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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32956 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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I'm not sure how the answer isn't soaring corporate profits. Yea, the government is printing bullshit amounts of money for bullshit things, but corpo profits are higher every year.

The rich are eating us instead of the other way around.

Do I want deflation? Yes - eggs should be cheap. Bread should be cheap. Celery should be cheap. Apples should be cheap.

Do I want rent control? No ... ... But! We should be making way more money than compared to the increase in rent. I don't know the answer - the free market is kaput and I still fear the government more than corporations but it's getting close.

The American dream is done for who the American dream was supposed to be for in the first place. I'm glad IT workers are doing great, but fuck them, no offense I know a ton of them and they're fantastic people, but fuck them - the rest of us are being left behind.

This sounds like Elizabeth Warren style economic theory where greed explains everything we do not like.

But that would require greed to be a variable that just happens to line up with other economic indicators that are more plausible all on their own, and would entail that when the economy produces results we like it is because the hearts of the corporate grinches grew larger.

By my reading, grocery store profits simply aren't high enough to account for the differences in prices.

From here, Canada's top three grocers went from $25.13B -> $26.54B (+$1.32B) in combined revenue, while total profits went from $0.883B -> $1.0195B (+$0.1365B). Increases in profit accounting for 9.7% of the increase in revenue did raise the profit margin from 3.51% to 3.84%, but that's hardly problematic IMO.

Exactly. Grocery stores don't make vast profits. The market is very competitive, and even if they chose to run with no profit at all, it would only shave a few percent off your bill.

Do I want rent control? No ... ... But! We should be making way more money than compared to the increase in rent. I don't know the answer - the free market is kaput and I still fear the government more than corporations but it's getting close.

Rent has always been a bad deal. It has to be or else there would be no reason to buy a home. And landlords have to charge a lot to recoup costs and deadbeats. The higher upfront cost of home ownership is offset by saving money in longer run.

This is only an explanation if you believe corporations weren’t doing their best to maximize profits before. Do any of these soaring profit figures factor in inflation?

I'm not sure how the answer isn't soaring corporate profits.

If corporations could maximize their profits at their leisure with simple policy changes, it's awful convenient timing that they started right around when Covid hit, isn't it?

And let's ignore all the companies going under/declaring bankruptcy:

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/us-corporate-bankruptcies-end-2020-at-10-year-high-amid-covid-19-pandemic-61973656

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/us-corporate-bankruptcy-filings-hit-12-year-high-in-first-2-months-of-2023-74567693

Does that seem like maybe the causal arrow doesn't point the way you're implying?

The whole "corporate greed" explanation doesn't work because corporate greed has been a constant for decades, and massive inflation is more transitory and recent.

We need to examine what changed.

I would also note that there may be some weird timing effects, too. I've heard through the grapevine about companies who are doing major layoffs while also being about to post some record annual profit numbers. The profit numbers are heavily influenced by things that happened early in their fiscal year, but their projections for the next 6mo-1yr are bad (thus the layoffs).

Well that and that many clearly, CLEARLY overhired during a stimulus period.

So the layoffs were inevitable as they adjusted to reasonable levels, but their projections for the next year are also going to factor in to how sharp the layoffs are.

In my view, they hired indiscriminately in hopes of capturing and identifying some valuable employees that they would attempt to keep in the long term when revenues were down.

Are any of those corporations the companies that actually matter, though? Certainly not any Fortune 500 biz, I bet.

You tell me.

https://archive.is/otz2K

It sure seems like a particular kind of company is seeing record profits while many others (e.g., airlines) are struggling mightily.

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