House oversight committee gets to root of inflation... corporate greed.

let's apply a bit of logic. corporate greed has existed since corps. have existed....


let me know if you need more hints

 

Hurry Dems. While you still have the house, pass the Corporate Greed Reduction Act.

p.s. good lord

 

YOU literally bolded this part. HA HA.

Certain corporations are using the cover of inflation to raise prices excessively, resulting in record profits and profit margins.

 

title sez corp greed is the root cause of inf. Posted & bolded a statement that contradicts that. Another thing about that bolded statement is excessive price increases should lower, not raise margins. The meaning of excessive there needs to be motivated b/c it makes no economic sense.

 

We should do everything possible to protect govt greed so corp greed doesn’t spin out of control.

 

I will acknowledge all of the above. And, will still respond by telling you that this is not a "them" problem, it is an "us" problem. I will bet that if people stop the absurd spending spree that so many have gone in the post-COVID Pause era, many of these issues would self-correct.

• Stop spending so much on non-necessities at the height of inflation - shipping costs go down.
• Literally no one is being forced to rent a car right now unless it is on business travel - rental car fees go down.
• This one appears tougher on the surface because we all have to eat, however, as we proved during the pandemic, much of the excess consumption comes through eating out. Stop going out to eat - food prices go down.
• Stop buying SUVs and pick up trucks again. Use common sense in driving habbits and cut excessive driving - fuel prices will go down.

Sure, all of that puts responsibility back on the consumer for eliminating excessive spending in the face of rising costs - but much easier to blame someone other than ourselves.

 

This strikes me a sophistry.

 

if you have a counter arg, make it.

 

Large corporations didn't cause inflation but they sure as hell capitalized on it.
Previously posted this link and this one example says it all.
Food Prices Soar, and So Do Companies’ Profits

 

It makes perfect sense to raise prices if people will pay anyway. The industries that were referred to in the OP are near monopolies so they have very little competitio. They also have responsibilities to their stockholders to maximize profits.

 

There is something confusing here though. If this is only an issue of corporations raising prices to help their bottom line, why didn’t they do this years ago?

 

The OP made it. I think it's largely correct.

 

So according to this report the reason cooperations were not making record profits before is because they weren’t charging enough. I’m guessing none of them considered that. “Hey team , it’s 2014 and going to be a good year, we are going to simply
raise our prices and increase profits. Sound good? no sir. You can’t do that, we have to await till later to hide those price increases ??” Is that the logic ? Talk about people not knowing civics…. The financial/ economic illiteracy of the claimed intellectual is staggering

 

I am sure their prices have always been in a very tight range of the profit maximizing price. The notion that profit maximizing behavior is the cause of inflation is dumb. 1. why would firms have been non profit maximizers until now; 2. regardless, it is not a solution anyway unless people are proposing price controls. (well, that rocket would have worked if it weren't for gravity!!) If a firm can increase profit by raising prices, I think it is a pretty good bet that demand has increased &/or supply has decreased. pretty damn sure greed has remained constant. Lastly, the notion in the OP that prices & cost should move in lockstep is sadly dumb. My costs of performing my job have plummeted over the years & yet my salary keeps going up.

 

Doc and I disagree often, but I think he has the right of it here. Corporations were chasing max profits long before inflation hit. Inflation isn't happening because of corporate profiteering, even if corporations unsurprisingly seek to maximize their profiteering while inflation is happening.

 

Most of the time the public would punish them for openly raising prices, which is why we see a lot of packaging tricks to lower the amount of product sold at the same old pricepoint. In our current climate, companies can get away with raising prices by blaming inflation, and the public will accept it, even though the price increases are much greater than what would be predicted by current inflation rates.