Greed Inflation

Quote: ams288

Righties when you point out Biden isn’t to blame for inflation:

Two pages in and this proved to be very apt.

Quote: Mission146

But...it was possible not to pay them at all.

You're thinking of a different candidate who wasn't in office. : )

I guess part of the point is, you vote for what you want, but if someone is in office who you disagree with a lot, it's probably not realistic to expect them to then suddenly adopt certain preferences. This you already really know. : )

Quote: rxwine

It's very odd to me, that you dismiss it.

It's the sort of thing I realize is just wrong as soon as I see it

Do companies set prices higher than they need to. Yes, sometimes, often when there is no inflation at all. The practice of setting the price as high as "the traffic will bear" is just the way it's done. Would I like to see companies hold back voluntarily in times of inflation? Yes. But when they do, they get no credit for it. For example, when toilet paper was in short supply, the grocery stores could have jacked up the price so high that supply met demand. Instead, the shelves were stripped clean and were empty all the time. Of course they knew that the public would riot if they gouged, so maybe it was more of fear of that than caring about not ripping people off, let's not give them too much credit. On the other hand, voluntarily not raising the price in these matters is often why we see shortages. The way it's supposed to work is if a product brings a high price, then the people providing that product work harder to put more of it out there, bringing things into balance.

This is economics 101, and the people doing the study you cited know they are making a mockery of these basic things.

"Old dog, new tricks"

After 30 years in office, the one thing I think Biden has changed during his presidency is knowing it's not a good look to sniff women's and children's hair.

(I think, waiting for Evenbob to prove that wrong)

Quote: odiousgambit

It's the sort of thing I realize is just wrong as soon as I see it

Do companies set prices higher than they need to. Yes, sometimes, often when there is no inflation at all. The practice of setting the price as high as "the traffic will bear" is just the way it's done. Would I like to see companies hold back voluntarily in times of inflation? Yes. But when they do, they get no credit for it. For example, when toilet paper was in short supply, the grocery stores could have jacked up the price so high that supply met demand. Instead, the shelves were stripped clean and were empty all the time. Of course they knew that the public would riot if they gouged, so maybe it was more of fear of that than caring about not ripping people off, let's not give them too much credit. On the other hand, voluntarily not raising the price in these matters is often why we see shortages. The way it's supposed to work is if a product brings a high price, then the people providing that product work harder to put more of it out there, bringing things into balance.

This is economics 101, and the people doing the study you cited know they are making a mockery of these basic things.

Maybe it's a stereotype or not, but the liberal side is more likely to argue lots of "gray" interpretations in everything, whereas the conservative side, is closer to either "It's good, or it's evil" and gray is just abandoning some moral absolute.

That's why when conservatives argue, "Big government is bad" I usually say, "Government needs to be a as big as necessary to run efficiently" not just big government is bad, though that can be true, I don't consider it the only correct all-encompassing answer. And that's often how I get to the positions I hold. Including this one.

Quote: RonC

The people who tout the Biden economy as being good for them are among those profiting from greedflation.

For the astute, it's never the economy, it's knowing when to buy body bags, and knowing when to buy life preservers.

That's kind of a bad saying for the benefit of all the people but it's still true. That I can't deny.

Quote: rxwine

You're thinking of a different candidate who wasn't in office. : )

I guess part of the point is, you vote for what you want, but if someone is in office who you disagree with a lot, it's probably not realistic to expect them to then suddenly adopt certain preferences. This you already really know. : )

Trump was definitely partially responsible for the first Covid relief measures and expanded unemployment. Given that the spending measures that he signed into law are what got us to this point, and Republicans are supposed to be generally opposed to welfare spending, I find it shocking that anyone should ever want to reelect Trump. Dude got the ball rolling on this, though I think it's possible he'd have been slapped with a veto-proof majority if he hadn't signed something, so who knows?

As far as the corporations go, 'Greedflation,' is a stupid term because the corporations are just doing what they exist to do. I also find it baffling that TheHill would use moronic phrases like, "Stockholder handouts," and, "Stockholder giveaways;" what the hell does that mean? Does the writer think the corporations exist as charities for their stockholders? That's just called delivering shareholder value and return on investment; it's not a handout; this is just how liberals speak now, I guess.

Here's a source I found off of your source:

https://www.axios.com/2023/05/18/once-a-fringe-theory-greedflation-gets-its-due

Quote:

In a speech in January, then-Fed vice chair Lael Brainard said wages weren't the main driver of inflation and pointed to a "price-price spiral," where companies mark up prices far higher than the increases in their input costs.

Right. When the companies know that the cost to manufacture the goods (or provide the services) and ultimately get the goods in the hands of consumers (or provide the services to the customers) is going to increase, then they are going to attempt to raise prices in an overcompensating way, if they think the market can bear the brunt of the increased prices.

It would be nice if there was some random idiot, say a relatively unimportant gambling writer, who could predict these things in advance.

Of course, you also have all the people clamoring to make a, 'Living wage,' for entry-level work. I'm not going to be the person that says, 'That type of work doesn't entitle you to a living wage,' because I don't decide what things pay, but what I can say is that the price increases in response (and further inflation driving resulting therefrom) will effectuate it such that it won't be a living wage for very long and some people who were making a living wage no longer will be.

In short, if they think total costs (which can include wages) are going to increase 5% the following year, then they'll generally see if they can get away with a 10% price hike.

While I admit that corporations rapidly increasing prices to an even greater extent than they incur increase to costs isn't particularly long-term sustainable, they don't have a duty to be long-term sustainable. If they want to run the business caring only about record revenues (or profits) for this year, then they're allowed to run it that way.

Quote:

In March, the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, Paul Donovan, published a note on "profit margin-led inflation," describing how in late 2022 and into this year, companies — particularly retailers and consumer goods makers — convinced consumers that they needed to raise prices. (They didn't really.)

Of course they didn't need to raise prices, but what are they going to say to the customer base, "We're raising prices even though it's mostly unnecessary?"

Anyway, what they seem to call, 'Greedflation,' I would call, 'Pretty f***ing obvious,' but grass would be a new discovery for some of these people, so it's no surprise to me that they would treat a well-established and well-known concept as if they just cracked the secrets of the freakin' Universe.

Quote: Mission146

I would just say, some corporations operate more responsibly to the overall public than others. But yes, they don't have to.

And no one has to ever give to charity or ever do one good thing except for themselves. But conservatives themselves have now said Corporations are people all the way to the Supreme Court.

See, so I can say F them then, so maybe they can ACT LIKE IT sometimes. If they were just a thing, I can't expect much. Conservatives fault again!

See what I did there! Heh.

Quote: rxwine

● Tyson––whose executives touted seeing "significant pricing power of our portfolio with a year-overyear increase of 7.6%"––saw its net income increase from $3 billion in FY 2021 to over $3.2 billion in
https://thehill.com/business/economy/4057722-greedflation-is-the-new-inflation-as-corporate-profits-balloon-report/

Tyson for years sold a 10 lb bag of chicken leg quarters for $5.99 which is $0.59 a pound. I used two of these a week for years and years to feed my cats as part of their diet. When the Bidenflation arrived this chicken went to $9.99 overnight. How is this possible I asked myself and it turns out it was fake. They raised the price so high people stopped buying it and because it was chicken that they would a lot of times throw away they had to bring the price back down. It was so obvious that it was corporate greed. We'll never know how much Bidenflation is just a bunch of greedy bastards.

Quote: rxwine

I would just say, some corporations operate more responsibly to the overall public than others. But yes, they don't have to.

And no one has to ever give to charity or ever do one good thing except for themselves. But conservatives themselves have now said Corporations are people all the way to the Supreme Court.

See, so I can say F them then, so maybe they can ACT LIKE IT sometimes. If they were just a thing, I can't expect much. Conservatives fault again!

See what I did there! Heh.

If they are people than they are allowed to spew hate just like all the lefties do. The lefties want the right to f*** the right every chance they get even so far as making up events. Not sure that is the model we want our corporations to follow, although many of them have gone down that path already supporting all the false narratives Biden has created.