It’s not inflation. It’s price gouging.
Price gouging coincidentally at the same time across the entire economy, soon after an enormous increase in the monetary supply.
A—Aurora Borealis? At this time of year! At this time of day! In this part of the country! Localized entirely within your kitchen?!?
Record high prices coinciding with record high profits and plunging cost of good sold, followed by even higher prices. They are testing to see what the pain thresholds are. All that’s gonna happen is that business will start to collapse as consumer spending plummets because people can barely afford to survive. Will the system autocorrect or collapse? Will the government ever enforce consumer protection laws ever again? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Occam’s razor says the more simple/plausible explanation, that a huge increase in the monetary supply causing higher prices through supply and demand, is about a thousand times more plausible than tens of thousands of corporations simultaneously deciding to coordinate to fix prices despite that it’s in each of their best interests individually to break with that scheme. With no actual evidence of a concerted attempt across the entire economy to fix prices (not to be confused with a couple corporations having board meetings where someone bragged about raising prices).
Or, in simple terms - it’s not that every single other good in the entire economy has suddenly become worth more as the result of some overarching conspiracy. It’s that they printed a bunch of money and it’s now worth less.
I would recommend anyone who still believes the “greedflation” thing spends an hour reading some articles critical of the theory. Not really looking for a debate about it tbh.
“Not really looking for a debate about it tbh.”
No, just the last word. There’s a lot more to it that clearly explains why it’s a systematic failure that led to this, and it’s a lot more complex that just over supply of cash. You can’t stop looking at other facts once you’ve researched just enough to find an answer you’re comfortable with.
Your previous comment was basically a massive industry wide conspiracy theory though, so their response of a more sensible answer to give you something a bit more concrete to go on was pretty reasonable to me.
The loan on my van is paid off, The bank is paying me interest on my savings again, I have a years worth of costco rice stored, and the campsites by the river where i live in my van is empty because everyone too broke to go on holiday. Life is sweet. (No part of this comment is hyperbole)
Out of curiosity is your van largely stock or have you upgraded it?
There is inflation I agree, but I think a significant percentage is from price gounging, around 30%. I saw a study detailing this that I could find and link if you want.
If you’re wondering how it can happen simultaneously accross whole countries and much of the world, you can look up the concept of “price leadership.”
Rose by any other name?
But yeah. It’s all made up.
Yeah it isn’t natural at all and needs regulation on basic items to live
I don’t know, they look natural to me
The inflation report that came out today specifically omits fuel and grocery prices because those are “volatile” categories. My grocery bill is double what it was two years ago and has been for six months. I wouldn’t call that volatile.
Groceries are stupid, it cost me $20 to make a lasagna that last year cost $10.
was it twice as good tho
no
Wtf. I mean I realized how much you us people pay for food when I was there last year, but 20$ for lasagna. What’s going on? I think I can easily do it under 10€,even buying “better” meat.
They didn’t omit those prices. CPI and Core are two separate measurements. Core excludes food and energy.
In fact, excluding food and energy actually made the numbers worse. CPI is at 3.0% YoY. Core is at 4.8%.
Idk man ground beef is still like $3 a pound for me, milk $2.70 a gallon, pasta $1 a pound. I’m not saying some things haven’t gotten more expensive because they have, but my grocery bill from 2 years ago is like 20-30% more expensive now.
Depends where you’re at. Ohio? Same. Florida? 2-3x
Where I am at,ground beef is more in the $5-6/lb range, as a comparison. We have some dairy farms local so milk is a bit cheaper, but basically everything else is significantly more expensive, especially meat.
Grocery prices can vary widely depending on location. The absolute cheapest Walmart ground beef I can get is $4.50 per pound and milk is $3.62 a gallon. Pasta is a $1 pound and eggs are relatively cheap here. Produce has gone through the roof.
inflation can’t be that cute
In some ways, the reported inflation is real. The main increase in cost is not actually real, or caused by anything except greed.
There’s also a lot of hidden costs that aren’t factored into inflation as strongly as they should be, or at all. Those hidden fees have also gone up.
So the entire business segment is just hand waving the whole issue because they know it will be reported wrong; they’re going to keep raising prices and point to the “official” inflation numbers and continue to feed us the bullshit that inflation isn’t a problem to justify never giving their employees a raise.
IDK how stupid they think we are, but I’m sure they think we’re little more than retarded (I mean that in the clinical sense). They’re (very publically) showing massive profit numbers, using inflation, or the lack thereof, to justify slave wages, while ripping off their users as much as they think that they can without creating riots.
More for them, less for us. As it’s always been.
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Well, thing is, some product categories probably aren’t suffering the same price hikes as groceries, fuel and rent. Stuff like cable and internet, clothing and office supplies are probably bringing the average down (please tell me if they’re having inflation, I pulled these categories out of my butt).
I hope we see deflation eventually… I know it’s not good for the economy but no one wants to pay 100 dollars for a coke
This breaks the current economic system and will only occur safely once capitalistic GDP and population growth has ceased completely
Some would argue the current economic system needs a little rattling
I also thinks it needs some rattling. But I don’t particularly want to plunge an additional billion+ people into new food shortages and poverty to trigger the necessary reforms if we can’t help it.
no one wants to pay 100 dollars for a coke
Reminds me of a comic strip where a guy goes to Japan and orders a coffee. The cashier says the total is 300 yen and the guy says “damn, coffee is expensive here!”
Problem with deflation is: what do people do when theres deflation when it comes to optional expenses? Well, they may postepone them in hopes that prices go further down, this means that there’s less demand, prices go downer, businesses may start to fail, putting people in unemployment, reducing demand, and death spiral. Basically same thing as inflation death spiral but with deflation. Consumer confidence is a very delicate thing
this means that there’s less demand, prices go downer, businesses may start to fail, putting people in unemployment, reducing demand,
I’ve always been skeptical of this and I’m not really aware of historical examples that prove it. The part i just quoted - “less demand, prices go downer, businesses may start to fail” - that means supply decreases too. All that’s really happening if you have a couple % deflation is that people are slightly more incentivized to hold onto their money, and the fact is that currencies don’t just naturally appreciate in value that much, at most in the long term I think you have “the same amount of money in circulation” vs. population growth causing it to chase a slightly larger economy.
It probably only is problematic in the same amount that inflation is bad. If it’s a little, it’s fine. If it’s a lot, you’re screwed
If you want a historic example look at the politics In Germany that got Hitler into power. Wikipedia is sadly only in German, but you can see from the graph that there was 10% deflation in 1932, with bad consequences.
I’m sure this does get lumped into “causes of Hitler’s rise to power/WWII” list somewhere. I seem to recall the inflation immediately prior being a lot more famous - that Germany was mandated by treaty to pay reparations after WWII, and that the Weimar Republic printed so much money people were using it as wallpaper or burning it as firewood (supposedly at least). In general, that there was a widespread sense Germany had been wounded somehow, which he was able to capitalize on, telling people to “fight back” against the minority groups he characterized as the forces of oppression. That’d be everywhere between 1918 and 1933 or so. Not so much “the purchasing value of money marginally increased for a one year period prior to Hitler’s rise”.
You just gave me a whole new perspective
When you thought Lemmy would be less cringe than Reddit: 🤡
I mean it is in fact a shitty post.
But can the shit still be cringe when it’s shitty cringe and taken as merely cringy shit? The question of our times.
Is there a c/lost_lemmings? Because this guy would fit right in.
tbh both inflation numbers are hot
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind being screwed by either of these inflations.
Nah reported inflation is better. Too much inflation might drown you
It’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Stop trying to make me feel good about inflation.
Sure it’s a widespread increase in the prices of goods and services, but corporate profits are up too so that makes it not inflation, for some reason. /s
My country’s news say we’re improving with a straight face. And I’m like “improving in what? Making the country sink more efficiently?”
I wish my country’s government had the testacles to cap prices on food. I order food mostly online and I compared prices from 2 years ago and most things are at least 200% more expensive, cheese for example is like 600% though.
If they cap prices on food, then you’ll see food shortages instead of expensive food
How so? In my country, certain basic food items are priced capped AND rationed, meaning you’re only allowed to buy a certain amount of it at a time.
> but but but muh freedum market$$
No! Worldwide, the agricultural sector is THE MOST SUBSIDISED economic field. You can’t have it both ways. If taxpayers’ money is used to prop up your business, you have a duty to the taxpayers and country.
Most food here is locally produced, I don’t see how that would create a shortage. Like people aren’t going to sell their grocery stores cuz their margins are thin again and farming is so heavily subsidised that I don’t see it effecting farmers.
If a local producer can get more selling to someone in the next country, they will. Basic economics. Prohibit them from doing so and they might plant something more profitable or just say “fuck it” and let their fields lie fallow, if they’re not making a profit. Farming ain’t free and farmers are on thin margins.
Small farms are long gone. Farmers the the most heavily subsidized sector in the country, and they’re not run by Ma and pa, but big multi-national corporations who use extractive agriculture that damages the soil, results in worse yields than more sustainable agriculture, and requires insane amounts of chemical fertilizers, is rapidly contributing to the death of all of our most critical pollinators.
I have really almost no sympathy for monoculture farmers who grow thousands of acres of almonds using trillions of gallons of water in a state perpetually under severe drought.
Literally, just by seizing the lands used to grow alfalfa for Saudi Arabia and almonds in California, the majority of the country could be fed cheap on low water, low maintanence, high yield food forests. We don’t need to subsidize murder farms where pigs are fed to their children as slurry when that same land could be used for vertical gardening.
The use of farmland for exclusively profit driven reasons is what drove the Great Depression. Farmers don’t deserve A profit if what they’re growing isn’t sustainable or catered towards the health of the people.
*affecting
And you’re wrong. Farmers and grocery stores are already operating on thin margins. Sure we could double subsidies but then why not just make food free instead? How about we just make food free for people who can’t afford it, maybe with some sort of special card
Farmers yes, grocery stores not anymore. Profits of companies is public info here and they started racking it in the moment the massive ‘inflation’ started. My parents live near a farm and they just buy veggies directly from them for like a fraction of the price, I unfortunately live in a city though. Prices are better at local markets but there arent many of those.
Inflation is transitory, and it is Trump’s fault for overheating the economy anyways.
It’s the Fed’s fault for overreacting to COVID and leaving rates at 0% for years. That shit has permanent consequences. A whole lot of people got insanely rich from a global tragedy.
Amateurs