Did you read the article? The economist interviewed specifically said it isn’t because of price gouging, but because they anticipated future costs will be higher than they actually were.
Normally, Andrew says, profits contribute less than a third to inflation. He found that in 2021, corporate profits could account for about double that, nearly 60% of inflation, meaning it was not costs driving inflation. It was corporate profits. Now, some economists hear this and think this is proof that companies were just using inflation as an excuse to gouge customers. Andrew does not think this. He thinks companies likely raised prices not because their costs went up in 2021 - because they did not, really - but because they were anticipating that their costs would go up a lot in 2022. And by the way, costs did end up going up in 2022, although companies still made record profits.
The part I don’t understand is why it’s important to hit the “replacement level”. Wouldn’t it be better for the planet if there were fewer people living on it and competing for resources?
It really depends which billionaires. Believe it or not, some billionaires aren’t bad people (probably). Billionaires are just people with a ton of money and power at the end of the day, and we should judge them on their actions, not their bank balance, regardless of our suspicions of how they got so rich.
However, if we could stick (for example) the Sacklers, Kochs and Murdochs in a sub and send it to Challenger Deep with just enough oxygen to get there and plenty of ballast, we’d definitely be doing the world a favour. These scumbags have a huge amount of blood on their hands, and while it would be better to see them in jail, we never will, so fantasising about their horrible demise is the most we can really do.
Don’t carry water for people who would let you die to increase their mountain of gold a little. What you’ve described might be true of millionaires, even multi millionaires; but no one gets to a billion dollars without stepping on those below them in the pursuit of more money than one person could ever spend in their lifetime.
Being a billionaire is pathological, if the human race was a biological organism and one part of it started hoarding that many resources, we would call it cancer and cut it out.
Juneteenth is a federal holiday, but private employers don’t have to observe it. Mine sure doesn’t. I have never heard of any employer observing Mother’s or Father’s day with a paid holiday.
That’s a good question. If you don’t mind, I’m going to use the “Speak as moderator” button here (although i don’t really know what that does).
I see a few things necessary to reform the current economic system - let’s call it Awareness, Advocacy and Action:
Awareness means getting people to realise that the corporate propaganda they’re hearing isn’t the whole truth.
Advocacy means going out and telling people to join the cause, form a local union, etc.
Action means taking organized action - writing to politicians, organising dialogues and strikes, etc.
I’m completely open to using this community for any and all of the above. When we have a good critical mass of users, we can all vote on this, and I’ll abide by the consensus.
In the meantime, however, we need to get more people to rally behind the cause. We have ~500 subscribers here from all over the world in a variety of jobs. That’s not nearly enough to do any sort of Action. All we can do in the meantime is Awareness and Advocacy. That means posting memes and screenshots, that means posting news that counters corporate propaganda, that means posting news about organised action taking place elsewhere that we can celebrate or contribute to.
If anyone disagrees, please share your opinions here, I’m totally open to suggestions, criticisms, insults even.
I think “speak as mod” adds a red “mod” logo (kinda looks like a shield) next to your username. That’s it, as far as I can tell - it doesn’t pin the post or highlight it or do anything else.
A big problem because it means a federal worker in NYC gets as much as a federal worker in Mississippi. That it hasn't changed for 20 years suggests both are underpaid, but the NYC worker has definitely got to get another job.
By what scale? Medieval peasants only had to pay 10% in taxes and got sooooo much free time. Technology even today is still bad for us, but nature and free time? Come on, what’s the point of having all these gadgets and what not if we don’t have the time to use them, and they’re all run by faceless corporations who make things as addictive and monetized as possible?
Productivity. That’s what you want to compare to wages, and it has definitely increased faster than wages, so why aren’t the workers being paid proportionately to their increased productivity?
Care to have a conversation and not just repeat random excerpts you read from a textbook?
So tell me, how exactly are we expected to consume all those goods in that basket that are used to measure inflation, when we are not paid in proportion to our increased productivity? Do those goods just pay for themselves with wages we do not receive?
Experience? If you say so, again just sounds like you’re quoting a textbook.
If you’re referring to experience all the way back to your quality of life comment, how old are you? Quality of life has definitely dropped since baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s and 40s
Sure we have netflix, we’re all interconnected and have instant access to information on the internet, but we can’t raise a family on a single income, we can’t pay off college or university with a single year of a summer job
In what way has quality of life dropped? We wouldn’t be having this conversation 10 years ago. I enjoy being able to experience an open source platform such as Lemmy, from my smartphone while getting drunk and lounging about at home. I couldn’t have done that without advancements in technology. I feel like that improves my quality of life at no cost. An example of how my life is improved, regardless of wages.
I’m paying devils advocate. I’m all for wages increasing for the average person. I just want people the feel happy for all the amazing things we have in our modern world.
its more like, if people would stop settling for wages below what you need to survive, then businesses wouldn’t be able to function without paying a living wage. but there is always someone willing to do the work for less so they get away with it. imagine a world where restaurants and farms were forced to employ fully waged employees, the entire country would cease to function.
This assumes that there’s an infinite supply of well paying jobs that are freely accessible to everyone, but that’s not how reality works. If the options are “work for shit pay” or “don’t work at all and starve” then people will choose the shit job. It’s why market economies aim for a few percents unemployment(and why places like the US really don’t want to forgive student debt) because people need to be desperate for whatever job they can get to keep wages low.
A much better way to solve it is just to legislate that if you work a fulltime job you have to be paid a livable wage.
So in essence you just want to ban employers from being able to offer poverty wages.
Doesn’t that mean even more people would be out of a job as the jobs paying poverty wages disappear? They won’t pay more, they’re way more likely to close up shop.
It’s a requirement for people to suffer for others to get ahead. It’s the entire basis of our economy and given the unsustainable population, it’s only going to get worse. Like much much worse. The redistribution of wealth would probably take a war tbh. There’s a ton of people who just don’t care, or have been indoctrinated to believe they deserve to suffer. No one wants to fight a war. We maintain status quo until the earth kicks us off. And we’re left with sustainable population.
[16:08] - Introduction and interview with Jaz Brisack and Casey Moore, organizers of Starbucks stores and of Inside Organizer School (IOS)
In this week’s Economic Update, Professor Richard Wolff comments on US megabanks once again taking new off-the-books risks, Elon Musk endorsing right-wing undemocratic census proposals and Fossil Fuel industry executives bribe Trump with campaign donations. In addition, we highlight the many US and global labor unions and workers who have joined the movement in supporting of ending the Israeli military actions in Gaza.
Finally, we Interview with Jaz Brisack and Casey Moore, organizers of Starbucks stores and of Inside Organizer School (IOS), a new organization that trains workers how to unionize their workplaces.
The Inside Organizer School (IOS) is a unique program aimed at making inside organizers as effective as possible in motivating and mobilizing their co- workers. The IOS branches off from traditional union organizer training which addresses staff development, focusing its curriculum instead on developing inside organizers who organize from within the workplace.
Work Reform
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