Not inflation. Price-gouging. Big difference.
If it were inflation increasing prices, profit percentages would remain relatively stable. That’s not what we’re seeing. Profit margins are through the roof across the board.
In other words, inflation is actually a tool for the rich to steal money from the rest of us. Interesting how that works.
Those who have stocks better watch out. My friend sold out all his stocks because Warren Buffet sold his massively last year. Buffet does this just before an economic bubble burst. Rumour has it that it may come this autumn. I kinda want to hold out a little longer because I am looking at other indicators, primarily on unemployment rate, consumer price index and retail sales, before deciding. The rising inflation might affect consumer confidence, which could exacerbate the risk of recession. The reports on these three indicators are coming out this month of August and we’ll see.
Wait until you do the math on how many millions you are paying in tax to the state, and what you get back for it. Almost nothing gets back to you.
I think our entire way of working is completely fucked up. Trading our time here for money, working until we are exhausted. For what. Then we get old and has lost the energy of youth, at some corp desk.
Its honestly a tragedy what we spend our lives doing.
That’s an oversimplification. Taxes are supposed to go for things that benefit everyone like roads for sure; but the vast majority goes to things that we generally think of as good but don’t generally need. Things like healthcare paid for by healthy people and military defense paid for by people who have never been shot at.
So while it is true to say nothing gets back to me, I am still relieved because if I was breaking even on my taxes that would mean I have some sort of life altering problem.
Thats one way of looking at it, sure.
Another way is that you could have had that money in your bank now, living a better life, maybe being able to stop working earlier, spending time with your family and friends, not feeling exhausted all the time.
Of course we have to pay some taxes but many people dont see any positive results from it at all, in the shape of better schools, roads, or whatever.
I think we can come to the common ground that there is a lot of stuff that the governments around the world and specifically the US government spend money on that it shouldn’t. A lot of our collective military spending is based on fear for example.
I’m not fully in your camp for destroying taxes but I do think that we could probably find some things that we both agree on pretty quickly
No I dont think we should destroy taxes. But I would love if they actually benefitted the majority of people, like you and me. After 50 years of being here on this planet, I havent seen that happening. I see old people getting poor health care, living on very little pension, and being forgotten by society.
All im saying is that the system is largely just sucking up money from everybody and using it for things the majority will never benefit from. We are easily talking many many millions in taxes over the years that you and I will never see again.
And of course you can say, shouldnt we pay taxes to support the weak in society? Yes, but again, i dont see that happening. I see old people being poor, i even see people being homeless. I see a lot of pain every day in people who actually need help but dont get it, because in capitalism, profits matter, not people.
So I guess im pretty much saying that taxes in capitalism ends up being profits for someone rich, not you and me. And also in communism, all systems I would guess. Because there isnt any system that puts human happiness above profits.
Can we agree billionaires shouldn’t exist
Yup. There’s no such thing as a good billionaire. We could probably drop it down to a hundred millionaire too
Yes, billionaires should not exist.
Can we also agree that school should be free and kids should be fed? Can we agree that roads (and rails) should be made and kept safe? Can we agree that our food should be safe to eat and not full of chalk or worse? Etc etc the most practical way to do those things is for everyone to chip in aka taxes.
One of the biggest problems in America is that since Reagan we’ve stopped truly taxing the rich and with that they’ve bought the government or enough of it to write the rules. Removal of the fairness doctrine, the repeal of glass-steagal, and citizens united are three big ones that come to mind. Where one-side can push their view without pushback or seeing the other side the idea of compromise goes out the window. That random opinions started getting treated same as facts is another thing. That companies could do stock buybacks and effectively manipulate their stock prices and C-suite/board pay meaning they can make money even without actual growth. And of course CU where money became speech and companies gained the benefits of being “people” without any of the detriments.
Its a hard question to answer. How many jobs are created by those people? Is it a net positive or negative compared to someone who doesnt create any successful company in his life?
I think I just hate the personality of the American billionaries. They are missing a lot of things inside, but that is also why they work so hard, because they need attention and feeling superior to others. Happy people dont even compare themselves to others very much and they feel good just having enough money to get a decent place to live, a decent car and decent food every day. And a partner to make life feel meaningful.
Of course now, young women are being totally brainwashed by social media so now they think they need to find rich single guys and ignore 90% of guys out there, which makes it hard to find a partner.
Its all part of the larger plan of making men feel like they dont have a purpose. Its just psyops. But thats a different discussion…
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At least in the US and UK (and I suspect most of the West), the official inflation has been understating the reality for years (just look at the massive difference between what a salary in the 60s could pay for and the very same inflation-adjusted salary today buys) so the real picture is probably significantly worse.
Also, the inflation for luxuries leaves regular inflation in the dust.
Back around 1960, $5,000.00 a year was a sold, middle class income. A Jaguar sportscar was about $6,000 and a Rolls was about $25,000.
Even if you spend the money to get a First Class airline ticket, you know that there are plenty of private planes out there.
Harlan Ellison wrote an essay about ‘fuck you money,’ the amount he needed to have in the bank so he could tell the studios to fuck off. Back in the day he could go six months on $1,000.
1000 dollars in 1960 would be about 11 grand today.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know if I’d last 6 months on 11 grand. Maybe 3 or 4. Rent alone would nuke over half of that, and I live in a cheap ass place.
We’ve been robbed
“Adjusted for inflation” is a lie.
Think of it this way. $1 million in 1960 would buy you a couple of mansions, a fleet of nice cars, and you’d have enough left to put into investments that would give you income for life.
$11 million today won’t buy the nicest house on the block.
It’s more that Official Inflation is a lie and has been a lie for decades, and always in the direction of understating realiy.
Hence why two money values at different points in time which according to the Official Inflation are equivalent (i.e. one when inflation adjusted using the Official Inflation over the years in between results on the other) have very different purchasing powers, the longer the time distance between them the worst.
It actually makes total sense for politicians to do whatever it takes for Inflation to be understated:
- Directly because too much Inflation is seen as a bad thing, so if the official number is lower, it looks better.
- Indirectly because Official Inflation affects the Official GDP - GDP calculation first yields a number in today’s money (the Nominal GDP) which then gets “deflated” by Official Inflation (so, the higher the inflation the smaller it gets) to produce the Official GDP figure (i.e. the Real GDP), so if from one year to the next the Official Inflation understates reality, the difference ends up making the GDP look bigger due to the mathematics of its calculation, which appears as GDP “Growth”, something that in the Neoliberal era politicials harp about like crazy (“The Economy grew X% under our government/presidency”)
We are being lied to and have been lied to for a long time about the Economic “success” in our Western countries, which is part of the reason why most people keep feeling poorer all the while politicians keep telling us GDP is growing (the other reasons being the increase in Inequality and, to a lesser extent, some of the actual growth was just population growth and per-capita there was no or negative growth).
It will set you up for a life tho, let’s not play coy
Just so we’re all on the same page - this is the same disjointed wage growth we were seeing under Biden that we were being told wasnt a big deal. It’s obviously gotten worse under Trump, but this has been a growing problem since at least the dotcom bubble
Fairly certain it has been an issue since the 60s or 70s for anyone not in the top 25% or so.
I’ve always been saying it. Fiat currency leaves the value of money in the hands of too few people. Whenever their buddies start crying for help, the money hose turns on and the rest of us suffer higher prices with no wage growth to balance it.
If we still had policies that forced wealth redistribution it would work fine like it used to
This isn’t a currency issue. The processes driving this have been observed in 19-century Britain under a gold standard. For me it took looking into how firms decide what to produce, how to produce it and what to do with the profits in order to build a better picture on what’s happening. This Talk at Google was a good starting point for me.
The ability to turn on the money hose isn’t the problem. If they used the money hose on us it’d be great! The problem is they use it to redistribute wealth to the rich and powerful, while the rest of us go thirsty.
If they used the money hose on us it’d be great!
To a point subject to the real resource limits we have, but I’m pretty sure you knew that. 😊
“A wage growth curve that looks more like a middle finger to the vast majority” is how I heard it described today.
Almost like the wealth gap is it’s own kind of slow apocalypse… Because if you don’t keep a society moving together, it starts to fall apart.
I’m surprised it’s only 40%.
The feds measure of inflation is deeply flawed because of the politicized basket of goods it uses, that’s why it’s seems so low.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Chained_Consumer_Price_Index
Exactly. Most times the US government mentions inflation they’re talking about “Chained” inflation, which lags behind actual inflation for most by 1%.
In the GDP calculations, the Official Inflation will “deflate” the GDP number calculated in today’s money (the Nominal GDP) to produce the Official GDP number (the Real GDP), so if the Official Inflation is lower than reality, the difference in inflation pretty much “leaks” into a higher GDP number than it should be, or in other words, officially it looks like GDP growth.
You might have noticed just how much politicians celebrate that they’ve “made the Economy grow” using the GDP Growth figure.
Massaging the Inflation is an easy way to create GDP “Growth” in the official figures and is far more indirect and obscure than massaging the GDP figures themselves so less likely for those doing it to be caught and even if they do only a handful of people actually understand the true significance of what has been done.
yeah I am very skeptical its only 40%. I find it hard to believe anyone working for a wage that does not include a contract with a golden parachute is keeping up with inflation.
Over, 40% is the minimum.
Broken system needs wealth redistribution
Maybe someone could explain to me how the short term inflation rate is 1.8%, but every tariff is at least 10%. I mean, in a country where nothing is made, which tariff free products are people buying? Is it just that many of the tariffs have not gone into effect yet? It’s so hard to keep track.
You pay 10% for the product when imported. However there are a lot of people, work and capital involved to transport the product and actually sell it to you.
Also a lot is also not imported, but made in the US. That is especially true for a lot of food, electricity, gasoline and even quite a bit of actual physical products.
Worth noting that tariffs are not charged on the retail price but on the cost of goods when imported. The 10% is on what Walmart pays their suppliers. Still increases prices, but not by as much.
it depends a lot on the business model. but like a lot of qualified people have been pointing out, places like Wal-Mart can weather the losses considering a store will make up to a 1-3million a day, and they pay the 40 people who work there so little they quality for SNAP there’s a lot of cushion to absorb the costs. but no business with less than 15 employees is going to make it.
But that’s not how capitalism works. If 70% of the items in Walmart have a 10% tariff, they raise 100% of the items 20%. Especially Walmart. But I guess I’m wrong.
Most companies have been taking it on the chin for now: eating the cost of the tariffs and taking a reduced profit to maintain prices and help foster consumer confidence while they wait and see how all the tariff negotiations actually play out.
With regards to the original question, inflation is measured across all consumer purchasing. So prices on goods (groceries, cars, computing hardware, etc) can increase significantly, but if the price on services (Netflix, restaurants, laundromats, etc) stays relatively flat, inflation ends up looking better than it feels.
Always has been. Inflation hurts the poor the most.
Middle class is the new poor.
Its called working class… But most normies don’t accept their w2 status, they prefer to cosplay being in the club
I hope all the assholes that voted for Trump FoR ThE EcOnOmY are in that 40%
What is this “wage growth” you speak of? Never heard of it.
