4 ms·

Inflation is being driven by corporate price gouging

12 points by shsachdev 3y ago

ftxbro 3y ago
Try not to let these corporations know that we squishy humans need food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical care or otherwise we will each literally die forever. If they learn it then they will drive up the prices because of our inelasticity of our desire to continue our existence, while the immortal corporations calmly trade other goods amongst each other at more reasonable prices.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  >Try not to let these corporations know that we squishy humans need food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical care That's right, never let 'em see you sweat. Opportunites for gouging like this don't come along every decade. For quite some time before the Wage & Price Freeze was enacted in 1971, it was obvious that workers and those on fixed income were getting the shaft since wages were rising insignificantly (other than unionized labor) compared to spiraling prices. There were TV commercials from the government urging Americans not to be "piggy", and it could be seen that "this" was supposed to be an effective effort to convince corporations not to raise prices? More so to persuade consumers that something was being done about inflation. After all whenever one of the commercials came on, you could see that the government was aware of how bad it was, and obviously was doing something about it; running ad's as persuasive as can be, right on TV. People were supposed to be frowned upon for wanting a raise in pay during such difficult times, how could you? Corporations certainly weren't going to raise prices after seeing all these commercials themselves, were they? Then once a price freeze was actually being talked about, corps jumped into action like never before otherwise it was going to be too late. The less-powerful small businesses not as much. Things were then frozen strategically before wages even had a chance to move the needle.
  - bick_nyers 3y ago
    They have a scapegoat to create a "new normal" that will persist for a decade or more. No wonder they tried to jack up the price of eggs so high. Vote with your wallets, even if you have the means to just eat the bill.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
jleyank 3y ago
It's bad form to have record profits in inflationary times. Makes too many people wonder...
elzbardico 3y ago
This is only possible because of the incredible levels of concentration and consolidation across industries. And I wonder if when checking your competitors price on real-time just require a few software engineers to keep a price crawler, it wouldn't make it easy to create some kind of emerging cartel-like behavior without the need for any kind of explicit coordination.

12 points by shsachdev 3y ago

Try not to let these corporations know that we squishy humans need food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical care or otherwise we will each literally die forever. If they learn it then they will drive up the prices because of our inelasticity of our desire to continue our existence, while the immortal corporations calmly trade other goods amongst each other at more reasonable prices.

fuzzfactor 3y ago
>Try not to let these corporations know that we squishy humans need food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical care That's right, never let 'em see you sweat. Opportunites for gouging like this don't come along every decade. For quite some time before the Wage & Price Freeze was enacted in 1971, it was obvious that workers and those on fixed income were getting the shaft since wages were rising insignificantly (other than unionized labor) compared to spiraling prices. There were TV commercials from the government urging Americans not to be "piggy", and it could be seen that "this" was supposed to be an effective effort to convince corporations not to raise prices? More so to persuade consumers that something was being done about inflation. After all whenever one of the commercials came on, you could see that the government was aware of how bad it was, and obviously was doing something about it; running ad's as persuasive as can be, right on TV. People were supposed to be frowned upon for wanting a raise in pay during such difficult times, how could you? Corporations certainly weren't going to raise prices after seeing all these commercials themselves, were they? Then once a price freeze was actually being talked about, corps jumped into action like never before otherwise it was going to be too late. The less-powerful small businesses not as much. Things were then frozen strategically before wages even had a chance to move the needle.
- bick_nyers 3y ago
  They have a scapegoat to create a "new normal" that will persist for a decade or more. No wonder they tried to jack up the price of eggs so high. Vote with your wallets, even if you have the means to just eat the bill.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

jleyank 3y ago

It's bad form to have record profits in inflationary times. Makes too many people wonder...

elzbardico 3y ago

This is only possible because of the incredible levels of concentration and consolidation across industries. And I wonder if when checking your competitors price on real-time just require a few software engineers to keep a price crawler, it wouldn't make it easy to create some kind of emerging cartel-like behavior without the need for any kind of explicit coordination.