But 2 lbs of beef makes 4 double quarter pounders. And around me 80% ground beef is $4-5/lb, and a double quarter pounder meal is around $10-12. A bun is 50 cents. A slice of cheese is like 20 cents. Piece of lettuce, slice of onion, slice of tomato, and condiments are maybe 10 cents each. Youāre looking at less than $3.50 for a solid 1/2 lb burger, made with better ingredients than McDonalds.
You pay for someone else to invest their time and equipment to cook it per your demand and when you need it. This always gets overlooked in these comparisons, which is just wrong. You pay mostly for service. Service is expensive.
Yeah, I know the costs McDonalds faces as a restaurant and understand why they charge what they do. Iām saying instead of buying something from McDonalds, you can probably make it at home for a fraction of the cost. Because you *donāt* have to pay wages or overhead to make a burger.
Is meal planning like phd level smarts now a days? Make hamburgers two nights. Use some leftover beef to make tacos or spaghetti. Use the leftover buns to make some other sandwiches. š¤·āāļø
You can buy 2.25 pounds of ground beef for $10.66 at Walmart. And if you really want to stretch that ground beef out, you buy three boxes of whatever noodles you like, use a couple tablespoons of flour and a splash of milk and youāve got beef and noodles in gravy that you could feed yourself with for most of a week.
And you go even cheaper when you opt for chickpeas, beans and lentils instead of meat.
Mediterranean cuisine has a lot of recipes that replace or reduce meat by legumes to cut costs - meat was always more expensive than plants
Getting downvotes for telling what's cheaper: Reddit Big Brain moment
The local farmer is greedy as fuck as well.
Only people with spare cash can buy from a butcher or processing plant. Because it's literally illegal for a farmer to sell his own meat without the govt getting their piece of the pie (inspections/licenses/etc)
This is the answer.
However, now they've moved on to us smarter shoppers with inventory manipulation and price adjustments being automated based on all our purchasing 'trends' being their property.
There is no winning until they fail IMO.
The sales are just normal prices after they inflated them the week before.
There's no winning this battle. Effective duopolies have negated any real power consumers have. You cant boycott necessities. And in pretty much every industry you have 1-3 companies dominating from economy class to luxury.
You can't buy cheap when they own it all. That's why monopolies were toppled in the first place.
Man I regularly get chicken breast for under 2 bucks a pound. Steak for 4.99 a pound. Two giant tubs of peanut butter for 7.99. two massive boxes of cereal for 5.99. Butter for about 2.50. 2 gallons of milk for 5 bucks. Pound of strawberries for 2 to 3 bucks. 99c for a pound of carrots. Noodles are always cheap. Bread for a couple bucks a loaf. Etc etc. Quit whining and buy shit that is a good deal and quit pretending the deals aren't there. Change your habits and quit expecting everyone else to solve your problems when you make shitty decisions. Shops all your stores around you. Go to Costco/Sam's club. Use your local butcher. Like I said it is not difficult.
Biggest thing of all IS TO QUIT BUYING SHIT YOU FEEL IS OVERPRICED. You do not need every single type of food all the time. Buy what is on sale.
The problem is that the price of these āsalesā is almost always relative to the ānormalā price of goods. As long as the listed price of a good is being increased (whether due to inflation or greed or both) and your wages donāt increase proportionally, you are going to start paying more for stuff even if itās on sale
Give me your worst take š
Ya, rampant inflation and corporate greed is the fault of consumers. Gotcha
(Also did you check my fridge? The water and frozen chicken breasts don't exactly scream excess and gluttony)
I think the point is if everyone shopped sales you could survive but corps would notice because they would have to discount shit that was about to spoil cause the price was too high, therefore would in theory adjust to the new market rate. Which would be the āsaleā price.
Not saying the system we are in doesnāt suck and shouldnāt prevent them from raising for the sake of ever increasing profits of course.
We are stuck in the current situation because no one is going to listen to you. They are going to be whining at the check-out as they pay $5 for a bag of Oreos, $6 for a bag of chips, and $9 for a 12-pack of soda. Ridiculous prices for people that have no self control.
This reminds me of the āitās only an hour of homework youāll be fineā perspectiveā¦thatās coming from six different classes on the daily.
Adding up all the āwatching outā we have to do to not get screwed over every second of every day is way too much.
Dude, I have to buy food or Iāll die. I donāt know what to tell you.
Boycott wonāt stop this problem, holding greedy companies accountable by law will
This is what I donāt understand, is how/why everyone keeps buying. As much as it sucks, weāve stopped going to concerts and sporting events because it is outrageously priced and service fees and resales, etc. I keep thinking no one will pay that, but people still do. Kids wanted to see Savannah Bananas game. $250 a ticketā¦ā¦Fuck that. Saw a neighbors kid a few days later wearing a new Bananas jersey, ask the dad. Thinking maybe got tickets through work or something. Nope, spent over a grand to go for his family of 4.
Stop supporting it people
As much as it sucks, the prices will remain and continue to go higher as long as people are spending. Ā This is what debasement does. Ā It increases the supply of money which drives up prices since there is more money to buy the goods/service. Ā And with the Fed reserve and gov deciding where those dollars go and flow too, there are winners and losers.
Problem is you can't choose not to buy when it's a basic need, so healthcare, food, rent and housing prices, fuel, insurance plans, and etc, and congress won't do anything about it because they're being bribed by these industries.
Yes, that is why monopolies and oligopolies are illegal, even for something like Windows.
These are captive markets with no competition.
People are trying to force reality to fit their political narratives. You can't just opt out of society.
Also, pay attention to the food you buy. Look for sales and discounts; try store brands, etc.
Iāve had to change some of my spending habits these past few months but fortunately not going broke buying necessities
While i agree, that's not always an option and people in here are acting like it is.
Businesses exist by filling a *need* in a market.
Telling people "just don't participate in society" Rather than the more obvious option of "our government should be working to prevent price gouging" is trying to force the world to fit your political narrative.
The entire concept of "inflation" exists due to macro economics and you guys are acting like that's not a real thing *while on a sub about it's real world effects*.
>Businesses exist by filling aĀ *need*Ā in a market
Businesses exist by filling a **demand** in a market. Some demands are needs and some are wants, knowing the difference you can save a lot of money.
Just wait until that happens and the non-garbage food goes up in price even more. I think lots of you are missing the point -- they know they have us by the balls and there isn't shit most people can do about it.
Holler when chicken breast is $8/lb. It's not far off.
Yep. It's like they didn't pay attention in econ or something.
Or this sub is brigaded by a bunch of business majors who took ECON 101 and think they know everything because of that.
The problem with deflation is that economists and rich people panic when it happens, which means layoffs and belt tightening that hurts average people too. So the best we can hope for is for prices to stay the same or at best go up with rises in wage
Yes that's exactly it. They're increasing prices because people are buying anyways.
I'm selling apples for 50 cents each, and selling 100 a day for 50 bucks. Increase the price to $1 an apple, and people are buying 100 a day anyways.
It's a common tactic that these businesses employ, blame inflation for everything and hike up the prices slowly and maybe people won't notice and when they do notice just mention inflation again.
I'm waging total war on food. I only eat once a day and it's always a store-bought, home-cooked meal. I'm saving enough money to buy a crossbow and will begin hunting for my own squirrels, mice, and bugs so I can save even more money.
Edit: I can't believe this comment is getting so many upvotes. Ya'll are some sick mofo's.
I do that as well, but I'm just on Adderall. I started off and had to force myself to eat a single meal. Starting to regulate and feel hunger again.
No squirrel needed.
Thatās true for scarce assets like paintings, rare cars and gems. In reality, those items arenāt priced by their functionality, but their emotional value. Even then, most people arenāt even driving those cars, just keeping them in a hermetically sealed bubble, unused for its entire life.
But for *actual* things like housing, food and services, the price is determined by aggregate demand. Eggs, water and gasoline will be purchased no matter what. When these ābasicsā are monopolized, there is no market competition, so the companies inflate the price to squeeze as much life force from the market as quickly as possible. Like insulin or water companies.
Something Iāve noticed when looking to purchase a car is people DOUBLING the price because itās in a ārare colorā combo that is āonly 1 of 100ā madeā¦ itās like, okay, why did only 100 of them get made? Because only 100 people demanded this crappy color combination and everyone else chose the silver paint with all black interior! So people think automatically this scarcity increases the priceā¦ no, itās the ratio of scarcity to demand. These people often wait years before some idiot pays these inflated prices.
Scarcity alone does not drive prices unless there is a monopolized necessity.
Demand for food hasn't drastically increased. It's just that food stores learned that people blame their least favorite politician, not them, when they raise prices.
>Eggs, water and gasoline will be purchased no matter what.
I stopped buying eggs for a while when prices peaked last year. There are lots of other things you can eat.
Also can we have some regulation on airports? I mean damn we literally canāt go anywhere else so youāre gonna fuck us with $9 coffees and $17 sandwiches THAT ARENT EVEN GOOD
Especially when you combine that with corporate concentrations. If there are 50 suppliers for everything you would have cost efficiency in the market because itās harder to fix the prices to be higher, somebody in that group is always going to seize the opportunity to secure more market share with their lower prices. When there are only like 4 or 5 players controlling 80-90% of the market share, itās not hard for them to not even collude just need to have the same pricing strategy at the same time.
The actual cause of the high prices we're seeing is due to reduced competition and the fact that our regulatory agencies have been captured by industry and thus have allowed only two or three companies to control the vast majority of major markets.
There is no more competition. Do y'all remember the consolidations that happened with supermarkets a few years before the pandemic? And now that only a couple huge corporations control the vast majority of places people buy their groceries the prices are super high, wow, what a shocker.
Vote in primaries and vote for people who are for regulation of business and breaking up these large companies.
This is the primary culprit. There is also a major de-dollarization push going on globally by the Brics nations. As those dollars return home it adds fuel to the fire.
That major push has had little impact. The world still uses US treasuries as the defacto gold standard. That hasn't changed because the BRICS nations are not remotely reliable economically. The US has raised some eyebrows in recent years with political disarray but it hasn't been enough to change the status quo.
Right because the world craves rubles, rupees and real. What the hell can most countries do with those currencies except buy goods from those specific countries? This is not a real problem
Dollars can buy you anything from anyone. Rupees can only buy you food/energy from India. What are you talking about? You think all the major developed countries are just going to switch to holding a basket of currency reserves from politically unstable countries instead of just one currency from the most stable democracy thatās ever existed?
The amount of people saying itās only corporate greed in this thread is mind boggling. Yeah, completely ignore the Fed printing trillions of dollars over years, that has NO affect on prices. Not a bit.
Is there some greed at play? Yes, some, but you canāt print trillions out of thin air without watering down the value of your currency. To think itās only big bad corpos acting greedily is infantile, one dimensional thinking
Iām convinced this current effort to blame inflation on āthe greedy corporationsā and not massive currency creation is very well funded astroturfing by the entities who benefit from creation of currency.
Inflation is caused by money printing.
Companies will raise prices during inflationary times because they must. Profits will also rise (in the short term) in those same times.
The people who have the same opinion as OP are, without exception, people who couldnāt pass the most entry level test on basic economics, allowing them believe what theyāre told, rather than believe whatās actually true, since they know nothing about the topic they have such strong opinions on.
This 100%. Companies raise prices because they CAN. Increased availability of money money means people can and more importantly still ARE buying things at inflated prices. Inflation is caused by money printing at a higher rate than the corresponding increase in goods and services produced by the economy. I agree anyone who claims inflation is due to ācorporate greedā has zero understanding of basic economic fundamentals. Corporations are always greedy, but they can only raise prices when consumers have more money to actually pay the higher prices. Unfortunately due to inflation people are still buying $6.99 bags of chips.Ā
And whatās worse is the politicians spread these lies that itās greedflation. Lol, corporations have been greedy since forever. They donāt just discover this in 2021. Why are wages going up to? Did people just decide to get āgreedyā too. The central bank is culpable full stop. Politicians too because we are spending too much and taxing too little. Aka fiscal policy is too loose.
There is an interesting anti-trust lawsuit going on with google I think right now. They are arguing essentially that because theyāre not abusing their monopoly power, itās totally okay then.
Itās like saying you drove 120mph on the highway but because nobody got hurt that it should be legal. Okay, maybe if the roads are empty some people might look the other way but if you *made it the law* to drive 120mph then other people would abuse it.
Right? I k ow this is reddit but the insincere pandering to idiots has to stop. Get political pandering out of this discussion. Oir govt spends too much and the fed had to print, doesnt matter which side wins
I noticed healthy food hasn't really increased in price much, however, all processed foods have sometimes close to double the price. Eat healthy, stop buying garbage, and you'll feel way more full and less hungry. If you buy bulk chicken, rice, potatoes, broccoli, and many other ingredients, groceries can still be very cheap.
I think a lot of us have post Covid burnout/depression. I can only speak for myself but pre and during COVID I loved cooking, never ate frozen food and rarely got food out.
Last few years Iāve been surviving off fast food and highly processed frozen foods. Then eating all the processed garbage makes me lethargic and more depressed.
Recently Iāve been slowly working cooking back into my routine, struggling but planning to stick with it.
I started weight lifting last Thursday and cleaned up my diet, I'm also tracking calories and macros. People are already complimenting me saying I look different, even though on my scale I only went down a few pounds. Sleep feels amazing and I have more energy and motivation.
What creates inflation?
Long-lasting episodes of high inflation are often the result of lax monetary policy. If the money supply grows too big relative to the size of an economy, the unit value of the currency diminishes; in other words, its purchasing power falls and prices rise.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Inflation#:~:text=If%20the%20money%20supply%20grows,power%20falls%20and%20prices%20rise.
Money Supply M2 in the United States averaged 5246.13 USD Billion from 1959 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 21722.30 USD Billion in April of 2022 and a record low of 286.60 USD Billion in January of 1959.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2#:~:text=Money%20Supply%20M2%20in%20the%20United%20States%20averaged%205246.13%20USD,Billion%20in%20January%20of%201959.
Sellers will always tell you that their own costs have risen. How the % rise in their expenses compare with the % they're marking up to customers, who knows.
Dude!! People are taking this seriously! Amazing to me. I thought I was on r/inflationcirclejerk which I didnāt even know existed.
But this is a serious post. Fucking mind blown.
No, 40% of all US dollars didn't exist just 4 years ago, your buying in to government BS trying to deflect from a problem they created. Monetary policy is always the cause of inflation.
The post shows a deep ignorance of basic economics.
Price increases =/= inflation. If I decide to charge 30% more for a thing I'm selling that's not inflation, that's just me trying to sell at a higher price.
Inflation is caused by the money supply rising faster than demand for goods. Money is worth about 1/3 less than what it was 5 years ago. If sellers sold at the exact same price now than they were then, then they'd be eating a massive loss. On a lot of goods like food that's just not possible.
Most grocery store items have less than 1% profit margin, so any increase in costs must be immediately passed on to the consumer or the seller goes out of business.
If you have data about sellers taking in a larger profit margin than they were in previous years then I'd belive you on price gouging, but I doubt most numbers would bear that out.
And before you say "bUT ReCoRd pROfItS!!!1!1" that doesn't actually mean anything. If I make 100 dollars profit on 1000 in sales one year then make 120 on 1500 in sales then I made record profits but actually made less margin.
Ding ding dingā¦ corporations have consolidated in most industries to prevent any serious competition.
Once they realized they could get away with large price hikes during COVID, they continued doing it well after prices shouldāve come back to pre-pandemic levels. Each time it was a different excuseā¦ āsupply chain issuesā, āno one wants to work anymoreā etc.
>Each time it was a different excuseā¦ āsupply chain issuesā, āno one wants to work anymoreā etc.
They don't even bother giving reasons anymore
Another big problem is that all these investors want to see gains quarter after quarter, year after year. 100 million profit this year and then 100 million profit next year is a massive failure to them. So they increase prices, decrease quality, increase advertising, etc. This begins to alienate some of their customers so they have to go up on the prices even more. In the past companies didn't have 200 investors to satisfy and the ceo would only give himself a raise if the company excelled. But now you can't have a company without investors because of the massive start up costs of doing business.
Infinite growth isn't that impossible, the problem is how fast they want to see that growth. Sales will inevitably increase as population increases but they want their returns right now, not when the next guy is in their chair.
If I see someone in a market push their prices too high, I am
Entering it. For example, I pay $75 for my lawn mowed. If it goes to $100, I am going it myself. If it goes to $125, I am going to enter the market myself.
The cure for high prices is high prices.
This is a great idea in theory.
The barriers to enter lawn mowing make this possible.
The barriers to enter MOST other industries is simply too high. You canāt compete with Walmart/Amazons, or the companies they get their products from.
The average American appears to be in a state of learned helplessness and laziness concerning cooking, so fast food prices are testing this theory. They should all be entering the market themselves - cooking at home - but will they do it? Not if they basically donāt remember how.
People are addicted to fast food in a few ways and addiction leads to irrational spending. Iām not confident free market pressures will apply here. They would rather just whine and make it political and keep getting robbed.
I got downvoted to oblivion recently for recently saying that it was cheaper for me, and about as fast, for me to feed my family grass fed steaks than it was to get fast food.
There's definitely a weird redditor/ therapy babble/ meme communism synergy where people stick to whatever Good Boy position then act like lawyers about why Poor People Need McDonald's and Cooking Is Impossible
Yeah I meanā¦ fat slob grease addicts can still type. Iām not really fat shaming either, itās very easy to get fat eating at home mostly - Iām proof! lol
I just canāt stomach the bad deals, the order mistakes, and blatant hostility toward the consumer basically that these late stage capitalist companies are engaged in. Very similar to the airlines but I donāt have a home remedy for that one.
Or it could be the crazy amount of money the American government has printed over the last few years. The graphs show a direct correlation between inflation and money being printed.
Some of it is speculative greed. Take for example: you run a successful logistical business that sells general goods en mass. The political forecast predicts turmoil and uncertain times. There will be a money surge before the plunge. You decide to maximize profit during the surge and convert assets to something stable before the plunge. However, in effect, you help exacerbate the inflation effect.
Now, this doesn't excuse the behavior, but it's a business tactic that has worked in the past. There are other factors as well. Covid showed that you could maintain product margins during a product shortage by raising prices. People are going to consume regardless. There is also the literal inflation effect of the government overspending, but that is more of a catalyst than a cause at this point. Greed, fear, skullduggery, and politics are to blame in different margins.
Sorry buddy I got news for you ā companies are always gonna charge as much as they can get away with. The consumer keeps enabling them. Theyāre just as much to blame.
Fucking exactly.
The rich fucks who claim so and so cause inflation are basically saying, "If I don't get what I want, I will raise prices." Bitch you were gonna raise them anyways fuck outta here.
The ONLY cause of true inflation is Government expanding (Inflating ) the money and credit supply. Everything else is a result of inflation. When Money has no limit prices will have no limit.
Inflation is not the cost of goods going up, that is one effect of inflation. Inflation is too much money being printed causing the value of each bill to go down in value. That is the only thing that causes inflation, too much money. Arbitrarily raising prices may be beneficial short term but long term it will drive people away, such as McDonalds missing profit goals for the first time in years last quarter. If the price is too high, don't buy it. Inflation takes that choice away from you, not the corporations. They literally can't create money and therefore can't be the cause if inflation.
You are using the wrong word period you mean price gauging not inflation period inflation is 100% the amount of money in circulation versus the amount of goods. The only thing that causes inflation is when government prints a boat load of money or forces the goods to not be allowed to be made light or shut down.
Inflation is 100% caused by the federal reserve and government regulations at nothing more
I'm a VERY savvy frugal shopper. I am going to specifically call out Stop & Shop. Why are YOUR prices double or more than other grocery stores in the same area??? Example: Halloumi cheese is $11.99 at S&S but $3.99 at Market Basket; Firestarters are $9.99 at S&S but $5.99 at Market Basket; 1/2 gallon of store brand milk is $3.29 at S&S, but $1.89 at Market Basket; Frank's Hot Sauce is $6.79 at S&S and the same size bottle is $3.49 at Market Basket. S&S can go pound sand.
Actually it's printing money until the money is worthless. The closer we get to the election, the more of these "it's not Bidens fault" posts we will see. The spending gets worse every year, the answer is always more money. Millions for this, billions for that, another trillion, no worries. In the end the little bit of money you could save will be worthless.
The number one cause of inflation is always - and always has been - too much money in circulation. It cause all sorts of impacts along the supply chain. What youāre seeing at the end in the way of higher prices is just the result of everything that came before pricing.
What does that even mean???Ā
The question is WHY they are raising the price, how does the market accept it?!
Say. It. With. Me.
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon
āStop making fun of my precious corporations. Yes they are experiencing record profits during āinflationā, but theyāre hurting too! No one thinks about the poor corporations?ā
-You who seems to enjoy the taste of boot.
Thatās it! Sellers set the price tag - not the market. If a seller can deal with a bit lower sales volume, or enough buyers arenāt paying close attention to individual prices then āthe marketā isnāt doing anything to prices - the seller sets the price
Bro, the sellers are half of the market. They are not separate from the market. The consumers make up the other half, and their price tolerance very much dictates the price point. Producers want to maximize their value and consumers want to maximize theirs. The producers should absolutely charge what the market will bear in order to maximize value. Consumers should absolutely not purchase anything at a price point beyond their perceived value of the product. This leads to efficient markets and optimal distributions.
Been a bit but last year I saw reports stating that a far larger chunk of each inflationary dollar in the current inflation is corporate profits vs previous similar periods. Almost double. I havenāt seen anything more recently and I wonder if itās because we have collectively decided there is nothing we can do about it.
The number 1 cause of inflation is and has always been money printing. If there were a coordinated effort by sellers to raise prices, it could succeed but at the same time it would reduce unit sales in aggregate.
No, the #1 reason for inflation is printing endless amounts of money that isn't tied to anything of value, such as silver or gold. If you have $100 in a fixed system and a phone cost $5, when you raise the amount of money in the fixed system to $1000, the same phone will then cost $50. Simple economics. Prices increases are reactionary to the amount of fiat in a closed system, such as the American economy.
Yea, the Fed printing money for years and keeping interest rates at 0% and the unprecedented government spending have a much larger impact I'm fairly certain. But keep blaming business owners.
Edit: one of you reported me to reddit cares lmao y'all are pathetic
>The #1 cause of inflation is someone deciding to raise their price, imo
What groundbreaking insight!
And it's true. For example, when I decide that I want more money for my goods at the Farmer's Market, I'm the reason for food inflation at my stand.
It's also true that gravity is the #1 cause of weight.
Inflation is defined as a general and sustained increase in prices across an economy
Ownership sets prices; this is elementary. Thus ownership is responsible for inflation.
Let the demand destruction.......begin!
The number 1A cause of inflation is/are the sap(s) that pay the higher price when there are cheaper alternatives. COVID exposed how many saps were perfectly willing to create their own inflation and corporate America responded accordingly.
They raise their prices because the value of money goes down - for everyone. Everything is more expensive for everyone because the money is less valuable.
The devaluation of money is caused by, amongst other things, the printing of money.
The sub is convinced that everyone just needs to go back to 1100s serfdom for self-sufficiency. Do not try to argue with them. They are literally arguing for their own demise.
The answer is regulation. They just don't want to hear it.
Lots of retailers and fast food places are setting record profits despite telling us higher wages would make them all go bankrupt. Looks like all they did was increase prices and wages are still low in those industries for most of the country.
Is the solution then to just to buy items from producers that are selling at the lowest price, or is there industry wide collusion among all producers to raise prices uniformly so that we have no lower priced alternatives?
It's pretty simple. Public companies have to show they are not only profitable but increasing profits.
What ends up happening is the C level demand everyone below find ways to cut as much expense as possible, even if it doesn't make sense.
Obviously, the goals are not met, and the company decides of we can't cut the cost out, we will just increase the products we sell by just a little bit. Rinse and repeat every year and bam you got inflation.
You have the governments worldwide pumping money into the systems, 2 major wars, and countries/companies bidding against each other for oil prices (and other commodities) because of the concerns of supply. We have increased supply of money and temporary reduced supplies of oil. The world runs on oil and a farmer, truck driver, etc... are not going to eat the increased costs themselves.
When the governments started pumping money into the economies, I said they needed to, but we would pay for it later with inflation. People were like, the US currency is too strong to have inflation. Now we have inflation, just like economics tells us.
Also, at the end of the day, the farmer is going to take the highest bid.
Number 1 cause of deflation is reducing demand š DONT BUY IT!
They raise the price because they know you'll pay it - DONT BUY IT
Ok I'll stop buying groceries and rely on photosynthesis for energy instead!
Don't let that sun get your business. Keep it local, go to your community deep water volcanic vent and get your energy there!
For the price of your double quarter pounder meal I can buy 2lb of beef and I won't poison my body with preservatives. Math is fun
lol no. 2lbs of beef costs more AND you gotta buy all the shit to go with it. Not saying buying McDonalds overpriced shit is smart, but be realistic.
But 2 lbs of beef makes 4 double quarter pounders. And around me 80% ground beef is $4-5/lb, and a double quarter pounder meal is around $10-12. A bun is 50 cents. A slice of cheese is like 20 cents. Piece of lettuce, slice of onion, slice of tomato, and condiments are maybe 10 cents each. Youāre looking at less than $3.50 for a solid 1/2 lb burger, made with better ingredients than McDonalds.
You pay for someone else to invest their time and equipment to cook it per your demand and when you need it. This always gets overlooked in these comparisons, which is just wrong. You pay mostly for service. Service is expensive.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, I know the costs McDonalds faces as a restaurant and understand why they charge what they do. Iām saying instead of buying something from McDonalds, you can probably make it at home for a fraction of the cost. Because you *donāt* have to pay wages or overhead to make a burger.
Is meal planning like phd level smarts now a days? Make hamburgers two nights. Use some leftover beef to make tacos or spaghetti. Use the leftover buns to make some other sandwiches. š¤·āāļø
There's always a new excuse to why they NEED fast food
You can buy 2.25 pounds of ground beef for $10.66 at Walmart. And if you really want to stretch that ground beef out, you buy three boxes of whatever noodles you like, use a couple tablespoons of flour and a splash of milk and youāve got beef and noodles in gravy that you could feed yourself with for most of a week.
Those preservatives could save your life in a fire. Didnāt you see the meme? Lol
Exactly why I consume ridiculous amounts of alcohol. (Preserving my body). Oh wait...maybe it's supposed to be formaldehyde.
And you go even cheaper when you opt for chickpeas, beans and lentils instead of meat. Mediterranean cuisine has a lot of recipes that replace or reduce meat by legumes to cut costs - meat was always more expensive than plants Getting downvotes for telling what's cheaper: Reddit Big Brain moment
The beef without preservatives and shit in it is like $10 a pound so /doubt
Not if you buy from a local farmer
The local farmer is greedy as fuck as well. Only people with spare cash can buy from a butcher or processing plant. Because it's literally illegal for a farmer to sell his own meat without the govt getting their piece of the pie (inspections/licenses/etc)
Hmmm it doesn't need to be organic to not have preservatives in straight lean ground beef... Not sure what you're buying.
"your" quarter pounder They literally said "groceries" and you're trying to argue anyway.
And pretend that the cost of beef hasn't been rising like everything else....
Shop smarter. Every single store has weekly sales. Plan and save money. It isn't that difficult.
This is the answer. However, now they've moved on to us smarter shoppers with inventory manipulation and price adjustments being automated based on all our purchasing 'trends' being their property. There is no winning until they fail IMO.
The sales are just normal prices after they inflated them the week before. There's no winning this battle. Effective duopolies have negated any real power consumers have. You cant boycott necessities. And in pretty much every industry you have 1-3 companies dominating from economy class to luxury. You can't buy cheap when they own it all. That's why monopolies were toppled in the first place.
Yeah, the illusion of choice coupled with rampant prioritization of cornering markets is a serious flaw of unregulated capitalism
Man I regularly get chicken breast for under 2 bucks a pound. Steak for 4.99 a pound. Two giant tubs of peanut butter for 7.99. two massive boxes of cereal for 5.99. Butter for about 2.50. 2 gallons of milk for 5 bucks. Pound of strawberries for 2 to 3 bucks. 99c for a pound of carrots. Noodles are always cheap. Bread for a couple bucks a loaf. Etc etc. Quit whining and buy shit that is a good deal and quit pretending the deals aren't there. Change your habits and quit expecting everyone else to solve your problems when you make shitty decisions. Shops all your stores around you. Go to Costco/Sam's club. Use your local butcher. Like I said it is not difficult. Biggest thing of all IS TO QUIT BUYING SHIT YOU FEEL IS OVERPRICED. You do not need every single type of food all the time. Buy what is on sale.
I bet companies is LOVE consumers like you! Bend over and take it without whining!
The problem is that the price of these āsalesā is almost always relative to the ānormalā price of goods. As long as the listed price of a good is being increased (whether due to inflation or greed or both) and your wages donāt increase proportionally, you are going to start paying more for stuff even if itās on sale
Give me your worst take š Ya, rampant inflation and corporate greed is the fault of consumers. Gotcha (Also did you check my fridge? The water and frozen chicken breasts don't exactly scream excess and gluttony)
I think the point is if everyone shopped sales you could survive but corps would notice because they would have to discount shit that was about to spoil cause the price was too high, therefore would in theory adjust to the new market rate. Which would be the āsaleā price. Not saying the system we are in doesnāt suck and shouldnāt prevent them from raising for the sake of ever increasing profits of course.
We are stuck in the current situation because no one is going to listen to you. They are going to be whining at the check-out as they pay $5 for a bag of Oreos, $6 for a bag of chips, and $9 for a 12-pack of soda. Ridiculous prices for people that have no self control.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yup people think I meant to starve to death I guess
Yep, I had to change my food choices. I use them to go to the store and buy anything I wanted, now I have to make different choices.
This reminds me of the āitās only an hour of homework youāll be fineā perspectiveā¦thatās coming from six different classes on the daily. Adding up all the āwatching outā we have to do to not get screwed over every second of every day is way too much.
You inbred hillbillies are some of the dumbest corporate bootlicking cockroaches in existence.
Okay I'll just be homeless then
Dude, I have to buy food or Iāll die. I donāt know what to tell you. Boycott wonāt stop this problem, holding greedy companies accountable by law will
This is what I donāt understand, is how/why everyone keeps buying. As much as it sucks, weāve stopped going to concerts and sporting events because it is outrageously priced and service fees and resales, etc. I keep thinking no one will pay that, but people still do. Kids wanted to see Savannah Bananas game. $250 a ticketā¦ā¦Fuck that. Saw a neighbors kid a few days later wearing a new Bananas jersey, ask the dad. Thinking maybe got tickets through work or something. Nope, spent over a grand to go for his family of 4. Stop supporting it people
As much as it sucks, the prices will remain and continue to go higher as long as people are spending. Ā This is what debasement does. Ā It increases the supply of money which drives up prices since there is more money to buy the goods/service. Ā And with the Fed reserve and gov deciding where those dollars go and flow too, there are winners and losers.
No no no. That wonāt work.. You keep buying overpriced BS then take pictures of it and post the disbelief of how much it costed.
Sometimes, social media shaming does pay off
Problem is you can't choose not to buy when it's a basic need, so healthcare, food, rent and housing prices, fuel, insurance plans, and etc, and congress won't do anything about it because they're being bribed by these industries.
Yes, that is why monopolies and oligopolies are illegal, even for something like Windows. These are captive markets with no competition. People are trying to force reality to fit their political narratives. You can't just opt out of society.
This says it all. Our congress is bought and paid for..by corporations
For real. If everyone just stopped eating food and insisting on living in doors, inflation would be under control by now.
Isn't that what started this whole process in the first place? š¤·
Hey great idea Edit: the originator of this comment has starved & frozen to death
Amen!
Ah yes, just don't buy food! Why didn't i think of that?
Fast food is the difference. Donāt buy expensive garbage thatās costs a fortune.
Also, pay attention to the food you buy. Look for sales and discounts; try store brands, etc. Iāve had to change some of my spending habits these past few months but fortunately not going broke buying necessities
While i agree, that's not always an option and people in here are acting like it is. Businesses exist by filling a *need* in a market. Telling people "just don't participate in society" Rather than the more obvious option of "our government should be working to prevent price gouging" is trying to force the world to fit your political narrative. The entire concept of "inflation" exists due to macro economics and you guys are acting like that's not a real thing *while on a sub about it's real world effects*.
>Businesses exist by filling aĀ *need*Ā in a market Businesses exist by filling a **demand** in a market. Some demands are needs and some are wants, knowing the difference you can save a lot of money.
Exactly.
No one needs to buy fast food. Ever for any reason. It is never a need.
Fast food is not necessary. Stop normalizing unhealthy and expensive eating habits
Just wait until that happens and the non-garbage food goes up in price even more. I think lots of you are missing the point -- they know they have us by the balls and there isn't shit most people can do about it. Holler when chicken breast is $8/lb. It's not far off.
Yep. It's like they didn't pay attention in econ or something. Or this sub is brigaded by a bunch of business majors who took ECON 101 and think they know everything because of that.
We need the FDA to break up food conglomerates. Until this happens, yes they have us by the balls.
But what about the cost of normal groceries? I buy just the groceries I need for meals. Nothing excess. And that grocery bill still climbs
This!!
Buy from a farmers market or local store. Put the mega corps out of business
Sorry I canāt afford the farmers market thatās for bougie people.
You live in a fantasy world
Too much logic bud. Buy more and complain more is the answer here
Yea food and shelter are bullshit away.
Nope. Liberate the grocery stores! Take back our agency! Collectivize the food industry!
If the answer was only that easy, it certainly isnāt. Economics & macro-economics have a looksie
Yeah but theyāre raising the cost of groceries and gas too. Not buying those is unrealistic
unfortunately some things are a necessity, like food and housing.
The problem with deflation is that economists and rich people panic when it happens, which means layoffs and belt tightening that hurts average people too. So the best we can hope for is for prices to stay the same or at best go up with rises in wage
Yes that's exactly it. They're increasing prices because people are buying anyways. I'm selling apples for 50 cents each, and selling 100 a day for 50 bucks. Increase the price to $1 an apple, and people are buying 100 a day anyways.
It's a common tactic that these businesses employ, blame inflation for everything and hike up the prices slowly and maybe people won't notice and when they do notice just mention inflation again.
I canāt buy the food anymore? I need the food.
I'm waging total war on food. I only eat once a day and it's always a store-bought, home-cooked meal. I'm saving enough money to buy a crossbow and will begin hunting for my own squirrels, mice, and bugs so I can save even more money. Edit: I can't believe this comment is getting so many upvotes. Ya'll are some sick mofo's.
Just defecate and sit in your own filth, the bugs will come. You'll never be hungry again
This is an advanced farming technique
And I'll use the same arrow over and over again!
While you wait for the bugs to come, there's always plenty of cockroaches in the sewers.
āThey had us in the first half, Iām not gonna lieā
I do that as well, but I'm just on Adderall. I started off and had to force myself to eat a single meal. Starting to regulate and feel hunger again. No squirrel needed.
The price of something is as much as someone is will to pay for it.
Thatās true for scarce assets like paintings, rare cars and gems. In reality, those items arenāt priced by their functionality, but their emotional value. Even then, most people arenāt even driving those cars, just keeping them in a hermetically sealed bubble, unused for its entire life. But for *actual* things like housing, food and services, the price is determined by aggregate demand. Eggs, water and gasoline will be purchased no matter what. When these ābasicsā are monopolized, there is no market competition, so the companies inflate the price to squeeze as much life force from the market as quickly as possible. Like insulin or water companies. Something Iāve noticed when looking to purchase a car is people DOUBLING the price because itās in a ārare colorā combo that is āonly 1 of 100ā madeā¦ itās like, okay, why did only 100 of them get made? Because only 100 people demanded this crappy color combination and everyone else chose the silver paint with all black interior! So people think automatically this scarcity increases the priceā¦ no, itās the ratio of scarcity to demand. These people often wait years before some idiot pays these inflated prices. Scarcity alone does not drive prices unless there is a monopolized necessity.
Demand for food hasn't drastically increased. It's just that food stores learned that people blame their least favorite politician, not them, when they raise prices.
This is probably the most based take Iāve seen in this thread
>Eggs, water and gasoline will be purchased no matter what. I stopped buying eggs for a while when prices peaked last year. There are lots of other things you can eat.
This gets a little murky though when it comes to necessities, which are being hit the hardest.
Also can we have some regulation on airports? I mean damn we literally canāt go anywhere else so youāre gonna fuck us with $9 coffees and $17 sandwiches THAT ARENT EVEN GOOD
Especially when you combine that with corporate concentrations. If there are 50 suppliers for everything you would have cost efficiency in the market because itās harder to fix the prices to be higher, somebody in that group is always going to seize the opportunity to secure more market share with their lower prices. When there are only like 4 or 5 players controlling 80-90% of the market share, itās not hard for them to not even collude just need to have the same pricing strategy at the same time.
The actual cause of the high prices we're seeing is due to reduced competition and the fact that our regulatory agencies have been captured by industry and thus have allowed only two or three companies to control the vast majority of major markets. There is no more competition. Do y'all remember the consolidations that happened with supermarkets a few years before the pandemic? And now that only a couple huge corporations control the vast majority of places people buy their groceries the prices are super high, wow, what a shocker. Vote in primaries and vote for people who are for regulation of business and breaking up these large companies.
The Fed printing trillions of dollars is the number one cause. Too many dollars chasing too few goods is what causes inflation.
Man can I get some of these free plentiful dollars? Or does that only go to the wealthy and corporations?
The money printing happened during COVID. And the wealthy made too much money to qualify
Everyone got out with something though, that's the problem. The rich got PPP loans
This is the primary culprit. There is also a major de-dollarization push going on globally by the Brics nations. As those dollars return home it adds fuel to the fire.
That major push has had little impact. The world still uses US treasuries as the defacto gold standard. That hasn't changed because the BRICS nations are not remotely reliable economically. The US has raised some eyebrows in recent years with political disarray but it hasn't been enough to change the status quo.
Right because the world craves rubles, rupees and real. What the hell can most countries do with those currencies except buy goods from those specific countries? This is not a real problem
The world craves energy and food, both of which they can get without dollars.
Dollars can buy you anything from anyone. Rupees can only buy you food/energy from India. What are you talking about? You think all the major developed countries are just going to switch to holding a basket of currency reserves from politically unstable countries instead of just one currency from the most stable democracy thatās ever existed?
BRICS is an absolute joke. The members wont accept their own currency from one another, let alone have any serious effect on global trade.
The amount of people saying itās only corporate greed in this thread is mind boggling. Yeah, completely ignore the Fed printing trillions of dollars over years, that has NO affect on prices. Not a bit. Is there some greed at play? Yes, some, but you canāt print trillions out of thin air without watering down the value of your currency. To think itās only big bad corpos acting greedily is infantile, one dimensional thinking
Thank you. Itās amazing how little people actually understand about how money supply works.
Iām convinced this current effort to blame inflation on āthe greedy corporationsā and not massive currency creation is very well funded astroturfing by the entities who benefit from creation of currency. Inflation is caused by money printing. Companies will raise prices during inflationary times because they must. Profits will also rise (in the short term) in those same times. The people who have the same opinion as OP are, without exception, people who couldnāt pass the most entry level test on basic economics, allowing them believe what theyāre told, rather than believe whatās actually true, since they know nothing about the topic they have such strong opinions on.
This 100%. Companies raise prices because they CAN. Increased availability of money money means people can and more importantly still ARE buying things at inflated prices. Inflation is caused by money printing at a higher rate than the corresponding increase in goods and services produced by the economy. I agree anyone who claims inflation is due to ācorporate greedā has zero understanding of basic economic fundamentals. Corporations are always greedy, but they can only raise prices when consumers have more money to actually pay the higher prices. Unfortunately due to inflation people are still buying $6.99 bags of chips.Ā
And whatās worse is the politicians spread these lies that itās greedflation. Lol, corporations have been greedy since forever. They donāt just discover this in 2021. Why are wages going up to? Did people just decide to get āgreedyā too. The central bank is culpable full stop. Politicians too because we are spending too much and taxing too little. Aka fiscal policy is too loose.
Printing money and low interest rates is the cause of inflation. But greed makes it worse.
Need to cut up these corporations and force some free market competition
There is an interesting anti-trust lawsuit going on with google I think right now. They are arguing essentially that because theyāre not abusing their monopoly power, itās totally okay then. Itās like saying you drove 120mph on the highway but because nobody got hurt that it should be legal. Okay, maybe if the roads are empty some people might look the other way but if you *made it the law* to drive 120mph then other people would abuse it.
The federal reserve sat on their thumbs too fucking long and let inflation get out of control. Dipshits.
Right? I k ow this is reddit but the insincere pandering to idiots has to stop. Get political pandering out of this discussion. Oir govt spends too much and the fed had to print, doesnt matter which side wins
I noticed healthy food hasn't really increased in price much, however, all processed foods have sometimes close to double the price. Eat healthy, stop buying garbage, and you'll feel way more full and less hungry. If you buy bulk chicken, rice, potatoes, broccoli, and many other ingredients, groceries can still be very cheap.
I think a lot of us have post Covid burnout/depression. I can only speak for myself but pre and during COVID I loved cooking, never ate frozen food and rarely got food out. Last few years Iāve been surviving off fast food and highly processed frozen foods. Then eating all the processed garbage makes me lethargic and more depressed. Recently Iāve been slowly working cooking back into my routine, struggling but planning to stick with it.
I started weight lifting last Thursday and cleaned up my diet, I'm also tracking calories and macros. People are already complimenting me saying I look different, even though on my scale I only went down a few pounds. Sleep feels amazing and I have more energy and motivation.
What creates inflation? Long-lasting episodes of high inflation are often the result of lax monetary policy. If the money supply grows too big relative to the size of an economy, the unit value of the currency diminishes; in other words, its purchasing power falls and prices rise. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Inflation#:~:text=If%20the%20money%20supply%20grows,power%20falls%20and%20prices%20rise. Money Supply M2 in the United States averaged 5246.13 USD Billion from 1959 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 21722.30 USD Billion in April of 2022 and a record low of 286.60 USD Billion in January of 1959. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/money-supply-m2#:~:text=Money%20Supply%20M2%20in%20the%20United%20States%20averaged%205246.13%20USD,Billion%20in%20January%20of%201959.
Sellers will always tell you that their own costs have risen. How the % rise in their expenses compare with the % they're marking up to customers, who knows.
yall seriously fail basic economics.... supply vs demand and inflation is direct correlation to the perceived value of a dollar
Dude!! People are taking this seriously! Amazing to me. I thought I was on r/inflationcirclejerk which I didnāt even know existed. But this is a serious post. Fucking mind blown.
No, 40% of all US dollars didn't exist just 4 years ago, your buying in to government BS trying to deflect from a problem they created. Monetary policy is always the cause of inflation.
You just refuse to open the economics book, huh?
The post shows a deep ignorance of basic economics. Price increases =/= inflation. If I decide to charge 30% more for a thing I'm selling that's not inflation, that's just me trying to sell at a higher price. Inflation is caused by the money supply rising faster than demand for goods. Money is worth about 1/3 less than what it was 5 years ago. If sellers sold at the exact same price now than they were then, then they'd be eating a massive loss. On a lot of goods like food that's just not possible. Most grocery store items have less than 1% profit margin, so any increase in costs must be immediately passed on to the consumer or the seller goes out of business. If you have data about sellers taking in a larger profit margin than they were in previous years then I'd belive you on price gouging, but I doubt most numbers would bear that out. And before you say "bUT ReCoRd pROfItS!!!1!1" that doesn't actually mean anything. If I make 100 dollars profit on 1000 in sales one year then make 120 on 1500 in sales then I made record profits but actually made less margin.
I feel like this sub just doesnāt know the federal reserve exists
This is circular logic. The definition of inflation is prices going up (by someone deciding to obviously, there is no magic price genie)
Ding ding dingā¦ corporations have consolidated in most industries to prevent any serious competition. Once they realized they could get away with large price hikes during COVID, they continued doing it well after prices shouldāve come back to pre-pandemic levels. Each time it was a different excuseā¦ āsupply chain issuesā, āno one wants to work anymoreā etc.
>Each time it was a different excuseā¦ āsupply chain issuesā, āno one wants to work anymoreā etc. They don't even bother giving reasons anymore
Another big problem is that all these investors want to see gains quarter after quarter, year after year. 100 million profit this year and then 100 million profit next year is a massive failure to them. So they increase prices, decrease quality, increase advertising, etc. This begins to alienate some of their customers so they have to go up on the prices even more. In the past companies didn't have 200 investors to satisfy and the ceo would only give himself a raise if the company excelled. But now you can't have a company without investors because of the massive start up costs of doing business.
It's a massive bug with how the current economy is set up. Infinite growth is impossible, yet the market demands it.
Infinite growth isn't that impossible, the problem is how fast they want to see that growth. Sales will inevitably increase as population increases but they want their returns right now, not when the next guy is in their chair.
And quarterly no less.
If I see someone in a market push their prices too high, I am Entering it. For example, I pay $75 for my lawn mowed. If it goes to $100, I am going it myself. If it goes to $125, I am going to enter the market myself. The cure for high prices is high prices.
This is a great idea in theory. The barriers to enter lawn mowing make this possible. The barriers to enter MOST other industries is simply too high. You canāt compete with Walmart/Amazons, or the companies they get their products from.
The average American appears to be in a state of learned helplessness and laziness concerning cooking, so fast food prices are testing this theory. They should all be entering the market themselves - cooking at home - but will they do it? Not if they basically donāt remember how. People are addicted to fast food in a few ways and addiction leads to irrational spending. Iām not confident free market pressures will apply here. They would rather just whine and make it political and keep getting robbed.
I got downvoted to oblivion recently for recently saying that it was cheaper for me, and about as fast, for me to feed my family grass fed steaks than it was to get fast food. There's definitely a weird redditor/ therapy babble/ meme communism synergy where people stick to whatever Good Boy position then act like lawyers about why Poor People Need McDonald's and Cooking Is Impossible
Yeah I meanā¦ fat slob grease addicts can still type. Iām not really fat shaming either, itās very easy to get fat eating at home mostly - Iām proof! lol I just canāt stomach the bad deals, the order mistakes, and blatant hostility toward the consumer basically that these late stage capitalist companies are engaged in. Very similar to the airlines but I donāt have a home remedy for that one.
Or it could be the crazy amount of money the American government has printed over the last few years. The graphs show a direct correlation between inflation and money being printed.
Amen just stop buying it and the cost will come down they earn nothing on unsold anything
If there wasn't demand at the new price they'd have to lower it again
Some of it is speculative greed. Take for example: you run a successful logistical business that sells general goods en mass. The political forecast predicts turmoil and uncertain times. There will be a money surge before the plunge. You decide to maximize profit during the surge and convert assets to something stable before the plunge. However, in effect, you help exacerbate the inflation effect. Now, this doesn't excuse the behavior, but it's a business tactic that has worked in the past. There are other factors as well. Covid showed that you could maintain product margins during a product shortage by raising prices. People are going to consume regardless. There is also the literal inflation effect of the government overspending, but that is more of a catalyst than a cause at this point. Greed, fear, skullduggery, and politics are to blame in different margins.
Stop calling it āinflationā, itās āprice gougingā.
Sorry buddy I got news for you ā companies are always gonna charge as much as they can get away with. The consumer keeps enabling them. Theyāre just as much to blame.
Fucking exactly. The rich fucks who claim so and so cause inflation are basically saying, "If I don't get what I want, I will raise prices." Bitch you were gonna raise them anyways fuck outta here.
well, and also someone who is willing to pay that price. Boycott is the only remedy.
The ONLY cause of true inflation is Government expanding (Inflating ) the money and credit supply. Everything else is a result of inflation. When Money has no limit prices will have no limit.
Inflation is not the cost of goods going up, that is one effect of inflation. Inflation is too much money being printed causing the value of each bill to go down in value. That is the only thing that causes inflation, too much money. Arbitrarily raising prices may be beneficial short term but long term it will drive people away, such as McDonalds missing profit goals for the first time in years last quarter. If the price is too high, don't buy it. Inflation takes that choice away from you, not the corporations. They literally can't create money and therefore can't be the cause if inflation.
You are using the wrong word period you mean price gauging not inflation period inflation is 100% the amount of money in circulation versus the amount of goods. The only thing that causes inflation is when government prints a boat load of money or forces the goods to not be allowed to be made light or shut down. Inflation is 100% caused by the federal reserve and government regulations at nothing more
Start gardening ... consume your neighbors flesh you can beat over paying at the grocery store if you just eat people -Jeffery dahmer
Yep, literal predators.
I'm a VERY savvy frugal shopper. I am going to specifically call out Stop & Shop. Why are YOUR prices double or more than other grocery stores in the same area??? Example: Halloumi cheese is $11.99 at S&S but $3.99 at Market Basket; Firestarters are $9.99 at S&S but $5.99 at Market Basket; 1/2 gallon of store brand milk is $3.29 at S&S, but $1.89 at Market Basket; Frank's Hot Sauce is $6.79 at S&S and the same size bottle is $3.49 at Market Basket. S&S can go pound sand.
Actually it's printing money until the money is worthless. The closer we get to the election, the more of these "it's not Bidens fault" posts we will see. The spending gets worse every year, the answer is always more money. Millions for this, billions for that, another trillion, no worries. In the end the little bit of money you could save will be worthless.
Nope. Number 1 cause of inflation is. Too much money in circulation. That is caused by printing money. So the feds cause most of the inflation
The number one cause of inflation is always - and always has been - too much money in circulation. It cause all sorts of impacts along the supply chain. What youāre seeing at the end in the way of higher prices is just the result of everything that came before pricing.
The #1 cause of inflation is bad government policy
Blaming inflation on greed is sort of like blaming a plane crash on gravity
Greedflation.
What does that even mean???Ā The question is WHY they are raising the price, how does the market accept it?! Say. It. With. Me. Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon
And it magically only happens when there is more supply of money than demand of it.
Op is what we get for letting public school go to shit.
āStop making fun of my precious corporations. Yes they are experiencing record profits during āinflationā, but theyāre hurting too! No one thinks about the poor corporations?ā -You who seems to enjoy the taste of boot.
Corporate profit margins are higher post-covid than before, and dramatically so.
Thatās it! Sellers set the price tag - not the market. If a seller can deal with a bit lower sales volume, or enough buyers arenāt paying close attention to individual prices then āthe marketā isnāt doing anything to prices - the seller sets the price
Bro, the sellers are half of the market. They are not separate from the market. The consumers make up the other half, and their price tolerance very much dictates the price point. Producers want to maximize their value and consumers want to maximize theirs. The producers should absolutely charge what the market will bear in order to maximize value. Consumers should absolutely not purchase anything at a price point beyond their perceived value of the product. This leads to efficient markets and optimal distributions.
Especially when thereās only about 6 major companies in the whole industry and they can easily collude to raise prices
This is the problem
The seller is testing the market. If it succeeds then price sticks. If not then it adjusts. Not that hard.
It's the Fed. Couldn't raise prices if the money supply wasn't there.
Do we not teach how the free market works anymore?
Discussing inflation without including the FED and the money supply is like cooking dinner without any food.
Yup...inflation by definition is an increase in the money supply. What happens afterwards is just a byproduct of the printing press.
Been a bit but last year I saw reports stating that a far larger chunk of each inflationary dollar in the current inflation is corporate profits vs previous similar periods. Almost double. I havenāt seen anything more recently and I wonder if itās because we have collectively decided there is nothing we can do about it.
And having a President who only cares about laundering money in Ukraine and allowing millions of illegals in the country
Definitely nothing to do with the endless printing of dollars
The number 1 cause of inflation is and has always been money printing. If there were a coordinated effort by sellers to raise prices, it could succeed but at the same time it would reduce unit sales in aggregate.
No, the #1 reason for inflation is printing endless amounts of money that isn't tied to anything of value, such as silver or gold. If you have $100 in a fixed system and a phone cost $5, when you raise the amount of money in the fixed system to $1000, the same phone will then cost $50. Simple economics. Prices increases are reactionary to the amount of fiat in a closed system, such as the American economy.
Yea, the Fed printing money for years and keeping interest rates at 0% and the unprecedented government spending have a much larger impact I'm fairly certain. But keep blaming business owners. Edit: one of you reported me to reddit cares lmao y'all are pathetic
Prices are set at what the market will bare. Stop buying prices come down. Its the only way.
>3. Increased money supply Derp!
>The #1 cause of inflation is someone deciding to raise their price, imo What groundbreaking insight! And it's true. For example, when I decide that I want more money for my goods at the Farmer's Market, I'm the reason for food inflation at my stand. It's also true that gravity is the #1 cause of weight.
Energy policies By Biden - fuel costs are way way up to transport goods
Inflation is defined as a general and sustained increase in prices across an economy Ownership sets prices; this is elementary. Thus ownership is responsible for inflation. Let the demand destruction.......begin!
This is brilliant economic analysis
Price increase isn't inflation. Inflation is your dollar getting less valuable which only happens when the government prints more of them
Please take a high school economics class. Increasing monetary supply lowers the value of each dollar.
The number 1A cause of inflation is/are the sap(s) that pay the higher price when there are cheaper alternatives. COVID exposed how many saps were perfectly willing to create their own inflation and corporate America responded accordingly.
Weird how everyone decided all at the same time. Iām sure itās just a grand coincidence
So a businesses costs (supply chain, labor, rent) isn't a factor, in ops opinion?
They raise their prices because the value of money goes down - for everyone. Everything is more expensive for everyone because the money is less valuable. The devaluation of money is caused by, amongst other things, the printing of money.
The sub is convinced that everyone just needs to go back to 1100s serfdom for self-sufficiency. Do not try to argue with them. They are literally arguing for their own demise. The answer is regulation. They just don't want to hear it.
#1 cause of inflation is the government printing money. That's inflation 101, and inflation 102.
Someone raising their prices? Then so shall we!
Lots of retailers and fast food places are setting record profits despite telling us higher wages would make them all go bankrupt. Looks like all they did was increase prices and wages are still low in those industries for most of the country.
Itās all corporate greed. This is the republican utopia. They created the āpursuit of the dollar above all elseā mantra. May be too late to fix.
Yup- stop rewarding greed!
Is the solution then to just to buy items from producers that are selling at the lowest price, or is there industry wide collusion among all producers to raise prices uniformly so that we have no lower priced alternatives?
Oh and we are all being politically manipulated, but yeah greed bad!
It's pretty simple. Public companies have to show they are not only profitable but increasing profits. What ends up happening is the C level demand everyone below find ways to cut as much expense as possible, even if it doesn't make sense. Obviously, the goals are not met, and the company decides of we can't cut the cost out, we will just increase the products we sell by just a little bit. Rinse and repeat every year and bam you got inflation.
You have the governments worldwide pumping money into the systems, 2 major wars, and countries/companies bidding against each other for oil prices (and other commodities) because of the concerns of supply. We have increased supply of money and temporary reduced supplies of oil. The world runs on oil and a farmer, truck driver, etc... are not going to eat the increased costs themselves. When the governments started pumping money into the economies, I said they needed to, but we would pay for it later with inflation. People were like, the US currency is too strong to have inflation. Now we have inflation, just like economics tells us. Also, at the end of the day, the farmer is going to take the highest bid.