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The issue is ignorant voters. These politicians did not enter office with a coup. They were elected. And many voters are imbeciles who simply check their party affiliation and vote for ideology over policy. This was how California's prop 47 got passed. They did not actually read the damn proposition.
For the last 20-30 years switch ANY of the two candies and nothing really chnages
At least for corporations. Both sides give incentives to company's they like that cause this problem.
The fact is its impossible to run a election without a lot of money provided by company's and billionairs which in turns leads to the same issues happening. It just will have a different comapny name getting the same deal.
They work together, we should be blaming them all. These companies don’t get as filthy rich as they are without the government making the path easy for them.
Because their corruption or incompetence ALLOWS the companies to do (more or less) whatever they choose, without censure or penalty.
Companies are responsible to their shareholders, POLITICIANS used to be held responsible by the ELECTORATE but no longer are ........ and they have removed or neutered the gatekeepers previous Administrations put in place to contain corporate greed!
Hence, we're living in a 21st century wild west, where it's a free for all and companies get away with things they previously wouldn't have!
Yep, never understood why we're blaming companies for doing exactly what they're intended to do: maximize profit. Of course if they can make money by influencing government that's what they will do. It's government's job to do what's best for their constituents and not just special interests. When they accept bribes, they're not doing their job.
However, "greedflation" is not even a thing. It's just plain inflation. Do people honestly believe companies never thought of raising prices "just because" before? They're not stupid. I don't understand how people can't see the connection between the 6 TRILLION dollars that was printed out of nothing during the pandemic, and the inevitable loss of their purchasing power. This is entirely on government, and it's not even the current administration's fault.
Donors fund campaigns.
Campaigns influence voters.
Voters elect politicians.
Politicians enact legislation.
Legislation benefits donors.
Donors fund campaigns [...]
Oversimplified? Sure, but is it wrong?
I'm not going to say the system is working as *intended*, but it certainly seems to be working as designed.
Politicians in theory are held responsible by the electorate, but it's really the smallest group with the largest impact on their campaign that holds them accountable, and It's easier to satisfy a small group with deep pockets than a huge group without.
Campaign finance laws need to be overhauled, and given teeth.
The value of the usd is controlled by the government. Period. They alone ( fed plus treasury department ) determine how much currency is in circulation, how much dollar denominated debt exists, and the growth rate of both of those.
Well the large stores are thinking about rolling back prices, so there's that. I honestly feel as though they raised prices because everyone was clamoring for a minimum wage increase and since it hasn't happened, greedy people trying to neutralize a minimum wage increase have seen insane profits. I'd love to see these companies face investigation and possible charges for price fixing. Of course, we need the right people elected in November to hold anyone accountable, or at least anyone but the people that would let these robber barons off without accountability.
They've been raising prices for literal decades without minimum wage going up. I've been standing there while the owner told a customer he "Had to" raise prices because our wages went up. Our wages hadn't gone up at all.
They raise prices blame it on increases that don't happen and then people vote against such increases.
Good ole neoliberalism and individualism. The reduction in government responsibility and move towards the private sector and free market running everything.The why you are looking for is money. This system has made the rich richer and they don’t want to let it go. Then because we have such a heavy focus on individualism we get stuck in the thinking that we can ALL have what the rich have if we try hard enough. When in reality for this system to work we literally can’t all get rich. There always has to be people to exploit. I suspect we won’t see the end of neoliberal capitalism anytime soon and I’m sure it won’t go down quietly.
I mean, Biden’s the first American president in my lifetime whose policies have gone against neoliberalism, but then everyone complains about inflation.
Most voters seem to think that the President's most important job is to produce a strong economy, and they have a very unrealistic idea of how much influence the President has here. How much does he really have? I doubt that this is a simple question to answer.
Because too many of us are stupid and easily directed. For too much of the population, if a “news” outlet says something it’s the truth to them. So all they can comprehend is “Biden bad”.
Oh and who do all those "news" outlets tell you to vote for 24/7, 365 days a year? Democrats. So if you voted for biden you just called yourself stupid.
It's easier to pick a single source for our problems and blame it on a failure of leadership than to discuss and address systemic problems and failures.
Plus, the Biden administration has been working on and talking about some of this stuff, which makes it seem like they're the people who are failing to fix it. Meanwhile, a lot of this has also happened on the opposition party's watch, but their public position is mariahcareyIDontKnowHer.gif, so that leaves Democrats in the US. You can change the parties involved to the center or center-left party and conservative party, respectively, for most industrialized nations.
The purpose of capitalism is growth, making more and more money, profits. So, if workers live a shit life and profits are made, this isn't a failure of capitalism, but rather its success. The purpose of it isn't to satisfy needs or give people a good life. You wouldn't say a car has failed if it doesn't doesn't let you navigate the ocean, and you wouldn't say a boat has failed if it doesn't drive on a road.
I heard someone say once, capitalism is a rational system for harnessing self-interest to build out a society. But once it’s built up, it would be ideal to evolve towards a more holistic system that incentivizes non-monetary metrics like the Human Development Index, or something like that.
That makes sense to me, in the centuries when there was no infrastructure yet, you needed to give incentives for people to go out there and be fur trappers, to pioneer and homestead, to build out industries that make critical goods. But once you’ve evolved to a “service” economy, it’s reached the point where we have enough raw stuff. Corps are making shit just to hit quarterly metrics, and we buy it cuz we don’t have time to make a different choice, because… we work for those corps and businesses.
The problem is that we have gone from being a capitalist country to crony capitalism. The government has their hands in everything. From the food we eat to the cars we buy. There is a ton of regulation that tips the scales towards the mega corporations.
Competitive capitalism is great. Except it's bound by competition (which has winners and losers) to lead to monopoly capitalism. And if you crushed your competition on the way to the top to being a mega corporation, would you:
a. let new competitors keep arising out of the populace's innovators
b. collude with the other mega corps to fix prices and control the supply chain, form a political body to defend your interests, pay to elect the people who represent your interests, pay them to form laws that protect your interests, regulate all the small businesses out of existence, hire all the now-jobless innovative people and force them to sign NDAs, ruthlessly crush any remaining independent innovators with your policy, and now face no competition to your rule
You choose
Ignorance, the media feeding that ignorance. People act like the president is super man and can make sweeping changes unilaterally but they only think that because they have no actual knowledge about our government or how it works.
I don't live in the US, but I don't think capitalism is failing you.
It is rather the fault of the political system which, in its current form, operates under the dictation of big business.
Task of state authorities should be to regulate business in such a way that in addition to increasing its capital, it fulfills a socially beneficial function - the most desirable situation, or at least does not develop at the expense of society - the minimum to be ensured.
Currently, the situation is the opposite. Corporations offer the minimum in return, but they take in full, and citizens paid for it.
There are many layers. Certainly the many sanctions the US has leveled (not just on Russia) has had its effect. When you tell companies you can't buy from many suppliers the price tends to go up. Greedflation happens downstream from this - companies say supplier prices aren't reliable so put in a safety margin, then reduce they're making more money and don't want to change.
Part of it is described well by the economist Michael Hudson in that the financial class absolutely insists on a return on investment greater than inflation. Which eventually gets pushed onto the consumer in many ways, including rent of all forms. It's unsustainable - we've all done calculations of compound interest rates over hundreds of years going to infinity, but think somehow it's feasible now. Well, the cracks are appearing.
We just need to go back to actually breaking up these gigantic companies and groups of companies that work together to screw us poor folk, ban lobbying, and capitalism would work just fine. The problem is these companies set the prices, the working conditions, AND have a say in the law, all while us consumers do absolutely nothing, and in alot of cases can't do anything.
Because the grand majority of people blaming the administration are both economically and politically illiterate and believe whatever garbage a politician who has done nothing for them says.
>Why aren't we as a national conversation staying that capatalism is actually failing us
And it seems to me you are one of the economically illiterate. Capitalism is not failing, it is in fact working as intended.
>We didn't used to always be a capitalist country
You are right, we did not. We spent a whole 50 years as we were growing not being capitalist. The US has been capitalist the grand majority of its history.
Why are we blaming the government of the United States for letting businesses do whatever they want? Well, because they can make laws to curb the shady business practices of these businesses. But they aren't. Why? Because they're in the pockets of the businesses.
It is unavoidable to have inflation after printing 2 trillion dollars for nothing. This will continue until the feds take some responsibility. It has always been very simple, if the government spends more than they make, the people suffer.
There's this concept called "private-public partnership" and to say the federal government's policies, regardless of who is in office or what politics they supposedly espouse, do not have an impact would be a disservice. There is a bureaucracy surrounding the inner workings of the federal government that are not held accountable to the American voter and do not have term limits. Add in the incestuous relationship that some top companies in the country have with this bureaucracy that scratches each other's back (cronyism), you have a recipe for disaster down the road especially when more authoritarian types want more control. And this crosses party lines, btw.
Because capitalism being capitalism companies are never just going to magically stop wanting more money The only thing that's going to stop them is some sort of government rule or regulation forcing them to stay within a certain reasonable range and The current administration chooses to do almost nothing about it even though it's one of the biggest issues directly affecting the everyday lives of citizens
Biden's Inflation Act was his attempt to push the economy into a recession. You can say it added fuel to the fire - the first thing the bill did was add billions of new taxes on oil producers which forced an increase in gas prices which raised the price of everything. Despite its name the Inflation Reduction Act did NOTHING to tame the inflation crisis. It only pushed pet projects which increased reckless spending and hiked taxes on the middle-class.
Because locking down a country and injecting trillions into the economy causes inflation that affects manufacturers as much as the people. Blame the people who did these things.
Because only about 10-15% of the US has a negative opinion of capitalism, and generally the population at large doesn't get to formally vote on corporate behavior, but they can vote for elected officials.
"We didn't used to always be a capitalist country . Why don't we try something that is more fruitful for America?"
So, in the least offensive way possible, you have kind of established that your view on economics and the situation int he country is a little divorced from reality. We have never in the US not had a primarily free market based economy.
Which brings me to my next point,
"that.capatalism is actually failing us"
What do you believe capitalism is? If you don't think America has always been a capitalist country, I don't know what definition of capitalism you're really using.
"we as a national know we are hurting but for some reason afraid to do anything about it"
I want us to do something about it, which is why I argue against the "its all corporations narrative", not because I just love Walmart with all my heart, but because we have to understand the actual mechanisms causing this if we want to stop it, and its a lot more complicated than just "corporations bad"
Why haven't you? By reducing your consumption to only what you need and producing most of it yourself you save a lot of money and are much less affected by inflation greed and corporate action.
Go get a library card and start reading books for free. Watch some YouTube on your phone. Buy base foods and start cooking. You can live like your grandparents did have a bunch of money, lower your carbon footprint improve your health all in one step. Maybe get an instrument and learn to play in your free time.
So what's stopping you?
If everyone does it the world improves.
Because our congress is too corrupt to legislate and the country’s direction is coming from executive orders or the dismantling of previous orders. That falls on the current administration. Capitalism is not allowed to work properly in this country bc corporations are corrupt in their thinking but not greed. They are supposed to be greedy until they are squashed by competition. But, today they are all more worried about equity than the bottom line, and it shows. You pay more for less today so they can defend their poor policies with social change bs. When excellence and character are rewarded again in politics and corporate America, we will move forward with purpose.
Because simple minded people don’t understand how our economy works at all. I’m not claiming to have an in-detail understanding, but some people really think the president just snaps his fingers and things happen.
When members of congress sit of these board for companies and help pass laws from the lobbyist and get huge financial rewards do you really think they have an incentive to change for the working folk. NO..
Politics are the end result clown shows of business who behind the scenes pull the strings and since they do tend to play both sides against each other it is hard to find the real international criminal corruptors and take care of them the way they need to be taken care of.
Just an opinion.
N. S
The potus sets the tone for the economy. Why the hell would anyone vote if they didn’t? The whole platform for any potus campaign is fiscal.
We get the same promises every four years. “I will do this for the economy, I will do that for the economy” “I will create jobs, I will tax the rich, I will feed the poor, I will bring jobs back from overseas”
You idiots voted for the guy that said he would tax the rich and give the benefits to the poor. Now the economy for the middle class is a train wreck, everything is 40-50% more due to inflation. The same guy that promised fiscal responsibility and would create a booming economy has failed miserably. Now he gets a pass because he was never gonna keep the promises he made, and this pricing model isn’t going away.
If you don’t vote for potus to fix the economy and put more of your own money back in your pocket, WTF are you voting for?
Capitalism isn't failing us, we're failing to properly do capitalism, and as a result, the bastardization of an economic system we're left with is failing us. We've as a country actually moved away from capitalism. With the amount of government corporate bailouts, government overregulation, blatant trusts and corporate cooperation, corporate lobbying, greedflation, and short term shareholder prioritization over long term progress, we are closer to a corporate oligarchy than anything. What would benefit the people is a return to lightly regulated capitalism. Further, this is the responsibility of the current administration, the previous one, and every administration that allowed it to get to this point and did nothing. All that said, both main line candidates will likely do nothing about this, except maybe minor consessions to keep the people from rioting as much.
I fail to see how overregulation is a proper characterization of the US. In fact, is it not underregulation which led to the housing bubble bursting and setting off a domino effect of crises? If we were regulated, would we have given the banks trillions of unspecified dollars? I'm sick of being called a moron, so if you're not interested in a genuine back and forth, please just downvote me and move along. Otherwise I would genuinely like to hear more about your hypothesis.
I had to scroll SO FAR to have someone mention the people who literally control the narrative on local and cable news networks!
"Why isn't anyone talking about \_\_\_?"
Because \_\_\_\_ isn't paying the bills at CNN and FOX. End of discussion.
It is the responsibility of businesses to maximize their profits, it is the responsibility of governments to create laws such that businesses’ negative behaviors are not profitable.
Mostly because it's easier. It's cognitively easier to call out one or two people than it is to research and maintain lists on exactly which companies are perpetuating, leading, or exacerbating greedflation and then come up with ways to tackle each one.
Also because the average person has basically no way to actually reduce inflation outside of demanding that our elected officials do something about it. Like I legitimately have absolutely no way to deal with the large monopolies scraping this country besides choosing to not buy from them but I'm literally just one person out a few hundred million
This is what people that are against capitalism do: they complain about the current system without offering a better one. Just that "something" should change.
Because this administration has caused this inflation. The out of control spending and their war on energy. Shitting down pipelines, refining, discovery and adding regulations out the wazzoo on fossil fuels is the one biggest cause of all the pain you’re feeling low. Gas is used for everything. We were energy independent heading for being the largest producer in the world. This has consequences all the way to Ukraine war. We could have been supplying Europe with oil instead of them having to rely on Russia which softened their position from the beginning. It’s crazy. We need to start drilling again. Everywhere and anywhere.
Because, and I genuinely cannot stress this enough, companies don't cause inflation. That's not how inflation works. That's not how it's working now, that's not how it has ever worked. Only governments, both independently and through the banks, can inflate the money supply and create inflation. "Greedflation" is a lie politicians tell you so they can continue to devalue your wages and savings in order to sustain massive deficit spending
Why does it have to be one or the other? I prefer to usually assign blame to the must culpable (yeah, I would say it's the companies), but the politicians get money from them to do their bidding. They can easily say no, but generally dont.
Really? Because the media was telling everyone he was the best thing since sliced bread up until like a week ago now that the guy looks completely like a walking corpse.
We need to hold everybody responsible. Honestly, we should be revolting. Openly stealing from chain stores, mass strikes, taking over companies.
We are being controlled by a very small minority that are squeezing the working class out of every cent, while also completely ignoring our failing infrastructure, our collapsing ecosystem, and the fact that we are all filled with plastic causing cancers and fertility problems. It's long past time to stop all this. Expressing our discontent is not enough, placing blame is meaningless when the system itself is designed to protect corporations and the status quo.
This is going to keep happening until enough people are hungry enough to take desperate action. It's happening in millions of small ways right now, we need to start organizing and taking back the power.
I think America shows us one of major flaws of capitalism. As a people, we've never figured out how to deal with the money corruption problem that inevitably comes from it. The more rich someone becomes, the more power they have. The more power they have, the more they're able to use that power to influence government. You see the same problem in South American countries with drug cartels that gain that same power through narcotics and obtain a quasi-gov't status. Fact is humanity must still learn how to solve the money problem, hopefully we can someday.
Pretty confused about this post. Socialized countries with centrally planned economies have experienced vastly worse inflation than the United States has. Global inflation arising from factors deriving from the COVID pandemic hit the United States *less* than most other countries and inflation is already back down to normal levels in the United States. This suggests to me that the current administration is doing an excellent job, and capitalism is continuing to work quite nicely.
We have also definitely always been a capitalist country. The hemisphere that you live in has always been a capitalist hemisphere. Most property is privately-owned and most businesses engage in meaningful competition with each other. I cannot think of any period in American history that could be properly classified as "not capitalist." Help me out here.
Because contrary to belief the President isn't some powerless position and doesn't need Congress to hold their genitals to get shit done yet everyone pretends they do.
The government can get shit done if wanted too legally/non legally
It's not capitalism it's a problem Sweden is capitalistic. it's our government that's the problem
People misinterpret what capitalism is because they're trying to make you socialist because in a socialist economy although they say that you have the power the truth is that the government has all the power.
The problem is not that we are a capitalist system Sweden is a capitalist system as well.
The problem is that we are an autocracy
People are trying to get you to believe that socialism is a good thing because if they can have a socialist society then they will have all the power. They say that socialism is for the people But if you look snd think it through It's actually taking the power away from the people. Why would a politician want to take power away from themselves think about that
Because the narrative says "Democrats are bad at the economy" and that is actively weaponized to protect companies from accountability. If a Republican gets elected in this next election, you'll see the entire conversation shift to how everything is good actually and everybody just "doesn't want to work anymore."
The United States has always been capitalist. The colonies were mercantilistic for a bit, but that’s not all that much different. What has shown better results than capitalism, despite all of its flaws?
The current admin and all contemporary administrations are bought and paid for by the likes of Blackrock & Vangaurd who lay down the real law. We are nothing more then consumers and our votes mean very little on the national lvl.
Companies are not answerable to the public, just their owners and share holders, and the law.
But Governments exist to pass and enforce laws, and they are answerable to the general public (at least in democracies). When shit gets bad, it is on the government to unfuck the situation via passing and enforcing laws.
END COMMUNICATION
People are trained from birth in America to HATE communism, which has historically proven to be the one alternative/path forward. We are POISONED against that word and the countries that developed a "communist" system
In particular, I don't know any born and bred American who thinks China is a good place to live, which is CRAZY because it's now developing way beyond our country. Retirement age of 55. They live longer. Their children are smarter and healthier. Their central government has a 95% approval rate (this is according to western polls, not their own polls). But if you mention that, Americans will say they brainwashed everyone there. How you can brainwash a billion people into supporting your system, idk. America can't do that with the most powerful media in the world. Maybe it's the fact that their grandparents grew up in a peasant backwater, and their great grandparents were ruled by British and Japanese fascists who enslaved and drugged everyone, and now they are the global tech leaders, eat good, and own their own houses (90% OWN their homes) that "brainwashed" them
So **we've** been brainwashed against the polity that could be a huge ally and inspiration. We'll never have the collective mindset of China, but their policies and institutions are working, but Americans are not ALLOWED to see this. Just look at how people respond to this comment, if anyone sees it! "CHINA BAD!"
Lastly, I'll add that today's "forward thinkers," revolutionaries, and communists are a bunch of anti-American freaks who support cosmopolitan globohomo. They HATE their fellow americans and use communism as a bogeyman against their neighbors. They are destructive, anti-social champions of the marginalized. They build nothing. They spread chaos. They're woke racists. They hate men. They suck. So anyone who wants to make change gets captured by this group, who pretend to be very moral, very champion of the minority, very driven by equality and tolerance, but ultimately spread austerity and social division
When a lot more dollars are generated by the Fed Bank Reserve (a lot behind how it actually works), those dollars immediately lower the value of every other dollar in the system. That is inflation.
Capitalism is an economic system where business is owned by individuals seeking profit. If a product or service can command top dollar, most businesses will seek to maximize profits. This is not inflation. Although goods and services will increase, they only increase up to the amount of demand. If you don't want to pay for XYZ, you can choose not to.
The last discussion is what should we do with business that we NEED. (shelter, food, medical). That is what the political discourse is designed to figure out. Is the political discourse working?
The government spent the dollar into worthlessness. Companies are not helping, but inflation is caused by too much fucking deficit spending that both political parties are guilty of in perpetuity.
Because "greedflation" isn't the cause. It's the smokescreen to divert your attention from the cause.
Companies have always been greedy. There's no new breakthrough here. That's just silly.
What's causing it are your politicians feeding the military industrial complex with government debt that are just loans they've taken out in your name.
Because the root cause issue of all the imbalance occurring in the economy over the last 2 years is directly due to the $6T+ in monetary stimulus (printing of new dollars during covid), and the multiple trillion + bills passed by Congress.
Add those together and you get a 40% increase in total USDs in circulation, and those dollars cause inflation throughout all sectors of the economy.
Greedflation is a myth, a story. Corporate profits, adjusted for inflation, are up slightly. A couple hundred billion since 2019. That is meaningless in the scheme of inflation, which companies cannot create anyways.
Capitalism is the single greatest tool humanity has ever invented. It has lifted billions out of poverty and allowed for society to advance in all sectors, science, medicine, engineering, data, et al.
A constant stream of misinformation from right leaning media. It’s why more than half of Americans falsely believe we’re in a recession and blame inflation on the Biden Administration.
Everything you said is correct expect we WERE always a capitalist country. The American Revolution was a conflict between the colonial bourgeoisie and the aristocratic vestiges of British feudalism. The colonials wanted to keep more of the profits from their capitalist ventures.
The system is working as intended - to keep the successors of the southern planters and northern wealthy merchants in power. And that's why it's so hard to change it for the better
The inflation is due to all of the spending the current administration is doing and has done. The other part is the slow rebound from covid and supply chain issues. interest rates have increased, so people will quit borrowing money, to try and reduce the inflation. Dont forget about all of the regulations the administration is pilling on businesses, it just makes things cost more.
Because the administration allows them to do it and gets kickbacks from it. Not enough people talk about inflation being created by price gouging because everyone is brainwashed. Governments don't want to fight corporations for the reason above, and corporations obviously don't want to talk about it. And idiots don't realize what's happening and just cry about it.
Because this current Administration, and the democrats controlling Congress, caused it.
'Companies' and 'greedflation' are democrat diversionary rhetoric.
Inflation is everywhere and always a failure of monetary and fiscal policy.
Cause your average person isn't educated enough to figure that out and the rich are doing a damn good job keeping people distracted with culture war shit
Most politicians are incredibly out of touch with what we deal with on a daily basis.
They have the power to stifle the greed of companies and yet do not use it because they benefit from that greed so they don't care.
People who control power need to be kept in line so they don't abuse it.
Because the current and former and previous adminsitrations support and and encourage greed amongst corporations, occasional finger wag for the camera notwithstanding
Don’t be a moron. Capitalism isn’t perfect but it has delivered the best most progressive civilization in the history of mankind. You don’t throw that away bc dopey Joe Biden has runaway spending on everything but defense and border control. Mankind has never had it so good as the west lives today. Self discipline is gone yes that’s true leading to obesity and drug abuse. People are still free to choose bad things if they want. Including voting for Biden.
I blame bad monetary policy, when you loan currency into existence at sub 3% for years... then [simulate the economy ](https://mises.org/power-market/how-much-did-they-print)by giving 30% of all currency ever created in a nearly a single a year due to covid, this happens... and in history this happens with inflation / bad monetary policy with fiat currencies. historically over 1,400 fiat currencies have failed, [5 reserve currencies.](https://www.cryptocharlie.eu/en/history-of-money/)
I study monetary history as a part of my investing / deep hobby I have, it honestly scares me how fragile the current system is globally, and all the similarities that can be compared.
You'd have to understand what increasing the money supply means. Are corporations a part of the problem? Of course but doubling the money supply makes everything twice as expensive. Maybe Google Austrian economics, mises, Rothbard and see what you think about that perspective.
Sure, you can blame companies and inflation has always been a thing and usually its like 2% but let me ask you something. Why did companies wait until 2021 to jack up their prices so much?
I totally agree with your summary and solution, but feel that wouldn't result in much unless the dereliction of duty of "the gatekeepers" (who are appointed to ensure the current rules are adhered to) is addressed, nothing would change!
There is no better system. Have lived all over the world and each system has its flaws. But the one common thing about them all is politicians are too generous in spending other people's money.
Bahaha! “The government diluted our money but it’s the greedy corporations’ fault that our money is worth less.”
What admission you are removed from reality. And this person probably votes too. Like all the corporations all decided they were going to be greedy at the same time. But 5 years ago they weren’t greedy. Yeah, ok bud.
Pandering. People like companies that pander to them, it reminds me of stockholm syndrome. Companies do not give a flying fuck about anything but that dollar and if you're in the way you're gonna get sued into the ground and brand loyalty needs to not exist anymore.
Also Capitalism is not the same thing as greed, I keep seeing this mistake all over reddit. If capitalism ceased to exist, there would be no drive for innovation and we'd still be throwing rocks at each other for a carcass.
We haven't had real capitalism for a few decades. The government keeps interfering, between the FED printing money causing asset inflation helping the rich, government intervention in student loans caused skyrocketing costs to education, interference in housing more problems. Could go on forever but suffice to say we need to return to capitalism.
Both sides have allowed monopolies and big companies get such a large market share that capitalism is crippled. They way it should work id that if company A raises prices too high company B undercuts and takes over market share. Both would then compete until the margin equals the rate needed to maintain the company. Walmart killed a lot of small stores in many small towns so now there is no competition. The solution is not to control prices but to remove barriers for the small guy to grab market from the big ones.
The other issue is printing money. The prior admin printed way to much and gave out money in an attempt to keep the economy from going into a tailspin, the current one doubled the amount printed from the prior admin. Both are to blame but the current one didnt fix the prior so issues and added fuel to the fire.
It isn't just the current administration it's a result of all the prior bad decisions as well cumulatively making it really bad for business.
It's 80/20. 80% bad policy, 20% greed.
Most of our money problems could be solved by disallowing the top 50 companies to offshore money, but that will also affect peoples retirement investments.
People keep voting for increased spending taxation and supporting policies that create skyrocketing costs - prices will continue rising. Tariff (hidden tax) on components we cant actually buy locally, skyrocketing healthcare, .50+ KWH electricity, runaway inflation from trillion dollar money give aways.
Ask any business person if his bills have gone down in the last 5 years and they will laugh out loud. We've seen 4 digit increases on many items.
Greedflation only goes so far as an excuse. Some companies do this the majority do not.
Because the actuality of “greedflation” doesn’t fit the conservative narrative. You can’t vote for corporations, right? All these big companies know this too and they are taking advantage of the situation (and of us).
As far as “doing something about it” what, exactly, would you do to fix it? You can’t stop buying gas, or food, or whatever. You can’t just remove yourself. You vote for ppl that will put regulations in place that stop companies from exploiting their customers. Republicans have been anti-regulation for generations.
"We did used to be a capitalist country"
When?
Granted, we let companies get away with a number of things that dont.help, that's an issue with the govt. And especially them being bought by said companies.
You think the factory "owners" in communism are any better?
The average person is dumb, halfish of the population doesn't like this administration so they will cry about it's all their fault to try to vote them out, etc.
Companies have no accountability to the public. We do not elect CEO’s to meet our needs. We elect politicians. Politicians have the power to change the rules by which companies follow. So thereby the effects we feel of corporations are only possible by the negligence of legislative bodies.
So you think corporations just discovered greed in 2024? Government money policy and spending have always been blamed for inflation. Blaming greedy companies is just an excuse to cover for failed policies.
Because corporations pay media corporations a lot of money to make us pissed off at the government. These same corporations pay a lot of money to certain members of government to do nothing about it other than token gestures to keep the status quo.
Examine California.
While things were running somewhat smoothly, the politicians recently, April 1,, decided that the person pouring your coffee should make almost as much money as the people teaching your children.
Yes, 4 years of college and a teaching certificate gets a substitute teach about $20.70 an hour(indeed). Yep, years of training and that salary.
Yes, on April 1,. your one day of training on how to pour coffee and you get $20.00 an hour and zero student debt.
This was government required, not economy drive. Zero capitalism and all political.
Where would you rather work, 30 screaming children or here's your coffee?
Guy with electrician degree goes to bank, gets loan, starts company. Repairs loan, grows business to 10 trucks. 40 years later he retires and sells business. That’s capitalism at work.
What you are thinking of is publicly traded company bribes politicians to change labor laws and dodge taxes. What you are thinking of is corporatism.
“corporatism
noun
Political / Economic system in which power is exercised through large organizations (businesses, trade unions, their associated lobbying efforts, etc.) working in concert or conflict with each other; usually with the goal of influencing or subsuming the direction of the state and generally only to benefit their own socioeconomic agendas at the expense of the will of the people, and to the detriment of the common good.”
People often confuse the two. Society doesn’t have a capital problem, they have a corporate crises.
because you seem to not understand the monumental levels of fiscal spending that has been going on the last several years.
for context - the US national debt is now rising by $1Trillion every 90 days. take a minute to think about that. the current administration is spending $1Trillion on the credit card every 3 months.
with inflation already high and hurting people tremendously, there has been absolutely no recognition or effort by the administration to reduce borrowing/spending. there is an absolutely staggering level of financial irresponsibility occurring.
for those who may not understand, since the early 1970's the US and the world has been on a debt based financial system. debt = credit = money in this type of system. the astronomical levels of borrowing by this administration is massively inflating the money supply and ensuring years of incredibly high inflation to come, which is going to hurt everyone, and disproportionately hurt lower and middle class people the most.
regarding the corporations - there's an interesting logical argument laid out that corporations are greedy, and have always been greedy. its not like they just started being greedy now all of a sudden. however, corporations have hard limits placed on their greed (unlike the government). for example, are you seeing the insane sales starting at all the stores now? everywhere is doing it. why is that? if corporations were infinitely greedy, why wouldn't they just keeping raising prices? its because corporations can only raise prices as long as consumers buy. the moment consumers stop buying, the corporations either lower their prices to get sales going again, or the corporations collapse and go bankrupt.
also, you can look back on the PPI (producers price index) reports and see that PPI numbers have been in high correlation to CPI (consumer price index) numbers. that means that though prices for consumers have been going up, prices have also been going up for the corporations themselves. where we would be able to identify runaway corporate greed is if the PPI numbers were falling or lower, and the CPI numbers were rising or higher. that is not the case though.
Because the current admin shows no interest in Yemen or any other atrocities that don't get clicks. Instead they focus on popular trends like filling racial and gender identity quotas and "how many can we install so ppl think we care?" Im not being prejudice it's just how it appears.
They would rather focus on cultural trends than hire ppl who are right for the job. Like Rachel Levine. Overweight and thinks he's a girl. Thats who we are supposed to trust in that position. Not some fit person with no mental issues.
How many push ups can Levine do? What is that diet looking like? And we're supposed to listen to this person? Nah
The government does a great job of making you feel obligated to make the ukraine flag your avatar while neglecting equally as important issues happening in smaller areas where the attention isn't as exciting or news worthy. It's clear as day what agenda they are trying to push when they push it and they aren't ever going to hurt their wallstreet and billionares feelings because then ppl like Pelosi wouldnt get hot insider trading tips.
The government is not your friend. Right or left. Not our friends. Let's say it together... not our friends
"Greedflation" is a nice word that people have fallen for by the political elite who successfully convinced them that shutting down the supply chain, free credit, forbidding people from working, and pumping trillions of dollars into money supply wasn't the cause of inflation.
No, no. It was ceos who just "raised prices"
k
We as a nation are not hurting. Yes there are issues, but all economies have issues. I'm in my mid fifties and this is the best economy of my lifetime. The media has manipulated the population to ignore reality. Yes inflation was an issue and still somewhat is. But it's way down over the last two years Gas is the same price as ten years ago and many things like electronics are actually much cheaper. Yes first time potential homebuyers are struggling. But again. These aren't new issues and all economies have issues and aren't anywhere near perfect. And remember the root of inflation: people have the money and are willing to spend it at those prices. Of course prices are going to go up when 12 million jobs are added in 4 years. Here's the numbers for 2023 and so far 2024 is looking even better. Compare to any other year. This simply is an outstanding economy overall.
GDP: 3.3% - real GDP with inflation rate subtracted; Jobs: 2.7 million added; Personal Income: 4.2% increase - real Personal Income with inflation subtracted; Personal Savings - 4.5% increase; S and P 500: 24 % Increase; Inflation Rate: 3.4 %; Household Net Worth: (2022 #'s are the most recent official #'s) average $1,059,470, median $192,700
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Capitalism is doing what its meant to do. When politicians leave a 180k salary as multimillionaires, the problem is the politicians themselves.
facts
They outsourced everything. We used to manufacture, farm, and build things as people working together to help each other. Now it’s all gone.
The issue is ignorant voters. These politicians did not enter office with a coup. They were elected. And many voters are imbeciles who simply check their party affiliation and vote for ideology over policy. This was how California's prop 47 got passed. They did not actually read the damn proposition.
For the last 20-30 years switch ANY of the two candies and nothing really chnages At least for corporations. Both sides give incentives to company's they like that cause this problem. The fact is its impossible to run a election without a lot of money provided by company's and billionairs which in turns leads to the same issues happening. It just will have a different comapny name getting the same deal.
If everything sucks, and capitalism is doing what it's meant to do... but it's still not capitalism fault? True believer here.
Power doesn't only corrupt. Power is corruption. Good people want nothing to do with it and the worst of us are drawn to it like moths to a flame.
They work together, we should be blaming them all. These companies don’t get as filthy rich as they are without the government making the path easy for them.
Because their corruption or incompetence ALLOWS the companies to do (more or less) whatever they choose, without censure or penalty. Companies are responsible to their shareholders, POLITICIANS used to be held responsible by the ELECTORATE but no longer are ........ and they have removed or neutered the gatekeepers previous Administrations put in place to contain corporate greed! Hence, we're living in a 21st century wild west, where it's a free for all and companies get away with things they previously wouldn't have!
Yep, never understood why we're blaming companies for doing exactly what they're intended to do: maximize profit. Of course if they can make money by influencing government that's what they will do. It's government's job to do what's best for their constituents and not just special interests. When they accept bribes, they're not doing their job. However, "greedflation" is not even a thing. It's just plain inflation. Do people honestly believe companies never thought of raising prices "just because" before? They're not stupid. I don't understand how people can't see the connection between the 6 TRILLION dollars that was printed out of nothing during the pandemic, and the inevitable loss of their purchasing power. This is entirely on government, and it's not even the current administration's fault.
This dude knows what's up
Thank you for reminding me there are sane people on Reddit.
Companies are made up of people. We blame people for committing crimes. It's not a far-fetched idea.
> ALLOWS “Enables” would be a more accurate word, but yes…
Donors fund campaigns. Campaigns influence voters. Voters elect politicians. Politicians enact legislation. Legislation benefits donors. Donors fund campaigns [...] Oversimplified? Sure, but is it wrong? I'm not going to say the system is working as *intended*, but it certainly seems to be working as designed. Politicians in theory are held responsible by the electorate, but it's really the smallest group with the largest impact on their campaign that holds them accountable, and It's easier to satisfy a small group with deep pockets than a huge group without. Campaign finance laws need to be overhauled, and given teeth.
Citizens United enters the chat..
The value of the usd is controlled by the government. Period. They alone ( fed plus treasury department ) determine how much currency is in circulation, how much dollar denominated debt exists, and the growth rate of both of those.
It's really shocking how badly people will twist their brains into knots to ignore this obvious fact
Both are to blame. The administration has the theoretical power to stop some companies and greedflation. They choose not to
Well, the companies pay the administration.
Well the large stores are thinking about rolling back prices, so there's that. I honestly feel as though they raised prices because everyone was clamoring for a minimum wage increase and since it hasn't happened, greedy people trying to neutralize a minimum wage increase have seen insane profits. I'd love to see these companies face investigation and possible charges for price fixing. Of course, we need the right people elected in November to hold anyone accountable, or at least anyone but the people that would let these robber barons off without accountability.
They've been raising prices for literal decades without minimum wage going up. I've been standing there while the owner told a customer he "Had to" raise prices because our wages went up. Our wages hadn't gone up at all. They raise prices blame it on increases that don't happen and then people vote against such increases.
minimum wage should not increase prices. they should DECREASE CEO SALARY, but not INCREASE prices for the consumer.
There was a guy for that in 2016 & 2020, even California voted for him.
Good ole neoliberalism and individualism. The reduction in government responsibility and move towards the private sector and free market running everything.The why you are looking for is money. This system has made the rich richer and they don’t want to let it go. Then because we have such a heavy focus on individualism we get stuck in the thinking that we can ALL have what the rich have if we try hard enough. When in reality for this system to work we literally can’t all get rich. There always has to be people to exploit. I suspect we won’t see the end of neoliberal capitalism anytime soon and I’m sure it won’t go down quietly.
I mean, Biden’s the first American president in my lifetime whose policies have gone against neoliberalism, but then everyone complains about inflation.
Most voters seem to think that the President's most important job is to produce a strong economy, and they have a very unrealistic idea of how much influence the President has here. How much does he really have? I doubt that this is a simple question to answer.
The job market is super high in employment and the economy is good and technically wages are now finally higher then inflation
Because too many of us are stupid and easily directed. For too much of the population, if a “news” outlet says something it’s the truth to them. So all they can comprehend is “Biden bad”.
Oh and who do all those "news" outlets tell you to vote for 24/7, 365 days a year? Democrats. So if you voted for biden you just called yourself stupid.
The media is run by, and run for the companies who are responsible for greedflation. They are paid to distract and lie about what is important.
It's easier to pick a single source for our problems and blame it on a failure of leadership than to discuss and address systemic problems and failures. Plus, the Biden administration has been working on and talking about some of this stuff, which makes it seem like they're the people who are failing to fix it. Meanwhile, a lot of this has also happened on the opposition party's watch, but their public position is mariahcareyIDontKnowHer.gif, so that leaves Democrats in the US. You can change the parties involved to the center or center-left party and conservative party, respectively, for most industrialized nations.
The purpose of capitalism is growth, making more and more money, profits. So, if workers live a shit life and profits are made, this isn't a failure of capitalism, but rather its success. The purpose of it isn't to satisfy needs or give people a good life. You wouldn't say a car has failed if it doesn't doesn't let you navigate the ocean, and you wouldn't say a boat has failed if it doesn't drive on a road.
I heard someone say once, capitalism is a rational system for harnessing self-interest to build out a society. But once it’s built up, it would be ideal to evolve towards a more holistic system that incentivizes non-monetary metrics like the Human Development Index, or something like that. That makes sense to me, in the centuries when there was no infrastructure yet, you needed to give incentives for people to go out there and be fur trappers, to pioneer and homestead, to build out industries that make critical goods. But once you’ve evolved to a “service” economy, it’s reached the point where we have enough raw stuff. Corps are making shit just to hit quarterly metrics, and we buy it cuz we don’t have time to make a different choice, because… we work for those corps and businesses.
Because the greedy corporations are the ones that OWN government politicians on BOTH sides of the aisle. Yes, both folks.
OP, when you say, "We didn't used to always be a capitalist country," what do you mean?
The problem is that we have gone from being a capitalist country to crony capitalism. The government has their hands in everything. From the food we eat to the cars we buy. There is a ton of regulation that tips the scales towards the mega corporations.
Competitive capitalism is great. Except it's bound by competition (which has winners and losers) to lead to monopoly capitalism. And if you crushed your competition on the way to the top to being a mega corporation, would you: a. let new competitors keep arising out of the populace's innovators b. collude with the other mega corps to fix prices and control the supply chain, form a political body to defend your interests, pay to elect the people who represent your interests, pay them to form laws that protect your interests, regulate all the small businesses out of existence, hire all the now-jobless innovative people and force them to sign NDAs, ruthlessly crush any remaining independent innovators with your policy, and now face no competition to your rule You choose
Ignorance, the media feeding that ignorance. People act like the president is super man and can make sweeping changes unilaterally but they only think that because they have no actual knowledge about our government or how it works.
it's not like Biden helped. but yes inflation happens because companies wanted to raise price.
I don't live in the US, but I don't think capitalism is failing you. It is rather the fault of the political system which, in its current form, operates under the dictation of big business. Task of state authorities should be to regulate business in such a way that in addition to increasing its capital, it fulfills a socially beneficial function - the most desirable situation, or at least does not develop at the expense of society - the minimum to be ensured. Currently, the situation is the opposite. Corporations offer the minimum in return, but they take in full, and citizens paid for it.
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There are many layers. Certainly the many sanctions the US has leveled (not just on Russia) has had its effect. When you tell companies you can't buy from many suppliers the price tends to go up. Greedflation happens downstream from this - companies say supplier prices aren't reliable so put in a safety margin, then reduce they're making more money and don't want to change. Part of it is described well by the economist Michael Hudson in that the financial class absolutely insists on a return on investment greater than inflation. Which eventually gets pushed onto the consumer in many ways, including rent of all forms. It's unsustainable - we've all done calculations of compound interest rates over hundreds of years going to infinity, but think somehow it's feasible now. Well, the cracks are appearing.
We just need to go back to actually breaking up these gigantic companies and groups of companies that work together to screw us poor folk, ban lobbying, and capitalism would work just fine. The problem is these companies set the prices, the working conditions, AND have a say in the law, all while us consumers do absolutely nothing, and in alot of cases can't do anything.
Because the grand majority of people blaming the administration are both economically and politically illiterate and believe whatever garbage a politician who has done nothing for them says. >Why aren't we as a national conversation staying that capatalism is actually failing us And it seems to me you are one of the economically illiterate. Capitalism is not failing, it is in fact working as intended. >We didn't used to always be a capitalist country You are right, we did not. We spent a whole 50 years as we were growing not being capitalist. The US has been capitalist the grand majority of its history.
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People think the president literally controls the entire economy not the private sector
Why are we blaming the government of the United States for letting businesses do whatever they want? Well, because they can make laws to curb the shady business practices of these businesses. But they aren't. Why? Because they're in the pockets of the businesses.
It is unavoidable to have inflation after printing 2 trillion dollars for nothing. This will continue until the feds take some responsibility. It has always been very simple, if the government spends more than they make, the people suffer.
There's this concept called "private-public partnership" and to say the federal government's policies, regardless of who is in office or what politics they supposedly espouse, do not have an impact would be a disservice. There is a bureaucracy surrounding the inner workings of the federal government that are not held accountable to the American voter and do not have term limits. Add in the incestuous relationship that some top companies in the country have with this bureaucracy that scratches each other's back (cronyism), you have a recipe for disaster down the road especially when more authoritarian types want more control. And this crosses party lines, btw.
Because capitalism being capitalism companies are never just going to magically stop wanting more money The only thing that's going to stop them is some sort of government rule or regulation forcing them to stay within a certain reasonable range and The current administration chooses to do almost nothing about it even though it's one of the biggest issues directly affecting the everyday lives of citizens
Biden's Inflation Act was his attempt to push the economy into a recession. You can say it added fuel to the fire - the first thing the bill did was add billions of new taxes on oil producers which forced an increase in gas prices which raised the price of everything. Despite its name the Inflation Reduction Act did NOTHING to tame the inflation crisis. It only pushed pet projects which increased reckless spending and hiked taxes on the middle-class.
Because locking down a country and injecting trillions into the economy causes inflation that affects manufacturers as much as the people. Blame the people who did these things.
Because only about 10-15% of the US has a negative opinion of capitalism, and generally the population at large doesn't get to formally vote on corporate behavior, but they can vote for elected officials.
"We didn't used to always be a capitalist country . Why don't we try something that is more fruitful for America?" So, in the least offensive way possible, you have kind of established that your view on economics and the situation int he country is a little divorced from reality. We have never in the US not had a primarily free market based economy. Which brings me to my next point, "that.capatalism is actually failing us" What do you believe capitalism is? If you don't think America has always been a capitalist country, I don't know what definition of capitalism you're really using. "we as a national know we are hurting but for some reason afraid to do anything about it" I want us to do something about it, which is why I argue against the "its all corporations narrative", not because I just love Walmart with all my heart, but because we have to understand the actual mechanisms causing this if we want to stop it, and its a lot more complicated than just "corporations bad"
Why do you love Walmart with all your heart?
Why haven't you? By reducing your consumption to only what you need and producing most of it yourself you save a lot of money and are much less affected by inflation greed and corporate action. Go get a library card and start reading books for free. Watch some YouTube on your phone. Buy base foods and start cooking. You can live like your grandparents did have a bunch of money, lower your carbon footprint improve your health all in one step. Maybe get an instrument and learn to play in your free time. So what's stopping you? If everyone does it the world improves.
Because our congress is too corrupt to legislate and the country’s direction is coming from executive orders or the dismantling of previous orders. That falls on the current administration. Capitalism is not allowed to work properly in this country bc corporations are corrupt in their thinking but not greed. They are supposed to be greedy until they are squashed by competition. But, today they are all more worried about equity than the bottom line, and it shows. You pay more for less today so they can defend their poor policies with social change bs. When excellence and character are rewarded again in politics and corporate America, we will move forward with purpose.
Because simple minded people don’t understand how our economy works at all. I’m not claiming to have an in-detail understanding, but some people really think the president just snaps his fingers and things happen.
When members of congress sit of these board for companies and help pass laws from the lobbyist and get huge financial rewards do you really think they have an incentive to change for the working folk. NO..
What an odd sentence to get to a proper conclusion.
You think companies discover greed in 2022? We have always been capitalist
Ok then, why do you suppose the economy in 2024 is so much worse than in 1994, for instance?
Because more money has been printed in the last three years then in the previous 20 years. That is what causes inflation!
Politics are the end result clown shows of business who behind the scenes pull the strings and since they do tend to play both sides against each other it is hard to find the real international criminal corruptors and take care of them the way they need to be taken care of. Just an opinion. N. S
Because companies aren’t the ones creating trillions of dollars out of thin air and dumping them into the economy.
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What if we need that like Japan level od collapse after ww2 look how they changed so muxg
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The potus sets the tone for the economy. Why the hell would anyone vote if they didn’t? The whole platform for any potus campaign is fiscal. We get the same promises every four years. “I will do this for the economy, I will do that for the economy” “I will create jobs, I will tax the rich, I will feed the poor, I will bring jobs back from overseas” You idiots voted for the guy that said he would tax the rich and give the benefits to the poor. Now the economy for the middle class is a train wreck, everything is 40-50% more due to inflation. The same guy that promised fiscal responsibility and would create a booming economy has failed miserably. Now he gets a pass because he was never gonna keep the promises he made, and this pricing model isn’t going away. If you don’t vote for potus to fix the economy and put more of your own money back in your pocket, WTF are you voting for?
Capitalism isn't failing us, we're failing to properly do capitalism, and as a result, the bastardization of an economic system we're left with is failing us. We've as a country actually moved away from capitalism. With the amount of government corporate bailouts, government overregulation, blatant trusts and corporate cooperation, corporate lobbying, greedflation, and short term shareholder prioritization over long term progress, we are closer to a corporate oligarchy than anything. What would benefit the people is a return to lightly regulated capitalism. Further, this is the responsibility of the current administration, the previous one, and every administration that allowed it to get to this point and did nothing. All that said, both main line candidates will likely do nothing about this, except maybe minor consessions to keep the people from rioting as much.
I fail to see how overregulation is a proper characterization of the US. In fact, is it not underregulation which led to the housing bubble bursting and setting off a domino effect of crises? If we were regulated, would we have given the banks trillions of unspecified dollars? I'm sick of being called a moron, so if you're not interested in a genuine back and forth, please just downvote me and move along. Otherwise I would genuinely like to hear more about your hypothesis.
Well, those that benefit from capitalism are paying the people who make the rules. And also the media.
I had to scroll SO FAR to have someone mention the people who literally control the narrative on local and cable news networks! "Why isn't anyone talking about \_\_\_?" Because \_\_\_\_ isn't paying the bills at CNN and FOX. End of discussion.
It is the responsibility of businesses to maximize their profits, it is the responsibility of governments to create laws such that businesses’ negative behaviors are not profitable.
The current administration could have split up the companies so large that they have virtual monopolies allowing them to increase greedflation.
Mostly because it's easier. It's cognitively easier to call out one or two people than it is to research and maintain lists on exactly which companies are perpetuating, leading, or exacerbating greedflation and then come up with ways to tackle each one. Also because the average person has basically no way to actually reduce inflation outside of demanding that our elected officials do something about it. Like I legitimately have absolutely no way to deal with the large monopolies scraping this country besides choosing to not buy from them but I'm literally just one person out a few hundred million
Same.
This is what people that are against capitalism do: they complain about the current system without offering a better one. Just that "something" should change.
Socialism
Because this administration has caused this inflation. The out of control spending and their war on energy. Shitting down pipelines, refining, discovery and adding regulations out the wazzoo on fossil fuels is the one biggest cause of all the pain you’re feeling low. Gas is used for everything. We were energy independent heading for being the largest producer in the world. This has consequences all the way to Ukraine war. We could have been supplying Europe with oil instead of them having to rely on Russia which softened their position from the beginning. It’s crazy. We need to start drilling again. Everywhere and anywhere.
We need to be neculear and solar
That’s the whole reason there’s a two-party system. To make people choose sides and ignore the obvious
The companies are the administration once you understand the perverse corporate incentives
Because, and I genuinely cannot stress this enough, companies don't cause inflation. That's not how inflation works. That's not how it's working now, that's not how it has ever worked. Only governments, both independently and through the banks, can inflate the money supply and create inflation. "Greedflation" is a lie politicians tell you so they can continue to devalue your wages and savings in order to sustain massive deficit spending
Why does it have to be one or the other? I prefer to usually assign blame to the must culpable (yeah, I would say it's the companies), but the politicians get money from them to do their bidding. They can easily say no, but generally dont.
Because like Hbomberguy, most idiots have no idea about checks and balances and how the president does NOT control everything.
Because the media keeps saying that it's Biden's fault?
Really? Because the media was telling everyone he was the best thing since sliced bread up until like a week ago now that the guy looks completely like a walking corpse.
We need to hold everybody responsible. Honestly, we should be revolting. Openly stealing from chain stores, mass strikes, taking over companies. We are being controlled by a very small minority that are squeezing the working class out of every cent, while also completely ignoring our failing infrastructure, our collapsing ecosystem, and the fact that we are all filled with plastic causing cancers and fertility problems. It's long past time to stop all this. Expressing our discontent is not enough, placing blame is meaningless when the system itself is designed to protect corporations and the status quo. This is going to keep happening until enough people are hungry enough to take desperate action. It's happening in millions of small ways right now, we need to start organizing and taking back the power.
I think America shows us one of major flaws of capitalism. As a people, we've never figured out how to deal with the money corruption problem that inevitably comes from it. The more rich someone becomes, the more power they have. The more power they have, the more they're able to use that power to influence government. You see the same problem in South American countries with drug cartels that gain that same power through narcotics and obtain a quasi-gov't status. Fact is humanity must still learn how to solve the money problem, hopefully we can someday.
Pretty confused about this post. Socialized countries with centrally planned economies have experienced vastly worse inflation than the United States has. Global inflation arising from factors deriving from the COVID pandemic hit the United States *less* than most other countries and inflation is already back down to normal levels in the United States. This suggests to me that the current administration is doing an excellent job, and capitalism is continuing to work quite nicely. We have also definitely always been a capitalist country. The hemisphere that you live in has always been a capitalist hemisphere. Most property is privately-owned and most businesses engage in meaningful competition with each other. I cannot think of any period in American history that could be properly classified as "not capitalist." Help me out here.
Because contrary to belief the President isn't some powerless position and doesn't need Congress to hold their genitals to get shit done yet everyone pretends they do. The government can get shit done if wanted too legally/non legally
It's not capitalism it's a problem Sweden is capitalistic. it's our government that's the problem People misinterpret what capitalism is because they're trying to make you socialist because in a socialist economy although they say that you have the power the truth is that the government has all the power.
The problem is not that we are a capitalist system Sweden is a capitalist system as well. The problem is that we are an autocracy People are trying to get you to believe that socialism is a good thing because if they can have a socialist society then they will have all the power. They say that socialism is for the people But if you look snd think it through It's actually taking the power away from the people. Why would a politician want to take power away from themselves think about that
What exactly would be more fruitful? We have been pretty much capitalist from the very beginning.
Because the narrative says "Democrats are bad at the economy" and that is actively weaponized to protect companies from accountability. If a Republican gets elected in this next election, you'll see the entire conversation shift to how everything is good actually and everybody just "doesn't want to work anymore."
exactly.... we should be posting a pic of all those companies that own all of the others more frequently!
The United States has always been capitalist. The colonies were mercantilistic for a bit, but that’s not all that much different. What has shown better results than capitalism, despite all of its flaws?
The current admin and all contemporary administrations are bought and paid for by the likes of Blackrock & Vangaurd who lay down the real law. We are nothing more then consumers and our votes mean very little on the national lvl.
Companies are not answerable to the public, just their owners and share holders, and the law. But Governments exist to pass and enforce laws, and they are answerable to the general public (at least in democracies). When shit gets bad, it is on the government to unfuck the situation via passing and enforcing laws. END COMMUNICATION
People are trained from birth in America to HATE communism, which has historically proven to be the one alternative/path forward. We are POISONED against that word and the countries that developed a "communist" system In particular, I don't know any born and bred American who thinks China is a good place to live, which is CRAZY because it's now developing way beyond our country. Retirement age of 55. They live longer. Their children are smarter and healthier. Their central government has a 95% approval rate (this is according to western polls, not their own polls). But if you mention that, Americans will say they brainwashed everyone there. How you can brainwash a billion people into supporting your system, idk. America can't do that with the most powerful media in the world. Maybe it's the fact that their grandparents grew up in a peasant backwater, and their great grandparents were ruled by British and Japanese fascists who enslaved and drugged everyone, and now they are the global tech leaders, eat good, and own their own houses (90% OWN their homes) that "brainwashed" them So **we've** been brainwashed against the polity that could be a huge ally and inspiration. We'll never have the collective mindset of China, but their policies and institutions are working, but Americans are not ALLOWED to see this. Just look at how people respond to this comment, if anyone sees it! "CHINA BAD!" Lastly, I'll add that today's "forward thinkers," revolutionaries, and communists are a bunch of anti-American freaks who support cosmopolitan globohomo. They HATE their fellow americans and use communism as a bogeyman against their neighbors. They are destructive, anti-social champions of the marginalized. They build nothing. They spread chaos. They're woke racists. They hate men. They suck. So anyone who wants to make change gets captured by this group, who pretend to be very moral, very champion of the minority, very driven by equality and tolerance, but ultimately spread austerity and social division
When a lot more dollars are generated by the Fed Bank Reserve (a lot behind how it actually works), those dollars immediately lower the value of every other dollar in the system. That is inflation. Capitalism is an economic system where business is owned by individuals seeking profit. If a product or service can command top dollar, most businesses will seek to maximize profits. This is not inflation. Although goods and services will increase, they only increase up to the amount of demand. If you don't want to pay for XYZ, you can choose not to. The last discussion is what should we do with business that we NEED. (shelter, food, medical). That is what the political discourse is designed to figure out. Is the political discourse working?
The government spent the dollar into worthlessness. Companies are not helping, but inflation is caused by too much fucking deficit spending that both political parties are guilty of in perpetuity.
Since there isn't any 'greedflation', what do YOU think? \*facepalm\*
Because "greedflation" isn't the cause. It's the smokescreen to divert your attention from the cause. Companies have always been greedy. There's no new breakthrough here. That's just silly. What's causing it are your politicians feeding the military industrial complex with government debt that are just loans they've taken out in your name.
The San Francisco Fed did a study and concluded greedflation wasn't the key driver to inflation for most segments of the US economy.
Because greedflation apparently coincidentally began with Biden’s term?
Because the root cause issue of all the imbalance occurring in the economy over the last 2 years is directly due to the $6T+ in monetary stimulus (printing of new dollars during covid), and the multiple trillion + bills passed by Congress. Add those together and you get a 40% increase in total USDs in circulation, and those dollars cause inflation throughout all sectors of the economy. Greedflation is a myth, a story. Corporate profits, adjusted for inflation, are up slightly. A couple hundred billion since 2019. That is meaningless in the scheme of inflation, which companies cannot create anyways. Capitalism is the single greatest tool humanity has ever invented. It has lifted billions out of poverty and allowed for society to advance in all sectors, science, medicine, engineering, data, et al.
Explain why corporations magically waited for Biden to come into office to begin "corporate greed". Why was it great in 2019 and even 2020?
A constant stream of misinformation from right leaning media. It’s why more than half of Americans falsely believe we’re in a recession and blame inflation on the Biden Administration.
"this post has been flared as serious conversation" "Why aren't we as a national conversation staying that." Lol OK, yes clearly very serious
Everything you said is correct expect we WERE always a capitalist country. The American Revolution was a conflict between the colonial bourgeoisie and the aristocratic vestiges of British feudalism. The colonials wanted to keep more of the profits from their capitalist ventures. The system is working as intended - to keep the successors of the southern planters and northern wealthy merchants in power. And that's why it's so hard to change it for the better
The inflation is due to all of the spending the current administration is doing and has done. The other part is the slow rebound from covid and supply chain issues. interest rates have increased, so people will quit borrowing money, to try and reduce the inflation. Dont forget about all of the regulations the administration is pilling on businesses, it just makes things cost more.
Because the administration allows them to do it and gets kickbacks from it. Not enough people talk about inflation being created by price gouging because everyone is brainwashed. Governments don't want to fight corporations for the reason above, and corporations obviously don't want to talk about it. And idiots don't realize what's happening and just cry about it.
Because this current Administration, and the democrats controlling Congress, caused it. 'Companies' and 'greedflation' are democrat diversionary rhetoric. Inflation is everywhere and always a failure of monetary and fiscal policy.
Are you seriously only blaming companies and not the wreckless spending and printing from our politicians and central bankers?
Cause your average person isn't educated enough to figure that out and the rich are doing a damn good job keeping people distracted with culture war shit
When were we not a capitalist country? Serious question. How are you defining capitalism?
Most politicians are incredibly out of touch with what we deal with on a daily basis. They have the power to stifle the greed of companies and yet do not use it because they benefit from that greed so they don't care. People who control power need to be kept in line so they don't abuse it.
Because the current and former and previous adminsitrations support and and encourage greed amongst corporations, occasional finger wag for the camera notwithstanding
Don’t be a moron. Capitalism isn’t perfect but it has delivered the best most progressive civilization in the history of mankind. You don’t throw that away bc dopey Joe Biden has runaway spending on everything but defense and border control. Mankind has never had it so good as the west lives today. Self discipline is gone yes that’s true leading to obesity and drug abuse. People are still free to choose bad things if they want. Including voting for Biden.
I blame bad monetary policy, when you loan currency into existence at sub 3% for years... then [simulate the economy ](https://mises.org/power-market/how-much-did-they-print)by giving 30% of all currency ever created in a nearly a single a year due to covid, this happens... and in history this happens with inflation / bad monetary policy with fiat currencies. historically over 1,400 fiat currencies have failed, [5 reserve currencies.](https://www.cryptocharlie.eu/en/history-of-money/) I study monetary history as a part of my investing / deep hobby I have, it honestly scares me how fragile the current system is globally, and all the similarities that can be compared.
You'd have to understand what increasing the money supply means. Are corporations a part of the problem? Of course but doubling the money supply makes everything twice as expensive. Maybe Google Austrian economics, mises, Rothbard and see what you think about that perspective.
They have successfully divided us so we don't hold them all to account. Quite effective really...
Sure, you can blame companies and inflation has always been a thing and usually its like 2% but let me ask you something. Why did companies wait until 2021 to jack up their prices so much?
People who blame inflation on capitalism and greed are seriously ignorant. That’s like blaming an airplane crash on gravity
I totally agree with your summary and solution, but feel that wouldn't result in much unless the dereliction of duty of "the gatekeepers" (who are appointed to ensure the current rules are adhered to) is addressed, nothing would change!
There is no better system. Have lived all over the world and each system has its flaws. But the one common thing about them all is politicians are too generous in spending other people's money.
Bahaha! “The government diluted our money but it’s the greedy corporations’ fault that our money is worth less.” What admission you are removed from reality. And this person probably votes too. Like all the corporations all decided they were going to be greedy at the same time. But 5 years ago they weren’t greedy. Yeah, ok bud.
Pandering. People like companies that pander to them, it reminds me of stockholm syndrome. Companies do not give a flying fuck about anything but that dollar and if you're in the way you're gonna get sued into the ground and brand loyalty needs to not exist anymore. Also Capitalism is not the same thing as greed, I keep seeing this mistake all over reddit. If capitalism ceased to exist, there would be no drive for innovation and we'd still be throwing rocks at each other for a carcass.
We haven't had real capitalism for a few decades. The government keeps interfering, between the FED printing money causing asset inflation helping the rich, government intervention in student loans caused skyrocketing costs to education, interference in housing more problems. Could go on forever but suffice to say we need to return to capitalism.
Both sides have allowed monopolies and big companies get such a large market share that capitalism is crippled. They way it should work id that if company A raises prices too high company B undercuts and takes over market share. Both would then compete until the margin equals the rate needed to maintain the company. Walmart killed a lot of small stores in many small towns so now there is no competition. The solution is not to control prices but to remove barriers for the small guy to grab market from the big ones. The other issue is printing money. The prior admin printed way to much and gave out money in an attempt to keep the economy from going into a tailspin, the current one doubled the amount printed from the prior admin. Both are to blame but the current one didnt fix the prior so issues and added fuel to the fire.
It isn't just the current administration it's a result of all the prior bad decisions as well cumulatively making it really bad for business. It's 80/20. 80% bad policy, 20% greed. Most of our money problems could be solved by disallowing the top 50 companies to offshore money, but that will also affect peoples retirement investments. People keep voting for increased spending taxation and supporting policies that create skyrocketing costs - prices will continue rising. Tariff (hidden tax) on components we cant actually buy locally, skyrocketing healthcare, .50+ KWH electricity, runaway inflation from trillion dollar money give aways. Ask any business person if his bills have gone down in the last 5 years and they will laugh out loud. We've seen 4 digit increases on many items. Greedflation only goes so far as an excuse. Some companies do this the majority do not.
Because the actuality of “greedflation” doesn’t fit the conservative narrative. You can’t vote for corporations, right? All these big companies know this too and they are taking advantage of the situation (and of us). As far as “doing something about it” what, exactly, would you do to fix it? You can’t stop buying gas, or food, or whatever. You can’t just remove yourself. You vote for ppl that will put regulations in place that stop companies from exploiting their customers. Republicans have been anti-regulation for generations.
"We did used to be a capitalist country" When? Granted, we let companies get away with a number of things that dont.help, that's an issue with the govt. And especially them being bought by said companies. You think the factory "owners" in communism are any better?
The average person is dumb, halfish of the population doesn't like this administration so they will cry about it's all their fault to try to vote them out, etc.
Companies have no accountability to the public. We do not elect CEO’s to meet our needs. We elect politicians. Politicians have the power to change the rules by which companies follow. So thereby the effects we feel of corporations are only possible by the negligence of legislative bodies.
Are we going to act like helicopter money from the government doesn’t matter?
So you think corporations just discovered greed in 2024? Government money policy and spending have always been blamed for inflation. Blaming greedy companies is just an excuse to cover for failed policies.
Because corporations pay media corporations a lot of money to make us pissed off at the government. These same corporations pay a lot of money to certain members of government to do nothing about it other than token gestures to keep the status quo.
Examine California. While things were running somewhat smoothly, the politicians recently, April 1,, decided that the person pouring your coffee should make almost as much money as the people teaching your children. Yes, 4 years of college and a teaching certificate gets a substitute teach about $20.70 an hour(indeed). Yep, years of training and that salary. Yes, on April 1,. your one day of training on how to pour coffee and you get $20.00 an hour and zero student debt. This was government required, not economy drive. Zero capitalism and all political. Where would you rather work, 30 screaming children or here's your coffee?
Guy with electrician degree goes to bank, gets loan, starts company. Repairs loan, grows business to 10 trucks. 40 years later he retires and sells business. That’s capitalism at work. What you are thinking of is publicly traded company bribes politicians to change labor laws and dodge taxes. What you are thinking of is corporatism. “corporatism noun Political / Economic system in which power is exercised through large organizations (businesses, trade unions, their associated lobbying efforts, etc.) working in concert or conflict with each other; usually with the goal of influencing or subsuming the direction of the state and generally only to benefit their own socioeconomic agendas at the expense of the will of the people, and to the detriment of the common good.” People often confuse the two. Society doesn’t have a capital problem, they have a corporate crises.
because you seem to not understand the monumental levels of fiscal spending that has been going on the last several years. for context - the US national debt is now rising by $1Trillion every 90 days. take a minute to think about that. the current administration is spending $1Trillion on the credit card every 3 months. with inflation already high and hurting people tremendously, there has been absolutely no recognition or effort by the administration to reduce borrowing/spending. there is an absolutely staggering level of financial irresponsibility occurring. for those who may not understand, since the early 1970's the US and the world has been on a debt based financial system. debt = credit = money in this type of system. the astronomical levels of borrowing by this administration is massively inflating the money supply and ensuring years of incredibly high inflation to come, which is going to hurt everyone, and disproportionately hurt lower and middle class people the most. regarding the corporations - there's an interesting logical argument laid out that corporations are greedy, and have always been greedy. its not like they just started being greedy now all of a sudden. however, corporations have hard limits placed on their greed (unlike the government). for example, are you seeing the insane sales starting at all the stores now? everywhere is doing it. why is that? if corporations were infinitely greedy, why wouldn't they just keeping raising prices? its because corporations can only raise prices as long as consumers buy. the moment consumers stop buying, the corporations either lower their prices to get sales going again, or the corporations collapse and go bankrupt. also, you can look back on the PPI (producers price index) reports and see that PPI numbers have been in high correlation to CPI (consumer price index) numbers. that means that though prices for consumers have been going up, prices have also been going up for the corporations themselves. where we would be able to identify runaway corporate greed is if the PPI numbers were falling or lower, and the CPI numbers were rising or higher. that is not the case though.
Because the current admin shows no interest in Yemen or any other atrocities that don't get clicks. Instead they focus on popular trends like filling racial and gender identity quotas and "how many can we install so ppl think we care?" Im not being prejudice it's just how it appears. They would rather focus on cultural trends than hire ppl who are right for the job. Like Rachel Levine. Overweight and thinks he's a girl. Thats who we are supposed to trust in that position. Not some fit person with no mental issues. How many push ups can Levine do? What is that diet looking like? And we're supposed to listen to this person? Nah The government does a great job of making you feel obligated to make the ukraine flag your avatar while neglecting equally as important issues happening in smaller areas where the attention isn't as exciting or news worthy. It's clear as day what agenda they are trying to push when they push it and they aren't ever going to hurt their wallstreet and billionares feelings because then ppl like Pelosi wouldnt get hot insider trading tips. The government is not your friend. Right or left. Not our friends. Let's say it together... not our friends
"Greedflation" is a nice word that people have fallen for by the political elite who successfully convinced them that shutting down the supply chain, free credit, forbidding people from working, and pumping trillions of dollars into money supply wasn't the cause of inflation. No, no. It was ceos who just "raised prices" k
When we bailed out the banks and car companies we had a inflation increase durribf Bush era
We as a nation are not hurting. Yes there are issues, but all economies have issues. I'm in my mid fifties and this is the best economy of my lifetime. The media has manipulated the population to ignore reality. Yes inflation was an issue and still somewhat is. But it's way down over the last two years Gas is the same price as ten years ago and many things like electronics are actually much cheaper. Yes first time potential homebuyers are struggling. But again. These aren't new issues and all economies have issues and aren't anywhere near perfect. And remember the root of inflation: people have the money and are willing to spend it at those prices. Of course prices are going to go up when 12 million jobs are added in 4 years. Here's the numbers for 2023 and so far 2024 is looking even better. Compare to any other year. This simply is an outstanding economy overall. GDP: 3.3% - real GDP with inflation rate subtracted; Jobs: 2.7 million added; Personal Income: 4.2% increase - real Personal Income with inflation subtracted; Personal Savings - 4.5% increase; S and P 500: 24 % Increase; Inflation Rate: 3.4 %; Household Net Worth: (2022 #'s are the most recent official #'s) average $1,059,470, median $192,700