Corporate Greed - look at all those companies raising prices to take advantage....... Inflation or Price Gouging Time for an excess profits tax, like we had in WW2. DD
lol. this would be an act of sheer desperation White House, congressional Democrats eye pause of federal gas tax as prices remain high, election looms They have struggled to address public frustration over inflation, and fuel prices have been one of the biggest issues https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/02/15/democrats-gas-tax-holiday/
I agree. They price gouging is out of hand. These 3 examples from your article are companies whose greed is out of control. Ocean shippers have quintupled their rates, and booked astronomical returns of $150 billion in 2021, up from $25 billion in 2020 Amazon just reported profits of $14.3 billion on the fourth quarter alone, double its fourth-quarter profits of 2020. The meat giant Tyson reported earnings per share up by 50 percent over last year, driven by price increases of 32 percent in beef, 20 percent in chicken, and 13 percent in pork. These price hikes to consumers go neither to farmers nor to supermarkets but to giant monopoly middlemen like Tyson. How much do you want to bet these billionaires got more stimulus money during the pandemic than most of Americans will make in a lifetime?
There Are Many Problems With Democrats' Plan for a Federal Gas Tax Holiday A federal gasoline tax holiday would undermine the user fee system for funding highways and could worsen inflation. https://reason.com/2022/02/16/there...democrats-plan-for-a-federal-gas-tax-holiday/ excerpt: On principle, if we have to pay taxes, then the gas tax is pretty much the ideal way to do it. It's a flat user fee that charges more to people who consume more gasoline, and the revenue is directed to the Federal Highway Trust Fund to pay for federal road projects. It's about as fair as any tax system could hope to be. But suspending the gas tax—and doing so for what are pretty obviously political reasons—creates a number of practical problems. First, it would blow an estimated $20 billion hole in the Highway Trust Fund at a time when the fund is already slinking toward insolvency. That hole would have to be filled sooner or later by either raising taxes, transferring revenue from somewhere else, or reducing the number of fund projects. Coming on the heels of the Biden administration's massive infrastructure bill, which has already weakened the historical norm of using user fees (like the gas tax) to fund road and bridge projects, this would constitute another step toward forcing a broad base of taxpayers to pay for infrastructure projects they might not use. The more immediate problem, however, is that there are two possible outcomes of a gas tax holiday. Either the tax break will be significant enough to artificially depress prices at the pump, which necessarily translates into drivers being encouraged to buy more gasoline—or…it won't be. Both of these seemingly contradictory outcomes are actually problematic if the White House's goal is to simultaneously reduce inflation and score political points for the effort. Experts are mixed on which outcome is likely, but there are good arguments for both. more at the link
I thought there was a good bit of gouging going on, but had yet to really see anything being reported on it.
Biden Keeps Blaming the Supply Chain for Inflation. That’s Dishonest. By Steven Rattner Mr. Rattner served as counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/opinion/inflation-supply-chain.html
I like his proposal for deficit reduction, but the first half was his attempt to sound smrt without providing obvious context of why people spent less. If you had two years of pent up demand, this opened floodgate plus the restart of the economy (while covid is still wrecking "essential workers" with unplanned sick days) created a two sided bottleneck. Pre-covid, if this demand accelerated car sales, we wouldn't see insane price increases within a few months, so giving off the impression that supply chain is in isolation wrt the other factors makes things sound more simplistic than they really are. One obvious way to cool inflation would've been to raise interest rates even higher, dampen lending and pop housing demand. Yet the expected .5 basis points was slashed in half cuz Ukraine. Well Ukraine will increase commodities prices and what people see on the ground won't they? Dummy Brando should've raised it higher!! The other thing about the Great Resignation is that the workforce doesn't really have a shortage. I dont have the number offhand but millions of eligbile workers are not working. The question is whether they'd stay unemployed if employers offered the market clearing wage for their services. You'll hear more accounts of Age Discrimination where Boomers who took a break got the cold shoulder when they tried applying for new opportunities. Can someone translate what "you're too experienced" means to me? Who tf wants to work 50 hr shifts at the discount rate of a 40 hr salary when they have options...An Obama era secretary?
I think people gotta just realize that we are just catching up to what is par for the rest of Western wealthy countries cost of a high standard of living. This just isn’t your mom and pops America where you could get a brand new house for 120k. Also reminder that your mom and pop were probably only making 70k a year total if they were doing well. You think it’s expensive here though?? Go live in Vancouver or in the UK or Paris. Right now the power is with the monopolized markets of greed in energy, and meat. Consumers need to curb their demand in order to institute their buying power too. You gotta have the self discipline to not drive from the woodlands down to the heights just to get a tasty fish taco and margarita. The oil execs and opec are dictating the price of gas based on what they think you’ll pay.
Houses are still that cheap in small towns I posted about it in the housing crisis thread. I was working in Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota about a year ago
Biden Keeps Blaming the Supply Chain for Inflation. That’s Dishonest. Feb. 17, 2022 By Steven Rattner Mr. Rattner served as counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. In an interview with Lester Holt of NBC last week, President Biden hewed closely to his talking points on inflation, which over the past 12 months has risen at its fastest rate in 40 years. “The reason for the inflation is the supply chains were cut off,” he insisted, as he has done several times before. Well, no. That’s both simplistic and misleading. For starters, the supply chains have not been “cut off,” just stretched. And supply issues are by no means the root cause of our inflation. Blaming inflation on supply lines is like complaining about your sweater keeping you too warm after you’ve added several logs to the fireplace. The bulk of our supply problems are the product of an overstimulated economy, not the cause of it. Sure, there have been some Covid-related challenges, such as health-related worker shortages in factories and among transportation workers. But most of our supply problems have been homegrown: Americans have resumed spending freely, and along the way, they have been creating shortages akin to those in a shopping mall on Black Friday. All that consumption has resulted from vast amounts of government rescue aid (including three rounds of stimulus checks) and substantial underspending by consumers during the lockdown phase of the Covid crisis. There has also been an unforeseen shift in what consumers are buying: With travel still sluggish and many people still wary of returning to entertainment venues, a hunk of purchasing has moved to goods — particularly “durables” like cars, electronics and building materials for housing — for which production and distribution capacity is limited. It’s a classic economic case of “too much money chasing too few goods,” resulting in both higher prices and, given the extreme surge in demand, shortages. A spending increase of the magnitude we’re seeing — 25 percent on durable goods in 2021 over 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis — would have challenged the capabilities of manufacturers under the best of circumstances. Much has been made, for example, about the very real shortage of semiconductors. But that gap has occurred despite manufacturers delivering a staggering 1.15 trillion chips in 2021, handily eclipsing the previous annual record. That looks to me like a demand problem creating a supply problem. And yes, when chips are in short supply, auto companies must curtail production and prices rise. I just ordered a new car and had to pay well above the sticker price (and face an indefinite wait). Among the ripple effects: a surge in used car prices, which are up 55 percent over January 2020 levels. Cars are not alone. Over that same period, furniture and bedding prices rose 19 percent and laundry equipment became 33 percent more expensive. In this environment, shipping delays are hardly surprising. The Commerce Department reported last week that imports into the United States surged by almost 21 percent last year. No wonder that the volume of goods arriving at the port of Los Angeles hit record levels in 2021 — as did delays in unloading all the additional ships. This is not to say that the current situation was easily foreseeable. While some economists warned of looming inflation, few anticipated the shift in spending and its effects. Also unexpected was the “Great Resignation,” the rise in people voluntarily leaving their jobs, as well as the decision by several million Americans to return to the labor force slowly or not at all as the pandemic waned. The Great Resignation has created shortages of a different kind — labor shortages — in the service sector, both for businesses for which demand remains mixed (like restaurants) and those for which demand has increased during the pandemic (just try to get a plumber or an electrician to show up at your house). As a result, inflation in service prices, while more moderate than those in goods, remains higher than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. Note to Mr. Biden: You can’t blame clogged ports for that. What to do about all these shortages? Here again, Mr. Biden was misleading in his conversation with Mr. Holt. “We got Intel to come in and provide $20 billion to build a new facility,” he said, referring to a recent announcement by the chip manufacturer of a new semiconductor plant to come in Ohio. Winning that new plant was a great accomplishment. But it’s not a solution to today’s problems; the plant isn’t scheduled to turn out its first chip until 2025. The real solution is more complicated. Some shortages will ebb naturally on their own, as consumers, having sated their thirst for adding that extra room on their house, return to more normal spending patterns. Other shortages will take longer to moderate and will require robust action, particularly by the Federal Reserve. For its part, the White House needs to be more honest as it rolls out initiatives. It has promised robust antitrust enforcement, but while that is long overdue, it will have no discernible impact on competition or prices for years. And the high prices of meat and hearing aids, both of which Mr. Biden has vowed to address, are not at the heart of the current problem. The Biden administration needs to shift its approach. In particular, with the economy steaming along, it should make deficit reduction as important as its other initiatives. (Smaller deficits reduce net spending by government, thus helping offset demand by consumers.) But here again, Mr. Biden has been disingenuous. His Build Back Better plan claims to be deficit neutral, but that assertion is made credible only by using the fuzziest math. Over the first five years, the plan would add about $750 billion to the deficit, according to an analysis of the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. With this year’s fiscal gap estimated at $1.3 trillion, any new version of the plan should reduce the deficit substantially in its early years using honest math. That’s how Bill Clinton pivoted after he took office in 1993: He unexpectedly raised taxes in his budget to address the pressing matter of the federal budget deficit. That decision served the country well — and ultimately also served him well.
Listening to people complain about where gas prices tells me we as a country aren't really prepared to fight another world war or even a major war against another power. During WWII it was a matter of paying high gas prices it was a matter of even being able to get gas. Gas like many other things such as meat and milk was rationed. If we have an all out war with Russia at the minimum the global economy will be very disrupted. Even if fighting is confined to Eastern Europe we're going to have several of our major trading partners caught up in the fight. Already one major oil producer and two major grain producers are already fighting each other. The cost of oil and food is going to get much higher. That will translate to the cost of many other things. Trade routes and shipping resources will also be disrupted as there will be a big shift of commercial shipping going to move war and humanitarian aid to Europe. If the Russians decide that stopping aid from getting to US allies might help them we could see the return of sub warfare sinking commercial ships along with air interceptions. Given that so many in this country consider not being able to go to the pub or having to wear masks during a global pandemic as TYRANNY! I have little faith that we would be able to handle the privations of sustaining a major war effort.
Also our last two wars were fought on credit. Most Americans didn't feel the affects of those wars economically just like most Americans didn't directly participate in the actual fighting. For most of this country the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan were remote and that is one reason why I think we stayed there so long. In a major conflict with Russia that possibly drags other countries we might not be able to count on easy credit. In a global conflict I have a hard time seeing the PRC or other countries willing to buy our debt to finance a war against Russia. That means in addition to much higher inflationary pressures we're going to have to raise taxes and do things like sell war bonds.
Imagine if we could have used those trillions of dollars and instead pumped them back into our critical infrastructure. Namely into investing into energy. Think of where we would be today in this situation.
