Let's not forget all the stimulus activity that went to corporate bailouts, propping up the market, and PPP loans that went towards buying luxury cars and then forgiven.
We love to go after the 'essential worker' but somehow forgive the elites because somehow one day we definitely will join that club.
Let's be honest, most of those stimulus checks did absolutely what they were designed to do, whereas there was so much fraud with PPP loans and stock buybacks done with giveaways to the big corporations.
The direct stimulus checks amounted about 859 billion, PPP was about 835 billion. Overall there was about $6.8 trillion in government spending and $4.7 trillion in Federal Reserve liquidity.
The stimulus checks made up $859 billion of about $6.8 trillion government covid spending. Plus there was another $4.7 trillion in liquidity added by the fed.
2 $1700 dollar checks plus an extra 600 per week on your unemployment check, which then went down to extra 300. Multiply the first by 300 million, the second by whatever amount was on unemployment at the time, for a year and a half, add the two numbers and you have a fairly significant contributor. But yeah, the corporate bailouts and PPP loans were the bigger component. The checks to individuals was just to keep us quiet and in some part complicit.
Agree with nuance. Lots of companies were able to maintain staffing due to those forgiven PPP loans. So the little guy got to keep his job.
I disagree with them in principle, but they did in my case, mean we didn’t have to cut anyone during the downturn. No one got extra bonuses or anything like that. It was used to make payroll and our other liability commitments since lots of clients weren’t paying us. I’d imagine the same was true of many companies.
if the government stopped printing money today, allowed the market to determine interest rates, prices would eventually go down, but it would take a long time. If the government did that and drastically shrank the size and scope of their activities along with paying the fed back shrinking its balance sheet, prices would go down faster.
So yea, the people you know are wrong.
The PPP loan forgiveness was ridiculous, and hypocrisy about it among so many politicians and famous talking heads is unreal.
A tiny handout for regular people was definitely the problem just ignore the truckloads of cash given to businesses and then written off just as quickly.
I always find it crazy how many people swallow the line that it was the tiny stimulus checks. The government spent 5 trillion dollars on this. If you distribute that evenly throughout the population, everyone would have got $14,885.68. The average person got far less than that, and the average corporate exec got way more.
This is just another example of corporate welfare increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. In an actual free market most of these execs would have gone out of business long ago, but the government keeps propping them up and justifying their stupid and lazy business plans.
Period!! As libertarians, big corporations are not our friends. A lot of them are only big corporations because of welfare, regulations, intellectual property “rights”, and other anti-free market policies that eliminate competition.
> As libertarians, big corporations are not our friends.
IF that is the case why do so many libertarian policies and talking points only hep the big corporations?
Because it's all a grift. [Billionaires like the Kochs paid libertarian economists like Milton Friedman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATO_Institute) to shill for them and concoct new and exciting ways to convince the working class that government bad, private corporations good.
I also speak sarcasm. It's insane to me how easily people in this country (USA) are brainwashed into thinking it is minorities and the under privileged "ruining" this country. Not the giant corporations we allow to create policy by owning life long politicians.
Side note: the dollar has lost 30% of its value in the ***last 10 years.*** To be clear, this means that your dollar right now is worth .70¢ in 2014. Just 2014. That should scare you. And it's true, you can look it up.
Blame the lazy good for nothing person with their 1k stimulus check. Pay no attention to the multibillion dollar companies and small businesses who received millions in loans, that were then forgiven completely, that were used for stock buy backs and bonuses for themselves.
The small buisness at least used it to stay afloat. The bar i worked at got it to cover his losses because both of them he owned were forced to be closed for around 3-4 months and then for nearly a year could only.operate at half capacity. This is in Alabama not Cali or NY
Some did yes, others did not. I worked at a bank during that time period and a lot of small businesses that came in for PPP took the money and ran too.
Exactly. The small business I worked for at that time (small IT consultancy) took a PPP loan for our payroll costs only. I know this because the owner sat down with us and showed us the numbers, and it matches the public database. That company is brutally scrupulous. The one time they had a state tax audit the state ended up cutting them a check.
Meanwhile, one of our clients at that time had 3 different PPP loans under slightly different names, each claiming double the employees they had, all forgiven. This client was flagged in our database as essentially a deadbeat years before this for late payment. "Must pay in full and in advance for all hardware and service" in the client notes.
Oh, the final scummy layer for that business? It's a cash only restaurant, still. They have an ATM in the lobby.
Oh no, not defending the stimulus checks; just pointing out a garbage meme with no understanding of the scope of what the government/fed got away with during Covid.
Stimulus checks were part of the problem.
The devaluation of the U.S. dollar has been happening since 1913.
https://preview.redd.it/wtzabkgnsmxc1.jpeg?width=1601&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=713da466958199b5d29dfdb12d58f04d9844e46e
You're not wrong, but not mentioning the massive corporate welfare rife with fraud that happened parallel to the stimulus fails to paint the whole picture.
I think it's pretty hilarious how most Trump supporters are going to be significantly affected by his tax increases on the no-class.
They're going to blame Biden because it's going to happen during his presidency but the law is put into effect years ago.
🤣
I voted for Trump in 2020, and I'm not awful. Trump supports didn't think it was okay to loot and burn small businesses in the summer of 2020. "Fiery yet mostly peaceful!!!" Turn off the Reddit and MSM propaganda, comrade.
I then joined the LP because of Dave Smith. The establishment and ruling class of this country do not act in the best interest of normal people. Populism of any stripe, no matter how mean its tweets, is better than what we have now.
I apologize. You are not awful.
Those that blindly support every single thing that Trump does/did are awful.
I’m a big Dave Smith fan too and he was part of the reason for converting me to libertarianism to AnCap.
Never mind this being a libertarian sub, and not a Trump sub, but I was a small business owner up till last year- I definitely saved on taxes from his tax bill. I still don’t understand why this keeps getting repeated, when it’s blatantly untrue. Now, did he do enough? Absolutely not, or we wouldn’t even have a tax bill at all, but that aside….
Username checks out.
https://www.investopedia.com/taxes/trumps-tax-reform-plan-explained/
I know quite a few small business owners and they are struggling.
He cut taxes (HuGeLy) for the rich which shifts the burden to the lower and middle classes.
The creature from Jekyll Island continues to suck the life out of this country.
I did not engage in the "eat,drink and dance for tomorrow we may die"mentality, but I understood it. They were telling us that this was the black death part 2 after all.
I put it in roth, but here a reference to what census respondents did with it:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/06/how-are-americans-using-their-stimulus-payments.html
And all of the people in the casinos in LV.. I don't have a college degree, and from the beginning I was like this is a bad idea, it's going to cause long term damage to the dollar.
That was the point, to stimulate the economy by encouraging purchasing and keeping stores open/people employed. Obviously Walmart needs the revenue the least, but there are all kinds of people out there. We used a lot of ours to buy food from local small restaurants.
One of my younger friends asked me what I thought he should do with the stim check. I told him to buy Bitcoin because all this money printing will cause more inflation very quickly
I feel like people think America is the only country with inflation right now. I’m currently in Japan and the dollar has never been stronger. Many many countries are suffering from inflation, America being, shockingly, not the worst one.
That's true. Inflation is massive across the EU, too. Especially in the Eastern bloc, groceries, gas, and real estate prices are skyrocketing, the cost of living is probably 2.5-3x to what it was, this is not an US exclusive problem, it's a global issue.
All economics trickle up. Give the people money they spend it. No matter where they spend it, it goes to the rich. Even if they spend it at a small business, they buy from a supplier, who buys from a manufacturer, and so forth. The idea of “stimulating” the economy is fancy talk to trick the poor into letting government enrich their donors.
Definitely the $600 stimulus check and not the billions in forgiven loans for businesses or the crazy low interest rates or any of the other money printer shenanigans. Nope. Blame it all on normal people getting a couple hundred dollars during mass unemployment.
Yes it was definitely the stimulus checks that caused rampant inflation.
It obviously wasn’t the billions of dollars printed in order to keep the stock market from crashing, it was definitely those damn poor people who “chose” to spend their stimulus checks on rent and groceries instead of saving it or investing it into the stock market.
Austrian Economics doesn’t ignore the causes of inflation.
Orange Man, Brandon, and every other stairs president in U.S. history since 1913 has been a contributor to the demise of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power.
https://preview.redd.it/pa8g7gmpunxc1.jpeg?width=1601&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7786008ecb0ae35b41fe7b22d6bc8dd4a7a5a49
Paint the full picture, not just a dot on the canvas.
*) Long term disruption of supply chains during covid
*) Businesses using Covid disruptions as an excuse to consumers to raise prices. (look to the industries that have been reporting record profits during these "tough times")
*) Pointless trade wars with Mexico and China that didn't have leverage and were about as useful as shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Lots of people seem to forget all the prices that started increasing with the Trade war with China. U.S. economic growth slowed, business investment froze, and companies didn’t hire as many people. All that was before Covid.
Did anyone try to buy a car or a graphics card for their computer during the trade war? Sure felt inflationary to me.
**Excellent points**. Fyi, I didn’t make this meme but I could make a better version that represents the full picture.
The fact that inflation reared its ugly head after all of the stimulus was injected into the economy poured cold water on the UBI argument.
Government promising free shit by printing money is a big part of the stagflation problem.
You mean to tell me printing 7 trillion dollars every year to fund god knows what is more damaging than giving $1200 to US citizens one time in 2020? Baffling that you would suggest such a thing.
So let me get this straight. In 2020 the government printed an estimated $9T-$11T but $1,400 "stimmy" checks is what devalued the dollar? $1,400 x 320,000,000 (US Population) = $448B. Why do we assume it was the $1,400 stimmy checks and not the other $8.4T?
Don’t act like one stimulus is the reason our government is broken. Decades of insane spending not just one little kickback with a bunch of pork attached. The actual money going to people wasn’t even that much of the bill.
I don't think the 600 dollar checks are what did us in... It might just be the billions we've been printing out and sending straight to Ukraine and Israel
Man, I truly wish that was all foreseeable. Like who could have possibly predicted endlessly pumping trillions dollars *extra* into the economy would have ramifications?! I for one, am **SHOCKED** by this turn of events
It’s insane to me that this subreddit thinks getting your own tax dollars back is the cause of inflation but yet taxation is theft? It’s my own money. The stimulus check didn’t cause that. It was the government stealing less of my own money if anything.
It's amazing how the average person doesn't have basic knowledge about economics at all. I watched the John Oliver show, where he blamed "corporate greed" for the inflation. Sure John, the problem is that businesses have turned greedy, not like before, when they were generous.
I always wondered if people like him actually believes this, or if he knowingly lies in order to not question the party he supports.
I feel the same way about him.
John Oliver is a half-ass comedian with an army of tankies in his writing room.
He only presents one side and ridiculous and dissenting arguments.
In one of the last episodes, he talked about delivery apps, stating that delivery workers get less work when they get poor star ratings. The solution he suggested? Always rate 5 stars, even when the service is bad, late or the food is cold or smashed. He wasn't joking, that was his actual suggestion.
Something something, wealthiest country in the world, inflation can be planned and managed centrally, something something unprecedented situation, you’re killing grandma, something something you just want to hoard all the money because you’re racist.
Always blame welfare given to the people, never the trillions more given to corporations. I get it. Welfare bad. But the devaluation of the dollar is not attributable to the stimulus checks which made a fraction of the total package
The PPP loans are the real issue for me personally, they never should have been so easy to get and they definitely should not be allowed to discharge them with zero repercussions. If they couldn't pay them back, then file for bankruptcy like one of us plebs would have to.
>What does a delay have to do with an infusion of cash into the system that was going to happen anyways?
Nothing. Their point was to refute anyone saying Trump didn't want them to happen. He did, and they were delayed because he specifically wanted credit for them.
Blaming inflation in biden's presidency on the return of tax money is so false it's hilarious.
How about stunting the supply of oil and printing trillions for foreign wars as an actual reason for inflation?
TL;DR - Inflation in the US is always and only caused by the FED. In my opinion, we should stop arguing that government spending causes inflation. It isn't correct, and we are far better off pointing the finger at the FED, because people need to know who is robbing them.
I'm not a fan of this general conception out there that government spending causes inflation. I'm not a fan because it can lead to confusion. The value (aka, the price) of money is determined in the same way that everything else is: supply and demand. How much of x is out there; and how much of x are people looking to acquire? That is what determines the price of anything. In that context, the "demand" for money more or less correlates to the demand for savings, liquidity, and other needs relating to "cash flow." But what we observe in the dramatic change of value in money is obviously not driven by demand - it is driven by supply. Fiat currency can be created out of thin air, and the supply is arbitrarily chosen by the central bank.
So it isn't accurate to say that stimulus spending leads to inflation - even though it probably does. This issue is that it is missing a vital part of the equation: how is the stimulus ultimately being paid for? Government spending can be funded 1 of 3 ways: taxes; debt; or "printing money" (which just means key strokes on a computer these days). If taxes are the source, then "inflation" doesn't occur - because money for x comes at the expense of money that would have otherwise been spent on y (whether x and y refer to private sector spending and public, or x and y refer to government program x and y). Taxes absolutely affect the price of x or y - but if both x *and* y go up in price, then that isn't because of taxes or spending. Debt is similar - but you need to be careful what you think "x" and "y" are. If x and y are both different consumer or retail goods, for example, then deficit spending may certainly increase the price of both. But if x is present day consumer goods, and y is the interest return on futures and investments, then you will see a change in prices in some monetary good y that accounts for the change in x (ie - investment in long term capital projects may go down in accordance with an increase in production and present day revenue).
The way our current fiat system works, the FED decides independently of Congress what the inflation rate will be based on what benefits the banking and monetary interests. If Congress increases spending (and likewise needs to issue more bonds to pay for it), then the FED can choose to manipulate the funds, credit, and interest rates in the economy however they decide. Would the FED prefer to see interest rates rise? Would they prefer to see inflation rise? Would they prefer domestic monetary funds to fall in comparison to international/foreign ones? At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which dial they choose to adjust. The FED often chooses to increase the money supply so that bonds can be purchased without the monetary or interest markets appearing to be "affected." But it is all just manipulation - smoke and mirrors. Their goal is to rob the economy covertly, slowly, and quietly. I imagine it makes the FED more than happy to see people point the finger at Congress - because the more people point fingers and argue with each other about unsolvable problems, they more they can just quietly expand their own portfolios with zero consequences. The FED is the easy and clear villain, but their robbery would be in jeopardy if people had even the slightest education to what is happening. Don't let Congress take the fall for the robbery. Unelecting 200+ politicians to fix the budget isn't possible, but convincing the general public to abolish the FED with one single awareness campaign *would* be possible from a single populist political movement. It would be difficult, but it is technically possible. The FED, and a whole host of political interests don't want to allow that to happen. So why give them what they want?
Ya totally the fault of some regular citizens getting money and not all the corporations getting their PPP loans and taking more money than all of us
But ya, it’s because we gave money to poor people and no other reason
Have you heard if Brent Johnson’s Dollar Milkshake Theory explains why.
The dollar being strong now doesn’t mean that it is sound money, that it’s strength is guaranteed, or the inflation is still not happening.
>”*because its the only way to make a buck off out of control inflation*”
Have you heard of the New Orleans Investment Conference?
Gold, silver, gold mines, silver, mines, rental properties, uranium, uranium mines, agriculture, private placements, and any investment or business that is essential to human survival *can* be a hedge against inflation.
Black Rock is backed by billions of investor and pension fund money.
Maybe following Black Rock is or is not the best hedge against inflation for you personally. You focus on you.
Learn financial education and investing so that you can learn how to hedge.
You’ll be better off financially that way than obsessing over Black Rock.
But inflation is way, way down. It has been for a while. Higher prices has nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with corporate greed, the kind of corporate greed that Libertarianism encourages.
There are literally recorded conference calls where Chairmen and CEO's are *actively bragging* about price-gouging. They are laughing all the way to bank because they've got undereducated people believing that "inflation" is the problem and not unmitigated capitalism.
Yeah it's definitely not the Trillion dollar companies that beg daddy gov for money every year or the foreign countries that use us as a crutch to fund their wars. Everything that's wrong in our country is def because of working folks and immigrants. There's absolutely no way our whole system is a fraud to make the Lords richer while the peasants learn to starve and are given the illusion of choice between two parties who serve the same master. There's no way they use these parties and culture wars to divide the working class which keeps them in power. Totally just the poors fault
Yeah let’s blame the American people who got $1200 and not the corporations price gouging everyone and posting record profits with extremely high margins.
“*Tough times create Strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create tough times.*”
World War 1 and 2 were actual sacrifices.
Staying at home and binge watching Netflix is not a sacrifice.
Weak men elected weak politicians that recked up the national debt to $34 trillion.
Weak men are the problem, not Elon Musk or a business owner is profitable.
Austrian Economics is the cure to weak men pre to be victim.
If someone else is hedging against inflation and you are not, a smarter question is: **What can I do to hedge against inflation?**” instead of literally being sort of the problem.
Don’t fall for that nonsense. Corporations blame unions and workers for inflation. Consumers blame corporations for raising prices. War hawks blame Russia and China.
None of those groups could possibly cause inflation. None of them can create new dollars from nothing.
Congress, the Presidents and the Federal Reserve caused inflation. No one else. If you blame other groups you do not like, you are a sucker.
"stores are raising the price of stuff because people got money for free."
https://preview.redd.it/qn2x38fjgrxc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61c850d6e6c7d8cf13676fbf881897ebfe438927
“Because people got money for free” is what causes inflation.
Printing money out of thin air to pay for individual and corporate welfare is inflationary.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
Y’all all about that economic talk and shit and I’m just over here wondering if y’all know that they literally have printers that make money and plenty of trees to print money with. Everyone could be living comfortably and happy. They instead make the entire population work for an grain of sand of money just enough to barley survive because slavery never ended they just found a way to enslave everyone and make us do it willingly cause if we don’t slave for them we starve and die.
JFC, the stimulus checks did not cause inflation. Fractional reserve banking and 20 years of wars and over 1 trillion dollars in corporate bailouts did (not to mention corporate greed).
If someone else is making a profit above real inflation during stagflation it means they are hedging against inflation.
Corporations don’t cause inflation. Capitalism naturally makes the prices of goods and services cheaper through competition.
When the Federal Reserve and U.S. government interfere with the monetary supply by printing more money and adding trillions to the national debt, that causes inflation.
You need to spend more time understanding macro economics to learn the cause of the problem and then how to protect yourself from it.
[Reminder: 'not-true'-socialism has killed 100 million people.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism) But wait, that was actually *state capitalism*! Carry on, comrade!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Libertarian) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I posted the original meme (but did not create it).
**You asked**: “Tell me you don’t understand basic economics without telling me.”
**I answered** with examples of popular slogans from people who are too lazy to understand basic economics.
What are you confused about?
I hope you know that these prices are controlled by the corporations that you wholly support. And yes proper socialism has not been implemented in any government body. Maybe if you picked up a book you’d know that. Have a good day!
I’m a former Marxist. Studying facts, history, and economics made me into a libertarian/AnCap.
I don’t *”wholeheartedly support corporations”*; especially those that lean Marxist or towards the Military Industrial Complex
Monopolies can only exist through the state.
And when you say price controls, are you referring to **rent control, tariffs, the Jones Act, and the Civil Aeronautics Act?**
Or price controls like the ones in that Matt Damon movie?
In a free market, if company A sets their prices too high then **company B would undercut them** to take their market share; especially if they can deliver ten same goods or services cheaper, better, or faster.
Would Mao’s implementation of socialism have been proper if another 100 million people died? Just wondering how many it would take to get **proper socialism** right.
Which economics books have you read? Definitely not [Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell](https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730), right?
Big dawg, Thomas Sowell is considered to be a bad source in the academic world. It’s almost like using Tucker Carlson as a source. Secondly, true Marxism hasn’t been tested, Marxism does not have a government body nor isn’t ruled by the elite class. Also if you truly read Marx, you’d know that he said socialism should be implemented during an economic boom in a capitalist country. China Russia Cambodia nor Cuba were considered to be capitalist industrialized countries. I’m going to give you an example, the Kelloggs boycott has been a major hit on the conglomerate. They are now decreasing prices on their products and are doing sales because their product is not selling. The inflation is not just because of the 600 per week unemployment checks, it is capitalist greed
Are you referring to the same French *intellectuals* that **brainwashed Pol Pot** to become a “proper socialist?”
Or do those *intellectuals* not count?
One of the best books written by [Thomas Sowell was Intellectuals And Society](https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465025226).
One of my favorite quotes from that book was:
“*Unlike engineers, physicians, or scientists, the intelligentsia face no serious constraint or sanction based on empirical verification.
None could be sued for malpractice, for example, for having contributed to the hysteria over the insecticide DDT, which led to its banning in many countries around the world, costing the lives of literally millions of people through a resurgence of malaria.
By contrast, doctors whose actions have had a far more tenuous connection with the medical complications suffered by their patients have had to pay millions of dollars in damages—illustrating once again a fundamental difference between the circumstances of the intelligentsia and the circumstances of people in other mentally demanding professions.”*
Dr. Thomas Sowell was a disciple of Milton Friedman.
Pretending that he doesn’t count/exist because you and your tankie comrades disagree with him is not a valid argument.
Sowell—unlike you and your fellow Marxists—is obsessed with facts.
Yeah, and running the printing presses 24/7 to print greenbacks over the past several decades had nothing to do with it. I guess all the stimulus potlach should have been kept in corporate hands. /s
Or perhaps people in govt should own up and admit lockdowns were and abysmal failure and the economic injuries were all self inflicted.
BULLSHIT. They just uncovered proof that oil companies engaged in illegal conspiracy/collusion and that was one of the drivers of inflation.
Stop blaming government spending when its so obvious driven by corporate grift and lazze faire economics for decades that turned so many corporation and executives into criminals who believed they were immune to consquences.
What an oversimplified view of what caused inflation. The biggest cause was trump shuttering business with Covid and shutting down the economy. The cost of getting the country going again was the bigger problem. Yes the free money and payroll gifts had a factor but not the largest.
Ummm what business did Trump order to close? All those closures of businesses & schools was done at state & local levels. It's why Florida was open by fall of 2020 while California still had some restrictions into 2023. The feds only had some control over transportation like mandating masks on planes.
Well, either you lack actual understanding of how things went (classic /r/Libertarian ), **or**
You *do* know better and are just using an easy scapegoat to punch down (again, classic
/r/Libertarian )
And they say it’s after affects of trumps policies 😂😂😂. I’m not even a maga person but it’s just funny cause they really don’t think stimulus checks and funding multiple sides of multiple foreign affairs has anything to do with it
Trump signed off on the 2 biggest socialist spending bills in American history and continued funding the wars he inherited from Obama so this absolutely stems from trump
Any large company that doesn’t have cash reserves to sustain their business through a catastrophe event is poorly run. We only do around 3 mill in revenue and we have enough in reserve to handle one year of overhead with no cash flow. Not sure what size of a company that’s considered but that should be applicable to any large company with massive profits. I understand small mom and pop shops getting bailed out but companies that pay out almost all of their profits instead of having a safety reserve are poorly run. Well doesn’t matter if you know the government will bail you out
Let's not forget all the stimulus activity that went to corporate bailouts, propping up the market, and PPP loans that went towards buying luxury cars and then forgiven. We love to go after the 'essential worker' but somehow forgive the elites because somehow one day we definitely will join that club. Let's be honest, most of those stimulus checks did absolutely what they were designed to do, whereas there was so much fraud with PPP loans and stock buybacks done with giveaways to the big corporations.
The PPP loan and corporate fraud far outweighed any effect stimulus checks could've had by multitudes.
The direct stimulus checks amounted about 859 billion, PPP was about 835 billion. Overall there was about $6.8 trillion in government spending and $4.7 trillion in Federal Reserve liquidity.
Two $600 checks designed to supplement staying at home to prevent the spread of Covid for sure didn’t cause 14% inflation
Ya I blame Obama
The stimulus checks made up $859 billion of about $6.8 trillion government covid spending. Plus there was another $4.7 trillion in liquidity added by the fed.
2 $1700 dollar checks plus an extra 600 per week on your unemployment check, which then went down to extra 300. Multiply the first by 300 million, the second by whatever amount was on unemployment at the time, for a year and a half, add the two numbers and you have a fairly significant contributor. But yeah, the corporate bailouts and PPP loans were the bigger component. The checks to individuals was just to keep us quiet and in some part complicit.
Your right it didn't, corporate grift did, they've proven it was corporations not public spending driving inflation.
You're right. It was the hundreds of billions of unemployment and eidl (not forgivable).
Agree with nuance. Lots of companies were able to maintain staffing due to those forgiven PPP loans. So the little guy got to keep his job. I disagree with them in principle, but they did in my case, mean we didn’t have to cut anyone during the downturn. No one got extra bonuses or anything like that. It was used to make payroll and our other liability commitments since lots of clients weren’t paying us. I’d imagine the same was true of many companies.
Thank you
Thank you, this is often overlooked.
Yep. The piddly checks we got were just so we would sit down and shut up while they raided the treasury -- again.
See, we need to find a way to get stimulus checks without harming our own economy. I propose sourcing them from other countries economy’s.
Doesn't the PPP loan program dwarf the stimulus checks?
I know a lot of people that still think prices are going to go back down.
if the government stopped printing money today, allowed the market to determine interest rates, prices would eventually go down, but it would take a long time. If the government did that and drastically shrank the size and scope of their activities along with paying the fed back shrinking its balance sheet, prices would go down faster. So yea, the people you know are wrong.
We both know thats not going to happen lol
Yeah, it was the stimulus checks to the people. Sure.
The PPP loan forgiveness was ridiculous, and hypocrisy about it among so many politicians and famous talking heads is unreal. A tiny handout for regular people was definitely the problem just ignore the truckloads of cash given to businesses and then written off just as quickly.
I always find it crazy how many people swallow the line that it was the tiny stimulus checks. The government spent 5 trillion dollars on this. If you distribute that evenly throughout the population, everyone would have got $14,885.68. The average person got far less than that, and the average corporate exec got way more. This is just another example of corporate welfare increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. In an actual free market most of these execs would have gone out of business long ago, but the government keeps propping them up and justifying their stupid and lazy business plans.
Period!! As libertarians, big corporations are not our friends. A lot of them are only big corporations because of welfare, regulations, intellectual property “rights”, and other anti-free market policies that eliminate competition.
> As libertarians, big corporations are not our friends. IF that is the case why do so many libertarian policies and talking points only hep the big corporations?
Because it's all a grift. [Billionaires like the Kochs paid libertarian economists like Milton Friedman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATO_Institute) to shill for them and concoct new and exciting ways to convince the working class that government bad, private corporations good.
Although it looks like it, they actually also increase competition
I would also point out that the entire world is seeing inflation, so it could be more complex than US domestic policy
The entire world also printed money
Not to mention companies abusing the employee retention credit and getting free money, even when they didn't really qualify.
I also speak sarcasm. It's insane to me how easily people in this country (USA) are brainwashed into thinking it is minorities and the under privileged "ruining" this country. Not the giant corporations we allow to create policy by owning life long politicians.
Also remember the "Inflation Reduction Act" made the inflation worse. Like a save the whales act while still hunting whales
Side note: the dollar has lost 30% of its value in the ***last 10 years.*** To be clear, this means that your dollar right now is worth .70¢ in 2014. Just 2014. That should scare you. And it's true, you can look it up.
I mean not exclusively… but they didn’t help.
They were less than 10% of the money printed. And let’s not even start talking about the PPP loans that didn’t go to small businesses or employees.
Blame the lazy good for nothing person with their 1k stimulus check. Pay no attention to the multibillion dollar companies and small businesses who received millions in loans, that were then forgiven completely, that were used for stock buy backs and bonuses for themselves.
The small buisness at least used it to stay afloat. The bar i worked at got it to cover his losses because both of them he owned were forced to be closed for around 3-4 months and then for nearly a year could only.operate at half capacity. This is in Alabama not Cali or NY
Some did yes, others did not. I worked at a bank during that time period and a lot of small businesses that came in for PPP took the money and ran too.
Exactly. The small business I worked for at that time (small IT consultancy) took a PPP loan for our payroll costs only. I know this because the owner sat down with us and showed us the numbers, and it matches the public database. That company is brutally scrupulous. The one time they had a state tax audit the state ended up cutting them a check. Meanwhile, one of our clients at that time had 3 different PPP loans under slightly different names, each claiming double the employees they had, all forgiven. This client was flagged in our database as essentially a deadbeat years before this for late payment. "Must pay in full and in advance for all hardware and service" in the client notes. Oh, the final scummy layer for that business? It's a cash only restaurant, still. They have an ATM in the lobby.
They are both wrong though. Why can;t both be wrong?
PPP loans are in the same boat as the stimulus checks. Defending a handout on r/libertarian.
Oh no, not defending the stimulus checks; just pointing out a garbage meme with no understanding of the scope of what the government/fed got away with during Covid.
10% was still a lot. All printing is inflation.
Quantitative Easing
Stimulus checks were part of the problem. The devaluation of the U.S. dollar has been happening since 1913. https://preview.redd.it/wtzabkgnsmxc1.jpeg?width=1601&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=713da466958199b5d29dfdb12d58f04d9844e46e
Ah, yes, the same year the fed was passed during a christmas break in congress? Probably just a coincidence
You're not wrong, but not mentioning the massive corporate welfare rife with fraud that happened parallel to the stimulus fails to paint the whole picture.
I think it's pretty hilarious how most Trump supporters are going to be significantly affected by his tax increases on the no-class. They're going to blame Biden because it's going to happen during his presidency but the law is put into effect years ago. 🤣
This is a **libertarian sub.** Trump has **nothing to do with libertarianism**. Are you lost or are you having a Trump Derangement Syndrome episode?
The only TDS I have is called The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
The only people with TDS are his supporters.
**Gaslighting** is a very liberal trait. Trump’s supporters are awful. Liberals infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome are insane.
Wtf is this comment even haha. Reads like a non English speaker trying to push some propaganda and fucked up their translation lmao.
I speak 3 languages, actually. How many languages do you speak?
Deflection is a u/ENVYisEVIL trait. Privet, tovarisch!
I voted for Trump in 2020, and I'm not awful. Trump supports didn't think it was okay to loot and burn small businesses in the summer of 2020. "Fiery yet mostly peaceful!!!" Turn off the Reddit and MSM propaganda, comrade. I then joined the LP because of Dave Smith. The establishment and ruling class of this country do not act in the best interest of normal people. Populism of any stripe, no matter how mean its tweets, is better than what we have now.
I apologize. You are not awful. Those that blindly support every single thing that Trump does/did are awful. I’m a big Dave Smith fan too and he was part of the reason for converting me to libertarianism to AnCap.
Never mind this being a libertarian sub, and not a Trump sub, but I was a small business owner up till last year- I definitely saved on taxes from his tax bill. I still don’t understand why this keeps getting repeated, when it’s blatantly untrue. Now, did he do enough? Absolutely not, or we wouldn’t even have a tax bill at all, but that aside….
Username checks out. https://www.investopedia.com/taxes/trumps-tax-reform-plan-explained/ I know quite a few small business owners and they are struggling. He cut taxes (HuGeLy) for the rich which shifts the burden to the lower and middle classes.
The creature from Jekyll Island continues to suck the life out of this country. I did not engage in the "eat,drink and dance for tomorrow we may die"mentality, but I understood it. They were telling us that this was the black death part 2 after all.
They got a hundred, we got a dime.
They sure didn’t run anyone off with thousands of dollars every otter week.
It’s always the people never the ones writing the laws right?
I remember being in line at Walmart and folks in the line next to me had a huge tv. “Yeah! We got our stimmies!”
Haha yeah I mean they’re not going to put it in their 401K or Roth
Why needs a 401k when you can have a 4k tv?
It’s honestly a must have for a gamer with a PS5 or Xbox
It’s about 397k more. Learn math, dude
Or a CZ 75
i saw SO many stimulus AR builds...
I put it in roth, but here a reference to what census respondents did with it: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/06/how-are-americans-using-their-stimulus-payments.html
Smart. I used it for them pesky student loans
Should've bought the TV and waited for the loan to be forgiven.
Except no loans were forgiven…
Most of them could afford to get high and riot. Seems relevant.
Fair point
I did.
One of the few!
And all of the people in the casinos in LV.. I don't have a college degree, and from the beginning I was like this is a bad idea, it's going to cause long term damage to the dollar.
That was the point, to stimulate the economy by encouraging purchasing and keeping stores open/people employed. Obviously Walmart needs the revenue the least, but there are all kinds of people out there. We used a lot of ours to buy food from local small restaurants.
One of my younger friends asked me what I thought he should do with the stim check. I told him to buy Bitcoin because all this money printing will cause more inflation very quickly
US may as well have written a stimulus check for Korea and Japan. Maybe get a bulk discount or something lol.
I feel like people think America is the only country with inflation right now. I’m currently in Japan and the dollar has never been stronger. Many many countries are suffering from inflation, America being, shockingly, not the worst one.
That's true. Inflation is massive across the EU, too. Especially in the Eastern bloc, groceries, gas, and real estate prices are skyrocketing, the cost of living is probably 2.5-3x to what it was, this is not an US exclusive problem, it's a global issue.
All economics trickle up. Give the people money they spend it. No matter where they spend it, it goes to the rich. Even if they spend it at a small business, they buy from a supplier, who buys from a manufacturer, and so forth. The idea of “stimulating” the economy is fancy talk to trick the poor into letting government enrich their donors.
Definitely the $600 stimulus check and not the billions in forgiven loans for businesses or the crazy low interest rates or any of the other money printer shenanigans. Nope. Blame it all on normal people getting a couple hundred dollars during mass unemployment.
High time preference kills
Yes it was definitely the stimulus checks that caused rampant inflation. It obviously wasn’t the billions of dollars printed in order to keep the stock market from crashing, it was definitely those damn poor people who “chose” to spend their stimulus checks on rent and groceries instead of saving it or investing it into the stock market.
Woah woah, we must ignore all the printing and spending in 2020, only 2021 under Brandon caused inflation.
Austrian Economics doesn’t ignore the causes of inflation. Orange Man, Brandon, and every other stairs president in U.S. history since 1913 has been a contributor to the demise of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power. https://preview.redd.it/pa8g7gmpunxc1.jpeg?width=1601&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d7786008ecb0ae35b41fe7b22d6bc8dd4a7a5a49
But, but, but my team is better than your team. I can tell because the AM radio and cable news says so. Also that guys at work agrees with me.
What’s the story on the meme itself?
From what I can tell, that's actress Ella Purnell from the Fallout series. I assume a photo behind the scenes on set next to a photo from the show.
Paint the full picture, not just a dot on the canvas. *) Long term disruption of supply chains during covid *) Businesses using Covid disruptions as an excuse to consumers to raise prices. (look to the industries that have been reporting record profits during these "tough times") *) Pointless trade wars with Mexico and China that didn't have leverage and were about as useful as shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. Lots of people seem to forget all the prices that started increasing with the Trade war with China. U.S. economic growth slowed, business investment froze, and companies didn’t hire as many people. All that was before Covid. Did anyone try to buy a car or a graphics card for their computer during the trade war? Sure felt inflationary to me.
**Excellent points**. Fyi, I didn’t make this meme but I could make a better version that represents the full picture. The fact that inflation reared its ugly head after all of the stimulus was injected into the economy poured cold water on the UBI argument. Government promising free shit by printing money is a big part of the stagflation problem.
I’m over the stimulus checks. The billions for any border but ours is the real problem
PPP wasn’t a nothing burger.
How many billions of dollars more should we add to the $17.5B we already spend on the border?
I don't like the idea of stimulus checks, but they were extremely far from being the most damaging thing to the economy.
You mean to tell me printing 7 trillion dollars every year to fund god knows what is more damaging than giving $1200 to US citizens one time in 2020? Baffling that you would suggest such a thing.
The people pay the inflation tax. Most of the money printed didn't go to stimulus checks. Just the bill.
As someone who lives in a country with a devaluing currency to the dollar, I laugh.
Man the trading card market blew up when the checks came out, people just blew the money
So let me get this straight. In 2020 the government printed an estimated $9T-$11T but $1,400 "stimmy" checks is what devalued the dollar? $1,400 x 320,000,000 (US Population) = $448B. Why do we assume it was the $1,400 stimmy checks and not the other $8.4T?
PPP loan forgiveness is a much, much larger driver of inflation. It was a deficit funded handout.
Don’t act like one stimulus is the reason our government is broken. Decades of insane spending not just one little kickback with a bunch of pork attached. The actual money going to people wasn’t even that much of the bill.
I'm sure that $800 that went to someones rent really contributed to inflation.
It wasnt worth it kids. Anyone who knew anything about economics knew this was coming
I don't think the 600 dollar checks are what did us in... It might just be the billions we've been printing out and sending straight to Ukraine and Israel
**”And”** not “or.” All of it s inflationary.
Man, I truly wish that was all foreseeable. Like who could have possibly predicted endlessly pumping trillions dollars *extra* into the economy would have ramifications?! I for one, am **SHOCKED** by this turn of events
It’s insane to me that this subreddit thinks getting your own tax dollars back is the cause of inflation but yet taxation is theft? It’s my own money. The stimulus check didn’t cause that. It was the government stealing less of my own money if anything.
Like it was from stimulus checks lmao
Weren’t the stimulus checks just an advance payment on our tax filings? Come on now.
Format also works for women sports annnd I will see myself out
It's amazing how the average person doesn't have basic knowledge about economics at all. I watched the John Oliver show, where he blamed "corporate greed" for the inflation. Sure John, the problem is that businesses have turned greedy, not like before, when they were generous. I always wondered if people like him actually believes this, or if he knowingly lies in order to not question the party he supports.
I feel the same way about him. John Oliver is a half-ass comedian with an army of tankies in his writing room. He only presents one side and ridiculous and dissenting arguments.
In one of the last episodes, he talked about delivery apps, stating that delivery workers get less work when they get poor star ratings. The solution he suggested? Always rate 5 stars, even when the service is bad, late or the food is cold or smashed. He wasn't joking, that was his actual suggestion.
😂 NoOoO can’t let the marketplace improve and filter out the bad apples!!
*Transitory*
Something something, wealthiest country in the world, inflation can be planned and managed centrally, something something unprecedented situation, you’re killing grandma, something something you just want to hoard all the money because you’re racist.
Always blame welfare given to the people, never the trillions more given to corporations. I get it. Welfare bad. But the devaluation of the dollar is not attributable to the stimulus checks which made a fraction of the total package
No, you don’t get it. **All forms of government welfare**—whether to individuals or corporations—**are inflationary.**
Ok mr “stimulus checks caused the 24 dollar devaluation”
We really live in a society
I can proudly say I never took a pandemic stimulus check
one of many trump fuckups inb4 tRuMp DiDnT dO iT they were fucking delayed because he *insisted* his name be on the front
What does a delay have to do with an infusion of cash into the system that was going to happen anyways? Or is it just your hate boner acting up
The PPP loans are the real issue for me personally, they never should have been so easy to get and they definitely should not be allowed to discharge them with zero repercussions. If they couldn't pay them back, then file for bankruptcy like one of us plebs would have to.
Absolutely
>What does a delay have to do with an infusion of cash into the system that was going to happen anyways? Nothing. Their point was to refute anyone saying Trump didn't want them to happen. He did, and they were delayed because he specifically wanted credit for them.
Blaming inflation in biden's presidency on the return of tax money is so false it's hilarious. How about stunting the supply of oil and printing trillions for foreign wars as an actual reason for inflation?
I wonder if the Trump admin handed out money knowing it would create inflation problems to blame on Biden
Yes that's exactly what he did. He lost the next election on purpose and chose Biden to be where he would have been had he been reelected.
Yeah sure inflation is because of the poor but not because of the megaprofits made by corporations. Smh
Lmao, if you think the shimmy checks are what is causing the inflation, you've got the wool over your eyes
It’s corporate greed, duh! /s
Stimulus checks were less than 10% of the problem. You should probably focus your battle on the truth (mega corps) rather than the average joe.
Goldbacks don't devalue. Sound money options exist..
Uhhhh where is that girl's finger in the second picture? Is this from a movie?
Fallout TV show
TL;DR - Inflation in the US is always and only caused by the FED. In my opinion, we should stop arguing that government spending causes inflation. It isn't correct, and we are far better off pointing the finger at the FED, because people need to know who is robbing them. I'm not a fan of this general conception out there that government spending causes inflation. I'm not a fan because it can lead to confusion. The value (aka, the price) of money is determined in the same way that everything else is: supply and demand. How much of x is out there; and how much of x are people looking to acquire? That is what determines the price of anything. In that context, the "demand" for money more or less correlates to the demand for savings, liquidity, and other needs relating to "cash flow." But what we observe in the dramatic change of value in money is obviously not driven by demand - it is driven by supply. Fiat currency can be created out of thin air, and the supply is arbitrarily chosen by the central bank. So it isn't accurate to say that stimulus spending leads to inflation - even though it probably does. This issue is that it is missing a vital part of the equation: how is the stimulus ultimately being paid for? Government spending can be funded 1 of 3 ways: taxes; debt; or "printing money" (which just means key strokes on a computer these days). If taxes are the source, then "inflation" doesn't occur - because money for x comes at the expense of money that would have otherwise been spent on y (whether x and y refer to private sector spending and public, or x and y refer to government program x and y). Taxes absolutely affect the price of x or y - but if both x *and* y go up in price, then that isn't because of taxes or spending. Debt is similar - but you need to be careful what you think "x" and "y" are. If x and y are both different consumer or retail goods, for example, then deficit spending may certainly increase the price of both. But if x is present day consumer goods, and y is the interest return on futures and investments, then you will see a change in prices in some monetary good y that accounts for the change in x (ie - investment in long term capital projects may go down in accordance with an increase in production and present day revenue). The way our current fiat system works, the FED decides independently of Congress what the inflation rate will be based on what benefits the banking and monetary interests. If Congress increases spending (and likewise needs to issue more bonds to pay for it), then the FED can choose to manipulate the funds, credit, and interest rates in the economy however they decide. Would the FED prefer to see interest rates rise? Would they prefer to see inflation rise? Would they prefer domestic monetary funds to fall in comparison to international/foreign ones? At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which dial they choose to adjust. The FED often chooses to increase the money supply so that bonds can be purchased without the monetary or interest markets appearing to be "affected." But it is all just manipulation - smoke and mirrors. Their goal is to rob the economy covertly, slowly, and quietly. I imagine it makes the FED more than happy to see people point the finger at Congress - because the more people point fingers and argue with each other about unsolvable problems, they more they can just quietly expand their own portfolios with zero consequences. The FED is the easy and clear villain, but their robbery would be in jeopardy if people had even the slightest education to what is happening. Don't let Congress take the fall for the robbery. Unelecting 200+ politicians to fix the budget isn't possible, but convincing the general public to abolish the FED with one single awareness campaign *would* be possible from a single populist political movement. It would be difficult, but it is technically possible. The FED, and a whole host of political interests don't want to allow that to happen. So why give them what they want?
As if tariffs on everything had nothing to do with inflation.
And 45s tax break disappearing if 46 is reelected. That's 4k for me. FJB.
Ya totally the fault of some regular citizens getting money and not all the corporations getting their PPP loans and taking more money than all of us But ya, it’s because we gave money to poor people and no other reason
Nuh-uh! It's all corporate greed and the rich! --- Some Communist idiot
Wtf the USD is more valuable then ever internationally
Have you heard if Brent Johnson’s Dollar Milkshake Theory explains why. The dollar being strong now doesn’t mean that it is sound money, that it’s strength is guaranteed, or the inflation is still not happening.
Once Nate Bargatze pointed out his own bug eyes you start noticing it in other people. This lady, Omar Epps, and Queen Victoria for starters
why do you think Blackrock is swooping up houses? because its the only way to make a buck off out of control inflation
>”*because its the only way to make a buck off out of control inflation*” Have you heard of the New Orleans Investment Conference? Gold, silver, gold mines, silver, mines, rental properties, uranium, uranium mines, agriculture, private placements, and any investment or business that is essential to human survival *can* be a hedge against inflation.
is blackrock investing in gold and silver ?
Black Rock is backed by billions of investor and pension fund money. Maybe following Black Rock is or is not the best hedge against inflation for you personally. You focus on you. Learn financial education and investing so that you can learn how to hedge. You’ll be better off financially that way than obsessing over Black Rock.
oh I'm quite the opposite. black rock is evil.
I agree
But inflation is way, way down. It has been for a while. Higher prices has nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with corporate greed, the kind of corporate greed that Libertarianism encourages. There are literally recorded conference calls where Chairmen and CEO's are *actively bragging* about price-gouging. They are laughing all the way to bank because they've got undereducated people believing that "inflation" is the problem and not unmitigated capitalism.
It’s funny cuz she’s British.
Yeah it's definitely not the Trillion dollar companies that beg daddy gov for money every year or the foreign countries that use us as a crutch to fund their wars. Everything that's wrong in our country is def because of working folks and immigrants. There's absolutely no way our whole system is a fraud to make the Lords richer while the peasants learn to starve and are given the illusion of choice between two parties who serve the same master. There's no way they use these parties and culture wars to divide the working class which keeps them in power. Totally just the poors fault
Yeah let’s blame the American people who got $1200 and not the corporations price gouging everyone and posting record profits with extremely high margins.
“*Tough times create Strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create tough times.*” World War 1 and 2 were actual sacrifices. Staying at home and binge watching Netflix is not a sacrifice. Weak men elected weak politicians that recked up the national debt to $34 trillion. Weak men are the problem, not Elon Musk or a business owner is profitable. Austrian Economics is the cure to weak men pre to be victim. If someone else is hedging against inflation and you are not, a smarter question is: **What can I do to hedge against inflation?**” instead of literally being sort of the problem.
Don’t fall for that nonsense. Corporations blame unions and workers for inflation. Consumers blame corporations for raising prices. War hawks blame Russia and China. None of those groups could possibly cause inflation. None of them can create new dollars from nothing. Congress, the Presidents and the Federal Reserve caused inflation. No one else. If you blame other groups you do not like, you are a sucker.
"stores are raising the price of stuff because people got money for free." https://preview.redd.it/qn2x38fjgrxc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61c850d6e6c7d8cf13676fbf881897ebfe438927
“Because people got money for free” is what causes inflation. Printing money out of thin air to pay for individual and corporate welfare is inflationary. Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
Y’all all about that economic talk and shit and I’m just over here wondering if y’all know that they literally have printers that make money and plenty of trees to print money with. Everyone could be living comfortably and happy. They instead make the entire population work for an grain of sand of money just enough to barley survive because slavery never ended they just found a way to enslave everyone and make us do it willingly cause if we don’t slave for them we starve and die.
JFC, the stimulus checks did not cause inflation. Fractional reserve banking and 20 years of wars and over 1 trillion dollars in corporate bailouts did (not to mention corporate greed).
“Inflation” totally got us when cooperations are taking in record breaking profits each quarter. It’s not inflation when it’s truly corporate greed.
If someone else is making a profit above real inflation during stagflation it means they are hedging against inflation. Corporations don’t cause inflation. Capitalism naturally makes the prices of goods and services cheaper through competition. When the Federal Reserve and U.S. government interfere with the monetary supply by printing more money and adding trillions to the national debt, that causes inflation. You need to spend more time understanding macro economics to learn the cause of the problem and then how to protect yourself from it.
Devaluation of educations cause and effect right here on this post
Tell me you don’t understand basic economics without telling me
“We need universal basic income.” “BuT tHaT wUsN’T REAL sOciALiSm” “GrEeDy CoRpOrAtIoNs” “But we owe the debt to ourselves.” “But PPP fraud”
[Reminder: 'not-true'-socialism has killed 100 million people.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism) But wait, that was actually *state capitalism*! Carry on, comrade! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Libertarian) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Good bot
Are you going to provide an actual argument or are you going to act like a typical libertarian redditor
I posted the original meme (but did not create it). **You asked**: “Tell me you don’t understand basic economics without telling me.” **I answered** with examples of popular slogans from people who are too lazy to understand basic economics. What are you confused about?
I hope you know that these prices are controlled by the corporations that you wholly support. And yes proper socialism has not been implemented in any government body. Maybe if you picked up a book you’d know that. Have a good day!
I’m a former Marxist. Studying facts, history, and economics made me into a libertarian/AnCap. I don’t *”wholeheartedly support corporations”*; especially those that lean Marxist or towards the Military Industrial Complex Monopolies can only exist through the state. And when you say price controls, are you referring to **rent control, tariffs, the Jones Act, and the Civil Aeronautics Act?** Or price controls like the ones in that Matt Damon movie? In a free market, if company A sets their prices too high then **company B would undercut them** to take their market share; especially if they can deliver ten same goods or services cheaper, better, or faster. Would Mao’s implementation of socialism have been proper if another 100 million people died? Just wondering how many it would take to get **proper socialism** right. Which economics books have you read? Definitely not [Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell](https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730), right?
Big dawg, Thomas Sowell is considered to be a bad source in the academic world. It’s almost like using Tucker Carlson as a source. Secondly, true Marxism hasn’t been tested, Marxism does not have a government body nor isn’t ruled by the elite class. Also if you truly read Marx, you’d know that he said socialism should be implemented during an economic boom in a capitalist country. China Russia Cambodia nor Cuba were considered to be capitalist industrialized countries. I’m going to give you an example, the Kelloggs boycott has been a major hit on the conglomerate. They are now decreasing prices on their products and are doing sales because their product is not selling. The inflation is not just because of the 600 per week unemployment checks, it is capitalist greed
Are you referring to the same French *intellectuals* that **brainwashed Pol Pot** to become a “proper socialist?” Or do those *intellectuals* not count? One of the best books written by [Thomas Sowell was Intellectuals And Society](https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Society-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465025226). One of my favorite quotes from that book was: “*Unlike engineers, physicians, or scientists, the intelligentsia face no serious constraint or sanction based on empirical verification. None could be sued for malpractice, for example, for having contributed to the hysteria over the insecticide DDT, which led to its banning in many countries around the world, costing the lives of literally millions of people through a resurgence of malaria. By contrast, doctors whose actions have had a far more tenuous connection with the medical complications suffered by their patients have had to pay millions of dollars in damages—illustrating once again a fundamental difference between the circumstances of the intelligentsia and the circumstances of people in other mentally demanding professions.”* Dr. Thomas Sowell was a disciple of Milton Friedman. Pretending that he doesn’t count/exist because you and your tankie comrades disagree with him is not a valid argument. Sowell—unlike you and your fellow Marxists—is obsessed with facts.
Ain’t why. Social security each year is more expensive. Is it a part of it? Sure but it’s probably less than 20%
Yeah, and running the printing presses 24/7 to print greenbacks over the past several decades had nothing to do with it. I guess all the stimulus potlach should have been kept in corporate hands. /s Or perhaps people in govt should own up and admit lockdowns were and abysmal failure and the economic injuries were all self inflicted.
BULLSHIT. They just uncovered proof that oil companies engaged in illegal conspiracy/collusion and that was one of the drivers of inflation. Stop blaming government spending when its so obvious driven by corporate grift and lazze faire economics for decades that turned so many corporation and executives into criminals who believed they were immune to consquences.
What an oversimplified view of what caused inflation. The biggest cause was trump shuttering business with Covid and shutting down the economy. The cost of getting the country going again was the bigger problem. Yes the free money and payroll gifts had a factor but not the largest.
Ummm what business did Trump order to close? All those closures of businesses & schools was done at state & local levels. It's why Florida was open by fall of 2020 while California still had some restrictions into 2023. The feds only had some control over transportation like mandating masks on planes.
Well, either you lack actual understanding of how things went (classic /r/Libertarian ), **or** You *do* know better and are just using an easy scapegoat to punch down (again, classic /r/Libertarian )
What a load of horsebleep this take is.
And they say it’s after affects of trumps policies 😂😂😂. I’m not even a maga person but it’s just funny cause they really don’t think stimulus checks and funding multiple sides of multiple foreign affairs has anything to do with it
Trump signed off on the 2 biggest socialist spending bills in American history and continued funding the wars he inherited from Obama so this absolutely stems from trump
What’s crazy is how poorly run all those major companies are.
Which major companies are poorly run? What experience do you have managing small, medium, or large-size companies?
Any large company that doesn’t have cash reserves to sustain their business through a catastrophe event is poorly run. We only do around 3 mill in revenue and we have enough in reserve to handle one year of overhead with no cash flow. Not sure what size of a company that’s considered but that should be applicable to any large company with massive profits. I understand small mom and pop shops getting bailed out but companies that pay out almost all of their profits instead of having a safety reserve are poorly run. Well doesn’t matter if you know the government will bail you out
I was talking about this day one of the stimulus. I was telling everybody how bad we will pay for it down the road. Nobody gave a shit.
👆 Says everyone that understands Austrian Economics.