It’s not inflation. It’s price gouging.
Price gouging coincidentally at the same time across the entire economy, soon after an enormous increase in the monetary supply.
A—Aurora Borealis? At this time of year! At this time of day! In this part of the country! Localized entirely within your kitchen?!?
Record high prices coinciding with record high profits and plunging cost of good sold, followed by even higher prices. They are testing to see what the pain thresholds are. All that’s gonna happen is that business will start to collapse as consumer spending plummets because people can barely afford to survive. Will the system autocorrect or collapse? Will the government ever enforce consumer protection laws ever again? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The loan on my van is paid off, The bank is paying me interest on my savings again, I have a years worth of costco rice stored, and the campsites by the river where i live in my van is empty because everyone too broke to go on holiday. Life is sweet. (No part of this comment is hyperbole)
Occam’s razor says the more simple/plausible explanation, that a huge increase in the monetary supply causing higher prices through supply and demand, is about a thousand times more plausible than tens of thousands of corporations simultaneously deciding to coordinate to fix prices despite that it’s in each of their best interests individually to break with that scheme. With no actual evidence of a concerted attempt across the entire economy to fix prices (not to be confused with a couple corporations having board meetings where someone bragged about raising prices).
Or, in simple terms - it’s not that every single other good in the entire economy has suddenly become worth more as the result of some overarching conspiracy. It’s that they printed a bunch of money and it’s now worth less.
I would recommend anyone who still believes the “greedflation” thing spends an hour reading some articles critical of the theory. Not really looking for a debate about it tbh.
There is inflation I agree, but I think a significant percentage is from price gounging, around 30%. I saw a study detailing this that I could find and link if you want.
If you’re wondering how it can happen simultaneously accross whole countries and much of the world, you can look up the concept of “price leadership.”
See my reply to your other comment https://lemmy.world/comment/2308508
“soon” or maybe you need to review your oversimplification of complex issues
No, it’s inflation. Too much money chasing too few goods. Caused partially by years of central banks across the world injecting new money into financial markets and partially by the massive dump of new money into the consumer economy in 2020-2022.
Too much money chasing too few goods?
Wrong. Supply is fine.
Prices are going up because people are willing to pay higher prices than they were. We still have not found a new ceiling. It’s not “all the money printed by Trump” that caused a giant spike in inflation (that only played a small part). It’s record profits in a variety of industries convincing anyone and everyone to charge more.
100%. I don’t know why anyone expected anything different - we’ve been printing and printing and printing money for the last 10 years. Chickens are home, roosting.
That’s fucking moronic… The US government has had that money printer running since Nixon… It’s just garbage all around regardless… even though they are and have been some slightly less garbage parts
tbh both inflation numbers are hot
The inflation report that came out today specifically omits fuel and grocery prices because those are “volatile” categories. My grocery bill is double what it was two years ago and has been for six months. I wouldn’t call that volatile.
Groceries are stupid, it cost me $20 to make a lasagna that last year cost $10.
Costs me $12 to make 2-3 sandwiches at home using deli meat and cheese, a loaf of French bread, and 2 small tomatoes. That’s while taking advantage of sale prices. Would be more like $8/sandwich if I hadn’t bought the meat and cheese on sale.
Idk man ground beef is still like $3 a pound for me, milk $2.70 a gallon, pasta $1 a pound. I’m not saying some things haven’t gotten more expensive because they have, but my grocery bill from 2 years ago is like 20-30% more expensive now.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. A 20-30% jump in a grocery bill is unprecedented in my life time. I’m skeptical it’s even that low for most. Pre-pandemic, I was buying eggs for 1.39, they’re 2.49 now. Jarred spaghetti sauce used to be 1.99, it’s 3.49 now if I catch a sale. I used to be able to regularly buy chicken breast for like 1.49-1.99, now if it’s less than 3 I buy as much as I can afford and freeze it. This time of year in my area, corn would usually be on sale 4/$1. The cheapest it’s gotten is $0.79.
Just repeat ad nauseam for everything. The other day I was in the store thinking to myself, “I’m not sure I can afford convenience foods like canned beans.” Canned. Fucking. Beans. The luxury.
I’m spending $2.30 for 18 eggs, buy spaghetti sauce at $.99 or so, and generally pick up chicken at about $1 a pound. Never seen corn on the cob for more than $.50 a cob, usually less than that. Bush’s beans, we just picked some up at $2 a can.
Grocery prices can vary widely depending on location. The absolute cheapest Walmart ground beef I can get is $4.50 per pound and milk is $3.62 a gallon. Pasta is a $1 pound and eggs are relatively cheap here. Produce has gone through the roof.
lucky. in Australia milk +50%, bread and rice +100%, pasta only about 20%, meats are almost out of reach ($12aud for 12 shitty supermarket sausages about 1kg worth is about as cheap as it gets. fruit and veg has always been volatile and fluctuates but I would say on average 20% more now
Where I am at,ground beef is more in the $5-6/lb range, as a comparison. We have some dairy farms local so milk is a bit cheaper, but basically everything else is significantly more expensive, especially meat.
inflation can’t be that cute
In some ways, the reported inflation is real. The main increase in cost is not actually real, or caused by anything except greed.
There’s also a lot of hidden costs that aren’t factored into inflation as strongly as they should be, or at all. Those hidden fees have also gone up.
So the entire business segment is just hand waving the whole issue because they know it will be reported wrong; they’re going to keep raising prices and point to the “official” inflation numbers and continue to feed us the bullshit that inflation isn’t a problem to justify never giving their employees a raise.
IDK how stupid they think we are, but I’m sure they think we’re little more than retarded (I mean that in the clinical sense). They’re (very publically) showing massive profit numbers, using inflation, or the lack thereof, to justify slave wages, while ripping off their users as much as they think that they can without creating riots.
More for them, less for us. As it’s always been.
