Greed Inflation

Quote: odiousgambit

RX, you are valiantly defending your position, I suppose anyone would. But how am I supposed to look at this thread? All of a sudden we are inspecting the role of companies, corporations and Mom and Pop outfits too I guess, when it comes to assessing the blame for inflation. Not when inflation was out of control, but now when it's getting under control. What's on the horizon? the 2024 election

To me this is a naked attempt to shift the blame as it's clearly a big problem for Biden to have this happen on his watch

It often seems to me that someone has handed you the D. Playbook and told you to go around citing the latest thing in play. Why do you go along with that?

What's the latest thing? I have to keep up. BTW, I've never been registered as a Democrat, ever.

Give me an actual reason to either (1) prefer some other goal or (2) make an overwhelming convincing argument for it. Despite all the accusations, I've never heard an argument that would make me even mostly socialist much less full on.

It's easy for me to define where socialism is appropriate. Making sure people in rural areas have access to hospital services, not based on their tax base for instance. I'm for supporting equal education services to wherever they are needed regardless of income of the area, inner city or remote. Until healthcare is affordable, I will not vote for it to be funneled to just those who can afford it.

I actually believe the best system is combination of free market and government. Enjoy your head exploding. Thanks.

No doubt big tech needs to be broken up.

Things that will forever keep me out of the rightwing.

Worrying about who chooses to live in non-traditional roles of sex and gender.

Worrying about children being influenced, instead of simply educating them which can actually teach them. If you truly believe what you believe is true, you should be able to convince them by educating them.

Religion in government.

And probably if they only keep endorsing more guns as the answer to crime. Or at least agree to back it up with real research.

that's the short list.

+educate children, not just the one side. And probably by people who actually believe in that side. I guess if we're going to have bias, then let's employ it full on from both sides from believers. Or all sides, as the case may be.

Quote: rxwine

Things that will forever keep me out of the rightwing.

Worrying about who chooses to live in non-traditional roles of sex and gender.

we can see that, no further comment

Quote:

Worrying about children being influenced, instead of simply educating them which can actually teach them. If you truly believe what you believe is true, you should be able to convince them by educating them.

Religion in government.

And probably if they only keep endorsing more guns as the answer to crime. Or at least agree to back it up with real research.

that's the short list.

+educate children, not just the one side. And probably by people who actually believe in that side. I guess if we're going to have bias, then let's employ it full on from both sides from believers. Or all sides, as the case may be.

not sure I follow all that

re being 'not a Democrat', I still need convincing.

Quote: odiousgambit

we can see that, no further comment

not sure I follow all that

re being 'not a Democrat', I still need convincing.

My fault. I should have added, whether it means anything at all, I've never been registered as a Democrat. Obama still is my favorite President of all the most recent ones. This is more from the perception of how he made decisions. Which is in character of the wizards, it's a good bet that matters most. One doesn't always have a good outcome. You can have a run of bad variance even with good bets.

And I consider Trump the worst bet I've ever seen in American Presidents, despite any successes.

Okay, maybe not all American presidents, because I simply don't have enough information about some of them.

If we have to go through 4 more years of Trump without creating impending disaster or complete corruption, I'll consider ourselves lucky, not smart that people bet on him.

I don't know about the dictator charge. That's the worst possible outcome. Hopefully no one will be right about that prediction.

Trump as President, Steven Miller border control/immigrations, Rudy Guiliani Attorney General, Mike Lindell, Education Secretary, Steve Bannon, Minister of
Finance, Roger Stone, Press Secretary, Proud boys, Secret Service and Marjorie Taylor Greene as Vice President.

Quote: odiousgambit

not sure I follow all that

I thought you would immediately pick up on "spread your wealth around" as soon as I said healthcare for people in rural areas regardless of their tax base. (in other words, more than they paid in)

Quote: rxwine

Mission

Of course, my original post wasn't really intended to go beyond the argument over where to place the degree of blame on current inflation. I failed to keep it within that range. Nothing new for me. : )

You shouldn't make the assumption that I'm interested in the same overall goals as you. Of course, I'm against over taxing, for no good reason. But that's where we start to differ. What's a good reason? I know mine is different than yours. I know a more regulated and taxed economy is more expensive than the laissiez-economy, but regardless of its drawbacks it's the one I vote for generally for those reasons of public services. Everything from healthcare support to education and more.

Most countries have elements of both laissez-faire and regulated economies anyway. There's always a battle between the two, often roiled by some event. Like bank crashes. Even then, half the people find some reason the other side had something to do with it.

I'm also against putting all the burden on the middle class. I'm willing to work out compromise solutions for everything, but not for overall goals I don't share.

Interesting though, you argue what has caused the wealth gap IS the government. Arguments I vaguely recall argue the government is keeping it from being even worse. So, exactly the opposite.

The side that you would favor, argue in favor of and would generally read things in favor of would also argue that the Government prevents it from being worse. To be perfectly honest, Economics is an imperfect science, so reasonable arguments can be made for both sides.

To be clear, my argument is that the Government's policies have caused the decline of the American Middle Class; as I have already stated, I think the standard of living for the absolute poorest Americans has improved; this has been done with a combination of wage policies and social safety net spending. In other words, the Democrats have been, more or less, successful in achieving one of their goals. Certainly not successful enough to the standard of some of their constituents, but alas, the stray dog left scraps on the back porch will always return hoping for more.

My argument against the Democrats is not that the Government's policies have failed to benefit the poorest Americans; I would argue that the poorest Americans have a better standard of living than they otherwise might have. My argument against the Democrats is that this has come largely at the expense of the Middle Class, rather than the ultra-rich, which is supposedly not one of their objectives. With that, it kind of depends on how one defines, 'Wealth gap.'

The reason that it comes at the expense of the Middle Class is that the wage increases combined with increased welfare spending effectuates higher prices as companies seek to make up for the increased costs to bring the goods to market. Granted, it's not as if the Government is directly taxing those of middle income to a greater extent, but if those (dwindling numbers) of middle income people face increased prices across the board, and those increased prices are largely brought about as a result of Government intervention/policies, and the wages of the middle class don't strictly keep up with the overall increase to prices, then what you end up with is de facto regressive taxation.

It's not strictly a tax, but these higher prices (particularly on housing, necessities for housing and base goods) eat up a greater percentage of income for those middle class folks who remain than they do for the rich. In other words, these individual costs represent a higher percentage of their income.

It's similar in concept to a toll road. A toll road has a fixed rate to travel on that road, so if you have someone who is low-income, someone who is middle-income and someone who is high income, and all three people have to take that toll road every workday (as a hypothetical), then the amount paid, in tolls, is the greatest percentage of income for the low earner, middle percentage of income for the middle earner and lowest percentage of income for the high earner. While the fee is the same for everyone, the fee ends up being a regressive one relative to income.

Increases to costs are, by necessity, the same way...at least when it comes to household expenditures and base goods. In a hypothetical where all families of four bought exactly the same groceries (and ignoring the possibility of food stamps), the lowest income earner would have the highest percentage of their income devoted to groceries, the middle the middle and the top end the lowest.

Wage increases brought about by government intervention work in the same fashion. The mega corporations can sustain this wage growth, not only because they have more leeway to increase prices than a smaller company (because the corporation can win a war of attrition, where necessary to, 'starve out' the competition, keep prices low and continue to exist than the independent small businesses), but also because these employee cost increases represent a smaller percentage of a corporation's revenue than is the case for a small business.

RECENT EVENTS

The current inflation is the responsibility of both parties; let's start with that the original Covid spending bill passed the Senate unanimously.

State governments, in their response to Covid-19, took things way over the top, in some cases, with some states reduced to all but martial law to keep people inside. Businesses were temporarily forced, by the government, to discontinue operations. Freedom of choice for the people, in these states, was eliminated. People were not permitted to determine whether or not transacting business, at least, for, 'Non-essential' things was a risk they were willing to take.

In addition to bailing out the airlines...who didn't even need to be bailed out, the Government threw money at everyone, unnecessarily, by way of stimulus. Additionally, the Government authorized weekly boosts to unemployment...such that the boost to unemployment was more than some of the people were making in the first place! I could have understood boosting unemployment such as to make people whole, which is to say, bringing them to 100% of what their income otherwise would have been during Covid, but the bill did more than that. The bill provided for an additional $600/week to unemployment benefits, across the board, even if people weren't making $600/week in the first place.

The key word is also, 'Additional,' which is to say on top of the unemployment benefits they'd have already received, which are often half of what their income would have been.

Of course, given the various services that were not permitted to operate in many instances (indoor dining, sports venues, concerts, movies) there really wasn't anything to spend this sudden windfall, in addition to the direct stimulus funds, than on goods. It's for that reason that we saw lopsided demands for goods, coming out of the most stringent period of lockdowns (as well as during the pandemic) when compared to services. '

In many instances, the result was shortages of these goods (electronics was a good example), which then led to substantial price hikes due to supply/demand, which skewed way more to the demand side than it normally would have with inadequate supply.

That's all in addition to the fact that the manufacturers of these goods, also due to Covid, were either not producing to normal levels or temporarily halted production altogether.

When production finally got back online and the companies sought to meet the demand, the problem that they were met with was a limited number of truck drivers and other problems in the distribution network; many of these problems had to do with the distribution networks not being built to handle such high moving inventories at once, which is why you saw the problems at the ports and elsewhere along the supply chain.

All of this, naturally, led to increased demands for fuel as they sought to transport these goods first to warehouses and eventually to stores. It's for that reason that we saw increased fuel costs (among a few other factors) until travel and shipment returned to an equilibrium, which finally happened around 2022.

For all of these reasons, we saw a rapid increase in demand which led to a high inflationary period. The bottom line is this: The Government dumping a bunch of free money on people directly resulted in the inflation; while Donald Trump was the POTUS when this started, all he did was put his name on a bill that passed the Senate unanimously and probably did close to the same in the House. Naturally, the idea of, 'Covid relief,' was very popular amongst most people because people are generally going to like free money without regard to the consequences of that free money.

The consequences, of course, being that the money was not free. The increase to costs (across the board or nearly so) that we saw as a result of this rapid few years of inflation are sufficient to demonstrate that the money was not free. People have paid, by way of costs that increased as a direct result of Government intervention, significantly more than the Government gave them in the first place...with some exceptions based on unemployment situations.

Of course, if the extra $600/week unemployment was more than a person was even making in the first place in and of itself, or resulted in more than they were making in the first place in conjunction with what would have normally been their unemployment, then, once again, you have a situation where the poor temporarily benefit, at the expense of the middle class, due to the inevitable price hikes that came about as a result of the very inflation that these policies caused.

I believe that you hinted at The Great Depression in your post. I'm not strictly opposed to Government intervention; I simply think it should be seen as a matter of absolute last resort. The Government intervention (stimulus/unemployment/bailouts) during Covid was patently unnecessary and only served to result in a greater divide between rich and not-rich, corporations and independent businesses. The worst aspect of that is that said Government intervention came as a result of the fact that the Government (states) intervened more than necessary, via the lockdowns, to begin with.

If you have a Great Depression type situation such that the entire structure of the economy (in that case, the entire banking system) is going to collapse but for Government intervention, then that is justified. The problem with Covid was it was first the Government intervening in the free market with lockdowns, then second, the Government spending entirely too much, dumping entirely too much, 'Free Money,' in the name of helping correct the problem that the Government itself caused in the first place.

Howdy Mission! Read through it. May respond a la carte. Got other activities to attend to. Gotta Carpe diem. Don't know why I'm using all these language bits, Oh well, C'est la vie, Rope a cow, and kick a turd.