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The lower class does suffer the most, but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them which actually cause most of the problem. By giving money to pe

The lower class does suffer the most, but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them which actually cause most of the problem. By giving money to people without producing more stuff - or even making it harder to produce the same - you MUST have inflation, rationing, or empty shelves - and often all three. The solution to allowing lower classes to have more stuff is to make it easier for everybody to produce more stuff. Giving money CAN help with distribution of stuff, allowing poor people to purchase a larger share. But it requires lots of money given directly to the people that need it (vs allowing the gov't to spend it themselves). And also requires lots of high inflation. Imagine, for example, just giving everyone £10M to spend on whatever they want. This would not create any more stuff - but it would sure be a big equalizer for people buying that stuff! But really - if we could all focus a bit more on production - allowing, encouraging, and celebrating it - then we'd all have a lot more stuff.

benlivengood 4y ago
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ shows that producing more stuff per person since 1978 hasn't fixed inflation (not graphed there), and we can afford less of it because real wages haven't kept up.
- solveit 4y ago
  No, that's not what real wages mean. Real wages going up means we can afford more stuff, full stop. The fact that real wages haven't kept up with productivity means that we can't afford as much more stuff as is being produced, but we can still afford more stuff. I'm not making a point about society, I'm making a point about what real wages mean.
- PathOfEclipse 4y ago
  Inflation is primarily caused by governments increasing the supply of money: https://www.hoover.org/research/inflation-true-and-false https://www.hoover.org/research/inflation-true-and-false. Inflation was fixed in the U.S. when Reagan became president: https://www.pacificresearch.org/beating-back-inflation-team-reagan-vs-team-biden/ https://www.pacificresearch.org/beating-back-inflation-team-... Recent studies in fact show that wages and productivity are still linked: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/3.2-Pgs.-168-179-The-Link-Between-Wages-and-Productivity-is-Strong.pdf https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/3.... And, finally other analyses show that studies on wage stagnation fail to take into account other factors, like the increase in non-wage benefits since the 70s: https://www.cato.org/projects/humanprogress/cost-of-living https://www.cato.org/projects/humanprogress/cost-of-living
  - dumpsterlid 4y ago
    [dead]
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    You're quoting the outputs of a propaganda industry, not the outputs of credible independent research. These are the orgs who persistently try to sell trickle-down economics, minimal taxation, low regulation, and other discredited, disastrous, and irrational neoliberal policy arguments. Many are also enthusiastic climate change denialists.
    - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      > You're quoting the outputs of a propaganda industry, not the outputs of credible independent research. One man's propaganda is another man's truth, and vice versa. Do you really think the EPI is credible? https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/economic-policy-institute/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/economic-policy-in... > These are the orgs who persistently try to sell trickle-down economics That's ironic, given that the phrase "trickle-down" was invented by leftists as a marketing tactic: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-the-trickle-down-myth-workers-are-always-paid-first-and-then-profits-flow-upward-later-if-at-all/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-the-trickle-... > low regulation Well, we can agree on that one at least. > and other discredited, disastrous, and irrational neoliberal policy argument Never mind. I guess we have nothing to agree on. > Many are also enthusiastic climate change denialists. You're clearly influenced by the outputs of a propaganda industry, not the outputs of credible independent research. See what I did there? I'll even one-up you with some links: https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/1950665798 https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matt... https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmism-Hurts/dp/0063001691 https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmi... https://www.amazon.com/Fossil-Future-Flourishing-Requires-Gas-Not-ebook/dp/B098M3Y7VC?ref_=ast_author_dp https://www.amazon.com/Fossil-Future-Flourishing-Requires-Ga...
      - DeathArrow 4y ago
- OliverGilan 4y ago
  Inflation has been remarkably low since 1980 though… and that graph doesn’t mention prices. Theoretically if more is being produced then you don’t need wages to keep up to afford the same luxuries. In fact all the stats I’ve seen shown that we can and do afford a lot more these days
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    Meanwhile the headline article is saying the exact opposite. We're not talking about luxuries, we're talking about essentials. A nice iPhone is useless if you can't afford to feed your family or pay your energy bills - which is quite literally the situation many families in the UK are now finding themselves.
- andrewmutz 4y ago
  "Real" wages are wages after being adjusted for inflation
cool_dude85 4y ago
>By giving money to people without producing more stuff - or even making it harder to produce the same - you MUST have inflation, rationing, or empty shelves - and often all three. Says who? Why can't the people producing stuff simply take lower profit margins instead?
- bluGill 4y ago
  That is the lower class producing stuff who you are asking to take lower profit margins.
  - Drakim 4y ago
    There is a very strong disconnect between the value created by the lower class though their labor and what they are paid in wages. Companies don't use some formula where they give a percentage of what you create to you in return, they try to squeeze your wages down as low as possible. It doesn't matter if you produce 5000 bucks an hour or 100 bucks an hour in value for your company, they still want to pay you as little as possible. Stuff like staff loyalty and retention has been to a large part abandoned in favor of simply keeping wages down.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- oatmeal1 4y ago
  First, because margins are razor-thin as it is. Second, because it's a mature market and penetration pricing is not profitable.
- solveit 4y ago
  Prices lower than the market-clearing price necessarily mean rationing or empty shelves. If you have a hundred potatoes and two hundred people, lowering prices just mean some people won't be able to buy at the low price.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
louwrentius 4y ago
Why so convoluted. Just tax the rich (companies) properly. The resources and money is available. The current government chooses not to allocate it properly. What is happening in the UK is to me 100% the result of the current Conservative Party and their policies.
- prox 4y ago
  Tax the rich and they go somewhere else (see recent discussions about the wealth tax in France)
  - pydry 4y ago
    The wealthy in the UK are largely landed gentry. They can't flee with their property and if they sell it off at firesale prices to ordinary folk to avoid being taxed that would largely solve the housing crisis. The problem wouldn't be that they would leave. The problem would be that they would stay and become violent.
    - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
      https://www.thetimes.co.uk/sunday-times-rich-list https://www.thetimes.co.uk/sunday-times-rich-list Eyeballing this, only 11 of the top 50 richest people in the UK have property as their source of wealth.
      - ambicapter 4y ago
        "only"? That's >20%.
      - pydry 4y ago
        Not really sure I'd call the "Hinduja" family wealth "British" although what small % of their wealth they do have in the UK is undoubtedly in property. There's quite a number of very rich foreigners who economically have very little effect on the UK apart from monopolizing scarce inner city property.
    - 4y ago
prox 4y ago
Production also means services right?
ddren 4y ago
[flagged]
- refurb 4y ago
  Because you get shortages. See the Nixon era price controls and how they failed to get inflation under control.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  I never see libertarians here.
- mrob 4y ago
  Price controls are equivalent to welfare payments, except instead of being handled by an at least theoretically accountable government, the responsibility is imposed on random third parties with no oversight. Unsurprisingly, most of those third parties decide they'd rather keep their wealth instead of selling at a loss.
- jhallenworld 4y ago
  The rises are due to a power dynamic: the companies raising the prices can basically get away with it ("whatever the market will bear"). Why can they do this? One reason is monopoly power- monopolies must be broken up. But what else can be done (besides central bank driven demand destruction)? So instead of price controls, a more palatable solution is collective buying. This gives buyers more clout, allows them to bargain for lower prices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyers_club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyers_club So we need more large non-profit buyers clubs, things like that. In the US, allow medicare to bargain with drug companies- it's insane that they can not. An example where this works: my parents live in a gated community. They pay very little for the cable + internet + cell phone because the entire community has a deal with the provider. Large retailers have this exact role: they certainly demand and get lower prices from their suppliers. We need a non-profit version of this, why should Walmart owners only benefit from their buying power?
  - concordDance 4y ago
isaacremuant 4y ago
I understand where you're for: patching things for some at the bottom doesn't help produce more. But focusing on the alleged producers while fleecing the people in the middle (who are not the lower end either) is equally bad. The people in the middle get high taxes, no real possiblity of ownership, no benefits of the bottom (state help) or of the top (the top just increases their own margins). The top lobbies government and sets an unfair advantage for themselves, making the whole alleged democratic representation a farce. The government should be more frugal with their won bureocracy and corruption and lower the taxes for the middle and bottom. The pretende that increasing conditions to the top will drip down is demonstrably false. It's mostly a rigged game, depending on where you started.
lostdog 4y ago
What are the typical policies for getting more stuff produced?
- jrockway 4y ago
  Whatever we do with corn is a good example. We have way more of it than anyone wants, but it continues to be produced because the producers are subsidized. (We have found alternate uses for the corn glut; high fructose corn syrup, ethanol in your gasoline, etc. Neither of these things exist in countries that don't subsidize corn production.) In theory, you could do this with toilet paper or loaves of bread too.
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them which actually cause most of the problem. In the US, the Fed is not concerned about the bottom. They're solely concerned on the top. Check the numbers, zero interest rates did *not* trickle down. Instead they helped further increase the income inequality gap. To blame to poor (read: the powerless) in any way, shape or form is, at best, misinformation. Worse it gives those responsible a free pass. "I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back." Leo Tolstoy
NalNezumi 4y ago
This seems to come from the same place as the argument of "trickle down economics". Yea no, I've seen similar things done in Japan with abenomics (with one of the targeted goal even being more inflation; without achieving it) and studies show it doesn't work. Those spending never reaches the "lower classes", and seldom even reach places where it would have the potential to increase productivity. It's a tired, old argument that is done to justify stupid spending and enriching certain pockets while claiming to benefit all with a shoddy reasoning that omit the important details
- theturtletalks 4y ago
  His argument is that the government can do 2 things: 1. Interest-free money for businesses to launch, grow, and advance. This leads to more goods in the market and thus lower prices 2. Free money straight to the people which means more money in the market and thus, inflation, empty shelves, etc. His general point is that having interest-free money keeps existing players honest since newcomers can come in and start a competing business. Now that the money is drying up, existing players are increasing their moat.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >1. Interest-free money for businesses to launch, grow, and advance. This leads to more goods in the market and thus lower prices We tried that. It all went into real estate and stocks and gave birth to a massive scam industry involving crypto and other get rich quick schemes as the world is full of stupid people and opportunists. The average joe didn't see much trickle down to him unless he was already invested in real estate or stocks. It was basically a wealth transfer. Housing is now about 30% more expensive than pre pandemic but take home wages are not. Giving away free money without any strings attached to individuals or corporations is a bad idea.
    - theturtletalks 4y ago
      I always thought "trickle-down" economics was about giving money to businesses via tax-breaks and that money would make it's way back to the people as wages. We know this doesn't happen and companies do stock-buybacks with that money. Here, we're discussing a different paradigm: interest-free money vs free money. The issue is that interest-free money has little to no use for individuals. They can't put that interest-free money into an existing business and reap the returns. That's why most people just use that "interest-free" money for stocks (margin trading) and even then it wasn't fully interest-free. The fundamental issue is how to give individuals interest-free money and have them see returns. Maybe using that money toward job training, or starting incubators that find small businesses and infuse them with money, mentorship, etc.
virgildotcodes 4y ago
We avoid inflation by taxing the wealthy and redistributing that to the lower socioeconomic classes. Global ecosystems are already in a free fall, we don’t need to “encourage production” [by deregulating industries? perhaps getting rid of those pesky environmental and worker protections? (that’ll definitely help out those workers) ] and even more rapid resource consumption.
- vuln 4y ago
  Has this ever successfully been accomplished and if so where? Thanks!
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    The biggest growth period in the Western world - after WWII - happened to coincide with enthusiastic social spending programs, aggressive government funding of new R&D, and very high tax rates. In the US the rate peaked at 91% on earnings over $400k - which is about $4m adjusted.
    - adventured 4y ago
      I often see the arguments made about how the US didn't suffer from the 90% tax rate. Those same arguments universally and intentionally ignore the elephant in the room: the US was the prime industrial power left standing in pristine shape after WW2 and largely inherited the globe accordingly. The US stepped right into being globally dominate in manufacturing, which produced a temporary, artificial prop for the middle class of gigantic proportions. That can't be repeated today and it wasn't the high tax rate that helped make things so great for the middle class. This is also why middle class tax rates are so high in Nordic countries, and most affluent nations with good social welfare structures. Taxing the rich isn't nearly enough. The US would have to shift to a much higher tax system for everyone, and the US middle class (which is spoiled by relatively low income tax rates) will not go for it (not yet anyway).
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  You avoid inflation by taxing everybody. That takes money out of the system. The "wealthy" are already taxed pretty heavily, and they don't buy a lot of stuff. In fact, your best bang-for-the-buck on reducing inflation is to tax the lower classes, since their money tends to be higher-velocity than the money of the wealthy. It sounds fucked up, but mathematically speaking, you need to tax the poor if you want to stop inflation.
henry2023 4y ago
We already produce enough. It’s the distribution of what has been produced the core issue.
- Nifty3929 4y ago
  Is it? Are the rich people eating up all the bread? Buying up all the shoes? It you take all the cars from the top 1% and give them to the other 99%, how many additional cars do you suppose the average family will get? How about for houses? How about for haircuts?
RhodesianHunter 4y ago
>By giving money to people without producing more stuff - or even making it harder to produce the same - you MUST have inflation, rationing, or empty shelves - and often all three. Completely inaccurate. Giving people money that came from taxes does not increase the money supply. Giving people money that came from selling bonds does not increase the money supply. Only printing money increases the money supply.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  It's the household finance mental model of national accounting that won't go away.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  The main driver in inflation is monetary velocity - the rate at which money is exchanging hands in the market. Increases in monetary supply almost invariably lead to increases in monetary velocity, so the two are generally equated - but this is not strictly necessary. If I gave you a quadrillion dollars tomorrow, and you chose to simply keep it under your [rather large] bed, but otherwise continued living as you do - then obviously no inflation is going to happen, even though you just increased the monetary supply quite substantially. So while one could nitpick some points about the specifics of government actions in relation to the monetary supply, even if we take all of your points for granted - there would almost certainly be inflation proportional to the amount given. The only way there would be no inflation is if this action didn't increase monetary velocity.
  - RhodesianHunter 4y ago
    >The main driver in inflation is monetary velocity I would say this is also mostly innacurate. Velocity is one factor, but may or may not be the driving factor depending on circumstances. If a global pandemic shuts down most of the manufacturing cities in China, and a war in Ukraine takes Russian energy and Ukrainian grain out of the supply equation, then the velocity of money is irrelevant compared to supply constraints.
  - cheriot 4y ago
drewcoo 4y ago
> The lower class does suffer the most, but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them I defy you to find any policies in capitalist countries that are intended mainly to "help the poor." Even the liberals' beloved FDR claimed he was just trying to save capitalism with his social programs.
rabite 4y ago
[flagged]
- mandmandam 4y ago
  [dead]
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  You can't quote the Daily Mail and expect to be taken seriously.
auggierose 4y ago
At some point AI will produce stuff for us. It is just a matter of time until AI can do the basics: grow food, build houses, operate people, etc. I mean, that is what technology was always for: making life better. So clearly there cannot be a correlation between how much you produce, and how much you consume.
cortesoft 4y ago
> Imagine, for example, just giving everyone £10M to spend on whatever they want. This would not create any more stuff - but it would sure be a big equalizer for people buying that stuff! This is mostly true, but it isn’t always, and it isn’t a perfect formula. For example, there are some goods that have zero or negligible marginal costs to provide. For example, a streaming service. If people use the extra money they get to buy Netflix subscriptions, it isn’t like there will suddenly be a shortage of Netflix streams. It doesn’t take many resources to add additional subscribers for Netflix… it isn’t exactly zero margin, but it is pretty damn close. This is even somewhat true for some physical goods. There is a lot of latent productivity in our economy… factories only running at 50% capacity, for example, or mines that aren’t producing all the ore they can because the demand doesn’t exist for what they produce. If demand suddenly increases because there is more money being spent, they can increase productivity without putting strain on the productive capacity of the industry. Obviously this is not infinite capacity, but it is why it is not as simple as “creating more money == 1 to 1 equivalent inflation”. In other words, you aren’t going to get a 10% inflation if you add 10% to the money supply. It would be some fraction of that 10%.
foldr 4y ago
>The lower class does suffer the most, but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them which actually cause most of the problem. By giving money to people without producing more stuff Which specific policies of this Conservative government amount to a change in the direction of giving more money to more nonproductive people? If anything, exactly the opposite has been happening, and yet inflation has been getting worse.
tmnvix 4y ago
> The solution to allowing lower classes to have more stuff is to make it easier for everybody to produce more stuff. So tax wealth rather than income?
- thomasjb 4y ago
  Or you know, deregulate things? Things like allowing free import of cabbage seeds, removing restrictions on manufacturing in residential areas, letting folk build homes which are different to what the local urban planners envisioned?

benlivengood 4y ago

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ shows that producing more stuff per person since 1978 hasn't fixed inflation (not graphed there), and we can afford less of it because real wages haven't kept up.

solveit 4y ago
No, that's not what real wages mean. Real wages going up means we can afford more stuff, full stop. The fact that real wages haven't kept up with productivity means that we can't afford as much more stuff as is being produced, but we can still afford more stuff. I'm not making a point about society, I'm making a point about what real wages mean.
PathOfEclipse 4y ago
Inflation is primarily caused by governments increasing the supply of money: https://www.hoover.org/research/inflation-true-and-false https://www.hoover.org/research/inflation-true-and-false. Inflation was fixed in the U.S. when Reagan became president: https://www.pacificresearch.org/beating-back-inflation-team-reagan-vs-team-biden/ https://www.pacificresearch.org/beating-back-inflation-team-... Recent studies in fact show that wages and productivity are still linked: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/3.2-Pgs.-168-179-The-Link-Between-Wages-and-Productivity-is-Strong.pdf https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/3.... And, finally other analyses show that studies on wage stagnation fail to take into account other factors, like the increase in non-wage benefits since the 70s: https://www.cato.org/projects/humanprogress/cost-of-living https://www.cato.org/projects/humanprogress/cost-of-living
- dumpsterlid 4y ago
  [dead]
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  You're quoting the outputs of a propaganda industry, not the outputs of credible independent research. These are the orgs who persistently try to sell trickle-down economics, minimal taxation, low regulation, and other discredited, disastrous, and irrational neoliberal policy arguments. Many are also enthusiastic climate change denialists.
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    > You're quoting the outputs of a propaganda industry, not the outputs of credible independent research. One man's propaganda is another man's truth, and vice versa. Do you really think the EPI is credible? https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/economic-policy-institute/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/economic-policy-in... > These are the orgs who persistently try to sell trickle-down economics That's ironic, given that the phrase "trickle-down" was invented by leftists as a marketing tactic: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-the-trickle-down-myth-workers-are-always-paid-first-and-then-profits-flow-upward-later-if-at-all/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-the-trickle-... > low regulation Well, we can agree on that one at least. > and other discredited, disastrous, and irrational neoliberal policy argument Never mind. I guess we have nothing to agree on. > Many are also enthusiastic climate change denialists. You're clearly influenced by the outputs of a propaganda industry, not the outputs of credible independent research. See what I did there? I'll even one-up you with some links: https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matters/dp/1950665798 https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Climate-Science-Doesnt-Matt... https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmism-Hurts/dp/0063001691 https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmi... https://www.amazon.com/Fossil-Future-Flourishing-Requires-Gas-Not-ebook/dp/B098M3Y7VC?ref_=ast_author_dp https://www.amazon.com/Fossil-Future-Flourishing-Requires-Ga...
    - DeathArrow 4y ago
OliverGilan 4y ago
Inflation has been remarkably low since 1980 though… and that graph doesn’t mention prices. Theoretically if more is being produced then you don’t need wages to keep up to afford the same luxuries. In fact all the stats I’ve seen shown that we can and do afford a lot more these days
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Meanwhile the headline article is saying the exact opposite. We're not talking about luxuries, we're talking about essentials. A nice iPhone is useless if you can't afford to feed your family or pay your energy bills - which is quite literally the situation many families in the UK are now finding themselves.
andrewmutz 4y ago
"Real" wages are wages after being adjusted for inflation

cool_dude85 4y ago

>By giving money to people without producing more stuff - or even making it harder to produce the same - you MUST have inflation, rationing, or empty shelves - and often all three. Says who? Why can't the people producing stuff simply take lower profit margins instead?

bluGill 4y ago
That is the lower class producing stuff who you are asking to take lower profit margins.
- Drakim 4y ago
  There is a very strong disconnect between the value created by the lower class though their labor and what they are paid in wages. Companies don't use some formula where they give a percentage of what you create to you in return, they try to squeeze your wages down as low as possible. It doesn't matter if you produce 5000 bucks an hour or 100 bucks an hour in value for your company, they still want to pay you as little as possible. Stuff like staff loyalty and retention has been to a large part abandoned in favor of simply keeping wages down.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
oatmeal1 4y ago
First, because margins are razor-thin as it is. Second, because it's a mature market and penetration pricing is not profitable.
solveit 4y ago
Prices lower than the market-clearing price necessarily mean rationing or empty shelves. If you have a hundred potatoes and two hundred people, lowering prices just mean some people won't be able to buy at the low price.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

louwrentius 4y ago

Why so convoluted. Just tax the rich (companies) properly. The resources and money is available. The current government chooses not to allocate it properly. What is happening in the UK is to me 100% the result of the current Conservative Party and their policies.

prox 4y ago
Tax the rich and they go somewhere else (see recent discussions about the wealth tax in France)
- pydry 4y ago
  The wealthy in the UK are largely landed gentry. They can't flee with their property and if they sell it off at firesale prices to ordinary folk to avoid being taxed that would largely solve the housing crisis. The problem wouldn't be that they would leave. The problem would be that they would stay and become violent.
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/sunday-times-rich-list https://www.thetimes.co.uk/sunday-times-rich-list Eyeballing this, only 11 of the top 50 richest people in the UK have property as their source of wealth.
    - ambicapter 4y ago
      "only"? That's >20%.
    - pydry 4y ago
      Not really sure I'd call the "Hinduja" family wealth "British" although what small % of their wealth they do have in the UK is undoubtedly in property. There's quite a number of very rich foreigners who economically have very little effect on the UK apart from monopolizing scarce inner city property.
  - 4y ago

prox 4y ago

Production also means services right?

ddren 4y ago

[flagged]

refurb 4y ago
Because you get shortages. See the Nixon era price controls and how they failed to get inflation under control.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
I never see libertarians here.
mrob 4y ago
Price controls are equivalent to welfare payments, except instead of being handled by an at least theoretically accountable government, the responsibility is imposed on random third parties with no oversight. Unsurprisingly, most of those third parties decide they'd rather keep their wealth instead of selling at a loss.
jhallenworld 4y ago
The rises are due to a power dynamic: the companies raising the prices can basically get away with it ("whatever the market will bear"). Why can they do this? One reason is monopoly power- monopolies must be broken up. But what else can be done (besides central bank driven demand destruction)? So instead of price controls, a more palatable solution is collective buying. This gives buyers more clout, allows them to bargain for lower prices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyers_club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyers_club So we need more large non-profit buyers clubs, things like that. In the US, allow medicare to bargain with drug companies- it's insane that they can not. An example where this works: my parents live in a gated community. They pay very little for the cable + internet + cell phone because the entire community has a deal with the provider. Large retailers have this exact role: they certainly demand and get lower prices from their suppliers. We need a non-profit version of this, why should Walmart owners only benefit from their buying power?
- concordDance 4y ago

isaacremuant 4y ago

I understand where you're for: patching things for some at the bottom doesn't help produce more. But focusing on the alleged producers while fleecing the people in the middle (who are not the lower end either) is equally bad. The people in the middle get high taxes, no real possiblity of ownership, no benefits of the bottom (state help) or of the top (the top just increases their own margins). The top lobbies government and sets an unfair advantage for themselves, making the whole alleged democratic representation a farce. The government should be more frugal with their won bureocracy and corruption and lower the taxes for the middle and bottom. The pretende that increasing conditions to the top will drip down is demonstrably false. It's mostly a rigged game, depending on where you started.

lostdog 4y ago

What are the typical policies for getting more stuff produced?

jrockway 4y ago
Whatever we do with corn is a good example. We have way more of it than anyone wants, but it continues to be produced because the producers are subsidized. (We have found alternate uses for the corn glut; high fructose corn syrup, ethanol in your gasoline, etc. Neither of these things exist in countries that don't subsidize corn production.) In theory, you could do this with toilet paper or loaves of bread too.

chiefalchemist 4y ago

> but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them which actually cause most of the problem. In the US, the Fed is not concerned about the bottom. They're solely concerned on the top. Check the numbers, zero interest rates did *not* trickle down. Instead they helped further increase the income inequality gap. To blame to poor (read: the powerless) in any way, shape or form is, at best, misinformation. Worse it gives those responsible a free pass. "I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back." Leo Tolstoy

NalNezumi 4y ago

This seems to come from the same place as the argument of "trickle down economics". Yea no, I've seen similar things done in Japan with abenomics (with one of the targeted goal even being more inflation; without achieving it) and studies show it doesn't work. Those spending never reaches the "lower classes", and seldom even reach places where it would have the potential to increase productivity. It's a tired, old argument that is done to justify stupid spending and enriching certain pockets while claiming to benefit all with a shoddy reasoning that omit the important details

theturtletalks 4y ago
His argument is that the government can do 2 things: 1. Interest-free money for businesses to launch, grow, and advance. This leads to more goods in the market and thus lower prices 2. Free money straight to the people which means more money in the market and thus, inflation, empty shelves, etc. His general point is that having interest-free money keeps existing players honest since newcomers can come in and start a competing business. Now that the money is drying up, existing players are increasing their moat.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >1. Interest-free money for businesses to launch, grow, and advance. This leads to more goods in the market and thus lower prices We tried that. It all went into real estate and stocks and gave birth to a massive scam industry involving crypto and other get rich quick schemes as the world is full of stupid people and opportunists. The average joe didn't see much trickle down to him unless he was already invested in real estate or stocks. It was basically a wealth transfer. Housing is now about 30% more expensive than pre pandemic but take home wages are not. Giving away free money without any strings attached to individuals or corporations is a bad idea.
  - theturtletalks 4y ago
    I always thought "trickle-down" economics was about giving money to businesses via tax-breaks and that money would make it's way back to the people as wages. We know this doesn't happen and companies do stock-buybacks with that money. Here, we're discussing a different paradigm: interest-free money vs free money. The issue is that interest-free money has little to no use for individuals. They can't put that interest-free money into an existing business and reap the returns. That's why most people just use that "interest-free" money for stocks (margin trading) and even then it wasn't fully interest-free. The fundamental issue is how to give individuals interest-free money and have them see returns. Maybe using that money toward job training, or starting incubators that find small businesses and infuse them with money, mentorship, etc.

virgildotcodes 4y ago

We avoid inflation by taxing the wealthy and redistributing that to the lower socioeconomic classes. Global ecosystems are already in a free fall, we don’t need to “encourage production” [by deregulating industries? perhaps getting rid of those pesky environmental and worker protections? (that’ll definitely help out those workers) ] and even more rapid resource consumption.

vuln 4y ago
Has this ever successfully been accomplished and if so where? Thanks!
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  The biggest growth period in the Western world - after WWII - happened to coincide with enthusiastic social spending programs, aggressive government funding of new R&D, and very high tax rates. In the US the rate peaked at 91% on earnings over $400k - which is about $4m adjusted.
  - adventured 4y ago
    I often see the arguments made about how the US didn't suffer from the 90% tax rate. Those same arguments universally and intentionally ignore the elephant in the room: the US was the prime industrial power left standing in pristine shape after WW2 and largely inherited the globe accordingly. The US stepped right into being globally dominate in manufacturing, which produced a temporary, artificial prop for the middle class of gigantic proportions. That can't be repeated today and it wasn't the high tax rate that helped make things so great for the middle class. This is also why middle class tax rates are so high in Nordic countries, and most affluent nations with good social welfare structures. Taxing the rich isn't nearly enough. The US would have to shift to a much higher tax system for everyone, and the US middle class (which is spoiled by relatively low income tax rates) will not go for it (not yet anyway).
pclmulqdq 4y ago
You avoid inflation by taxing everybody. That takes money out of the system. The "wealthy" are already taxed pretty heavily, and they don't buy a lot of stuff. In fact, your best bang-for-the-buck on reducing inflation is to tax the lower classes, since their money tends to be higher-velocity than the money of the wealthy. It sounds fucked up, but mathematically speaking, you need to tax the poor if you want to stop inflation.

henry2023 4y ago

We already produce enough. It’s the distribution of what has been produced the core issue.

Nifty3929 4y ago
Is it? Are the rich people eating up all the bread? Buying up all the shoes? It you take all the cars from the top 1% and give them to the other 99%, how many additional cars do you suppose the average family will get? How about for houses? How about for haircuts?

RhodesianHunter 4y ago

>By giving money to people without producing more stuff - or even making it harder to produce the same - you MUST have inflation, rationing, or empty shelves - and often all three. Completely inaccurate. Giving people money that came from taxes does not increase the money supply. Giving people money that came from selling bonds does not increase the money supply. Only printing money increases the money supply.

pessimizer 4y ago
It's the household finance mental model of national accounting that won't go away.
somenameforme 4y ago
The main driver in inflation is monetary velocity - the rate at which money is exchanging hands in the market. Increases in monetary supply almost invariably lead to increases in monetary velocity, so the two are generally equated - but this is not strictly necessary. If I gave you a quadrillion dollars tomorrow, and you chose to simply keep it under your [rather large] bed, but otherwise continued living as you do - then obviously no inflation is going to happen, even though you just increased the monetary supply quite substantially. So while one could nitpick some points about the specifics of government actions in relation to the monetary supply, even if we take all of your points for granted - there would almost certainly be inflation proportional to the amount given. The only way there would be no inflation is if this action didn't increase monetary velocity.
- RhodesianHunter 4y ago
  >The main driver in inflation is monetary velocity I would say this is also mostly innacurate. Velocity is one factor, but may or may not be the driving factor depending on circumstances. If a global pandemic shuts down most of the manufacturing cities in China, and a war in Ukraine takes Russian energy and Ukrainian grain out of the supply equation, then the velocity of money is irrelevant compared to supply constraints.
- cheriot 4y ago

drewcoo 4y ago

> The lower class does suffer the most, but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them I defy you to find any policies in capitalist countries that are intended mainly to "help the poor." Even the liberals' beloved FDR claimed he was just trying to save capitalism with his social programs.

rabite 4y ago

[flagged]

mandmandam 4y ago
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TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
You can't quote the Daily Mail and expect to be taken seriously.

auggierose 4y ago

At some point AI will produce stuff for us. It is just a matter of time until AI can do the basics: grow food, build houses, operate people, etc. I mean, that is what technology was always for: making life better. So clearly there cannot be a correlation between how much you produce, and how much you consume.

cortesoft 4y ago

> Imagine, for example, just giving everyone £10M to spend on whatever they want. This would not create any more stuff - but it would sure be a big equalizer for people buying that stuff! This is mostly true, but it isn’t always, and it isn’t a perfect formula. For example, there are some goods that have zero or negligible marginal costs to provide. For example, a streaming service. If people use the extra money they get to buy Netflix subscriptions, it isn’t like there will suddenly be a shortage of Netflix streams. It doesn’t take many resources to add additional subscribers for Netflix… it isn’t exactly zero margin, but it is pretty damn close. This is even somewhat true for some physical goods. There is a lot of latent productivity in our economy… factories only running at 50% capacity, for example, or mines that aren’t producing all the ore they can because the demand doesn’t exist for what they produce. If demand suddenly increases because there is more money being spent, they can increase productivity without putting strain on the productive capacity of the industry. Obviously this is not infinite capacity, but it is why it is not as simple as “creating more money == 1 to 1 equivalent inflation”. In other words, you aren’t going to get a 10% inflation if you add 10% to the money supply. It would be some fraction of that 10%.

foldr 4y ago

>The lower class does suffer the most, but unfortunately it is the policies intended to help them which actually cause most of the problem. By giving money to people without producing more stuff Which specific policies of this Conservative government amount to a change in the direction of giving more money to more nonproductive people? If anything, exactly the opposite has been happening, and yet inflation has been getting worse.

tmnvix 4y ago

> The solution to allowing lower classes to have more stuff is to make it easier for everybody to produce more stuff. So tax wealth rather than income?

thomasjb 4y ago
Or you know, deregulate things? Things like allowing free import of cabbage seeds, removing restrictions on manufacturing in residential areas, letting folk build homes which are different to what the local urban planners envisioned?