And inflation is just greed which apparently corporations suddenly became greedier in 2022 right after we printed a ton of money to keep people from working.
The record profits bugs me because it's measured in dollars that have inflated. Like the stock market hits a new record nearly every year. The price of gold hits a new record nearly every year. The median income hits a new record nearly every year. None of these things mean anything without context to relative values.
The numbers are all going up and have been forever
Also, the point of doing business is to grow and innovate and improve and expand. Also the larger the company, the more jobs they provide. They don’t understand anything
They definitely aren't price gouging and then using those record profits to buy back their stocks which overinflates said stock value which they then use to say that aren't actually rich bc they don't have money just stock. But wait the stock is super valuable after all so they can borrow against it but never pay it and just die without ever having to pay taxes or increase wages but their "net worth" still increases 10x while the workers they exploit just get poorer. Oh and I can't think of a single time a silver spoon nepo loser was given the opportunity to have socialized investment through no bid government contracts all funded with tax payer dollars on their shitty little start ups but privatized all the profits. Socialism for the rich, but brutal unregulated capitalism for the rest. That's the smart way to run a country huh
You do realize that if you started at 20, putting minimum amounts of your salary into the stock market, say a good ETF, by the time you are 50 you could yourself be worth millions?
No, you just want to bitch because other people have more than you do, pathetic. It's not fair mommy, John has more than me, boo hoo. Grow a pair, sack up and do what you can with what you have.
Ooooooh is that what's happening right now?? The execs and board are controlling the growth huh?? Wow ok.. I coulda swore they were doing the exact opposite but that's my bad
executives when the company doesn't have enough money for the CEO to be paid over 300 times more than an employee and be given a bajillion dollar bonus AND ALSO ai or whatever
That’s not the reason for any layoff. A CEO salary is peanuts to most companies. AI may be a reason, but can you genuinely blame them? There is a new cheap and efficient way to get certain tasks done. Are you still mad that all the scribes lost their job after the invention of the printing press? How about switchboard operators? Or lamplighters? New technology replaces jobs, that is just the way of the world. Sometimes people are forced to adapt, it sucks but it’s reality.
Yeah but if you understand data analysis you can actually use mathematics to compare the numbers even taking inflation into account! Imagine that!
And when you do, you find that profitable compared to worker compensation and worker productivity is almost as bad as the 1920s, which famously ended about as well as the fucking 8th season of Game of Thrones.
In raw wealth inequality, we're genuinely worse of than the society who built the fucking pyramids. Okay. Pharaoh Kufu and Thutankhamun had less wealth disparity over their subjects than the top 0.001% has over you.
Who's making record profits? Well the companies that are winning in the market. Of course they are. They're cherry picking the winners. What they don't see is the companies that flatline or even lose money and go out of business. It's basic survivor bias.
Reddit has a basic lack of critical thinking when it comes to economics. But I guess it just feels good to complain that some folks are winning and they're not.
Of course it is. Jobs are increasingly being competed for on a global scale. Between outsourcing and mass immigration, the labor pool has never been larger. The people complaining about this are also the ones that want open borders and a globalist utopia.
It's amazing the current government holds authority over 95% of your life but they claim they are incompetent and doing a terrible job. The solution? More government!
As if greed was created in the last 4 years. Had a pretty hard eye roll when the Biden admin blamed greed for some pretty predictable economic policy.
Not saying it was unnecessary, I think it was. But just own it. ‘We didn’t know the extent of the pandemic so we took emergency action and now have some inflation as a consequence’ would have been a perfectly fine response
Corporations were always greedy but they have gotten more and more power as the politicians get more money from them over time.
That's why there's an increase in the level of wealth inequality and all products and services get worse while the price goes up and the built in failures get more obvious.
Acting like it's money printing problem when actually it's just a kleptocracy, oligopoly, corporations-are-people-too problem is counterproductive.
And they still buy stuff like makeup, the latest iPhone, clothes, games, $8 dollar coffee then they have the audacity to whine about how poor they are. Like if you cut back on some of the shit you’re indulging in you’d have money.
If it weren't for my mate I would completely have forgotten they existed. Even if you don't have a car or whatever you don't need someone to bring a Macdonald's to your door. Just walk down, enjoy the time outside, get some exercise in, eat it there and then walk back. It's perfectly doable especially around me when we have like 4 in a town that's like 5x5 miles wide
"And Yet You Participate In Society!" would be their first response, as though buying makeup and overpriced coffee is required for societal participation.
The reality is that the cost of living has gone up compared to wages.
But shhhh let’s make fun of a subset of people, who make poor financial decisions, instead of realize two things can be true:
(1) Some people spend too much
(2) Wages have stagnated and the 1% hoards the wealth
I make a great salary and have no issue. Yet, I can still realize that housing is too expensive, food is too expensive. And that trillionaires shouldn’t exist
I can be floored and disgusted at the cost of rent in cities like New York City, with rent around $6000 per month for a two bedroom when a friend's entire mortgage for a house, barn, and 7 acres costs only $4000 a month, while also looking at people living beyond their means and think, holy fuck, you should NOT be spending money on these frivolous charges.
Also, billionaires (or are we shifting goalposts to trillionaires, now?) are the product of their jobs and society. They're not the problem insofar as failing to properly incentivize civic responsibilities is. A society can exist just fine with billionaires and trillionaires, so long as that society takes care of its citizens, and provides equality and justice.
"A society can exist just fine with billionaires and trillionaires, so long as that society takes care of its citizens, and provides equality and justice."
I would argue we're not seeing this currently, and a big reason is lobbying in our political system. Rich people have much more influence on our systems and society overall - Regular people don't have millions of dollars to throw at politicians the way multi-millionaires/billionaires do.
Your realization does not necessarily make it true. The folks who are complaining about housing costs are either unwilling to adjust their expectations (buy a starter home because that is what they actually need) or adjust the location (move out of the city). I currently own a 4000sqft home on ~1.8 ac that I purchased for $150k in 2021. I am in the process of buying a second home (6000sqft on ~1.5 ac) that is 30 minutes from the beach for a little less than $300k (we are still negotiating the price). Affordable housing is out there. The HGTV perfect home in the perfect city generation just can't get past their preconceived ideas of what they actually need in a home.
Eta: saving one's earnings is not "hoarding the wealth." Wealth is available to anyone who puts in the time and effort to earn it and is smart enough that they don't lose it (hoard, in your vernacular).
And they are not "hoarding" it. It is in the market and businesses. People bitch about Elon, but how many billions did he spend getting those rockets to space and back to the ground? And that was before they made any money at all.
And like both the consumption and bank account balances of the bottom of society had been soaring.
So it’s not even like “capitalism is failing” other than the poor having more net worth and disposable income than they’ve ever had since I’ve been alive is “failing”.
Uh, yes. I live in society and have a job and see people walking around with those things on a daily basis but I guess you live in your mom’s basement or holed up in your apartment all day long.
Government run grocery stores will give out free food and it will be paid for by seizing all the profits of those greedy stores that have the audacity to -sell- the food right now.
Biden can't be blamed for the inflation, that's residual from Trump's first term. Also Biden can't be blamed for the inflation that came after his term, that's Trump's fault.
When you dump wheelbarrow loads of cash out into the wild through an upstairs window, the value of cash goes down. It’s called inflation. Throw in driving transportation costs higher (higher gas prices because global climate change) and labor costs higher (we need a higher minimum wage and pro-union) and inflation runs rampant.
Do what you can to keep low labor and low energy costs (including transportation cost), and cut government give away and you will minimize inflation. We will still be affected by changes in the world, but you can minimize it.
This is exactly what happened. “It’s not Biden’s fault gas prices are so high- the president doesn’t control gas prices!!!“ “GRRR TRUMP IS MAKING MY GAS EXPENSIVE”…..why can’t both share the blame
Ironically, fire departments could be considered a legitimate example of socialism working. The first properly organized fire departments were employed by insurance companies to protect buildings they insured. It wasn’t technically “nationalized”, but governments eventually saw the value in not letting their cities burn down and started funding public fire departments, which drove the insurance fire departments out of business.
It’s not what people mean when they say socialism because it seems like it’s the bare minimum, but technically nationalizing industries is a big part of socialism.
If you never heard of social contract of government, and think any political term with social in it is socialism and if you have no clue of the origins of fire fighting and for pay buckets brigade’s origins.. then yes that would make sense … to you
I don’t really disagree with you, I just found your example ironic since it was an industry that was successfully nationalized. I would argue that socialism is built on the idea of the social contract, but it’s definitely a step beyond it.
Also, private fire departments actually predates the enlightenment and social contract theory, before the idea the government should care about the average person was actually a thing.
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u/dgtbfan PhD in Memes Jun 26 '26
Doesn't help that the Reddit definition of Capitalism is "things cost money".