I mean, that’s 4 years of our lives taken! 4 years of opportunities that were more challenging because they wanted a number on a computer to go up! 4 years of feeling worse than necessary about my finances and management of them and general personhood because i felt like i couldn’t afford anything because everything was priced egregiously!
And now they’re saying ‘oh well we fixed it now’. Fuck you!!! Get over yourselves! Holy shit, I can’t wait to happily be friends with the giant corporations again!! Just the arrogance that we’re happy to once again be at their beck and call because they changed the numbers they could’ve always changed. Sickening.
And I feel like I have a brain disease because i’ve been worrying and posting for years about how disgusting it is that they’re just cranking the numbers up to see what’ll happen and obviously no one will stop them because this is an oligarchy — and i kept getting well-ackshullyied into the ground by esteemed logical posters explaining how supply chains work. Well look at this shit you motherfuckers!
Just the amount of incredibly deep and sophisticated social engineering is so disgusting:
It’s a savvy play for shifting perceptions of value, crucial for consumers in the decision-making process of where to shop for bread and eggs. Customers benefit by saving some money; retailers possibly benefit even more by being known as the company that magnanimously trimmed prices.
Go to hell, stop shifting my value perception. I should be able to decide what I feel about milk or zucchini. When I think about a croissant I should be thinking about France, not Target pricing strategies.
Most importantly, the theater of making grand pronouncements about lower prices is great for retailers’ reputations. Forget about all the price hikes grocery retailers and food brands implemented in the last few years — now companies would like consumers to focus on the savings they’re offering. “They’re all leaning into this inflation-oriented messaging,” says Stambor, which he notes is interesting because food inflation isn’t high at the moment. It’s the accumulation of past inflation that we’re still feeling the sting of; the prices just didn’t come down.
And we’re meant to thank them for this! I hope to god they can’t put the genie back in the bottle with this. I won’t forget 2020, I’ll hate these bloodsuckers til the day I die.
It turns out the supply & demand story of economics is basically horseshit, and if you look at how the economy works scientifically - which in this case just means paying attention to what actually happens and letting that shape your theories rather than demanding that your theories are correct and patching them ad-hoc to pretend you were always right - then essentially inflation is caused by price setters just hiking prices.
https://strangematters.coop/supply-chain-theory-of-inflation/
This is a decent interview with the authors where they also talk about how orthodox economists gatekeep their theories and launder other’s theories so they never have to admit they were wrong:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/the-imf-admits-we-were-right-121530013/
So yeah, you’re not crazy, it is just corporations using their price setting powers to shit on us, and economists giving them cover.
If we still had “real” competition, this wouldn’t have happened. Even during the pandemic competition would’ve/should’ve kept prices normal-ish. But of course we all know this isn’t how it works. Turns out that if a dozen or so companies own the grand majority of whatever their industry is, they behave like monopolists. Who could’ve possibly predicted such a thing?
There was this bearded fellow in the 1800’s, but I’m sure he had no idea what he was talking about.
This is another story that orthodox economics tells, but the supply chain model takes competition into account and appears to operate in its presence.
Monopoly is a problem, but even the story that competition keeps prices down is a false one.
This is more of a failure of government rather than a failure of capitalism.
In democracies, people can vote to tax the wealthy corporations and give food vouchers to the middle and lower classes.
The problem with a marketplace with too few unique sellers is they don’t have to agree to raise prices, they just know no one is going to lower them to try to gain market share.
The government should have done something or broken up larger companies and it did nothing. Capitalism isn’t the problem, weak governments and terrible leaders are the problem.
Biden could have spearheaded hauling the leaders of every supermarket into a congressional hearing to ask questions that would have resulted in downward price movement. Congress could have passed “increased profit taxes” so that if corporations selling inelastic goods had profit increases over 10% and price increases over 10% on the top 5 of their best selling goods, then a large tax would kick in. Price gouging taxes could have taxed the profits on any store that raised prices by over 20% per quarter. Any of these things would have reduced the problem. I am surprised Elizabeth Warren didn’t get anything passed because despite all of her past problems (rising in academia though misrepresentation), she’s incredibly smart with policy, she just doesn’t know how to scream and yell at people to get her point across.
But most government leaders are feckless and lazy and stupid. That’s the sad reality.
If a democrat got on TikTok screaming about these policies and yelling that Republicans are being selfish and fucking over the middle class, they would have been passed. I have thought about going on TikTok myself and ranting and raving but I have a complex past and I’m not sure how people would respond and I am concerned about TikTok’s collection of data.
There’s not been actual LEGISLATION that could be effective.
The lazy ineffective government controlling even more of society through Marxism is not the answer. Better people need to run for office.
Ultimately, what is going to happen is somehow the Democrats are going to get Newsom into office to try to be Bill Clinton II and he’ll enact mediocre policies that will be slightly better than the shit that’s been going on and he’ll be praised for being slightly less than mediocre. But the downward spiral of society will continue because ultimately, the math of global warming will kill us all, so none of this will matter. Newsom isn’t smart enough to veer away from the cliff of doom the world is barreling towards, but he’ll make some meaningless gestures and look good with great hair and be self-aggrandizing and people will feel better prior to everyone dying.
100%. Unfortunately, somewhere down the line, American style neoclassical economics because simply “economics” or even worse “just basic economics.” Suddenly tax breaks for the rich became the all curing treatment for any economic ailment.
Too much money to spend on healthcare? Tax cuts for the rich.
Too little money to spend on healthcare? Also tax cuts for the rich.
In terms of fixing every problem even, I’m yet to hear what it can’t do.
My favourite was when you had every economically illiterate stock bro in existence claiming along the lines of “no, I’ve glanced at a couple of margin calculations i made for 2 companies, at one point in the supply chain, and, as such, I know price gouging couldn’t possibly have happened.” They dont know enough about inventory keeping to explain to them that they can’t tell either way, bless them.
I recall Bush II starting his first term saying that the economy was doing so great that we had a budget surplus, and that had to be given back to the people* via tax breaks.
Then, before that could happen, the economy hit the shitter, and he said we needed to encourage the economy to recover by giving tax breaks to the people*.
It’s amazing how tax breaks just fix everything.
* The rich people, of course.
I would love to read more about how supply and demand is bullshit, but that is NOT a credible source. it’s just some guy’s blog. I’m sure it’s an interesting read but it would be intellectually irresponsible for me to disbelieve a fundamental principle of economics based on a source like that
I understand that, but if you read the first section, there are reputable sources quoted that simply admit that they have no good working model of inflation, and that supply & demand does not explain it.
Also if you actually go looking for the science that establishes the supply & demand model, it’s not really there. The supply & demand “graph” is actually just an illustration. It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s a story mainstream economists tell, not a reality.