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'Stop the price-gouging’: Biden hits corporations
(www.cnbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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politics
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Everyone seems to think saying this is all he's doing, but that's incorrect.
He issued an executive order in 2021 to orient his entire administration to increase enforcement of antitrust law among all departments and promote competitive practices wherever possible. There has definitely been an uptick in antitrust cases since then, and inflation has also decreased significantly.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-case-filings
There's a shit load of people who would disagree with you... inflation might have decreased based on some metrics no one uses...but my $100 at the grocery store does fuck all to buy food now.
Inflation doesn't stop though. The rate your $100 is losing value has slowed from when inflation was highest.
Disagree with me how? The inflation rate has objectively decreased from last year and the year prior. That doesn't mean prices have gone down, just that they're going up now at a rate closer to the historical average over the past century. People absolutely can afford less now than 3 years ago after inflation spiked, but with it returning to average levels, wages are also starting to catch up more.
These are all general population trends also, and can't be used to describe or predict any one person's situation
inflation rates don't include things like groceries. they do this on purpose to make people like you think inflation is going down when it's not.
Why would you think "things like groceries" aren't included in the inflation rate? The Consumer Price Index is top line number reported regarding inflation in the US, and it absolutely includes food. There are other measures that don't include it, but there are lots of different measures for lots of different uses. No one is trying to fool you
https://www.marketplace.org/2021/03/18/why-some-inflation-measurements-dont-include-food-energy-prices/
It's idiotic to blame anything other than company owners not paying out the pay they are supposed to
ok
You have to remember: Inflation tells you how fast prices are increasing. We want a certain degree of inflation (typically around 2% is healthy for the economy). The problem occurs when inflation is too high, so that wages don't keep up, that's what we're seeing now. When inflation decreases, that means prices are growing less fast, not that they're decreasing.
Decreasing prices (across the board) would be deflation, which is terrible (think Great Depression / 1930's Germany terrible). If your 100$ is worth more tomorrow than it is today, then why would you spend it today? You wouldn't (except for necessities). That leads to a massive drop in investments, not only in the "Wall street" sense, but in things like building houses, building factories, hiring people etc. it also causes wages to decrease. This goes on until production and wages hit a low point where there's huge amounts of money in circulation, very low production/employment, and very low prices. That's when you get a whiplash to a situation where everyone has money to buy stuff, but no one is making it, aaaaand we have HyperInflation™
In short: Your 100$ has in fact never been worth less than now, and that's a good thing. We just want it to decrease in value more slowly, and things are going in the right direction. It could still take a year or two for wages to catch back up, but we'll get there. Current policies are helping the situation.
Nah, we want food and survival on basic pay
I won't repeat the whole argument, but I have to admit like it seems you didn't catch the core part.
You should be able to get food and survival on basic pay. Prices should increase slowly over time. Basic pay should therefore increase at the same pace, or slightly faster, than prices are increasing. The issue you have now is not really the current inflation, but that inflation has outpaced wage growth for the past couple of years. Price growth isn't a problem if everybodies wages increase at the same rate as the prices grow, or faster, agree?
Now that inflation has slowed down, wages just need a little time to catch up. <= That right there is an important point. You don't want prices to decrease to match your current pay. That breaks the economy bad. You want your wage to increase to match the current prices.
Another major issue you have is that minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation, that's a regulatory issue. Also your unions had their collective back broken a couple decades ago, that didn't help either.
That's because the inflation already happened. What you're complaining about is that there isn't any deflation.
And you think the President, any of them control that?
When Trump dumped a bunch of money on the economy in 2020, he did contribute to a bunch of inflation, yes.
Oh, good!
Would...would you prefer the beating continue?
"Would you prefer the beating continue?" is not a great campaign slogan. Getting inflation under control is a good thing, and the Biden administration should receive credit for its efforts. But ordinary people are suffering right now from the effects of inflation, and when the cost of living is already unsustainable, one doesn't want to hear that it won't be getting significantly worse, one wants to hear that it's getting better.
It's not fair that Republicans get to wreck shit (which is comparatively easy) so that Democrats have to come in and spend all their time and energy just fixing the last guy's mess and hardly have any left to try and make any actual improvements. It's a fundamentally broken aspect of our politics. But most voters don't think in those terms, they think in terms of what they need to get through the day. If you can't figure out a way to make real tangible improvements in normal peoples' lives, you're going to have a bad time come election day, deserved or not.
It’s just… the place where truly significant things can happen on that front is in the legislature, and they’re completely fucked. But people either put all the blame on the president, or if they recognize Congress’s role, they don’t appreciate that the Dems never had the numbers at any point during Biden’s term to do more than they managed to do.
I'd prefer that the people who did the beating not be allowed to be in office anymore. There's a lot of people on that list.
You seem like the kind person who, if firefighters rescued you from a burning building, would be pissed at them for not preventing the fire in the first place.
Pissed at the firefighters, no, but I'm also not going to be jumping for joy that my house isn't currently on fire when it is in fact a smoldering wreck. Ordinary people, people who vote, are hurting right now due to unrestrained corporate greed, and they need help beyond "It's not getting worse right now!"
A lot of good that did