I get the feeling companies are jackingnup prices to:
1) get richer
2) see how far to the edge they can push us.
If our government could get away with chaining us to our work stations they would. Slavery is legal after all.
>see how far to the edge they can push us.
Yep, and it seems like Target may have found the limit on how much they can raise, and are starting to edge back down [https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cwo8go/target\_to\_lower\_prices\_on\_about\_5000\_basic\_goods/](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cwo8go/target_to_lower_prices_on_about_5000_basic_goods/)
Publicly lower prices on certain things, secretly raise prices on other things.
Until and unless we put some kind of price controls in place this is the way things will be.
Still got my 1960 electric top and stove, as well as our 80s washing/drying machines... Finally bit the bullet though and replaced the 25 year old water heater with a air source heat pump one though as out of all the things to fail that would be the messiest.
Boy I sure loved it when I found out that my car, made by GM, had all of its power windows held up entirely by plastic o-rings, which held the entire weight of the window up.
I especially love that it was the cheapest possible plastic, and from continual heat cycles being in the inner portion of the car doors had become brittle.
It was just my favorite thing in the world to have to replace all four power window brackets because all 4 of them failed.
The aftermarket parts that I bought were both cheaper than OEM, and had metal o-rings...
And this was before the pandemic, they were solely trying to save a couple cents per car on material expenses... Either that or drive business back to their licensed repair centers/dealers by intentionally designing a part so that it fails after about 5 years.
To me this was the ultimate advertising for "literally any other car company"
I used to be out on anything Ford, now I'm out on anything GM or Ford. Saved them 10 cents per car, made me give $40,000 to a foreign car company that I otherwise would have spent with them.
Stonks indeed.
Electronics begin with prototypes built with the highest quality components. Once green lighted for mass production focus shifts to cheaper and cheaper materials and components to maximize profit margins.
Boy I sure do love having to replace an entire washing machine just because a single plastic component snaps in half and it would cost me almost as much as buying a new one just to get that one part fixed, $600.
And no they don't just offer that one part for you to install yourself, it's $300 for a whole assembly kit, and that's all they sell them in.
Thanks Samsung! I really enjoyed having a new washing machine for all of 6 months before it turned into a useless pile of plastic and subpar metal! That was just swell!
Meanwhile a washing machine built in 1981 will have had multiple uses every day, and still keep running 40+ years later.
Had a fridge as old as me. The ice maker sprung a leak so it didn't work great. The ice would turn into a block and have to be tossed out once a week otherwise you couldn't pull the individual cubes apart. Also the plastic door shelves were so old they literally shattered to pieces so decided it was time to replace it. Because of the custom cabinets, I had to special order a smaller fridge because small fridges don't come with ice machines in stores. The new fridge is godawfully noisy, the water quality is somehow gross and even worse, the ice machine works as well as the broken ice machine from the last fridge. I have to do literally the same exact thing anyway.
Not even sure it was worth replacing the old one. And worse is after complaining about my new fridge friends tell me to expect it to die in two years because that's how long theirs lasted.
I'm pretty vigilant about looking at my groceries out of necessity, and what far fewer people notice compared to increased prices is how insanely small products have become!
They will keep the package the same length and width on certain things, but make the height 1/3 of what it was.
Almost every single thing I buy has downsized by minimum 1/8th in the last two years while gaining an extra 50% to 150% in price
The other day I opened up a fun size pack of sour patch kids at my cousins grad party.
Therr were 4 in there.
4.
They have really started go hit the edge because it was the first time on my life I instantly noticed how little was actually in the package. Perhaps 5 was the magic number but 4 instantly made me think "damn, this shit really is getting out of hand" (not the first time I've thought that, it's just bad when a fun sized pack of candy is the catalyst of the thought.)
Me and my buddy were talking about this more so on the societal level as a whole.
At one point I said "if they would just be a bit more chill they could have gotten away with this shit for so long, our parents didn't really give a shit because they had enough. If they could just chill out and go back to that most people would just continue to live on their ignorant bubble and be fine with it, but they couldn't be chill and pushed the envelope to far and now they are getting way more push back"
Yes, this. Also, how in fuck is this not bait-and-switch fraud? The simple fact that they so obviously are CONCEALING the shrink makes it 100% fraudulent. Send every 1%er and every company officer guilty of shrinkflation to a work-prison gulag, after seizing their entire net worths.
Used to be, that it was cheaper to buy some processed foods than make your own. That was part of the draw.
Take a look at 'hamburger helper' today, $3-4 for a box containing $50¢ worth of pasta, and even less than that worth of spices/flour/corn starch. The meals gonna cost you $12-18 to make once you include the ground beef!
Wasn't 5 years ago I'd see sales of those boxes at 2/$1. It made sense to get them back then, now you might as well be lighting cash on fire instead of buying that.
$9.99 for a tube of elf themed cookies down 1/4 of their weight. $2.49 for a single can of tuna.
I still say learning how to cook is the best way to save money, but they're even dipping into that as well!
I recently moved from a lower income, but much more remote location where it would make sense that food would be higher priced than other high traffic locations, to a more central location that has easier access to all forms of produce...
It's somehow more expensive?!
For example: apples, grown in central America, $1.49lb in the Pacific NW, $2.49 in the Midwest. Within the same month.
And they're way worse! Half of them don't have intact skins in the Midwest, with bruising. While basically none of them in the Pacific Northwest were less than perfect.
How is a worse product more expensive if it had to travel 2,000 miles less than the other product? Greed, that's how.
I'm a bagger at Krogers, have been for years. When I started a bit over a decade ago you could barely get 3 bags of regular sized chips to fit in one but now I can easily get 4 in there.
I got so excited when I saw the Ticketmaster news. I don’t know if anything will actually happen but I would LOVE to see those bastards get broken into about 5 competing companies.
In a way that is a form of price control.
The government would simply be enabling the free market to control the price, rather than allowing a group of individuals and shareholder interests to determine the price for individual products based on what makes them the most profit.
the thing about trust busting vs planned economy or some third party setting the price is when you trust bust, all the value and function still actually exists and can still adjust itself, but it's better for everyone. you break a monopoly up into two companies, as many or more jobs exist, as many or more orders get filled, the same amount gets done. letting the monopoly operate with alleged state control doesn't solve the problems with monopoly, it's a punt at best. The other thing you can do is just totally take over the industry, just say "we've had all the gas line innovation we're likely to see, let's just make gas lines public."
Wonder when they're going to start charging us a fee to use the self-checkout line, just like they do today with ATMs.
Why the hell do we pay fees for ATMs? They save the banks tons of money on having to have many branches and tellers in order to service all of their customers, yet somehow we're responsible for covering the cost?
Also important to remember that this country could fix homelessness and hunger for its citizens for a sliver of the defense budget but encampments of hungry homeless people serve as a visceral reminder to everyone forced to see them of what happens if you falter on the tight rope of wage slavery or good health.
> Also important to remember that this country could fix homelessness and hunger for its citizens for a sliver of the defense budget but encampments of hungry homeless people serve as a visceral reminder to everyone forced to see them of what happens if you falter on the tight rope of wage slavery or good health.
Also like George Carlin once mentioned, it's not solved because there's no money to be made in solving the problem.
Except all the models and tests that have done this DO show increase in overall profit and spending.
It literally is only because corporations are evil that we don't do it
There shouldn't be a budget.
We live in a post scarcity world. There's enough for everyone. Money is simply rationing coupons for goods and services. It's bullshit. A control scheme.
this is the thing right here. WE LIVE IN A POST SCARCITY WORLD. We employ a fraction of our population and fertile land to the feeding and housing of individuals. until 100% of these two resources are saturated it is unconscionable for anyone to go without these necessities. then we work our way up the necessity ladder and whatever value and workhours we have left after everyone is taken care of is what we use to invent and research. There is no excuse for anyone to live without food shelter and water.
I also want to add that this is a great way to give businesses more leverage if no one can "get a better job" we are stuck. Since the businesses pay the politicians to pass or reject regulations, it's one and the same.
In this "lovely" right to work state, OSHA is basically toothless and doesn't do fuck all for employees and rarely fines repeat offenders. Gee, I wonder why that is.
Prices went up during COVID because production slowed and demand went up combined that with massive stimulus packages. They haven't come down since because they know people will pay it
the $1800 the average person got was ridiculously small, tiny amount of the overall package. miniscule. so tiny it had no real impact on anything, its not worth focusing on (unless youre Manchin who always tried to lower it even further).
*edited for clarity*
Oh the inflation didn't come from people getting $1,800.
It came from the PPP loan program, where they gave away millions to anybody who could claim to already have a business making millions...
Oh it turns out about half of the recipients used fraud to obtain their funds.
> Oh it turns out about half of the recipients used fraud to obtain their funds.
...and as it turns out it's the single mother receiving SNAP assistance that is the *real* problem.
The first round of Tricky Trump Fun Bucks came in 2020, that was 4 long years ago.
You should still have money left if you spent only $1/day. Stop buying avocado toast
Covid disruptions accounted for some of it. At least it did a couple years ago. Publicly held companies are telling their shareholders they are making record profits. This is happening at the same time they’re having record price increases.
They tend to get away with it because no one reports "Company A raised their prices by 33% and posted massive profits!"
Instead the message is "Company A raised their prices by 33%; Inflation is going up: What is the government going to do!" so everyone starts blaming the government for the price hikes. Your average person doesn't put link the record profits part because the news stories are separated enough either via time or fluff/anger pieces
It's the government's job to put regulations in place to protect citizens from this very thing. So, yes, I will continue to blame the government, as we all should, because they will never do that. Corporations aren't going to sprout morals, they need to be regulated. Alas, those same corporations also own the government. So we're pretty fucked.
In the U.S., our elected officials make money by helping the companies they invest in. We needs laws to stop this bullshit.
Both republicans and democrats do it.
[NY Times: These 97 Members of Congress Reported Trades in Companies Influenced by Their Committees (2022)](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/13/us/politics/congress-members-stock-trading-list.html)
Don’t forget the decreases in labor costs too. Many companies furloughed or laid off employees like crazy, keeping a bare minimum skeleton crew. Many of them are still operating this way because it worked during COVID.
>massive stimulus packages.
I don't know what she told you, but it was below average at best. Especially compared to what other *swarthier* countries put out for their citizens.
I used to buy fast food for my family after my Saturday errands. Once five guys raised the cost of a shake, fries and burger to $20.00 that shit abruptly ended.
We’re not going back.
Yes. An oil company exec was just exposed for colluding with Russia and Saudi arabia to artificially inflate our fuel prices. A Republican family that controls a large portion of the egg industry was caught price fixing. So we kinda know it's a thing you just don't know how much of a thing it is.
Right? Throw that in the face of the next person crying about windmills and energy independence. Is it outrage fatigue? It reminds me of all the M\*GA republicans getting a pass on their made-up drama about election integrity, when Tr\*mp had his own damned election integrity commission that found nothing. People forget about that:
[https://apnews.com/article/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d](https://apnews.com/article/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d)
I get it ... it's a lot easier to blow things up than build a productive economy and healthy educated workforce. If people are paying attention, it's much harder to loot our country. That's exactly what we're seeing is a full-on, ultra-rich looting of the country, enabled by politicians. It's not a bunch of brown people looking for a better life for their families. The GOP owns that with the tax code and program cuts, but many Dems aren't innocent, either.
Oh, I know. If you haven't, look at dairy and meat subsidies and how the industry is completely blocking efforts to identify and track H5N1. We're fucked. These industries get subsidies, have pitiful practices and contagion control, then we ALSO bail them out when their risky practices result in mass-culling of animals. It's all in the hands of a few massive corporations who have gamed the system.
Can you imagine if I got subsidies for my sloppy, risky business, then if I had losses due to my negligence, I'd get a big fat bonus? Sign me up!
Pretty sure if that is a goal of theirs, it's a secondary/tertiary one. They mainly are jacking the prices because they want to make a lot of money as the primary goal.
This is my opinion too. Firstly they want to make money. Secondly, if they can jack prices and point to an incumbent democratic president as being at fault for their own actions, they have a better chance of getting a republican in office that will be more receptive to cutting their taxes and regulations, so they can make even more money.
We're just the ones in the middle casting the votes and deciding. I'm personally not inclined to belive a damn word a for-profit corporation has to say about anything. They're not saying anything for my benefit.
This is the way. If anything, politicians and corporations are hostile toward the average person. They don't have your best interest in mind. They never did.
Yep, not to mention he met up with Oil Execs promising them tax cuts if he got elected again. These corporations are right wing scum, especially Wally world and Home Depot.
Right my mistake. Not only is he a fascist he's a grifter, God only knows what he was planning to do with all those documents. Probably would sell them to anyone for top dollar.
I think it's much bigger than this election. I think they're realizing people are sick of capitalism and they are retaliating. They're going to take as much money from us as possible until people fight back. It's class warfare.
Oil/gas is 100% for SURE.
Saudi Arabia & Russia (Whom the US STILL buys oil from, like WTaF is THAT? War is a profit, remember that kids) both stopped production to jack up price to get tRumpty in office. We knew about this earlier in the year that they were going to squeeze the American people at the pump. JB *did* just release a LOT of US oil but I don't think it's going to bring the price down nearly enough to stop people from blaming him, which is funny, like the president literally sets the price of imported gas. Why are people so dumb?
Food?
Nah, that's just a gawddamn money grab for companies. No one cares, well, no one that can do anything about it anyway, because they (congress people) are ALL investors. I mean, does anyone get into politics to actually HELP people anymore? That's laughable.
I mean, trump would side with corporations not the people. So maybe? But look, McDonald's, wendys, target, Walmart, Aldi are all lowering prices now since consumers aren't buying. Just shows they jacked up prices to see how much we're willing to pay. Now it backfired and they're trying to lure us back.
Totally. Modern capitalism is running on this new theory of see how much it takes to break the thing, then dial it back a bit. The old way was price competitively, and raise prices only to bend the consumer, hoping they stick around for the price increase. Now, they break the consumer by going past the line, and reset prices back to where it was still just barely affordable for them.
We also also seeing this with layoffs. Used to be, cut enough people to just not break any core operations of your business. New model says cut enough to break your core business, then rehire back whomever you actually needed to make the thing work.
Absolutely scum.
The real loss is in our eating habits
I got a Wendy's burger once every 2 weeks before because I enjoyed it and the price didn't make me angry
The closer I got to dropping a 20 for lunch the more furious I became
Now I am learning to fast and losing weight
Don't plan on eating Wendy's until this fever breaks and even then, I am out of the habit
I don't see McDonald's as a cheap alternative when 5 years ago I did
I didn't associate McDonald's and Starbucks with Israel but now I do
They won't realize the damage this little price fixing stunt did to their reputation, to their future earning and their market share, until the numbers tell them
I'll tell them now
Your customers changed because you changed them
The amount of price reduction to get me back is going to hurt and even then I'm using a coupon because fuck you
They skyrocketed prices so that now when a Quarter Pounder meal costs $12 instead of $14 it feels like a savings, regardless of the fact that 2 years ago it was barely $8.
Trump is actively soliciting donations. He told the petroleum industry that for a $1 billion contribution he’ll get rid of all the green energy initiatives.
Unless they reduce prices by 30-40% to align it back to inflation, then their new price reductions are performative.
The fast food industry has increased prices of 2-3x the rate of inflation since 2014, so a new 5% mea culpa price reduction in 2024 is mostly meaningless.
Yes
Just like the “liberal media” refusing to run stories on the openly fascist policy proposals Trump and the GOP have published via project 2025. They are all complicit, which is precisely what happens when the plutocrats own everything, from grocery chains to the entire media ecosystem. From NYT to WSJ They have long been pushing the Overton window hard right. The American “left” is further right than Regan was. It’s a death spiral. It’s no different with grocery chains, gasoline or any big business. Even Disney funded DeSantis for years, while plastering rainbows and African American families all over their ads. They are all willing to fund a little fascism in exchange for never ending “tax breaks” and taxpayer funded handouts.
Why are you 'feeling that way'?
It's obviously happening. They did it under Obama too and Clinton. They want better tax policy for themselves and their shareholders so they can hoard more money.
I was just talking to my room about this a few weeks ago. I wondered why no one was talking about it or didn't realize it. Trump presidency benefitted the rich. They want to trick people into thinking this current situation is because of a democratic president so people will vote for Trump or a similar candidate. I believe this 100%
No. Tbh it's only Americans that seem to blame the price of things on the current president. I remember it happening back in the 80s any time the price of gas went up.
Unfortunately the stereotype of Americans thinking they're the only country in the world is often true. Any post I see online about cost of living increases has a ton of replies about it being due to 'Bidenomics'
I live in Europe now and all of the prices of groceries has gone up here, too. So has our electricity, and our petrol which is already more expensive than the US. Rents are at an all time high, house prices are crazy. They've put extra taxes on carbon fuels which a lot of people use an open fire to heat their homes. A bag of coal was 16 euro, last winter it was 34 for the same size.
It's just greed. A lot of these green initiatives are bullshit, just made up excuse to fleece people. All the plastic we were separating and thought we were recycling in Ireland was actually not being recycled at all. Electric cars are another. Soon only the rich can afford to drive these expensive vehicles which can be totally remote controlled, tracked and have their range limited.
You will own nothing and be happy is the vision the puppetmasters of our planet have for us plebs. Lifelong renting and employment which is just slavery with extra steps, with the retirement age being constantly raised and no one able to afford to anyway.
You know, I already had enough reasons not to vote for Trump, including integrity, and not being a total fucking moron, but I’m happy to go ahead and add this to the list.
Locally, there is a small chain of gas stations that is threatening to move out of certain areas (downtown) because of crime yadda yadda yadda. In the same breath, talk about their record profits.
Also remember how we were all told how those stimulus checks and PPP loans would drive up inflation? No argument here, that is basic economics and so much more so when paired with a global near complete cessation of production. However those same people, those who are against all forms of government assistance (for the individual that is, corporate welfare is not just permissible, but celebrated) now want to tell us to believe it is all Biden's fault. By what mechanism they never say, presumably just by virtue of Biden not being their Golden, I mean Orange Boy Trump the universe recoils in horror and inflation (you know the same inflation they predicted when Trump was putting his name on stimulus checks) is just one of the many ways this incongruency in leadership manifests itself. They never have to be consistent because their base is only concerned with what they are being spoon fed and ordered to think that very moment.
Ive been saying this for a while. Big companies tend to favor Republican administrations due to the fact they give bigger tax breaks to said companies. I genuinely believe/think they are doing this in order to persuade the consumers to vote for a Republican in office. I also predict that prices are going to drop if Trump is reelected, insuring that Republicans will be favored for their perceived ability to "lower effects of inflation"
Bud, they don't care. They've been price gouging under the guise of inflation the entire time. They're making record profits every year now. It doesn't matter who is in charge, really.
No, not everything revoles around Trump... Gas, Oil, Groceries are up Globally! This is not a Trump or Biden thing. It's a corporate- we wanna make more.money thing.
Politicians are the servants of corporate no longer those of the people. Infact if you look even way back in history, most politicians have always had wealthy donors, the politicians in turn have supported their interests.
Listen: the structure of a corporation is at direct odds with stopping a fascist takeover.
Consider the following two scenarios:
1) a corporation embraces revolution and reduces profits due to turbulence.
2) be neutral with, or embrace fascism: profits stay the same or rise.
The conservative nature of corporations makes them susceptible to such transformations. No corporation is on your side.
In my experience, during election years, 1 of 2 things will occur.
1. If democrats are in charge. Republicans raise prices, create scarcity, cause supply chain problems. Then tell everyone it's the democrats fault and the only way to fix it is to vote for them.
Or
2. Republicans are in charge and have been trashing the economy for their own greed. But still blame democrats saying the only way to fix it is to reelect them again.
Your basic protection scam where you always lose, and they always win.
I always assumed it was just greed/companies seeing they could get away w it during Covid and taking advantage but I wouldn’t be surprised if this also motivated the price gouging
It's not some conspiracy. More like hey people need gas and food. We just had a traumatic event. Let's just blame that while we jack up the price. Always in history, there are people who never let a tragedy go to waste.
No they are just greedy AF. Finding more ways to spend less making the same stuff with worse ingredients and could care less if the shit kills you. It’s easy to settle multi million dollar lawsuits when your profit is multi-billion.
Our government just slaps hands to make it look like they kind of care.
I am sure that is exactly what the oil companies are doing. They want the orange mango back in the White House because he is their boy toy. So they keep hiking the price of gas and then planting stories in the news media about how awful the prices are. It's disgusting.
Also the lay offs are to make Biden look bad. They want to continue the trump era tax cuts forever because the rich don’t give a single fuck about anyone except themselves. That includes their own country.
Until people realize that corporations and businesses set their own prices and the President has no control over them we are totally fucked by this stupid and ridiculous argument.
It doesn’t matter if Mother Theresa was President … they are in it because Profit is King. It’s unlikely to be some conspiracy about Trump. He’s not smart enough to pull it off anyways
I tend to agree with the other posters. Corporations definitely want Trump because they're greedy but the price increases are due to conditions caused by Trump (think Ukraine), COVID and international tensions. They are obviously greasing palms in the hope of him coming back again.
All true, but you also have to remember that the Democrats want to raise minimum wage and these trash companies are raising prices in anticipation of a minimum wage hike. They're essentially trying to neutralize any possible wage increase. Hopefully Biden will just tax the hell out of the wealthy so that if they try to increase the cost of things, that the taxes will decrease their buying dollar as well. I'd set a tax rate at 10x the inflation rate against their wealth so that any inflation after a minimum wage increase will really hurt them. We can't address inequality if we're only focusing on one side of it.
Taxing the hell out of the wealthy works, just look at the results of the recent millionaire tax in Massachusetts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1cx846l/millionaires_tax_has_already_generated_18_billion/
Or you can look at the U.S. when the middle class prospered, the government wasn't as corrupt as it is now with all the dark money pumped into it, upward mobility was more likely, and the top tax brackets were close to 90% (i.e. before that POS Reagan trashed our country for rich trash).
Gas prices going up to hurt biden, yeah I can believe that. Everything else- nah, just greedy capitalists. Why- there’s more oil than ever before, and oul companies litteraly have a monopoly conglomerate that sets prices and trump will bend over backwards for them.
The oil companies were no fan of Trump as he allowed so much leeway in drilling and so much competition. You’d be surprised how pro Biden some oil company folks are. They like the limited competition and high prices
Prices aren't really this high for no reason. Stimulus spending during the long quarantine - which both Trump and Biden are responsible for - and the supply chain issues we got from pandemic-related disruptions fueled inflation. When this happens, companies that can pass on the increased costs to consumers will do so, with total and depraved shamelessness.
That said, its very easy to gouge someone and hide behind the backdrop of cost increases. This happens and is probably happening, but its hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
As to your question: I think they'd like another R administration because it always means less taxes and regulations. But I don't think jacking up prices is primarily intended to achieve that. The fact that people are pissed about inflation and blaming Biden is just a happy byproduct of passing the costs onto the consumer. I'm sure SOME businesses think this way and MOST are happy to benefit, but the private sector outside the US is doing the exact same thing and they have no reason to believe higher prices in the UK, for example, will benefit Trump.
Trump supporters will blame literally everything on Biden and right-wing politicians play on this.
Prices go up: Biden
Covid: Biden
Crime exists: Biden
Another country does something: Biden
Local taxes: Biden
Health insurance co-pays: Biden
They get diarrhea at a rally: Biden snuck up behind them and put it there.
It’s not jacked up for no real reason. It’s jacked up because of years of our government kicking the can down the road regarding our economy and the markets.
This AND I think despite what Maga loves to say about the media hating Trump and trying to ruin him (it’s a convenient enemy for him) - the media actually is trying to get Trump back in order to drive outrage culture and fuel engagement with their platforms.
Of course they are. It's not even about feeling or thinking, it's for a fact happening. The rich want bigger tax cuts and they used COVID to their advantage. It's the equivalent of a gas station trying to jack up prices during a crisis, because they know they can. Yes supply and demand is real, yes shutting down everything for months impacted us, but greed made a bad situation 10x worse. And after seeing what they could get away with, they kept going. It's going to crash for sure. When people aren't buying overpriced crap, these businesses will fail and the government will just pull them out again.
What corporations fail to see is that fascists don’t share power. They used all that corporate money to get power, but once they have it all, do you honestly think they’re going to share with the corporations and rich people?
Does China bow to their corporations and rich people? Absolutely not. Those people funding the Republican Party will soon be seen as a threat to their power.
Short-sighted thinking as always.
There’s no investment in a company’s survival. CEO’s are there to please faceless stock market investors by raising stock prices and who are only interested in extracting what they can before selling off when the stock price starts to dip. Gas prices are more based on demand in the world and tax revenue. The Saudi’s can literally overproduce and crash the market if they want to which leads to production wars with Russia and less overall competition as it becomes unprofitable to produce anywhere else. Trump helped kill off quite a few American production companies with his shenanigans especially since demand was low during Covid.
It happens every cycle between Republicans and Democrats.
They wait until a Democrat takes office to do something huge like Obama got the bank crash and Biden got inflation.
We all know that inflation was just corporations raising prices and price gouging people and we know this because of their record-breaking high profits.
We know they strong armed Obama and scared everyone into thinking the world was going to collapse just so we would bail out the banks and it worked.
And all of the big money is heavily Republican sided.
These mega corporations use this as a way to blame Democrats and say that their policies are the reason the economy is doing what it is in a bad way. When we all know it was the corporations doing unethical things with the economy.
Corporations typically favor their donations to Republicans and especially to Trump because he will eliminate"red tape." Which really means health and safety to people and environment laws will be removed. Laws are in place for the protection of people and the environment, and that costs money. Corporation only cares about profits, and the c-suite want their bonuses.
Corporations are very American centric in the west. But I see sky high prices in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK etc as well.
Food, housing, clothing, household goods are kind of out of control. It’s like corporate American is trying to bleed everyone dry right now to buy everything they want to keep control.
Have everyone fighting a culture war and hating on the hungry and homeless to distract them from rising up and fighting a class war. We outnumber them. We scare them. They want us poor and living paycheck to paycheck.
Part of it is Trumps tax cut right before he left cut food subsidy significantly causing essentially killing off of small farmers in favor of factory farms and no one talks about it because the same people who own the news own the factory farms
The real issue is the Trump tax cuts, everyone was flushed with money during the pandemic now that it has died down we are seeing the true effects of these tax cuts that are based on Reaganomics.
We the working class are getting shafted, the guy was smart, he is not office but his actions are still felt today and as many think he will come to the rescue… not really for the common man. If you fix taxes for the middle class you got my vote but clearly that ain’t gonna make a difference, people will fall for his lies. Tax cuts are for the rich we the middle class subsidize the short falls of them not paying taxes.
I feel like the media is completely owned by the 1%/billionaire predator class and they're constantly feeding the country the idea that Trump is winning and there is nothing anyone can do. Straight up propaganda because they want him to be president because he'll deregulated everything and let them make as much money as they can off of us. The whole system is rigged, our only hope is VOTING against Trump/Fascism until he is finally too old to run or dies.
The squeeze is being felt by corporations now. I just saw an announcement from target on lowering prices on a bunch of items in the upcoming weeks.
The lack of buying power from everyday citizens is going to really start to strangle corporations to the point where they concede those inflated prices in lieu of getting shoppers to make impulse buys.
I have actually seen this in Albuquerque NM. In 2022, during the midterm election cycle, the price of gas slowly crept up for months, peaking just around the Nov. 7 election. Then, almost immediately after the election, the price plummeted, dropping by around 60 cents immediately, and then staying down for quite a while after that. Albuquerque is a pretty Blue area, and I'm paying pretty close attention this year, and so far, it looks like history is repeating itself. Where it used to regularly be around $2.60, it now only barely drops below $2.99 before rising again. I can't help but feel like there's some connection, but I'm not sure what it is. I may just be completely wrong, but it sure FEELS like gas companies are trying to make Democrats look bad in the lead up to the election by giving Republicans talking points.
Yes. I have no doubt about it. Especially petroleum. Even though the price of a barrel of oil is low, the oil companies are keeping the price of gas artificially high.
Yes and not just jacking up prices but also laid off everyone in tech so that they will get angry w/ Biden and vote R. Most billionaire owners are right wingers.
1000%
Not only that but corporations were getting inflationary pressure on third margins when Trump but held off jacking up prices to keep him in power.
HEB was selling their buns same .25 throughout the plandemic/pandemic and as soon as Biden inaugurated they jacked the buns to 33 cents, and now 48 cents
There was a thread in r/finance saying all other subreddits don't know what inflation is, and how do you expect prices to stay constant with a couple trillion more in circulation- how did we get there then? They didn't explain anything, it was just a 'everyone's complaining except me' type of post.
The real temporary cost increase due to supply chain issues was relatively transient and small, but the endless coverage of it gave corporations a cover to raise prices and see how much they could profit.
Inflation is NOT a rule of economics. it’s purely driven by greed and the toxic “endless growth” mindset of modern capitalism.
They are also punishing this administration for enforcing antitrust laws.
They don't want another term of being held accountable, private equity and wallstreet want further corporate consolidation.
I don't think there has to be a political motive, but services that cater to conservatives are hiding behind inflation as an excuse to raise prices far beyond inflation, and their customers are just accepting it without question.
The last 40 years of destroying competition has positioned retailers in the post-covid world to raise margins astronomically.
So many local retailers and regional chains destroyed by the ruthlessness of Walmart, Home Depot etc. The consumer had limited ability to push back.
We eagerly did this to ourselves
Remember when we had all that massive congestion at the ports coming out of the pandemic? They just didn’t seem to be able to move the containers out of the ports. It was causing mass chaos in the economy. When Biden raised the storage fees at the ports and all of the sudden, the problem magically went away.
Yes, because it's not about the money or they would have quit and retired like I would do the second I found myself with $10 million dollars. They want to be kings in a world with nukes, so this is the next best option.
Nothing to do with Trump. In fact they don’t really give a crap who elected because they own both parties…don’t let that fool you. Its about max dollars and max dollars only forever and always
I think it’s more just corporate greed. Prices went up during the pandemic with the “supply chain issues,” but when those issues were resolved, corporations figured we were used to paying higher prices and kept them inflated.
Of course. He is king socialism for corporations. He only knows one thing and that’s stealing money from the bottom and funneling to the top. Crooks support crooks.
Yep. Oil companies did this to help Bush get elected, and now all varieties of corporate scum are using the same playbook. Republicans lower their taxes and cut regulations that make it harder and more expensive to pollute and sell harmful products. Since a corporation's only concern is increasing profits, they'll gladly sell the rest of us into Christofascist dictatorship if it means they can make more money. I think it was Mussolini who said fascism could be more accurately described as corporatism.
Abso-fucking-letely!!!
Corporations want the GOP in power because it benefits them.
Causing "inflation" under DEM presidents.makes it seems as it's caused by democrats so idiots keep voting red.
Not American but I lost a lot of faith in the position of POTUS the first time he got in. I’ll just give up and not care ever again if it happens again. Go fuck yourself Trump you pathetic, grifting piece of shit.
Yes, of course. It happens every time a Democrat is in office. Most corporations are hard-core Republicans. Then, when a red guy gets in there, it all goes down, making it seem like it was them that improved it. I mean, they've been making record profits every year yet, still screw everybody else!
If so, only idiots will fall for it -- and idiots are the ones who were going to vote for that asshole anyway.
Personally, I will **NEVER** vote for a Republican for *any* office, for the rest of my life. I mean, there was already a 99% certainty I wouldn't have anyway, because it's very rare for me to agree with a Republican's position on anything, but since trump's disastrous time in the White House and all the rest of the shit he's pulled before and since, and they *support* him? No fucking way. I will vote for the Democrat *every* time (and maybe the occasional Independent, but not for President).
I get the feeling companies are jackingnup prices to: 1) get richer 2) see how far to the edge they can push us. If our government could get away with chaining us to our work stations they would. Slavery is legal after all.
>see how far to the edge they can push us. Yep, and it seems like Target may have found the limit on how much they can raise, and are starting to edge back down [https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cwo8go/target\_to\_lower\_prices\_on\_about\_5000\_basic\_goods/](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cwo8go/target_to_lower_prices_on_about_5000_basic_goods/)
Publicly lower prices on certain things, secretly raise prices on other things. Until and unless we put some kind of price controls in place this is the way things will be.
Not to mention "shrinkflation" and increased use of "fast fashion" with shoddier materials.
[удалено]
If you've bought any appliance in the past decade, you will become intimately familiar with this.
Coffee maker burner plates rust out in 6 months nowadays
Still got my 1960 electric top and stove, as well as our 80s washing/drying machines... Finally bit the bullet though and replaced the 25 year old water heater with a air source heat pump one though as out of all the things to fail that would be the messiest.
Boy I sure loved it when I found out that my car, made by GM, had all of its power windows held up entirely by plastic o-rings, which held the entire weight of the window up. I especially love that it was the cheapest possible plastic, and from continual heat cycles being in the inner portion of the car doors had become brittle. It was just my favorite thing in the world to have to replace all four power window brackets because all 4 of them failed. The aftermarket parts that I bought were both cheaper than OEM, and had metal o-rings... And this was before the pandemic, they were solely trying to save a couple cents per car on material expenses... Either that or drive business back to their licensed repair centers/dealers by intentionally designing a part so that it fails after about 5 years.
[удалено]
To me this was the ultimate advertising for "literally any other car company" I used to be out on anything Ford, now I'm out on anything GM or Ford. Saved them 10 cents per car, made me give $40,000 to a foreign car company that I otherwise would have spent with them. Stonks indeed.
Electronics begin with prototypes built with the highest quality components. Once green lighted for mass production focus shifts to cheaper and cheaper materials and components to maximize profit margins.
Boy I sure do love having to replace an entire washing machine just because a single plastic component snaps in half and it would cost me almost as much as buying a new one just to get that one part fixed, $600. And no they don't just offer that one part for you to install yourself, it's $300 for a whole assembly kit, and that's all they sell them in. Thanks Samsung! I really enjoyed having a new washing machine for all of 6 months before it turned into a useless pile of plastic and subpar metal! That was just swell! Meanwhile a washing machine built in 1981 will have had multiple uses every day, and still keep running 40+ years later.
Had a fridge as old as me. The ice maker sprung a leak so it didn't work great. The ice would turn into a block and have to be tossed out once a week otherwise you couldn't pull the individual cubes apart. Also the plastic door shelves were so old they literally shattered to pieces so decided it was time to replace it. Because of the custom cabinets, I had to special order a smaller fridge because small fridges don't come with ice machines in stores. The new fridge is godawfully noisy, the water quality is somehow gross and even worse, the ice machine works as well as the broken ice machine from the last fridge. I have to do literally the same exact thing anyway. Not even sure it was worth replacing the old one. And worse is after complaining about my new fridge friends tell me to expect it to die in two years because that's how long theirs lasted.
I'm pretty vigilant about looking at my groceries out of necessity, and what far fewer people notice compared to increased prices is how insanely small products have become! They will keep the package the same length and width on certain things, but make the height 1/3 of what it was. Almost every single thing I buy has downsized by minimum 1/8th in the last two years while gaining an extra 50% to 150% in price
The other day I opened up a fun size pack of sour patch kids at my cousins grad party. Therr were 4 in there. 4. They have really started go hit the edge because it was the first time on my life I instantly noticed how little was actually in the package. Perhaps 5 was the magic number but 4 instantly made me think "damn, this shit really is getting out of hand" (not the first time I've thought that, it's just bad when a fun sized pack of candy is the catalyst of the thought.)
Happened to me with a fun-sized pack of m&ms. There were five m&ms. Five. What’s fun about five f’ing m&ms?
Me and my buddy were talking about this more so on the societal level as a whole. At one point I said "if they would just be a bit more chill they could have gotten away with this shit for so long, our parents didn't really give a shit because they had enough. If they could just chill out and go back to that most people would just continue to live on their ignorant bubble and be fine with it, but they couldn't be chill and pushed the envelope to far and now they are getting way more push back"
Yes, this. Also, how in fuck is this not bait-and-switch fraud? The simple fact that they so obviously are CONCEALING the shrink makes it 100% fraudulent. Send every 1%er and every company officer guilty of shrinkflation to a work-prison gulag, after seizing their entire net worths.
Perfect example - it wasn't that long ago that the current 4-lb. bag of sugar was 5 lbs.
Used to be, that it was cheaper to buy some processed foods than make your own. That was part of the draw. Take a look at 'hamburger helper' today, $3-4 for a box containing $50¢ worth of pasta, and even less than that worth of spices/flour/corn starch. The meals gonna cost you $12-18 to make once you include the ground beef! Wasn't 5 years ago I'd see sales of those boxes at 2/$1. It made sense to get them back then, now you might as well be lighting cash on fire instead of buying that. $9.99 for a tube of elf themed cookies down 1/4 of their weight. $2.49 for a single can of tuna. I still say learning how to cook is the best way to save money, but they're even dipping into that as well! I recently moved from a lower income, but much more remote location where it would make sense that food would be higher priced than other high traffic locations, to a more central location that has easier access to all forms of produce... It's somehow more expensive?! For example: apples, grown in central America, $1.49lb in the Pacific NW, $2.49 in the Midwest. Within the same month. And they're way worse! Half of them don't have intact skins in the Midwest, with bruising. While basically none of them in the Pacific Northwest were less than perfect. How is a worse product more expensive if it had to travel 2,000 miles less than the other product? Greed, that's how.
I'm a bagger at Krogers, have been for years. When I started a bit over a decade ago you could barely get 3 bags of regular sized chips to fit in one but now I can easily get 4 in there.
Price controls tend to be really problematic. Far better to just get back to preventing monopolies and trust busting the way we used to.
Louder please
Get involved https://www.economicliberties.us/ Eating the rich sounds good. Making a world that they cannot exist in sounds better.
I got so excited when I saw the Ticketmaster news. I don’t know if anything will actually happen but I would LOVE to see those bastards get broken into about 5 competing companies.
But have you even thought of how that will effect the bottom line of international megaconglomerations and their shareholders?!?!?! /s
In a way that is a form of price control. The government would simply be enabling the free market to control the price, rather than allowing a group of individuals and shareholder interests to determine the price for individual products based on what makes them the most profit.
the thing about trust busting vs planned economy or some third party setting the price is when you trust bust, all the value and function still actually exists and can still adjust itself, but it's better for everyone. you break a monopoly up into two companies, as many or more jobs exist, as many or more orders get filled, the same amount gets done. letting the monopoly operate with alleged state control doesn't solve the problems with monopoly, it's a punt at best. The other thing you can do is just totally take over the industry, just say "we've had all the gas line innovation we're likely to see, let's just make gas lines public."
[удалено]
Wonder when they're going to start charging us a fee to use the self-checkout line, just like they do today with ATMs. Why the hell do we pay fees for ATMs? They save the banks tons of money on having to have many branches and tellers in order to service all of their customers, yet somehow we're responsible for covering the cost?
I think most of it is raising prices on the things we need, and lowering on the things we want.
Also important to remember that this country could fix homelessness and hunger for its citizens for a sliver of the defense budget but encampments of hungry homeless people serve as a visceral reminder to everyone forced to see them of what happens if you falter on the tight rope of wage slavery or good health.
> Also important to remember that this country could fix homelessness and hunger for its citizens for a sliver of the defense budget but encampments of hungry homeless people serve as a visceral reminder to everyone forced to see them of what happens if you falter on the tight rope of wage slavery or good health. Also like George Carlin once mentioned, it's not solved because there's no money to be made in solving the problem.
Except all the models and tests that have done this DO show increase in overall profit and spending. It literally is only because corporations are evil that we don't do it
There shouldn't be a budget. We live in a post scarcity world. There's enough for everyone. Money is simply rationing coupons for goods and services. It's bullshit. A control scheme.
this is the thing right here. WE LIVE IN A POST SCARCITY WORLD. We employ a fraction of our population and fertile land to the feeding and housing of individuals. until 100% of these two resources are saturated it is unconscionable for anyone to go without these necessities. then we work our way up the necessity ladder and whatever value and workhours we have left after everyone is taken care of is what we use to invent and research. There is no excuse for anyone to live without food shelter and water.
I also want to add that this is a great way to give businesses more leverage if no one can "get a better job" we are stuck. Since the businesses pay the politicians to pass or reject regulations, it's one and the same. In this "lovely" right to work state, OSHA is basically toothless and doesn't do fuck all for employees and rarely fines repeat offenders. Gee, I wonder why that is.
And when the poor go hungry ...
Slavery ensures tax revenue.
Fuck ya it does. I'm so close to dying. Thank God this world is near over for me
Prices went up during COVID because production slowed and demand went up combined that with massive stimulus packages. They haven't come down since because they know people will pay it the $1800 the average person got was ridiculously small, tiny amount of the overall package. miniscule. so tiny it had no real impact on anything, its not worth focusing on (unless youre Manchin who always tried to lower it even further). *edited for clarity*
Surely people are still spending their $1800 they got 3 years ago.
Oh the inflation didn't come from people getting $1,800. It came from the PPP loan program, where they gave away millions to anybody who could claim to already have a business making millions... Oh it turns out about half of the recipients used fraud to obtain their funds.
> Oh it turns out about half of the recipients used fraud to obtain their funds. ...and as it turns out it's the single mother receiving SNAP assistance that is the *real* problem.
Oh I know three. Legal fraud.
The first round of Tricky Trump Fun Bucks came in 2020, that was 4 long years ago. You should still have money left if you spent only $1/day. Stop buying avocado toast
My bootstraps are old and worn out.
Mine fell off years ago. Something about boots and soles ... more like losing your own soul.
Lucky for you all you need to do is buy new boots, at 400x the cost you paid for your first pair!
(at the company store)
Love it when the CEOs bust that one out
Covid disruptions accounted for some of it. At least it did a couple years ago. Publicly held companies are telling their shareholders they are making record profits. This is happening at the same time they’re having record price increases.
They tend to get away with it because no one reports "Company A raised their prices by 33% and posted massive profits!" Instead the message is "Company A raised their prices by 33%; Inflation is going up: What is the government going to do!" so everyone starts blaming the government for the price hikes. Your average person doesn't put link the record profits part because the news stories are separated enough either via time or fluff/anger pieces
It's the government's job to put regulations in place to protect citizens from this very thing. So, yes, I will continue to blame the government, as we all should, because they will never do that. Corporations aren't going to sprout morals, they need to be regulated. Alas, those same corporations also own the government. So we're pretty fucked.
In the U.S., our elected officials make money by helping the companies they invest in. We needs laws to stop this bullshit. Both republicans and democrats do it. [NY Times: These 97 Members of Congress Reported Trades in Companies Influenced by Their Committees (2022)](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/13/us/politics/congress-members-stock-trading-list.html)
Don’t forget the decreases in labor costs too. Many companies furloughed or laid off employees like crazy, keeping a bare minimum skeleton crew. Many of them are still operating this way because it worked during COVID.
And then got loans to pay the staff they kept but the loans were forgiven.
Don’t worry, it’ll trickle down any day now…
And then got loans to pay the staff they kept (and stock buybacks, new equipment, bonuses) but the loans were forgiven.
"massive stimulus packages" Lol Lololol Lololololololololol
I've seen more massive stimulus packages on chatroulette.
>massive stimulus packages. I don't know what she told you, but it was below average at best. Especially compared to what other *swarthier* countries put out for their citizens.
I used to buy fast food for my family after my Saturday errands. Once five guys raised the cost of a shake, fries and burger to $20.00 that shit abruptly ended. We’re not going back.
Yes. An oil company exec was just exposed for colluding with Russia and Saudi arabia to artificially inflate our fuel prices. A Republican family that controls a large portion of the egg industry was caught price fixing. So we kinda know it's a thing you just don't know how much of a thing it is.
Look for the sale of the Port Arthur oil refinery to Saudi Arabia. That deal stinks so badly.
THIS! How are people not outraged?!? NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT
Right? Throw that in the face of the next person crying about windmills and energy independence. Is it outrage fatigue? It reminds me of all the M\*GA republicans getting a pass on their made-up drama about election integrity, when Tr\*mp had his own damned election integrity commission that found nothing. People forget about that: [https://apnews.com/article/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d](https://apnews.com/article/f5f6a73b2af546ee97816bb35e82c18d) I get it ... it's a lot easier to blow things up than build a productive economy and healthy educated workforce. If people are paying attention, it's much harder to loot our country. That's exactly what we're seeing is a full-on, ultra-rich looting of the country, enabled by politicians. It's not a bunch of brown people looking for a better life for their families. The GOP owns that with the tax code and program cuts, but many Dems aren't innocent, either.
Definitely don't look into how much we subsidize that industry on a national and local scale. You'll want to die.
Oh, I know. If you haven't, look at dairy and meat subsidies and how the industry is completely blocking efforts to identify and track H5N1. We're fucked. These industries get subsidies, have pitiful practices and contagion control, then we ALSO bail them out when their risky practices result in mass-culling of animals. It's all in the hands of a few massive corporations who have gamed the system. Can you imagine if I got subsidies for my sloppy, risky business, then if I had losses due to my negligence, I'd get a big fat bonus? Sign me up!
No foreign entity should be able to own ANY portion of our infrastructure. Period.
But… but… but… the stickers?!? They told me Biden did it
Pretty sure if that is a goal of theirs, it's a secondary/tertiary one. They mainly are jacking the prices because they want to make a lot of money as the primary goal.
This is my opinion too. Firstly they want to make money. Secondly, if they can jack prices and point to an incumbent democratic president as being at fault for their own actions, they have a better chance of getting a republican in office that will be more receptive to cutting their taxes and regulations, so they can make even more money. We're just the ones in the middle casting the votes and deciding. I'm personally not inclined to belive a damn word a for-profit corporation has to say about anything. They're not saying anything for my benefit.
This is the way. If anything, politicians and corporations are hostile toward the average person. They don't have your best interest in mind. They never did.
Yep, not to mention he met up with Oil Execs promising them tax cuts if he got elected again. These corporations are right wing scum, especially Wally world and Home Depot.
Not correct. The deal was “give me 1 billion for my campaign, and in exchange I’ll kill green energy”.
Right my mistake. Not only is he a fascist he's a grifter, God only knows what he was planning to do with all those documents. Probably would sell them to anyone for top dollar.
I think it's much bigger than this election. I think they're realizing people are sick of capitalism and they are retaliating. They're going to take as much money from us as possible until people fight back. It's class warfare.
Exactly. More tax breaks for them and 30% inflation and they got 50% profits
Oil/gas is 100% for SURE. Saudi Arabia & Russia (Whom the US STILL buys oil from, like WTaF is THAT? War is a profit, remember that kids) both stopped production to jack up price to get tRumpty in office. We knew about this earlier in the year that they were going to squeeze the American people at the pump. JB *did* just release a LOT of US oil but I don't think it's going to bring the price down nearly enough to stop people from blaming him, which is funny, like the president literally sets the price of imported gas. Why are people so dumb? Food? Nah, that's just a gawddamn money grab for companies. No one cares, well, no one that can do anything about it anyway, because they (congress people) are ALL investors. I mean, does anyone get into politics to actually HELP people anymore? That's laughable.
I mean, trump would side with corporations not the people. So maybe? But look, McDonald's, wendys, target, Walmart, Aldi are all lowering prices now since consumers aren't buying. Just shows they jacked up prices to see how much we're willing to pay. Now it backfired and they're trying to lure us back.
It didn't backfire. They learned exactly what they wanted to learn
Totally. Modern capitalism is running on this new theory of see how much it takes to break the thing, then dial it back a bit. The old way was price competitively, and raise prices only to bend the consumer, hoping they stick around for the price increase. Now, they break the consumer by going past the line, and reset prices back to where it was still just barely affordable for them. We also also seeing this with layoffs. Used to be, cut enough people to just not break any core operations of your business. New model says cut enough to break your core business, then rehire back whomever you actually needed to make the thing work. Absolutely scum.
You're right.. But especially fast food places may have lost some customers to local restaurants that serve food cheaper and better.
I find that when I don't eat fast food in a long time, it tastes like shit when I try it again.
The real loss is in our eating habits I got a Wendy's burger once every 2 weeks before because I enjoyed it and the price didn't make me angry The closer I got to dropping a 20 for lunch the more furious I became Now I am learning to fast and losing weight Don't plan on eating Wendy's until this fever breaks and even then, I am out of the habit I don't see McDonald's as a cheap alternative when 5 years ago I did I didn't associate McDonald's and Starbucks with Israel but now I do They won't realize the damage this little price fixing stunt did to their reputation, to their future earning and their market share, until the numbers tell them I'll tell them now Your customers changed because you changed them The amount of price reduction to get me back is going to hurt and even then I'm using a coupon because fuck you
They skyrocketed prices so that now when a Quarter Pounder meal costs $12 instead of $14 it feels like a savings, regardless of the fact that 2 years ago it was barely $8.
Bahdup bop bah baaaah, they're lovin' it
yeah, and now they're doing this shit where if you coral yourself in their ap, they'll sell it to you for what used to be full price like it's a sale.
Trump is actively soliciting donations. He told the petroleum industry that for a $1 billion contribution he’ll get rid of all the green energy initiatives.
Unless they reduce prices by 30-40% to align it back to inflation, then their new price reductions are performative. The fast food industry has increased prices of 2-3x the rate of inflation since 2014, so a new 5% mea culpa price reduction in 2024 is mostly meaningless.
Yes Just like the “liberal media” refusing to run stories on the openly fascist policy proposals Trump and the GOP have published via project 2025. They are all complicit, which is precisely what happens when the plutocrats own everything, from grocery chains to the entire media ecosystem. From NYT to WSJ They have long been pushing the Overton window hard right. The American “left” is further right than Regan was. It’s a death spiral. It’s no different with grocery chains, gasoline or any big business. Even Disney funded DeSantis for years, while plastering rainbows and African American families all over their ads. They are all willing to fund a little fascism in exchange for never ending “tax breaks” and taxpayer funded handouts.
They just jacking up prices it’s not to get some one elected. It’s capitalism
It’s probably both.
Yea this is basically it. It’s happening everywhere, not only in the US…
I mean, oil execs got Trump to promise to axe green energy if they contribute to his reelection.
Well, it’s greed, but those 2 things are pretty much the same
Why are you 'feeling that way'? It's obviously happening. They did it under Obama too and Clinton. They want better tax policy for themselves and their shareholders so they can hoard more money.
I'm pretty sure this started at least with Jimmy Carter.
Nobody protects corporate profits by harming people like Republicans.
I was just talking to my room about this a few weeks ago. I wondered why no one was talking about it or didn't realize it. Trump presidency benefitted the rich. They want to trick people into thinking this current situation is because of a democratic president so people will vote for Trump or a similar candidate. I believe this 100%
No. Tbh it's only Americans that seem to blame the price of things on the current president. I remember it happening back in the 80s any time the price of gas went up. Unfortunately the stereotype of Americans thinking they're the only country in the world is often true. Any post I see online about cost of living increases has a ton of replies about it being due to 'Bidenomics' I live in Europe now and all of the prices of groceries has gone up here, too. So has our electricity, and our petrol which is already more expensive than the US. Rents are at an all time high, house prices are crazy. They've put extra taxes on carbon fuels which a lot of people use an open fire to heat their homes. A bag of coal was 16 euro, last winter it was 34 for the same size. It's just greed. A lot of these green initiatives are bullshit, just made up excuse to fleece people. All the plastic we were separating and thought we were recycling in Ireland was actually not being recycled at all. Electric cars are another. Soon only the rich can afford to drive these expensive vehicles which can be totally remote controlled, tracked and have their range limited. You will own nothing and be happy is the vision the puppetmasters of our planet have for us plebs. Lifelong renting and employment which is just slavery with extra steps, with the retirement age being constantly raised and no one able to afford to anyway.
You know, I already had enough reasons not to vote for Trump, including integrity, and not being a total fucking moron, but I’m happy to go ahead and add this to the list.
Locally, there is a small chain of gas stations that is threatening to move out of certain areas (downtown) because of crime yadda yadda yadda. In the same breath, talk about their record profits.
Also remember how we were all told how those stimulus checks and PPP loans would drive up inflation? No argument here, that is basic economics and so much more so when paired with a global near complete cessation of production. However those same people, those who are against all forms of government assistance (for the individual that is, corporate welfare is not just permissible, but celebrated) now want to tell us to believe it is all Biden's fault. By what mechanism they never say, presumably just by virtue of Biden not being their Golden, I mean Orange Boy Trump the universe recoils in horror and inflation (you know the same inflation they predicted when Trump was putting his name on stimulus checks) is just one of the many ways this incongruency in leadership manifests itself. They never have to be consistent because their base is only concerned with what they are being spoon fed and ordered to think that very moment.
For sure Oil Companies "lowered" prices when "W" ran for his second term. So yes, I think politics enters into theor thinking and price setting.
Ive been saying this for a while. Big companies tend to favor Republican administrations due to the fact they give bigger tax breaks to said companies. I genuinely believe/think they are doing this in order to persuade the consumers to vote for a Republican in office. I also predict that prices are going to drop if Trump is reelected, insuring that Republicans will be favored for their perceived ability to "lower effects of inflation"
It’s greed all of it is greed.
Bud, they don't care. They've been price gouging under the guise of inflation the entire time. They're making record profits every year now. It doesn't matter who is in charge, really.
No. They do it purely out of greed for themselves
No. I think they’re jacking up prices because they can, and it wouldn’t matter who’s in office. Companies exist for one purpose, to make money.
No, not everything revoles around Trump... Gas, Oil, Groceries are up Globally! This is not a Trump or Biden thing. It's a corporate- we wanna make more.money thing. Politicians are the servants of corporate no longer those of the people. Infact if you look even way back in history, most politicians have always had wealthy donors, the politicians in turn have supported their interests.
No. They are intentionally jacking up prices ro make more money. They don't give a fuck about who is in the WH or you.
Listen: the structure of a corporation is at direct odds with stopping a fascist takeover. Consider the following two scenarios: 1) a corporation embraces revolution and reduces profits due to turbulence. 2) be neutral with, or embrace fascism: profits stay the same or rise. The conservative nature of corporations makes them susceptible to such transformations. No corporation is on your side.
Things aren’t jacked up for “no real reason”
It’s to have another year of record profits
In my experience, during election years, 1 of 2 things will occur. 1. If democrats are in charge. Republicans raise prices, create scarcity, cause supply chain problems. Then tell everyone it's the democrats fault and the only way to fix it is to vote for them. Or 2. Republicans are in charge and have been trashing the economy for their own greed. But still blame democrats saying the only way to fix it is to reelect them again. Your basic protection scam where you always lose, and they always win.
yes
I always assumed it was just greed/companies seeing they could get away w it during Covid and taking advantage but I wouldn’t be surprised if this also motivated the price gouging
It's not some conspiracy. More like hey people need gas and food. We just had a traumatic event. Let's just blame that while we jack up the price. Always in history, there are people who never let a tragedy go to waste.
No they are just greedy AF. Finding more ways to spend less making the same stuff with worse ingredients and could care less if the shit kills you. It’s easy to settle multi million dollar lawsuits when your profit is multi-billion. Our government just slaps hands to make it look like they kind of care.
Look at the *oil crisis* that installed Ronnie Rodent in 1980...
I am sure that is exactly what the oil companies are doing. They want the orange mango back in the White House because he is their boy toy. So they keep hiking the price of gas and then planting stories in the news media about how awful the prices are. It's disgusting.
Also the lay offs are to make Biden look bad. They want to continue the trump era tax cuts forever because the rich don’t give a single fuck about anyone except themselves. That includes their own country.
Until people realize that corporations and businesses set their own prices and the President has no control over them we are totally fucked by this stupid and ridiculous argument.
It doesn’t matter if Mother Theresa was President … they are in it because Profit is King. It’s unlikely to be some conspiracy about Trump. He’s not smart enough to pull it off anyways
I tend to agree with the other posters. Corporations definitely want Trump because they're greedy but the price increases are due to conditions caused by Trump (think Ukraine), COVID and international tensions. They are obviously greasing palms in the hope of him coming back again.
All true, but you also have to remember that the Democrats want to raise minimum wage and these trash companies are raising prices in anticipation of a minimum wage hike. They're essentially trying to neutralize any possible wage increase. Hopefully Biden will just tax the hell out of the wealthy so that if they try to increase the cost of things, that the taxes will decrease their buying dollar as well. I'd set a tax rate at 10x the inflation rate against their wealth so that any inflation after a minimum wage increase will really hurt them. We can't address inequality if we're only focusing on one side of it.
Taxing the hell out of the wealthy works, just look at the results of the recent millionaire tax in Massachusetts: https://www.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1cx846l/millionaires_tax_has_already_generated_18_billion/
Or you can look at the U.S. when the middle class prospered, the government wasn't as corrupt as it is now with all the dark money pumped into it, upward mobility was more likely, and the top tax brackets were close to 90% (i.e. before that POS Reagan trashed our country for rich trash).
Gas prices going up to hurt biden, yeah I can believe that. Everything else- nah, just greedy capitalists. Why- there’s more oil than ever before, and oul companies litteraly have a monopoly conglomerate that sets prices and trump will bend over backwards for them.
Trump would just do a better job at negotiating than biden. Everyone knows the ceos goes to the president first for approval /s
The oil companies were no fan of Trump as he allowed so much leeway in drilling and so much competition. You’d be surprised how pro Biden some oil company folks are. They like the limited competition and high prices
Prices aren't really this high for no reason. Stimulus spending during the long quarantine - which both Trump and Biden are responsible for - and the supply chain issues we got from pandemic-related disruptions fueled inflation. When this happens, companies that can pass on the increased costs to consumers will do so, with total and depraved shamelessness. That said, its very easy to gouge someone and hide behind the backdrop of cost increases. This happens and is probably happening, but its hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. As to your question: I think they'd like another R administration because it always means less taxes and regulations. But I don't think jacking up prices is primarily intended to achieve that. The fact that people are pissed about inflation and blaming Biden is just a happy byproduct of passing the costs onto the consumer. I'm sure SOME businesses think this way and MOST are happy to benefit, but the private sector outside the US is doing the exact same thing and they have no reason to believe higher prices in the UK, for example, will benefit Trump.
It’s not for no reason, but it’s also not Biden’s fault.
Trump supporters will blame literally everything on Biden and right-wing politicians play on this. Prices go up: Biden Covid: Biden Crime exists: Biden Another country does something: Biden Local taxes: Biden Health insurance co-pays: Biden They get diarrhea at a rally: Biden snuck up behind them and put it there.
Biden shit in Trumps pants at the recent trial.
Yes, and to make profits
It’s not jacked up for no real reason. It’s jacked up because of years of our government kicking the can down the road regarding our economy and the markets.
This AND I think despite what Maga loves to say about the media hating Trump and trying to ruin him (it’s a convenient enemy for him) - the media actually is trying to get Trump back in order to drive outrage culture and fuel engagement with their platforms.
Of course they are. It's not even about feeling or thinking, it's for a fact happening. The rich want bigger tax cuts and they used COVID to their advantage. It's the equivalent of a gas station trying to jack up prices during a crisis, because they know they can. Yes supply and demand is real, yes shutting down everything for months impacted us, but greed made a bad situation 10x worse. And after seeing what they could get away with, they kept going. It's going to crash for sure. When people aren't buying overpriced crap, these businesses will fail and the government will just pull them out again.
What corporations fail to see is that fascists don’t share power. They used all that corporate money to get power, but once they have it all, do you honestly think they’re going to share with the corporations and rich people? Does China bow to their corporations and rich people? Absolutely not. Those people funding the Republican Party will soon be seen as a threat to their power. Short-sighted thinking as always.
There’s no investment in a company’s survival. CEO’s are there to please faceless stock market investors by raising stock prices and who are only interested in extracting what they can before selling off when the stock price starts to dip. Gas prices are more based on demand in the world and tax revenue. The Saudi’s can literally overproduce and crash the market if they want to which leads to production wars with Russia and less overall competition as it becomes unprofitable to produce anywhere else. Trump helped kill off quite a few American production companies with his shenanigans especially since demand was low during Covid.
It happens every cycle between Republicans and Democrats. They wait until a Democrat takes office to do something huge like Obama got the bank crash and Biden got inflation. We all know that inflation was just corporations raising prices and price gouging people and we know this because of their record-breaking high profits. We know they strong armed Obama and scared everyone into thinking the world was going to collapse just so we would bail out the banks and it worked. And all of the big money is heavily Republican sided. These mega corporations use this as a way to blame Democrats and say that their policies are the reason the economy is doing what it is in a bad way. When we all know it was the corporations doing unethical things with the economy.
I think they are doing it out of pure greed. But I wouldn't put it past them to use that as well.
The threat of higher corporate tax rate really has them shaking in their boots
Corporations typically favor their donations to Republicans and especially to Trump because he will eliminate"red tape." Which really means health and safety to people and environment laws will be removed. Laws are in place for the protection of people and the environment, and that costs money. Corporation only cares about profits, and the c-suite want their bonuses.
No they need to appease shareholders and get their bonuses. They don’t care about anything else.
Corporations are very American centric in the west. But I see sky high prices in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK etc as well. Food, housing, clothing, household goods are kind of out of control. It’s like corporate American is trying to bleed everyone dry right now to buy everything they want to keep control. Have everyone fighting a culture war and hating on the hungry and homeless to distract them from rising up and fighting a class war. We outnumber them. We scare them. They want us poor and living paycheck to paycheck.
Part of it is Trumps tax cut right before he left cut food subsidy significantly causing essentially killing off of small farmers in favor of factory farms and no one talks about it because the same people who own the news own the factory farms
The real issue is the Trump tax cuts, everyone was flushed with money during the pandemic now that it has died down we are seeing the true effects of these tax cuts that are based on Reaganomics. We the working class are getting shafted, the guy was smart, he is not office but his actions are still felt today and as many think he will come to the rescue… not really for the common man. If you fix taxes for the middle class you got my vote but clearly that ain’t gonna make a difference, people will fall for his lies. Tax cuts are for the rich we the middle class subsidize the short falls of them not paying taxes.
They are rising prices because they want money. There doesn’t need to be some political conspiracy.
There are definitely players that are loyal and tipping their resources towards Drumpf’s campaign, but not all.
I feel like the media is completely owned by the 1%/billionaire predator class and they're constantly feeding the country the idea that Trump is winning and there is nothing anyone can do. Straight up propaganda because they want him to be president because he'll deregulated everything and let them make as much money as they can off of us. The whole system is rigged, our only hope is VOTING against Trump/Fascism until he is finally too old to run or dies.
I've always wondered about this when I see gas prices change drastically around election day.
The squeeze is being felt by corporations now. I just saw an announcement from target on lowering prices on a bunch of items in the upcoming weeks. The lack of buying power from everyday citizens is going to really start to strangle corporations to the point where they concede those inflated prices in lieu of getting shoppers to make impulse buys.
I have actually seen this in Albuquerque NM. In 2022, during the midterm election cycle, the price of gas slowly crept up for months, peaking just around the Nov. 7 election. Then, almost immediately after the election, the price plummeted, dropping by around 60 cents immediately, and then staying down for quite a while after that. Albuquerque is a pretty Blue area, and I'm paying pretty close attention this year, and so far, it looks like history is repeating itself. Where it used to regularly be around $2.60, it now only barely drops below $2.99 before rising again. I can't help but feel like there's some connection, but I'm not sure what it is. I may just be completely wrong, but it sure FEELS like gas companies are trying to make Democrats look bad in the lead up to the election by giving Republicans talking points.
Its happening in canada too actually its way worse.
Yes. I have no doubt about it. Especially petroleum. Even though the price of a barrel of oil is low, the oil companies are keeping the price of gas artificially high.
Yes and not just jacking up prices but also laid off everyone in tech so that they will get angry w/ Biden and vote R. Most billionaire owners are right wingers.
1000% Not only that but corporations were getting inflationary pressure on third margins when Trump but held off jacking up prices to keep him in power. HEB was selling their buns same .25 throughout the plandemic/pandemic and as soon as Biden inaugurated they jacked the buns to 33 cents, and now 48 cents
Yeah, these economic terrorists were pretty open about it the last couple of election cycles.
Yes, I believe it.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since those “Biden did this” stickers appeared on gas pumps all over the country a few years ago.
Yes.
If you make people desperate enough, they'll work for peanuts and without benefits.
There was a thread in r/finance saying all other subreddits don't know what inflation is, and how do you expect prices to stay constant with a couple trillion more in circulation- how did we get there then? They didn't explain anything, it was just a 'everyone's complaining except me' type of post.
The real temporary cost increase due to supply chain issues was relatively transient and small, but the endless coverage of it gave corporations a cover to raise prices and see how much they could profit. Inflation is NOT a rule of economics. it’s purely driven by greed and the toxic “endless growth” mindset of modern capitalism.
They are also punishing this administration for enforcing antitrust laws. They don't want another term of being held accountable, private equity and wallstreet want further corporate consolidation.
When the price of a bag of tortilla chips doubles, don’t tell me it’s because of one year of 8% inflation.
I don't think there has to be a political motive, but services that cater to conservatives are hiding behind inflation as an excuse to raise prices far beyond inflation, and their customers are just accepting it without question.
The last 40 years of destroying competition has positioned retailers in the post-covid world to raise margins astronomically. So many local retailers and regional chains destroyed by the ruthlessness of Walmart, Home Depot etc. The consumer had limited ability to push back. We eagerly did this to ourselves
Remember when we had all that massive congestion at the ports coming out of the pandemic? They just didn’t seem to be able to move the containers out of the ports. It was causing mass chaos in the economy. When Biden raised the storage fees at the ports and all of the sudden, the problem magically went away.
Exactly, I think the price increases and layoffs are just their way of tanking the economy in favor of Trump.
Absolutely yes
As far as I know economical repercussions from a presidency takes years to play out. You can blame trump for inflation.
I have most certainly thought of this. Corps to get run free with less regulations with him. Great for a boom and bust economy too
Yes, because it's not about the money or they would have quit and retired like I would do the second I found myself with $10 million dollars. They want to be kings in a world with nukes, so this is the next best option.
Yes and their greed.
PRICE CONTROLS TEND TO BE REALLY PROBLEMATIC! FAR BETTER TO JUST GET BACK TO PREVENTING MONOPOLIES AND TRUST BUSTING THE WAY WE USED TO!
Nothing to do with Trump. In fact they don’t really give a crap who elected because they own both parties…don’t let that fool you. Its about max dollars and max dollars only forever and always
100% It's fucking obvious.
I think it’s more just corporate greed. Prices went up during the pandemic with the “supply chain issues,” but when those issues were resolved, corporations figured we were used to paying higher prices and kept them inflated.
Of course. He is king socialism for corporations. He only knows one thing and that’s stealing money from the bottom and funneling to the top. Crooks support crooks.
Yep. Oil companies did this to help Bush get elected, and now all varieties of corporate scum are using the same playbook. Republicans lower their taxes and cut regulations that make it harder and more expensive to pollute and sell harmful products. Since a corporation's only concern is increasing profits, they'll gladly sell the rest of us into Christofascist dictatorship if it means they can make more money. I think it was Mussolini who said fascism could be more accurately described as corporatism.
Yup, thought that for years with gas prices. Now, I'm pretty sure it's a quasi-coordinated effort across industries.
No, they just want money
Abso-fucking-letely!!! Corporations want the GOP in power because it benefits them. Causing "inflation" under DEM presidents.makes it seems as it's caused by democrats so idiots keep voting red.
You're not wrong. A republican presidency benefits corporations and the rich.
Not American but I lost a lot of faith in the position of POTUS the first time he got in. I’ll just give up and not care ever again if it happens again. Go fuck yourself Trump you pathetic, grifting piece of shit.
Corporations don’t want trump admin
Yes, of course. It happens every time a Democrat is in office. Most corporations are hard-core Republicans. Then, when a red guy gets in there, it all goes down, making it seem like it was them that improved it. I mean, they've been making record profits every year yet, still screw everybody else!
If so, only idiots will fall for it -- and idiots are the ones who were going to vote for that asshole anyway. Personally, I will **NEVER** vote for a Republican for *any* office, for the rest of my life. I mean, there was already a 99% certainty I wouldn't have anyway, because it's very rare for me to agree with a Republican's position on anything, but since trump's disastrous time in the White House and all the rest of the shit he's pulled before and since, and they *support* him? No fucking way. I will vote for the Democrat *every* time (and maybe the occasional Independent, but not for President).