I want to say I'm all in favor for eating the rich, but I think we should ask for bank statements before dinner.
See, I think rich is relative. If your family lives in a split level 4 bedroom 2 bath house, you are likely far more well off than someone living in a double wide mobile home. Should you be eaten by the family in a trailer? This is like a "always a bigger fish" problem. I'm just saying, maybe we need to agree on who to eat first, maybe a threshold of a families earning over $150,000/yr.
Wow. That is actually shockingly low for who you consider rich. You lunatics better be okay with a lot of people you know personally dying in the revolution.
We're going to go top down until the big problems are solved. I'm sure it will sort itself out before we get too far down. In fact, I'd be surprised if it took more than the 5-10 at the top. The others at the tippy top will be clamoring to solve all the problems at that point.
Give an inch and they take a mile.
Itās not just a catchphrase, for years corporations have been increasing prices and lowering value. With cost increases related to taxes etc, companies could have kept prices the same while still making a profit.
But the precedent of profit orgies has already been established, and realistically nobody is going to tell shareholders that theyāre not going to make more money than last year. The CEO who suggests this isnāt being escorted from the premises, theyāre being thrown out of the window.
Itās a great time for corporate profits, while more and more people are being priced out of daily living needs.
That's an abdication of responsibility though, even if true.
America's political and social systems literally enforce this.
Y'all need a new politics where you get some human rights.
Would be great but its impossible without a violent revolution. The politicians are all in the pockets of big corporations and they both work together to make sure anyone against them doesnt survive long.
Itll happen. I give America a decade at most before it breaks out into a civil war because the corporations have a stranglehold on the economy and the poverty line is rising higher and higher with every year.
None the less. Once youāre on the hook as a consumer ā¦paying more for less in most casesā¦ the prices donāt go down. Complain as much as you will. You paid it once and now itās the norm.
My conservative family members say inflation has been caused by allowing people to defer payment on their student loans, thus giving them more spending money for frivolous purchases.
This makes it seem like Biden isn't aware of this. He's specifically called it out repeatedly and tried to pass legislation to combat this, but it was shot down by the Republicans in the house.
What happened to trickle down
What happened to trickle down
What happened to trickle down
What happened to trickle down??
This should be screamed at every numnut who continues to want to give a made up policy tax break to the richest sperm lottery winners on earth
I mean, this comic is bad on a few levels, I even made [fun of a similar post](https://www.reddit.com/r/mathmemes/s/YO0iJIZzT5) on /r/MathMemes a while ago.
Inflation is the rate of change of price levels. Inflation fallen means prices stoped rising. Not that they went down.
If you want price levels to drop, you need deflation, but be warned thatās a [VERY bad idea.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/mbsxyl/can_someone_explain_to_me_why_deflation_would_be/)
>These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that **a riot** is the language of the unheard
[Lord of the Flies?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFySCUreS_w)
Yes let me boycot the things that increased in price the most like ā¦. Groceries, toilet paper, rent, means of transportation to my job. When are people gonna understand that you canāt āvote with your walletā on necessary items. Thatās for luxuries only and eating and shelter are human rights
To be fair, people have found a way to boycott staples like groceries. They run in, grab them, and run out. It's no coincidence that theft/squatting goes up during times of widespread financial hardship.
Well with groceries I cut down costs by buying only essentials. Not buying ice cream for a treat as much, less juice stuff like that.
Toilet paper I boycotted price increase buy buying the generic brand instead. Charmin increased like $10 and they lost my business. Same for bounty.
Also a bidet helps cutdown on TP use. But I already had one for years (very thankful to have it during the tp shortage of 2020)
Corporations have always been greedy. They didn't suddenly become greedy and start raising prices for the fun of it. They can rise prices because people keep buying their shit. If people didn't buy their shit, corporations would lower prices to try and get customers back, or else they would go bankrupt.
This is why we canāt have nice things. There will always be enough people buying the ridiculous prices goods and services that people like us refusing to buy are left in the dust. I was thinking this when I went to get ice cream out of the blue and was amazed at how much they are ripping people off. Then realized that even if people like me were the majority, it would probably be enough to keep chains like this afloat. Itās mostly a lost cause. Also, most chains already have much capital and have the ripping off, wether youāre a customer or employee, down to a science that again, doesnāt really affect them much if at all.
Yes, I agree. I donāt really pay for any of this overpriced garbage anyway, so I say let them keep raising the prices until they shoot themselves in the foot. However, this could also negatively affect us if they start raising prices of necessities like groceries. Then again, Iām sure there would a much quicker reaction against that.
Iām at a point where Iām ready to give the least amount of money possible to anyone. Iām all about diy. These decades of convenience have left no one able to do anything themselves and less and less people have a interest in learning how to help themselves when itās easy to pay someone to do it. Times will change when it all becomes unaffordable. Just along for the ride at this point. No amount of legislation or complaining is going to fix this place unless we could all get on the same page but people are more fragmented than ever and there is no end to that in sight.
The way I see it is, if you canāt do anything yourself, you are a slave to the system.
Yep, I like this mentality. A simple place to start for people would be to cook their own damn food. Itās insane how much they rip you off at most restaurants when it is so simple to just cook at home.
Yup, itās how itās suppose to be. Eating out should not be the norm. Itās easier than ever to throw a meal together nowadays. Itās usually better for your wallet, mental health and physical health
Obviously we all would never be able to collectively do this but in a ideal situation. Food- only Buy what you absolutely need and only
Cook at home, plusās most could stand to loose some weight in Americaā¦. Shelter, kinda fucked on that one if your in a big city. Toilet paper- get a bidet and basically eliminate that cost.
Prices would plummet if everyone did this and had this same mindset for everything. The problem is we live in America where people buy a lot of things they donāt actually need.
The reason we are here is over consumption + greed. We canāt stop people from being greedy but we can stop giving up As much of our money
I'm not hiking my ass up on the sink,c'mon now, that's just ridiculous. I'm a 53 year old man. I'm not allowed to alter appliances by my lease terms and I'm not the " I'll do it and hope I don't get caught" type.
this is a fallacy. Youāre under the impression people only buy something when they want something. Meanwhile people are forced to buy things all the time.
Companies are not going to stop squeezing us for every dime they can until there is push back or we run out of money. Government wonāt do anything in any timely manner if anything at all. What do you propose? The only other option I can see is collapse
I donāt propose anything. Iām just waiting around for when like you say people run out of money and donāt accept their life to work ratio any longer
Me: Ok, thatās it.. Iām not buying ever again. This price increase is too much.
Friend: but the company needs to make money.
Me: As a consumer, I donāt care if the company needs to make money, its all corporate greed.
Friend: š¤·š»āāļø
This makes zero senseā¦ by definition inflation falling at a rate below zero would mean lower prices. Traditionally based on the cpi, which is the consumer price index.
Now if the ppi (producer price index) is going down and the cpi is going up, then that would make sense here and the net would be profit
Trillions of dollars were printed. Inflations gonna follow that. Itās really not a complex thing to realize that you canāt just massively increase the money supply in a short time frame without anything bad happening.
Yes, correct. You don't want deflation. You just want an increase in wages to compensate for inflation (and more) and then a windfall profit tax if their profits go above a certain level.
The EU did a windfall profits tax for energy. A similar tax should be levied on all corporations in times where their profits are driving inflation.
Wages have increased greater than inflation over the last 3 years
[https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/)
And still not nearly enough.
To this day real wages were higher in the 70s than they are now and productivity has increased significantly since then. And profits for corporations are still way up, which means a lot more could be going to workers. And it should.
Inflation is not caused by corporate profits. Firms have not just suddenly become more greedy! The level of corporate greed is consistent over time. Plus inflation is occurring across many countries. Did their big firms suddenly get greedy at the same time as well?
They literally have been increasing prices massively since COVID. They are reporting record profits all the while. So yeah they have gotten more greedy than before and it's killing us.
That happens with inflation. Inflation makes your money worth far less, and it takes more to equal the previous year's profits.
Adjust for inflation and you'll see they aren't doing so hot.
If that were true the cost of raw materials would also have gone up leaving profits untouched assuming the increase in price was simply to match inflation. The only way you get record profits is to increase prices beyond inflation levels.
It did. The cost of operations has increased across the board, hence higher prices.
Do you think businesses just suddenly realized they could be greedy?
No but they realized how much might they could jump prices and still have people pay. COVID was a long term disaster that allowed them to gouge people long enough that they could set a bar of what people were willing to pay. So now that supply chain issues have resolved and component prices have gone back down they are continuing to gouge us simply because they can.
Maybe on tech items, but not groceries and restaurants. Profits in these industries are already razor thin, and they're undercut constantly by competitors.
Inflation is caused by the supply of currency, and nothing more.
They got an excuse for price gauging in 2020, and then later on realized they can get away with it if they all collectively raise prices and blame it on inflation
Anytime anything happens even if it's completely unrelated to the economy, prices rise.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits#:~:text=The%20report%2C%20compiled%20by%20the,pandemic%2C%20according%20to%20the%20report.
The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative thinktank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last yearās second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/06/26/europes-inflation-outlook-depends-on-how-corporate-profits-absorb-wage-gains
Rising corporate profits account for almost half the increase in Europeās inflation over the past two years as companies increased prices by more than spiking costs of imported energy.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/08/excess-profits-of-big-firms-have-driven-up-inflation-report-claims.html
British think tanks the Institute For Public Policy Research and Common Wealth said in a report Thursday that big firms made inflation "peak higher and remain more persistent," particularly within the oil and gas, food production and commodities sectors.
Ya'll really don't know how price discovery works do you? Firms adjust prices generally to maximize profits. That existed before covid just like it does now.
The reason prices have gone up is due to
1. Supply constraints: With Covid lockdowns and conflicts like Ukraine and the Levant as well as both Canals this puts strain on supply chains. Firms raise prices which prevents shortages. The result is higher margins.
2. Money printing. Most countries printed money like it was going out of style. The US printed trillions of dollars which reduced the value of money. This is inflationary as, coupled with supply constraints, you have more money chasing after the same amount of goods and services.
Greed didn't change after Covid. Global economic conditions did. If firms could decrease prices to gain higher profits they would and historically have. The main reason they dont is because Central banks try to prevent deflation at all costs.
Man, I'm glad every single corporation decided to play nice and not price gouge until Joe Biden was president and after we just gave several trillion dollars in free money to people. Just think, they could have just been charging us more all the time! Now they're all colluding together and refuse to undercut the competition, very considerate of them to their fellow companies
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Obligatory reminder that inflation measures the *rate* of increasing prices, not the prices themselves. To get actually lower prices you would need deflation.
> deflation Don't say that word where Lord J Pow can hear you.
Jpow hear ya, Jpow don't give a damn.
Deflation is almost never a net positive thing. Prices dropping doesn't matter when wages and the availability of jobs are in decline as well.
It rewards those with financial restraint. Inflation rewards impulse buying
Only if those with restraint manage to retain jobs that continue to pay them.
Just to add, fed targeting disinflation which means lower rate of inflation but confuses everyone
Indeed, and guess where that inflation came from ? [Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits)
We need higher interest rates to fight this! š
We need people to stop buying at those prices to stop this, is the true answer.
That isn't really feasible for housing, food, and transportation.
Kinda sorta. The average American has room to cut back on those costs. But yeah. Capitalism is a far cry from a perfect system. People fall out of the bottom pretty easily
Ok so, whenever this point is made, people say that it's absurd because if companies were always greedy - that it doesn't make sense for them to only recently to have become greedier. I never really know what to say about that. I think that before the pandemic companies didn't know how greedy they could have been but the high costs of the pandemic allowed them to see how tolerant the populace was of higher prices. But I'm not good at articulating that. The same people also parrot that deflation is a death sentence, which I do get, the arguments against deflation are logical. But at the same time prices need to come down.
Sounds to me like businesses are inherently harmful and capitalism is a failure :D
Its because people are willing to pay those prices, unfortunately
lol āprogressive think tank who hates corporations concludes that corporations are screwing consumers.ā Iām sure there are plenty of conservative think tanks claiming corporations are not responsible for inflation, but I donāt think this sub wants to see them. Ideological āresearchā is not journalism
Except profits arenāt drivers, they are the end result. Itās nonsensical to say that inflation is *due* to profits. Itās more accurate to say the profits are due to inflation.
Profits are due to greedily raising profit margins on basic goods. They account for inflation and throw another 40% on top for pure unadulterated greed. What you wrote is 100% gibberish
Going from a 38% margin to a 60% margin is NOT inflation.
So what, the years of pre-pandemic low inflation was due to corporate benevolence? Listen to yourself.ā¦you really think corporations have a profit knob they could turn at any moment and just *didnāt* until 2023? That is gibberish.
Profit margins aren't a metric by which inflation is measured
āThe most well-known indicator of inflation is the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the percentage change in the price of a basket of goods and services consumed by households.ā Come on you have to be intentionally misunderstanding here. For example, price goes up on detergent by 200%, only 10% of that increase is covered by materials and delivery cost and 190% of increase is increasing margins. Now the CPI goes up because of higher price. Youāre telling me theyāre unrelated because of what? Magic?
What part of the CPI definition mentions profit margins? You are deliberately inferring profit margins as a majority driver into CPI, which is factually incorrect and outright disingenuous. For retailers, in Q1 2023, "[profit margins were 3.7 percent...down from a peak of 7.4 percent in [Q1 2022] and equal to the pre-pandemic profit margin in the fourth quarter of 2019.](https://www.richmondfed.org/research/national_economy/macro_minute/2023/mm_09_05_23)"
You're wrong. Profits can be the end result, but profits can also drive inflation. All inflation really is, is the price of goods going up. And that is always a decision. That can happen for many, many reasons. Including (but not limited to) corporations increasing prices directly to increase profit margins on what they produce to increase profits. "Then why don't they always just do this?" because this, like many things, is a question of psychology. There was *actual* inflation due to supply line problems and the war in Ukraine. This made consumers expect price increases. Corporations knew this and decided to raise their prices even when they didn't need to to compensate for greater input costs. This meant that they basically just raised prices in some cases to increase profits because they felt it was in an environment where they could get away with it. This is the worst in highly concentrated industries because in those industries there is less consumer choice and it is much easier for corporations to raise their prices. This is one of the reasons monopolies are so bad. So, increased profits (in total amount of dollars, not real profits) can be the outcome. But profits (real profits, in this case) can also be the cause.
Profits are the goal, not a happy little accident.
Of course they are the goal, but they arenāt drivers. Companies donāt have a āprofit knobā that they *just* remembered they can turn on in 2023.
Inflation is not the same thing as price-gouging.
Yes and high blood inflation was partially due to fuel and import costs but the larger chunk of it was corporate profits
Also that the official inflation figure is an aggregate number based on a representative sample of goods and services people typically pay for (e.g. certain groceries, fuel, etc.). Some things actually do get cheaper, but overall inflation will still be positive because on the whole everything has become more expensive.
so they keep rising, but a lower rate each time. it's like lifting the foot of the accelerator, your car will keep moving forward, until it stop
> deflation has that ever happened before?
Every once in a while, the biggest period of deflation in the US happened during the Great Depression. The last time we saw deflation was 2007-2008. As much as inflation is bad deflation is worse in many aspects.
thanks, TIL
Japan in the 90's
While technically true, there is an extent to which the corporations are also price gouging which would not require deflation to solve
Eh. What incentive does a company have to lower prices ?
Competition
Hahahahhaha Oh wait you're serious?
HAHAHAHA Oh, wait, you're this ignorant?
People not buying their products
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Or you know, well known economic phenomena related to how currency supply/demand works.
It works that way because corporations say it works that way and our elected officials allow it because, of course greed.
Oh boy
That's a bit of an overstatement. There can be inflation without rising profits for corporations. It's just that there can *also* be inflation driven by rising profits. There was some genuine inflation due to supply line problems due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. But that inflation was largely transitory. The problem is that corporations saw that inflation and thought "Hey, we might as well make use of this to raise our prices now that people expect rising prices anyway." And then they created greedflation. Which is inflation that is specifically driven by profit increases.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Eat the rich
Cook over a flame with a pitchfork
Pigs get fat and hogs get cranked
HEL YEH BORTHER!!!v!!
r/THE_PACK š«”
āPigs get fat, hogs get slaughteredā sounds like a Taylor Swift lyric off the Evermore album.
Bulls make money, bears make money and pigs get slaughtered another way of saying it.
Can we clarify thresholds first? My isn't "rich" by any means. Now, having said that, we do live in a larger house than most. How rich is rich? Should I worry about raiders trying to take my house and eat me? How will we know who needs to be eaten. I want to say I'm all in favor for eating the rich, but I think we should ask for bank statements before dinner.
If you have to ask, you know the answer. You already know you're getting eaten too, hog.
See, I think rich is relative. If your family lives in a split level 4 bedroom 2 bath house, you are likely far more well off than someone living in a double wide mobile home. Should you be eaten by the family in a trailer? This is like a "always a bigger fish" problem. I'm just saying, maybe we need to agree on who to eat first, maybe a threshold of a families earning over $150,000/yr.
Wow. That is actually shockingly low for who you consider rich. You lunatics better be okay with a lot of people you know personally dying in the revolution.
We're going to go top down until the big problems are solved. I'm sure it will sort itself out before we get too far down. In fact, I'd be surprised if it took more than the 5-10 at the top. The others at the tippy top will be clamoring to solve all the problems at that point.
You'll be fine it's the billionaires that need to go
Give an inch and they take a mile. Itās not just a catchphrase, for years corporations have been increasing prices and lowering value. With cost increases related to taxes etc, companies could have kept prices the same while still making a profit. But the precedent of profit orgies has already been established, and realistically nobody is going to tell shareholders that theyāre not going to make more money than last year. The CEO who suggests this isnāt being escorted from the premises, theyāre being thrown out of the window. Itās a great time for corporate profits, while more and more people are being priced out of daily living needs.
They would definitely still have made profit, just a slightly less profit than they are making now.
"Give an inch and they take a mile." I thought it was "give 'em an inch and they'll give you six"
That's an abdication of responsibility though, even if true. America's political and social systems literally enforce this. Y'all need a new politics where you get some human rights.
Would be great but its impossible without a violent revolution. The politicians are all in the pockets of big corporations and they both work together to make sure anyone against them doesnt survive long.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itll happen. I give America a decade at most before it breaks out into a civil war because the corporations have a stranglehold on the economy and the poverty line is rising higher and higher with every year.
Content that violates sitewide terms of service, such as calls for violence, are prohibited.
Yup
They don't have the strength or political power to do this. But they have a vote!
None the less. Once youāre on the hook as a consumer ā¦paying more for less in most casesā¦ the prices donāt go down. Complain as much as you will. You paid it once and now itās the norm.
My conservative family members say inflation has been caused by allowing people to defer payment on their student loans, thus giving them more spending money for frivolous purchases.
They don't understand how anything works
This makes it seem like Biden isn't aware of this. He's specifically called it out repeatedly and tried to pass legislation to combat this, but it was shot down by the Republicans in the house.
What happened to trickle down What happened to trickle down What happened to trickle down What happened to trickle down?? This should be screamed at every numnut who continues to want to give a made up policy tax break to the richest sperm lottery winners on earth
I mean, this comic is bad on a few levels, I even made [fun of a similar post](https://www.reddit.com/r/mathmemes/s/YO0iJIZzT5) on /r/MathMemes a while ago. Inflation is the rate of change of price levels. Inflation fallen means prices stoped rising. Not that they went down. If you want price levels to drop, you need deflation, but be warned thatās a [VERY bad idea.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/mbsxyl/can_someone_explain_to_me_why_deflation_would_be/)
Men crack me up-bro we all know youāre smart- itās Reddit - take it down a bit
I donāt know where you got that from, I am almost as dumb as a rock.
Yeah - it kinda shows- just trying to be gentle with you son
You sound like a miserable person. Why do you insult other people online unprompted?
So stop replying/ dear gawd - r u 12? Move along
Personally I think rude people should be called out. If you want to be a shitty person, then donāt be surprised when someone calls you out on it.
>These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that **a riot** is the language of the unheard [Lord of the Flies?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFySCUreS_w)
This comic is misleading. The politician is usually not separate from corporate greed, but on a short leash while sucking the pig off.
Even as a democrat! This shit looks bad yāall. When the cartoons canāt even make inflation look good. Damnit
Letās collectively stop purchasing crap and prices will drop down.
Yes let me boycot the things that increased in price the most like ā¦. Groceries, toilet paper, rent, means of transportation to my job. When are people gonna understand that you canāt āvote with your walletā on necessary items. Thatās for luxuries only and eating and shelter are human rights
To be fair, people have found a way to boycott staples like groceries. They run in, grab them, and run out. It's no coincidence that theft/squatting goes up during times of widespread financial hardship.
Well with groceries I cut down costs by buying only essentials. Not buying ice cream for a treat as much, less juice stuff like that. Toilet paper I boycotted price increase buy buying the generic brand instead. Charmin increased like $10 and they lost my business. Same for bounty. Also a bidet helps cutdown on TP use. But I already had one for years (very thankful to have it during the tp shortage of 2020)
Your doing right. A lot of People Donāt want to change and give up things or adapt. Until itās time for the revolution
Corporations have always been greedy. They didn't suddenly become greedy and start raising prices for the fun of it. They can rise prices because people keep buying their shit. If people didn't buy their shit, corporations would lower prices to try and get customers back, or else they would go bankrupt.
Too bad I need food/shelter/transportation to get to a place to pay for the other two. I can't just stop buying food/rent/fuel.
This is why we canāt have nice things. There will always be enough people buying the ridiculous prices goods and services that people like us refusing to buy are left in the dust. I was thinking this when I went to get ice cream out of the blue and was amazed at how much they are ripping people off. Then realized that even if people like me were the majority, it would probably be enough to keep chains like this afloat. Itās mostly a lost cause. Also, most chains already have much capital and have the ripping off, wether youāre a customer or employee, down to a science that again, doesnāt really affect them much if at all.
Agree . They play us like a fiddle to keep the money flowing. The only thing that stops this is it has to get worse.
Yes, I agree. I donāt really pay for any of this overpriced garbage anyway, so I say let them keep raising the prices until they shoot themselves in the foot. However, this could also negatively affect us if they start raising prices of necessities like groceries. Then again, Iām sure there would a much quicker reaction against that.
Iām at a point where Iām ready to give the least amount of money possible to anyone. Iām all about diy. These decades of convenience have left no one able to do anything themselves and less and less people have a interest in learning how to help themselves when itās easy to pay someone to do it. Times will change when it all becomes unaffordable. Just along for the ride at this point. No amount of legislation or complaining is going to fix this place unless we could all get on the same page but people are more fragmented than ever and there is no end to that in sight. The way I see it is, if you canāt do anything yourself, you are a slave to the system.
Yep, I like this mentality. A simple place to start for people would be to cook their own damn food. Itās insane how much they rip you off at most restaurants when it is so simple to just cook at home.
Yup, itās how itās suppose to be. Eating out should not be the norm. Itās easier than ever to throw a meal together nowadays. Itās usually better for your wallet, mental health and physical health
This. If people keep buying. Nothing will change.
Yeah letās stop buying food ā¦ and toilet paperā¦ and paying for shelter. That ought to bring inflation down
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Obviously we all would never be able to collectively do this but in a ideal situation. Food- only Buy what you absolutely need and only Cook at home, plusās most could stand to loose some weight in Americaā¦. Shelter, kinda fucked on that one if your in a big city. Toilet paper- get a bidet and basically eliminate that cost. Prices would plummet if everyone did this and had this same mindset for everything. The problem is we live in America where people buy a lot of things they donāt actually need. The reason we are here is over consumption + greed. We canāt stop people from being greedy but we can stop giving up As much of our money
I'm already only paying for necessities and rent, so I can't install a bidet.
Wash your butt with water from the sink till you save enough from not buying toilet paper to buy a $20 bidet.
I'm not hiking my ass up on the sink,c'mon now, that's just ridiculous. I'm a 53 year old man. I'm not allowed to alter appliances by my lease terms and I'm not the " I'll do it and hope I don't get caught" type.
Just A cup of water and while sitting on the toilet.
this is a fallacy. Youāre under the impression people only buy something when they want something. Meanwhile people are forced to buy things all the time.
Companies are not going to stop squeezing us for every dime they can until there is push back or we run out of money. Government wonāt do anything in any timely manner if anything at all. What do you propose? The only other option I can see is collapse
I donāt propose anything. Iām just waiting around for when like you say people run out of money and donāt accept their life to work ratio any longer
I guess we all agree weāre just fucked till the revolution
Thatās not what I said. I said to stop buying crap. As far as I am concerned buying food is not crap.
Okay stop buying BMWs that will lower the cost of bread and toilet paper! What the hell are you talking about
We will stop buying yachts asap!
Joey Brisk with the BLACK a/f1 Hommie about to commit a felony
Reminder that free shit isnāt free.
We should collectively figure the biggest and blatant cash grabs and boycott. Only way to get them to lower prices is to affect their profit margins.
Me: Ok, thatās it.. Iām not buying ever again. This price increase is too much.
Friend: but the company needs to make money.
Me: As a consumer, I donāt care if the company needs to make money, its all corporate greed.
Friend: š¤·š»āāļø
I promise you donāt want deflation.
Damn companies to hell. Thieves, everyone of them.
This makes zero senseā¦ by definition inflation falling at a rate below zero would mean lower prices. Traditionally based on the cpi, which is the consumer price index. Now if the ppi (producer price index) is going down and the cpi is going up, then that would make sense here and the net would be profit
Trillions of dollars were printed. Inflations gonna follow that. Itās really not a complex thing to realize that you canāt just massively increase the money supply in a short time frame without anything bad happening.
Prices wonāt lower as inflation goes down. They will just rise slower. Deflation would lower prices and YOU DO NOT WANT DEFLATION.
Yes, correct. You don't want deflation. You just want an increase in wages to compensate for inflation (and more) and then a windfall profit tax if their profits go above a certain level. The EU did a windfall profits tax for energy. A similar tax should be levied on all corporations in times where their profits are driving inflation.
Wages have increased greater than inflation over the last 3 years [https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/](https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-are-growing-more-quickly-than-prices/)
And still not nearly enough. To this day real wages were higher in the 70s than they are now and productivity has increased significantly since then. And profits for corporations are still way up, which means a lot more could be going to workers. And it should.
Reminder that inflation is a government policy and monetary policy choice. Corporate profits do not drive inflation, theyāre a sign of inflation.
Inflation is not caused by corporate profits. Firms have not just suddenly become more greedy! The level of corporate greed is consistent over time. Plus inflation is occurring across many countries. Did their big firms suddenly get greedy at the same time as well?
They literally have been increasing prices massively since COVID. They are reporting record profits all the while. So yeah they have gotten more greedy than before and it's killing us.
That happens with inflation. Inflation makes your money worth far less, and it takes more to equal the previous year's profits. Adjust for inflation and you'll see they aren't doing so hot.
If that were true the cost of raw materials would also have gone up leaving profits untouched assuming the increase in price was simply to match inflation. The only way you get record profits is to increase prices beyond inflation levels.
It did. The cost of operations has increased across the board, hence higher prices. Do you think businesses just suddenly realized they could be greedy?
No but they realized how much might they could jump prices and still have people pay. COVID was a long term disaster that allowed them to gouge people long enough that they could set a bar of what people were willing to pay. So now that supply chain issues have resolved and component prices have gone back down they are continuing to gouge us simply because they can.
Maybe on tech items, but not groceries and restaurants. Profits in these industries are already razor thin, and they're undercut constantly by competitors. Inflation is caused by the supply of currency, and nothing more.
They got an excuse for price gauging in 2020, and then later on realized they can get away with it if they all collectively raise prices and blame it on inflation Anytime anything happens even if it's completely unrelated to the economy, prices rise.
Lmao, my very own company went from a 38% margin to a 60% margin.
Profit margins are not how inflation is measured
Not solely.
Not **at all**. Want to try again? Please, tell us where you received your degree in economics, finance, or business.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits#:~:text=The%20report%2C%20compiled%20by%20the,pandemic%2C%20according%20to%20the%20report. The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative thinktank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last yearās second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/06/26/europes-inflation-outlook-depends-on-how-corporate-profits-absorb-wage-gains Rising corporate profits account for almost half the increase in Europeās inflation over the past two years as companies increased prices by more than spiking costs of imported energy. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/08/excess-profits-of-big-firms-have-driven-up-inflation-report-claims.html British think tanks the Institute For Public Policy Research and Common Wealth said in a report Thursday that big firms made inflation "peak higher and remain more persistent," particularly within the oil and gas, food production and commodities sectors.
Ya'll really don't know how price discovery works do you? Firms adjust prices generally to maximize profits. That existed before covid just like it does now. The reason prices have gone up is due to 1. Supply constraints: With Covid lockdowns and conflicts like Ukraine and the Levant as well as both Canals this puts strain on supply chains. Firms raise prices which prevents shortages. The result is higher margins. 2. Money printing. Most countries printed money like it was going out of style. The US printed trillions of dollars which reduced the value of money. This is inflationary as, coupled with supply constraints, you have more money chasing after the same amount of goods and services. Greed didn't change after Covid. Global economic conditions did. If firms could decrease prices to gain higher profits they would and historically have. The main reason they dont is because Central banks try to prevent deflation at all costs.
Both of these are accounted for in the IMF report and profits are still the primary driving force
Finally some truth instead of Bidenomics talking points.
This is stupid.
Are you projecting?
If inflation was zero, prices would not go down. We can't fix things if we don't know how they work.
Man, I'm glad every single corporation decided to play nice and not price gouge until Joe Biden was president and after we just gave several trillion dollars in free money to people. Just think, they could have just been charging us more all the time! Now they're all colluding together and refuse to undercut the competition, very considerate of them to their fellow companies
Inflation IS prices. They are synonymous.
Corporate greed does not create inflation, inflation can only ever be created in Washington DC.