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- hackernews@derp.foo
- news@lemmy.world
In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to hike prices in search of profits.
“The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism,” Edwards wrote. “This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”
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If this surprises you, you’re an idiot.
I guess one way it’s surprising is that, it takes a degree of coordination for this to happen. I mean you have some major international event that can trigger international economic consequences like some degree of inflation and then some genius thinks that since the public have been forced to swallow price rises across the board because of this, what if we just raise our prices some more and it will be assumed it’s for the same unavoidable cause. Okay, I get the scam, great. But, whether consumers believe the pretense or not and have sympathy or not, wouldn’t stop them going elsewhere if someone else didn’t come up with the same clever scheme or hasn’t launched it yet, and still has higher, but not extra high prices. Or maybe they do all see a great caper and jack up the prices at the same time, eventually, for the same greedy reasons, those businesses would want to take the other’s lunch if they could and would see the benefit of being at least just a little bit cheaper which is supposed to create a cycle that is the way capitalism supposedly works.
This doesn’t happen when you see monopolies or near monopolies. Supermarkets in Australia are in particular being talked about for price gouging and there’s an associated near duopoly between 2 dominant chains. In that context it’s definitely not very surprising. I’d bet that this particularly recent example of price spikes without adequate explanation are associated particularly with sectors where there is very little competition. The article was pay walled so I can’t tell if they’re referring specifically to prices for groceries or economy wide problems.
When 6 corporations owns 90% of the market it dosen’t require a great deal of coordination.
Then that should lower the bar to prove collusion
Exactly. The article is pay walled so I couldn’t get too specific since I don’t known it’s scope but my suggestion here is that it’s not complete naïveté not to have automatically assumed the war in Ukraine would lead to both actual inflationary pressure as well as cover for just plain old price gouging because that price gouging behavior on its own doesn’t make good business sense even hard nosed and cynically motivated, it requires both greed and concentrated ownership in cartels. Presumably we should see this greedflation happening unevenly in particular sectors where cartels or cartel like conditions have flourished.
Perhaps, although a little harsh. Most people just don’t think that deeply about things.
The accepted narrative is that inflation happens when poor people get too much money.
Yes it’s obvious that there’s more going on if you think about it for a few moments, but no one does.
Next thing we know it they’ll be lying about shoplifting or something else that sends a little of they pain they’re causing us back home.
The shoplifting lie was posted yesterday I believe. Both are repeated articles that have just constantly been found to be true, but nobody has the energy to even be mad because we’re so busy trying to survive.
Not really sure what the tenor is of your reply but I would just say they steal a lot from us (shrinkflation, price-fixing, straight up lying about amount of product in unit, etc), people steal some of that back. Sunrise, sunset
Edit: on the retail side, a lot of those businesses are abusing the social safety net to reduce the amount they pay and socialize the losses while bitching their privatized profits would be higher if it wasn’t for all the socialized theft that was occuring on their watch!
straight up lying about amount of product in unit
Just saw an article this week that shoppers in Canada were purchasing things like cereal with tens of grams less than what they were paying for.
I’ve seen about four different versions of this over the last few years. It’s nothing new, much like the greedflation thing having been discussed for years.
Don’t forget that wage theft outstrips all other forms of theft combined
I think GDP theft is the biggest form of theft. Or possibly number of atoms in the universe theft. That’s probably the biggest form of theft.
And its basically only ever dealt with on the dime of the victim and only civilly where it vastly exceeds the dollar value threshold required for big boy criminal charges on the part of the non-person person (person/non-corporation)
Australia is in the process of passing a law that criminalises wage theft - very much looking forward to our government taking actual theft seriously. I’m looking forward to seeing unscrupulous bosses and CEOs in handcuffs, even though I know it’s going to be extremely rare.
Its insane its not already the case. Good on them for actually attempting to stop fucking around
Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
He’s literally complaining about capitalism while saying it might end capitalism. Fucking wild.
He’s literally complaining about capitalism while saying it might end capitalism. Fucking wild.
Capitalism could work with very strong governmental oversight. You have the hustle and means to get filthy rich? Good for you. You want to get filthy rich x 10,000? Get fucked.
He’s an economist at one of the worlds top financial company, of course he considers capitalism has some good and wants to preserve it.
it’s telling how capitalists are worrying they’re fucking us too hard and might blow up the whole system in the process. their own stability in massive wealth and inequality would be safer if they’d back off a little but they can’t help themselves
I feel as though there’s a lot of one-upmanship in the capitalist class that prevents them from working in their own long-term best interest, coupled with a sense of infallible invincibility. Many capitalists believe they have what they have because they deserve it, and any moves to redistribute wealth that would maintain the status quo become untenable because of that constant drive to have more than your neighbour.
Accelerationism is a fucking dogshit ideology, but just like all dogshit ideologies, there’s an element of truth to it. Shit like this could literally end capitalism.
The thing is, it’s an inevitability of capitalism. When you have a system who’s measurement of success is how much material wealth you can accumulate, people are going to do their best to accumulate as much wealth as possible. Which means putting basic needs on the back burner if they don’t make you enough money.
I think people wanting stuff is pretty much endemic to people, whatever economic system happens to be in place.
True, but capitalism incentivises wanting beyond what you can possibly use. Billionaires could never genuinely spend all of their money on themselves. It’s human to want what you don’t have; it’s inhuman to want to amass more than you could use by taking it from the mouths of others.
if you literally break the economy to the point where average people can’t afford necessities, it’s over. people won’t work if there isn’t food and a roof as rewards. they’ll be forced to seek those needs outside the system. many will die in this process but none will work for capitalist profit
I can’t wait for capitalism to end. Here’s a good video explaining it…
‘Why it’s a hard time imagine life after capitalism’ https://youtu.be/PaASqPnpq5Y
Seriously, promise?
I and my family will take the painful collapse and rebuild, because at least that provides hope for a better future, unlike today’s path, further enriching a few thousand sociopath’s ego scores in their race to see who can burn up the the planet for private profit the fastest.
Living under the tyranny of the greed class is just pain by design. Pain in generational perpetuity.
We’ve had political, social and economic revolutions before without shit collapsing. Lots of death and destruction though generally. People don’t give up power easily unfortunately.
Yeah, seriously. The path is so obvious and linear for society today due to that. I feel like it just gets easier to predict the future, from axioms such as “the rich are powerful and will always try to expand their influence and cement their rule”.
It’s easy to see that climate change will never be solved for as long as something big doesn’t change, wealth inequality will keep rising, it will just keep being more and more expensive to live and own things, working conditions won’t improve or may even worsen, automation will put out more and more people out of a job, creating a massive crisis, poor countries will get worse leading to wars or other crises, and ever more commercialization of everything, such as art and hobbies.
At least, unless it collapses/a revolution happens.
This is all a bit optimistic. The collapse of society will have a measurable human toll and may seal the deal on the chance of a better future. Very optimistic to think the resulting power struggle will result in anyone other than a dictator taking power.
but that’s all already happening anyways. it’s not a risk to changing things if it is a given in the status quo
Happening, hasn’t happened. Op is suggesting we just succumb. If I have to explain why that is a stupid notion I’m not even going to start with you.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A joint study by think tanks IPPR and Common Wealth found profiteering by some of the world’s biggest companies forced prices up significantly higher than costs during 2022.
Analysts have typically laid the blame on supply-chain bottlenecks created by excess demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Profits for companies in some of the world’s largest economies rose by 30% between 2019 and 2022, significantly outpacing inflation, according to the group’s research of 1,350 firms across the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Brazil, and South Africa.
The biggest perpetrators were energy companies like Shell, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron, which were able to enjoy massive profits last year as demand moved away from Russian oil and gas.
In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance.
In November, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon suggested the era of high inflation in the U.S. was over, and shoppers may soon begin to experience a contraction in prices—known as “deflation”—in company stores.
The original article contains 639 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
All our regulations are so eroded, our government bodies so toothless and captured, that these companies are just fucking around with people’s lives because they can. There is no recourse. Burn your local chain store today.
But the trillion dollar company told me times were tough for them and their billionaire ceo. I should trust them, they know everything about me and have no reason to decieve me
“Times are tough” = everything from “1 week til collapse” to “might not meet our growth stretch targets, that trigger my massive bonus”
Better use the Fed to reduce worker leverage again in response to this new information, amirite?
This is a class
waroccupation, whether you choose to fight your oppressors or love them as so many peasants are successfully propagandized from birth to do.Today on: No shit sherlock… 🙄
All those moral, humane, compassionate corporations lied to me for profit?
No shit?? Wow…let me… WOW ???
Who even knew?
This has been public knowledge since the very first quarterly earnings call in the greedflation era.
We know, just goes to show how out of control these capitalist pigs truly are
Greed is not a new force in the world so anyone trying to sell recent increases in inflation as a function of greed is either mistaken, or lying to you.
So you’re saying the unusual increases in profit corresponding to inflation is in error? The authors published their methodology. Please show your work.
Okay my work is basic logic.
Imagine a graph of greed over time. This graph is a horizontal line, like this:
“ _______
Now imagine a graph of inflation over time. This graph has a spike in it, like this:
______/
See the difference here? It makes no sense to argue that the spike in the second graph is a result of the variable being shown in the first graph, because one of those variables stayed instant and the other one did not.
Now here’s a graph showing the amount of competition between companies in the same time period. See if you notice any patterns:
———-\
Oh! Interesting. Looks like the competition between companies went down. Could it be that variable is somehow associated with the increase in inflation?
What could have caused that drop in competition between companies?
Well, let’s look at the graph of companies being forcibly shut down by the government, and see if there are any interesting patterns:
_____/_
Oh what’s this? What is that enormous spike in companies being forcibly shut down? Oh right, that’s when we forcibly shut down millions of small companies. We called it “the lockdowns”, and sure enough it destroyed huge numbers of companies, reducing the amount of completion in the market.
So, to recap:
Greed:
Inflation:
__________/Competition:
——————\I hope this has been an informative journey through the world of basic logic.
It’s a good thing all of economics can be explained by a simple diagram consisting of underscores and a slash or this would have been a big wasted effort.
Yeah. It’s a shame the authors of the study wasted their time with empirical data instead of just asking a random person on the internet for their “logic.”
Many companies are lying, period
