Greed Inflation

Quote: Evenbob

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.

What year was that? Wasn't there a bird flu strain that wiped out just shy of sixty million chickens in late 2022?

Quote: kenarman

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.

Trump needs a ball gag if you don't like spew and lies.

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.

I'm not particularly interested in putting the behavior of corporations on one political party or the other.

Even Democrats pass legislation and promote things that would ultimately benefit corporations. If you increase regulations and force increases to wages to the point that you practically need to be a corporation to be able to afford to open/own a business location, then there will eventually be nothing left but corporations. Additionally, all of the R&D being done to replace human labor output with that of machines and AI (due to potential labor cost savings) is also going to be a positive for corporations and will choke out would-be small businesses who either can't afford these measures, or if they can, can only do so in some way that effectively makes them indebted to the corporation. (read: franchising---which is really just working for the corporation as a manager, with no guarantees, in many cases)

Put it another way: If Democrats are in power, corporations benefit. If Republicans are in power, corporations benefit.

The only thing that can possibly take some power away from major corporations is having competition that comes from some other source, which is to say, small independently-owned businesses. It's for that reason that the labor market should be allowed to mostly dictate its own prices with minimal government interference and regulations should be the least amount practicable.

The only way to change the balance of power is for the people and small businesses to take some of the power back, but that relies on consumers choosing to do so...which mostly doesn't happen. People not ordering stuff from Amazon would be a good start.

The Coronavirus relief bill (the 2T one), for example, passed the Senate unanimously. A part of this spending was devoted to bailing out various airlines, which would have been dumb on its own, but the worst aspect of the bill was that it required the airlines to continue operating flights to all destinations...which is to say that the Government gave the airlines money and, essentially, forced those same airlines to squander some of that money by operating routes that were taking huge losses due to a lack of passengers.

The airline industry, as a whole, also didn't need to be stabilized. They acted as if all the airlines would be filing Chapter 7 as a result of the downturn in travel (due to Covid), but that was far from true. Here's a good piece on the airline bailout aspect:

https://www.mercatus.org/research/policy-briefs/2020-bailouts-left-airlines-economy-and-federal-budget-worse-shape#:~:text=How%20Big%20Were%20the%20Bailouts,billion%2C%20and%20%2414%20billion).

It also would have been beneficial (for consumers) for a couple of airlines to have failed. The surviving airlines would have been able to add to their fleets, at dirt cheap prices, buying the assets during liquidation of the failed companies, had there been any. This savings (relative to adding to the fleet with new planes sold at market prices) could have been passed on to end users in the form of cheaper tickets.

The worst part, of course, is that it signals to certain corporations that, in the event of sudden downturns, the Government will just bail them out. As a result of that, these corporations can operate from a position that they don't actually need significant cash reserves or assets that are easy to liquify. Essentially, running themselves without a focus on long-term stability or being able to manage significant downturns on their own, which is to say, recklessly, is rewarded in the short-term. If they'd otherwise be victims of their own over-aggression, the Government will just save them...all in the name of supposed macroeconomic stability and job preservation.

Say what you want, but at least the Government's bailout of the home loan industry (Great Recession) seemed to be generally profitable for the government. But, really, the Government shouldn't intervene to preserve corporations as a matter of principle.

Bottom line: Greed gets rewarded at every level. Even when certain major companies might fall victim to their own aggressive tactics, if the Government is going to save them anyway, then greed never gets punished.

So, what result other than corporations behaving in a non-sustainable and rampantly greedy way would one expect?

Quote: Mission146

So, what result other than corporations behaving in a non-sustainable and rampantly greedy way would one expect?

I don't know. I guess what mom's say when you're little. "If you want to be treated like a little man, stop acting like a little prick."

Or something like that.

Corps=People, Justice Thomas. I'm probably going to run that excuse into the ground now.

snips

Quote: Mission146

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 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.)

The journalist doesn't even try to defend this gratuitous and preposterous remark in parentheses, directed to us like we are children. Of course you can always claim that a certain company can get by with less profits. And you can believe that it's their civic duty to do so, too, if you are a completely devoted to socialism like I don't doubt in the slightest she is. The rest of us, children that we are I guess, realize that a company facing inflation in its costs will raise its prices ... or cut employees loose instead. (They pretty much have to)... see, I put that in parentheses to prove it

As for Paul Donovan, he is a nut who claimed in 2015 that "printing money never, ever, causes inflation". God knows what planet he lives on.

Yes, as a matter of fact I do feel like pouring it on

Quote:

UBS Top Economist Donovan Finds Career Marred by China Comments

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-14/ubs-s-donovan-championed-diversity-and-economics-with-sarcasm

Quote:

Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, was placed on leave in June after he said that the outbreak of the disease only “matters if you are a Chinese pig” or “if you like eating pork in China”. His tongue-in-cheek remarks provoked outrage in China...

https://www.ft.com/content/6b2c8e9a-e447-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc

Quote:

Donovan was named one of the top ten "Inspirational Leaders" by the British LGBT Awards in 2021.

Gay too? 'Not that there's anything wrong with that' as they would say on Seinfeld, but, unsaid on Seinfeld, yes it explains a lot, we seem to have *activism* suggested here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Donovan_(economist)

I'm just saying the guy is a loose cannon, a go-to guy for out-there BS

If he's racist, you can fire him. But a fact is still a fact. Same as I say about Limbaugh. If he was right about something he was right.

Then you have others who are right twice a day like a clock.

So, far I can see, you can only dispute the premise. since there is plenty of evidence that "greed" is involved in profiteering. And the economy and lot more are affected.

If I take your arguments to heart, there is nothing wrong with this.

Quote:

In September 2015, Shkreli was widely criticized when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price by 5,455% (from US$13.50 to $750 per pill).

And that's just an extreme of the same thing going on in the real thing: "greedinflation" which is slang really.

This next example has some flaws, but it amuses me.

Greedinflation hurts APs.

One AP goes in and burns a juicy promotion (takes as much as he can exposing the process) It has a negative effect on the economy of APs overall when the promotion is now shutdown.

Quote: rxwine

If he's racist, you can fire him. But a fact is still a fact. Same as I say about Limbaugh. If he was right about something he was right.

Then you have others who are right twice a day like a clock.

So, far I can see, you can only dispute the premise. since there is plenty of evidence that "greed" is involved in profiteering. And the economy and lot more are affected.

If I take your arguments to heart, there is nothing wrong with this. [Shkreli's actions]



And that's just an extreme of the same thing going on in the real thing: "greedinflation" which is slang really.

And it illustrates that companies often show restraint ... the original holders of the license could have gouged also but chose not to

The reason I am a big proponent of regulation of free enterprise, is the same reason "please stop doing cocaine" doesn't work either.