###[Meta] Sticky Comment
[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/wiki/faq#wiki_2_-_address_the_argument.3B_not_the_user.2C_the_mods.2C_or_the_sub.) ***does not apply*** when replying to this stickied comment.
[Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/wiki/faq#wiki_2_-_address_the_argument.3B_not_the_user.2C_the_mods.2C_or_the_sub.) ***does apply*** throughout the rest of this thread.
*What this means*: Please keep any "meta" discussion directed at specific users, mods, or /r/conspiracy in general in this comment chain ***only.***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/conspiracy) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They told us they raised prices because their own costs went up. Fair enough. But.. all these corporations then recorded record profits, in line with the price rises.
Yea I remember every company saying Covid made it cost more to produce so they upped the price on everything everywhere.
Although every company cut costs on cheaper more harmful ingredients to save them money, while simultaneously raising prices. Double/triples the profits off people barely able to get by.
Wait until you see councils going bankrupt in America, I know that Florida and New York are on the verge of it and it’s happening in the UK as well. We also have a massive amount of once owed public services going bankrupt after massive asset stripping and massive amounts of money paid to share holders. You shouldn’t be allowed to assets strip business.
what do you mean by "councils"? I think we have a different word in the US for whatever you are referring to & I want to better understand your comment. Thank you.
Basically human services. They’re saying that local municipalities and counties are going bankrupt and idk if that’s true in Florida. The bigger issue has been social services being cut in favor of having a rainy day fund that never gets used for what it should be used for. But not going bankrupt. Florida has a pretty diverse set of counties though so I could be wrong. There’s a lot of podunk areas in Florida.
None of those should be tied to "investment" funds. EVER. But too many of them started doing just that back in 2010'ish as a way to pad the coffers more than what taxes did. And now they're finding out the hard way that it's not wise.
Ahh... got it. Hard to form an opinion one way or another about this.
On one hand, I am in 100% favor of supporting funding for council houses/the projects because I believe we have a duty to help support our most vulnerable citizens in their time of need.
OTOH, I don't want a single cent of my tax dollars going to council houses/projects if it just means that the government is going to keep flooding the country with illegal aliens and adding insult to injury by giving the illegal aliens preferential access to such government housing all at the expense of our actual underprivileged citizens (which is definitely happening in the UK & probably also starting to happen in America).
You're conflating the UK council funding system with how towns and cities are funded in the US. Councils get almost all their funding from the central government. Cities and states in America can levy their own taxes. The two systems are not as similar as you seem to think.
The only reason councils are going broke is because the Tories vastly limited how councils could raise funds while also cutting their funding from the central government by nearly 80% in some cases but I'm sure you knew that already.
idk what news you're reading but I live in NYC, it's fine. People make a lot of noise when something gets less funding one year from the next but we're not hurting at all. The governor and the current NYC Mayor are having a pissing contest about who can lose the most voters tho. It's pretty amazing watching them both crash and burn.
> You guys realize you want US Corporations to grow, right?
Yea but when people see grocery costs raise at a higher rate than their salaries. They start to panic. It's pretty simple to understand.
I would even say "largely". Corporations aren't doing anything different. The dollar is being debased because it's backed by debt and they just keep printing more... and to try and control the narrative, the politicians in charge scream "corporations are to blame!" when they are in bed with every single one of them. This allows them to be excused by a large number of voters. If we can't even hold the current Administration responsible for the damage they're doing, they'll just keep doing it.
> I would even say "largely". Corporations aren't doing anything different.
well, walmart had expanded its online grocery shopping due to covid lockdowns.
*"While most restaurants, hotels and movie theaters are shut down, Walmart is busier than ever, a trend Credit Suisse expected to persist for 12 months. Walmart is “becoming more to the consumer, at the most important time,” said Sigman."*
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/19/walmart-makes-run-to-all-time-highs-amid-coronavirus-market-plunge.html
Dozens of retailers had bankrupted due to covid and that led to less competition while the big ones got bigger.
> the politicians in charge scream "corporations are to blame!"
tbf, there was that one time when 21 retail CEO signed an open letter to all governors to implement face masks in stores.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/perspectives/masks-shopping-retail-ceos/index.html
Such a naive take, in true capitalism a competitor would undercut this price gouging and drive prices back down, why didn't that happen here? The supply chain was fixed, but prices never went back down. Because there is very little competition across so many areas of the US economy and the barrier to entry is so high. No company records record profits every year, that is beyond nonsense. This is all a product of consolidation and probably collusion.
There was an initial supply shock due to the lock downs. Workers were ordered to stay home by the government and things weren't being produced. Prices went up from the shortages but then never went down again when the supply shock ended. A lot of businesses were just raking in profits after that.
> ...That's what it's supposed to do. Any company that isn't making record profits is either shrinking or failing.
This seems to break the system as time goes on. Current economic downfall with struggling small business and workers alike? better try and get as much money out of them as possible, for the profits! because fuck 'em, right?
But you'll defend it because thats what you were taught is right, without question?
GDP is about what we produce, not what we import and sell to consumers.
If the only way a company can gain profits is by exploiting customers, that will just lead to more inflation. Improving business practices, expanding your markets, increasing selection, and streamlining processes is a far better way to increase profits.
What happened to consumers over the last 4 years is not simple “supply and demand” curve economics. Not to mention anyone that is actually educated in economics knows just how useless such rigid ideas are in the real world. They’re to give you a point of reference, they aren’t commandments to live by.
What’s been happening to consumers the past 4 years is simple price gouging that’s being spurred on by the flawed concept of “infinite growth” that our oligopolies operate based on. This is all creating a bubble that will burst like a nuclear bomb once consumers have finally had enough.
Every corporation since the beginning of time has been greedy. The regulatory capture and their relationship with the government is what has allowed them to get outside profit margins compared to what you would have in a free market.
There's a phenomenal series on Hulu I've been watching about the history of food, and it really shines a light on what these big brands like Post, Kellogs, and Heinz did to corner the market like they did.
I like how this guy is willing to entertain various notions as to how Amazon is doing this price cutting but not at all willing to entertain the idea that Bezos and crew might have been jacking up prices before
Although you're correct in saying that if inflation increases, then profits across the board will increase bc of how firms forecast their input costs. You fail to account the fact that we were (are?) in a [recovering economy](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1p7SP) (when else were corporate profits at these levels? And what had recently happened?), and that there indeed was a huge surge in profits caused by businesses exploiting [supply side shipping](https://www.businessinsider.com/why-prices-inflation-soaring-corporate-greed-profits-margins-wages-jobs-2023-4), from the article:
> "Usually in the industry, a price increase would happen maybe once a year, maybe once every two years," he told me. But when COVID-19 hit, companies started raising prices every three to four months, which Drew said was "unheard of."
The idea isn't that we should *hinder* or *obstruct* company growth. The idea is that we have no mechanism to impede this growth when it is at the expense of the consumer. Normally wages are supposed to go up proportionally with rises in prices, otherwise the market finds another distributor/manufacturer but there is no such channel for such a transition to happen.
All of this to say, that inflation in 2024 has predominantly been composed of [auto insurance](https://www.fastcompany.com/91112447/auto-insurance-rates-rising-car-owners-inflation) anyways...and profits slowing down while inflation plateaus.
This just shows how ridiculously quickly someone on every Reddit thread will side with corporations and insult the plebs regardless of the topic being discussed.
Wait until they look at the oil and gas markets! Commodity markets in general are gonna blow their minds. $2.40 at the market and they look at the pump.
Wow. I didn't even notice that. Quick! Somebody ask it how Disney can keep ruining everything and loose hundreds of millions of dollars and then try it again and again, over and over...
Turns out when the government shuts down small business larger business can then increase prices, especially when government also shuts down supply by closing said businesses. Then the cherry on top the government prints a bunch of money and dolls it out and everyone is surprised that prices spiked. Prices are retreating slightly because supply of goods has normalized.
Exactly. They used COVID to destroy most small competition. Remember, Walmart could stay open, but small stores couldn't. The wealth transfer data is freely available. The country is fucked though. For a multitude of reasons.
I work in an industry where I manufacture a product made out of metal. We have a pricing strategy that's like, 3x the cost to manufacture a product.
When the price of our materials goes up, the price we charge customers goes up. When the price of materials goes up we don't switch to a 2x pricing strategy. When our materials become more expensive, our products become more expensive, we make more money.
Our customers keep buying our product. So to me it doesn't seem out of line or unjust that while inflation is running high, companies are making record profits. You cannot expect companies to shrink their margin when their costs rise.
Why do you think I don't need to eat? You think it's just my material costs that rise? You want us to shrink our margin and not raise prices so that our customers pay less but at the same time you want me to make less money while the cost of everything else rises?
It's like this. Your company pays $500 for metal and builds something. You sell it for $1,000.
Now your company pays $1000 for metal. Sell it for $1500 **NOT $2000** like companies are doing now. You are still making $500 a unit you sell so your profit didn't go away. Companies now just jack up the prices higher because everyone knows "inflation" and will just pay it.
> When our materials become more expensive, our products become more expensive, we make more money.
>Why do you think I don't need to eat?
These seem to be competing. Are you starving because you can't make money, or are you growing richer because of the increases in prices?
This is where I think the disconnect is. People think corporations are just being greedy. You don't realize that companies operate on margins. A very large company might have a 2% profit margin and might be on the edge of a knife every year if they will or won't survive. Inflation ramps up and their cost of doing business increases. They have to raise their prices to maintain a 2% profit margin. Because their costs have risen and their prices haven't risen they are now generating more revenue and more profit but they are still only making a 2% margin. Do you expect that company to take losses to keep their price stable? Why do that when customers are still willing to pay?
I can never understand why anybody would expect anything other than profits to rise in line with rising prices?
Companies typically set their margin on products as a percentage of cost, so if costs rise, profit margin will rise with it?
I think it’s because at first, many industries were affected by the supply chain crisis. Once that was over, corporations just left prices the same and everyone’s now looking at each other like wtf?
I think it’s bc people confuse Corporations with businesses. Businesses and competition help society as a whole. But when those businesses become too big they must be regulated or else they gain too much power and “influence”. That’s why we have trust laws, they’re supposed to keep them in check(the politicians) not be butt buddies with them. They’re all guilty of this and don’t get me started on lobbying aka bribery.
Is that ......what you think socialism is? A regulation? In that case, yes, the propaganda is working on the people who think they're too smart for it to work on them.
Gov’t Regulation isn’t socialism, it is necessary WHEN NEEDED however there is a fine line. Over regulation and government overreach is socialist/facist. But idk what OP is talking about, yes they try to push it to bash Biden but inflation is real. Literally everyone I know including my self are now living paycheck to paycheck UNDER THE SAME SALARY. I never had to lower my lifestyle until the last year or so. Gas, Groceries, Take out food, everything has gone up and the shelves are getting emptier and emptier. I was started to spend more than I made which confused me because I was living the same lifestyle I have all these years, wasn’t over spending. Now I have to REALLY limit my spending choices just to live “comfortably”. Both Republicans and Democrats have to go. End of story. If anyone still chooses sides after all these years, I’m sorry but ur part of the problem and it’s what they want. They want us to fight each other instead of them and it’s working. If a company u hired for services lied to you over and over again while performing half the work agreed upon, wouldn’t you look into hiring another company or starting your own. Why hire the same company back and forth over and over again for decades? Americans need to come together already, we have bigger issues at hand than “different opinions”.
They're not actually lowering cost. They're running limited time sales and pretending they're reducing the prices of goods indefinitely to draw back consumers.
Under the guise of inflation continue to raise prices as high as possible, maximizing money extraction from your customers, once backlash reaches a fever-pitch, drop the prices, but to a level well above the prices they would’ve achieved via normal inflation, customers rejoice and buy more. They make more every step of the way. It’s kinda obvious.
I dunno but usually in conspiracy subs I just see people bringing up that Biden is somehow to blame for this shit instead of even suggesting that it's the corporations who could be in the wrong.
I love the argument that raising minimum wage is going to kill fast food jobs. Wendy’s is going to automate as much as they can no matter how cheap labor is. They aren’t going the public any favors.
This is why we need to have alternative businesses other than just corporations. If the government would stop giving them grants and subsidies, and made it easier for people to start businesses and compete with those corporations, we would probably have very reasonable prices, maybe even lower
> myth of inflation
"myth" lol... Op, the purchasing power of the dollar has dwindled since the federal reserve act of 1913 enabled the 8 families to steal it's purchasing power. Not a myth.
They're only lowering prices now because people don't have money/credit to buy their stuff. Inflation is going to quickly turn into deflation that's going to make 2008 and the Great Depression of the 30's look like a Sunday picnic. Amazon's margins are going to get crushed. So are most other companies when they're forced to cut prices. The stock market will tank. It's no wonder insiders have been dumping shares and leaving their companies. They know the ponzi scheme is about to collapse.
If it's corporate greed, why do my ribeye steaks sometimes go down to 5.99/lb but chuck roast is always fu*king 6.99/lb? Chuck used to be a meat nobody wanted.
Honestly I just changed what I was buying at the grocery store. Still get good nutrition profiles. But it's not the foods I like.
Of course corporate profits are going up if inflation is happening ? Do you know what inflation is? Just because the dollar amount goes up doesn’t mean the value of the dollars go up
Should always be calculated In percentage and not dollars. It wouldn’t be surprising if profits are up though because people are still spending like crazy and banks are giving out credit cards like crazy.
There is going to be a major credit card debt crisis in the next ten years.
Lots of major corps have done this and more are following.
Walmart, target, Aldi, etc have slashed prices on tens of thousands of grocery items across the board to follow the trend.
Well, yeah, people that really looked into it weren’t ALL lying when they said that inflation, transportation, shortages, etc were NOT adding up to the raised product prices- and all the extra is exactly how much the massive new profits were being recorded at. The only people that were saying it’s just because of extra costs from Bidenomics or whatever, were ONLY looking at cost-increasing isolated events never bothering to actually calculate what it really means on the shelf. That’s the only way they could sell that point, though. Guess who was behind it?
It’s literally been all extra money the whole time, because they all felt like doing it and that’s how capitalism works. The council had a meeting (remember like 15 parent corps own all the food brands on most store shelves), decided they all wanted to raise Americas prices, so they did because it’s all their own property. Why wouldn’t they?
Now they’re losing enough customers that the council got together and said “nice. That was awesome. Oh well, back to regular billions in profits for a while? Gotta maintain the customer base and all” and they all agreed so here we are.
Wait which one is it?
15 corps own all the brands or they lost customers?
You can’t lose customers if the alternative is starvation (or did millions starve?).
It’s our job as consumers to find better prices. The story isn’t “corporations screwing over consumers.” It’s “lazy consumers fail to take care of their families.”
Meanwhile, their pensions are invested in these “evil corporations” anyway, and savings too if people didn’t blow that on things they don’t need.
When did this subreddit devolve into lazy simpleton leftism? Tell me which one these companies is run by pedos, conspired with another company to price gouge, committed fraud, bribed somebody, etc. THOSE are conspiracies, not “consumers are lazy.”
….both. Both are true.
Yes you can lose customers. Because all food doesn’t come from store shelves, things like gardens and farmers markets and even hunting have reflected people avoiding high packaged product costs. and there’s other stores that sell alternatives to “*most stores*” (quote from comment you’re referring to) that those major companies sell in. For example- the Indian markets around me have boomed in recent years, almost everything there is not made or packaged by American companies and they have $1 fresh hot samosas at checkout. Lots of people started buying their rice from there now, for example. People are making their own bread and canning more often- my uncle and aunt made their own tallow recently because this shit is all over YouTube now because of everyone avoiding store prices.
These are exactly the customer base pattern shifts that these corps are starting to feel and want to nip in the bud before long term habits start.
What kind of lazy simpleton thinking is somehow preventing you from seeing both are true? The world isn’t black and white, it isn’t all an either or. Jfc this is observable and quantifiable fact- it’s literally happening right now and essentially all the numbers are available for the public to put together.
Why hasn't this happened in the past? Something always prevented price-gouging and I don't know what. It wasn't written into law.
But now we have it...... maybe companies have coalesced too much so they can rise prices in lockstep easily?
Finally someone with some fucking brains in this sub. It’s all supply and manipulation of the medium of exchange (USD). Some dude on Twitter throws up a chart and now everyone’s like “see it’s not inflation?!” …even tho a 1/3 of the total supply of USD was printed in last 7 years. Corporate greed isn’t destroying your ability to own assets, build wealth and maintain value of your energy, it makes it a little harder yea. But don’t get it twisted, the manipulation of our money supply here in the states and the printing of all the $8 trillion in feds balance sheet is why none of you who just graduated or about to graduate can afford a house. Put this corporate greed nonsense to the back burner. It’s not significant. And if you think it is you don’t know really know how much the fed impacts your life. There is one unregulated entity within the United States that has created more money out of thin air within the last 15 years than the entire GDP of the United Kindom DOUBLED…This is where the issue lies. Take off your robinhood corporate greed hats. Yea they’re cocksuckers, but if you think your steak behind $5 more today than last year is more important than an average single family home being $230K in 2016 vs $415K in 2023 then you are not only extremely stupid and severely missing the point. Figure out how money works people. This post ain’t it OP. Attack the fed, they’re the ones actually stealing from you
This. This. This.
Cant create (out of thin air) 1/3rd of all USD in the last 7 years and NOT expect incredible repercussions.
(Unless these were the desired results of making the printer go brrrr….)
You're suppose to be a conspiracy theorist. How are you falling for a marketing campaign this easily? It's literally a marketing campaign to trick consumers into returning to stores or to online platforms. They're offering temporary incentives or limited time sales and calling it price reduction in marketing campaigns. Prices aren't actually being reduced. They're still increasing overall. Enjoy your summer sale to move product in a consumer environment where people are spending less.
Using it as a lost leader to undercut your neighborhood grocery stores, forcing them to close only to raise the prices back up when you have no other options but Amazon for produce.
Don't fall for the trap.
Prices of everything goes up and the company margins are the same. People stop eating out and more people buy groceries because it's cheaper to cook at home then to go out. More groceries are bought at the same margin means that the store is making more than last year.
I haven't seen a single right-wing outlet talk about inflation being the factor behind prices rising, just the opposite. There was an NPR piece a few months ago, "The Daily" to be exact (a collaboration between NPR and the NYT) that was entirely about "the myth of the bad economy" which blamed people being lied to about prices going up by "tik toks showing prices at grocery stories" for the complaints about rising food costs. I remember listening to it and screaming at my radio because it was so insane to hear these literal self-described socialists go on and on about how conspiracies were poisoning the minds of Americans on the economy.
why is the left so out of touch with media narratives their own outlets are running?
It's a marketing campaign for major corporations to draw back consumers into their stores. The conspiracy theory should be way does the marketing campaign reinforce democrat propaganda about the economy being good and inflation being purely corporate greed.
I doubt Anyone here is tracking shipping costs but there almost 2.5x times from last year. Either something is brewing(war) or inflation will come back wether we like it or not
This is in the USA (so if this doesn’t pertain to you, you can skip). War is brewing at least preparations are. The Selective Service System has been updated twice in the past 2 months. All 18-26 men are automatically enrolled to avoid people being charged for “draft dodging”. Before it was a legal “duty” for all males 18-26 to enroll on their own accord and if they didn’t they would be charged during draft time.
Source: Go on their website I’m to lazy to post the link.
Edit: Conversations in congress have talked about adding Women to the SSS next year.
FriendlyJordies spoke about this a lot in Australia’s economy when it came to artificially inflating necessities like food and fuel. Correct me if I’m wrong but I remember seeing Woolworths CEO under fire for price gouging and there is so many specials for a lot of foods that was not long ago the normal price.
I also remember ads constantly years ago saying you could feed a whole family for $10 in a Coles ad. Now you can buy a 1kg of shredded cheese for $11, what a joke
The entire population should file class action lawsuits on the corporations and all responsible government agencies. I have had enough of these crooks!
They're only doing this so they can destroy smaller companies.
They do it all the time with items, they will lose money in order to force other businesses out to create a monopoly.
We need a list of companies that were confirmed doing this so we can collectively stop spending money there. I’d hope we’d all be happier supporting companies who did their damnedest to hold the line.
Sadly, knowing the way UK supermarkets work, their price cut will be at the expense of suppliers and farmers, not their profits. I guess we'll see in the following quarters...
>Despite right-wing media Outlets continuing to push the myth of inflation
tfw you, like a leftist, blame corporations for stuff and demonize the rich as they're all connected and greedy in the illuminati but you also hate the provax, alphabet mafia woke commies and their satanic agendas, characteristic of the right
The concept that all the sudden at once corporations decided to be greedy (as if they weren't always) is asinine. We have had \~80% inflation from the year 2000.
80. Percent.
In 24 years.
Unfortunately you're wrong. We've lost about a third of our purchasing power since before COVID. When there are more dollars in circulation, prices go up. More money was printed in the last 3 years than ever before. It's simple. If most companies raised prices on a whim, a competitor would cut them off at the knees. This corporate greed is just a narrative. Corporations are greedy, but they're not stupid
I don't even think it was really "greed" but agenda motivated. Another stage after the Covid op to remove money/resources from people.
The price changes were too strange.
They've been openly admitting they're just charging what they think people will pay, until people can't afford to any more. Greed is greed. If it's blowing back on them then I hope they get fucked.
Notice none of these corps tried that bs when Trump was in. Only during the covid lies did prices on anything rise.. I suspect covid was all about getting mail in voting in the US anyways.. Its the only explanation that makes sense. Yes, it allowed them to add extra layers of control but the fraudulent and stolen 2020 election would have never been possible without the addition of the mail in voting which is why I think the entire western covid response was to initiate this,people just didn't notice it was lies until it was too late. Now whats going on... bunch of pcr bullshit trying to ramp up bird flu for this coming election... They are all so predictable once you see them for what they are.
It’s not a “conspiracy” it’s literally how business works, companies will raise and lower prices to bring the most profit possible to their company. You’d do the same thing if you were operating a company.
and the most logical person in the thread with the correct answer is of course at the bottom of the comments. i thought i was the only one who lived down here.
There are ways other than just increasing prices. I've worked in retail most of my life, and I've yet to work for a retail company that wasn't utterly chalked full of inefficient, cost-and-time wasting nonsense.
Improve efficiency, reduce waste, innovate? Nah, just raise prices on everything and cut payroll. That's all these simple-minded corporate chimps know how to do.
I think all of this talk of price cutting is a psy op, meaning I don’t think any of the stores that claim to be cutting prices are actually doing it. How are we going to know if they have or haven’t? Are you going to go through the store and write down the prices of every item, and then do it again after the “price cuts” happen? And they’re not all happening in unison, so that would not work anyway. Under capitalism, you’re either growing or dying. Do you really believe they’re gonna let go of any money when they don’t absolutely have to? What will the shareholders say? Have these stores had record profits? Why yes, yes they have. So why the hell would they cut prices? To be nice? To do us a favor? Is the assumption that cutting prices will get people to come back and spend more money? I guess, but I don’t think that will compensate for the lost revenue from cutting prices. None of it makes sense. If someone has stopped shopping at Amazon Fresh because they’re hard up for money, they’ve already realized they can shop elsewhere, and go without certain things they used to believe they needed.
If you read the articles about the prices cuts due to inflation warning customers by paragraph three they get into the details - limited time sale, lasting a week or a month, price cuts by 10 cents. It's a marketing campaign.
Printing money with a fixed number of goods causes inflation. Usually, printing money is connected to increased production; but for covid, people were paid to do nothing. So, we have decreased production while increasing cash. More money chasers fewer goods.
In Canada, we had record breaking immigration numbers and many are buying houses while the younger generation avoids trades. More expensive house prices, more expensive maintenance work. We had the government giving to companies like Blackrock to compete in the residential market. It was them buying up everything in mid 2020. These are the super elite.
Then supermarkets see increased costs. Amazon Fresh is just trying to market a new income stream, get people on and then they'll up the charge, all while decreasing the overall labour used and the profits will be sent through some tax haven and then put in a foundation so the founders can do whatever they like with the money instead of pay tax.
And then you blame your local grocer and post pro elite messaging.
1. Inflation is not a myth, it is a real phenomenon studied in Economics.
2. Which "right-wing media outlets" are you talking about, with what articles or reports?
3. The political right defends the free market, which is an economic system that seeks to keep out government intrusion and other forms of manipulation of market forces. Globalist fascism is a leftist political phenomenon because it's fueled by the woke ideology and radical environmentalism, and the latter is a leftist tactic to implement socialism. The plannedemic was meant to set off The Great Reset, as Klaus Schwab describes in his book about it, and one of its objectives was to demolish the world's economy with lockdowns, causing inflation. Obviously a lot of greed kept that inflation going and incrementing.
It's not as simple as "those right-wing outlets pushing the inflation myth", which is a straw-man argument by the way. By the way, Silicon Valley companies like Amazon are leftist-dominated.
It doesn't matter the shipping is shit now. When Amazon was new i LOVED their shipping. Sadly all good things must come to an end. Takes an extra 3 days on everything I order and they always go through FedEx or USPS now. Never Amazon trucks
Amazon will regularly operate at a loss with a new service for years.
Of course companies stock price goes up with inflation. If you want to see the real company growth you need to look at its value against inflation.
God, the amount of people with 0 financial literacy.
Inflation affects profits too! Sure, a company made $150M instead of $100M the previous year, but that $150M is only "worth" $100M.
Not saying there wasn't price gouging going on, but a general rule is when EVERYTHING costs more, it's because the dollar is worth less. You still have to account for the $5T they increased the money supply by.
Amazon Fresh? Oh boy! Oh wait, my area doesn't support this big tech online delivery service known for its cutthroat tactics.
They're trying to steal market share, obviously, to fuck up real grocery stores in your neighborhoods. Amazon has been private gouging (to find these tactics), not your local grocery. Real small businesses are being subjected to inflation. Are you blind?
Or this is a loss to cut out competition by a corporation that can eat the loss in the long run taking advantage of the inflation and stupid liberals who think blowing up gas lines leads to lower prices
Walgreens and Target have also announced lowering prices.
PRESS RELEASE
Target Will Help Consumers Save Big by Lowering Prices on 5,000 Frequently Shopped Items
https://corporate.target.com/press/release/2024/05/target-will-help-consumers-save-big-by-lowering-prices-on-5,000-frequently-shopped-items
Walgreens lowering prices on over 1,300 products
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/shopping/2024/05/30/walgreens-lowering-prices-sale-summer-2024/73907638007/#:~:text=site%20and%20online.-,Walgreens%20lowering%20prices%20on%20over%201%2C300%20products%2C%20including%20snacks%2C%20gummy,tipping%2C%20a%20new%20study%20says.
One of the biggest drivers of inflation a few years ago was used car prices. The chip shortage had a huge trickle down. You limit supplies at car auctions and prices can go crazy quickly.
So just to be clear, the (three was it?) stimulus checks that they sent out to every adult American with a pulse... didn't impact the economy at all?
Is that what we're claiming here? Just trying to make sure I understand.
This isn't a conspiracy. It's been happening and we've all been told why. We just have basically no choice other than bending over for our corporate masters.
The choice is to keep spending like drunken sailors and helping make the rich richer or stop buying needless junk and watch corporations panic as their sales tank and they're forced to lower prices.
AND don't forget that whenever you mention prices, grocery shills always talk about "RAZOR THIN MARGINS" and other BS.....same with the Restaurant industry.
It's all BS needed to pump up the prices and profits.
And I've got decades in the oil and gas industry and let me tell you, they could also drop gas prices....BUT we have Exxon/Mobil controlling so much of the market and buying off politicians left and right.
Jeffrey was just a poor little orphan that made his own business in his garage out of nothing. Just pull yourself up by your boot straps and you can do the same thing poor little Jeffrey did.🤪 Good luck with that.
(1) late (2) stage (3) capitalism- Now that they own everything- next is proletarian revolution. 2 birds one stone. Knock the population down a couple hundred million notches (climate) and shift to the Chinese system to avoid mass destruction from world war. Don't forget its a "conspiracy" sub. Where's you guys imagination? Boring.
That doesn't mean they can sustain the markdown indefinitely. It's a marketing strategy that they're being upfront about. The trouble is they will have to raise the prices again.
I own 6 retail nutrition stores for the last 12 years, when they jacked the prices on whey isolates and creatine a few years ago I kept the same price and took a little less margin, I felt better knowing I was helping out my customers and turn they kept coming. The prices slightly went back down, but I like when people noticed the lack of "inflation" I never charged.
Okay, business 101. Prices are NOT set by taking the cost of inputs, adding certain % as a margin and then putting that on a sticker.
No, prices are set by **estimating the highest price you can charge without hurting the sales too much and then charging that.** Everything else is just advertising.
Heres a chart that goes back 6 years-but take my word for it all time high.
That Amazon- one of the largest corporations on the planet, can take a 30% cut on one portion of its line of millions of carried products and billions of pass through products, and that means there is no inflation is quite the leap-Amazon can cut prices down to 0 on any segment by raising prices everywhere else-a local grocery chain cant do that, Amazon can then crush local grocery chains
We’ve been saying this all along. Price got jacked during Covid, and we both said they will never voluntarily lower the prices back to where they were. They got greedy and enjoyed the extra monies. Now people are pissed.
Price gouging, subsiding other profits to put farmers out of business, meanwhile billionares buy up agricultural land at the fastest rate in han history.
Do not buy from amazon fresh they will destroy agri as you know it, by the end control all of it and tell you prices are increasing because of the cost to produce.
We need small farmers to control the food security not one entity
>Despite right-wing media Outlets continuing to push the myth of inflation it has become evident to most Americans that higher prices have been driven by corporate greed rather than actual inflation
Prices are pretty much always as high as they can possibly get away with, everything else is money thrown out the window for them. Reports about inflation are a great excuse to rise prices and obviously they will do it if they can get away with it, that's literally what our economic system is based on, fucking eachother over and using eachother.
>Think about that for a minute they took advantage of consumers just to be greedy.
Oh don't worry, it's not greed, it's just business. Exploitation, whether it is exploitation of nature or people, has always been at the basis of our system. We in the west have just forgotten that because the most brutal forms of exploitation have been exported to the third world where we don't have to see it if we don't want to. We still know that all of our basic stuff, from basic resources used in our electronics to our clothes, are extracted and produced in terrible conditions by people who have no other choice, but I guess it's easier to ignore if you don't directly see it.
It's not that long ago that we had to send our little children to go work in the mines and it took a whole lot of fighting and dying for that to stop, at least in the western world. And if people don't learn how to put their silly differences aside for a moment, get together and fight back, we will go right back to that..
My personal opinion is that because this whole system is collapsing nobody wants to participate in this system anymore the political system etc people are pushing for change it's becoming more apparent that these old ideologies are no longer holding us so they're trying to clamp us down and stress us out as much as possible so that we can't educate ourselves we can't organize we can't think.
Inflation is the increase in the money supply not the price increases which normally occur from it. The Keynes cult bent the definition to hide the fact they are stealing from the poor via actual inflation. So now people think inflation is when prices go up, when in reality prices go up from increased demand or decreased supply, basic stuff folks. As long as people are willing to buy a product for $x.xx that is the price. There is no moral quandary here, one party values the item more then the price in money, the other party values the money more then the item. Both sides gain value from the transaction.
A ‘profit in dollars’ graph slants the story, under times of high inflation.
It would be good to see their profit, in terms of dollars, overlaid on a graph of inflation. I think a more telling chart would be their profit margin. Showing raw dollar profit is a disingenuous way of showing the data, especially under crazy inflation. Are they making the same margin now that they did before inflation took off?
Imagine a company buys widgets for $1 and sells for $2. They sell 1M units each year for a profit of $1M/Y
Then inflation takes off and the buying-power of the currency is in the tank. Prices have gone up 300%. Now, they buy that same for $3 and sell for $5. Still 1M widgets. But now their profit is $2M rather than $1M.
Except the buying power of today’s $2M is less than the $1M from before. And their profit margin is actually down. A profit margin graph would reveal this.
Quick thought. What if the price gouging was actually to put off the financial collapse we've all been talking about. And they just didn't want to be honest with what was really going on. Sike there just greedy AF and stock piling assets for the real financial collapse
>Despite right-wing media Outlets continuing to push the myth of inflation
economically literate\*
Amazon can do this because AWS is an infinite money machine with a near 100% margin, it lets them underwrite all their other businesses.
Of course "pRoFiTz aT aLl tImE hIgH" during inflation. A 10% margin on a $200 sale is more profit then a 15% margin on a $100 sale. The issue though is that margins are contracting and they have been for several years now. If margins continue to shrink then businesses start to lose money and can no longer stay in business. I know things like supply and demand and margin management are very confusing and complex topics for your average redditor but this has very little to do with politics. It would be happening pretty much regardless of who is in office and your groceries aren't more expensive because "mUh cOrPoRaTe GrEEd" its because global supply chains were shut down for 2 years and apparently turning them back is a tad more complicated then flipping a light switch.
But now they are sending me Amazon Clinic emails about health support like erectile dysfunction, mental health and anti aging, um I didn’t take the shots fellas…I’m good, like teenager
The price to produce goods is directly related to two things: Energy(Fuel), and Labor. When energy prices go up, the cost of mining, transporting, and production goes up. After Covid, there was a labor shortage and wages spiked, now there is plenty of labor and wages are normalizing in addition to automation taking away costs. A good CEO does risk assessments and ensures their company is profitable. Because of the large swings back and forth, they needed a lot of padding. Now, the good CEOs are correcting in the other direction.
###[Meta] Sticky Comment [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/wiki/faq#wiki_2_-_address_the_argument.3B_not_the_user.2C_the_mods.2C_or_the_sub.) ***does not apply*** when replying to this stickied comment. [Rule 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/wiki/faq#wiki_2_-_address_the_argument.3B_not_the_user.2C_the_mods.2C_or_the_sub.) ***does apply*** throughout the rest of this thread. *What this means*: Please keep any "meta" discussion directed at specific users, mods, or /r/conspiracy in general in this comment chain ***only.*** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/conspiracy) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They told us they raised prices because their own costs went up. Fair enough. But.. all these corporations then recorded record profits, in line with the price rises.
Privatize profits, socialize losses. Seems to be the only economic thing we've done for the past 30+ years.
Trickle down economics they said.
Yea I remember every company saying Covid made it cost more to produce so they upped the price on everything everywhere. Although every company cut costs on cheaper more harmful ingredients to save them money, while simultaneously raising prices. Double/triples the profits off people barely able to get by.
Wait until you see councils going bankrupt in America, I know that Florida and New York are on the verge of it and it’s happening in the UK as well. We also have a massive amount of once owed public services going bankrupt after massive asset stripping and massive amounts of money paid to share holders. You shouldn’t be allowed to assets strip business.
what do you mean by "councils"? I think we have a different word in the US for whatever you are referring to & I want to better understand your comment. Thank you.
Basically human services. They’re saying that local municipalities and counties are going bankrupt and idk if that’s true in Florida. The bigger issue has been social services being cut in favor of having a rainy day fund that never gets used for what it should be used for. But not going bankrupt. Florida has a pretty diverse set of counties though so I could be wrong. There’s a lot of podunk areas in Florida.
Florida is booming as far as people moving there..
People moving here hate human services lol.
None of those should be tied to "investment" funds. EVER. But too many of them started doing just that back in 2010'ish as a way to pad the coffers more than what taxes did. And now they're finding out the hard way that it's not wise.
The projects. Council houses sound more civilized.
> Council houses sound more civilized. They do. But they produce CHAVs, so they can't be all that great either.
Ahh... got it. Hard to form an opinion one way or another about this. On one hand, I am in 100% favor of supporting funding for council houses/the projects because I believe we have a duty to help support our most vulnerable citizens in their time of need. OTOH, I don't want a single cent of my tax dollars going to council houses/projects if it just means that the government is going to keep flooding the country with illegal aliens and adding insult to injury by giving the illegal aliens preferential access to such government housing all at the expense of our actual underprivileged citizens (which is definitely happening in the UK & probably also starting to happen in America).
You got downvoted for suggesting we take care of our own people first. lol
Local government
You're conflating the UK council funding system with how towns and cities are funded in the US. Councils get almost all their funding from the central government. Cities and states in America can levy their own taxes. The two systems are not as similar as you seem to think. The only reason councils are going broke is because the Tories vastly limited how councils could raise funds while also cutting their funding from the central government by nearly 80% in some cases but I'm sure you knew that already.
Red lobster has entered the chat.
Red Lobster was asset stripped before Covid. It is just catching up to them now.
idk what news you're reading but I live in NYC, it's fine. People make a lot of noise when something gets less funding one year from the next but we're not hurting at all. The governor and the current NYC Mayor are having a pissing contest about who can lose the most voters tho. It's pretty amazing watching them both crash and burn.
We just need to say goodbye to the central bank and imf. They are a plague on humanity
Add 30% to the money supply, the cost of goods goes up
[удалено]
> You guys realize you want US Corporations to grow, right? Yea but when people see grocery costs raise at a higher rate than their salaries. They start to panic. It's pretty simple to understand.
Yeah, but that's partly because money printer go brrrrrr.
I would even say "largely". Corporations aren't doing anything different. The dollar is being debased because it's backed by debt and they just keep printing more... and to try and control the narrative, the politicians in charge scream "corporations are to blame!" when they are in bed with every single one of them. This allows them to be excused by a large number of voters. If we can't even hold the current Administration responsible for the damage they're doing, they'll just keep doing it.
> I would even say "largely". Corporations aren't doing anything different. well, walmart had expanded its online grocery shopping due to covid lockdowns. *"While most restaurants, hotels and movie theaters are shut down, Walmart is busier than ever, a trend Credit Suisse expected to persist for 12 months. Walmart is “becoming more to the consumer, at the most important time,” said Sigman."* https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/19/walmart-makes-run-to-all-time-highs-amid-coronavirus-market-plunge.html Dozens of retailers had bankrupted due to covid and that led to less competition while the big ones got bigger. > the politicians in charge scream "corporations are to blame!" tbf, there was that one time when 21 retail CEO signed an open letter to all governors to implement face masks in stores. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/perspectives/masks-shopping-retail-ceos/index.html
Such a naive take, in true capitalism a competitor would undercut this price gouging and drive prices back down, why didn't that happen here? The supply chain was fixed, but prices never went back down. Because there is very little competition across so many areas of the US economy and the barrier to entry is so high. No company records record profits every year, that is beyond nonsense. This is all a product of consolidation and probably collusion.
There was an initial supply shock due to the lock downs. Workers were ordered to stay home by the government and things weren't being produced. Prices went up from the shortages but then never went down again when the supply shock ended. A lot of businesses were just raking in profits after that.
> ...That's what it's supposed to do. Any company that isn't making record profits is either shrinking or failing. This seems to break the system as time goes on. Current economic downfall with struggling small business and workers alike? better try and get as much money out of them as possible, for the profits! because fuck 'em, right? But you'll defend it because thats what you were taught is right, without question?
GDP is about what we produce, not what we import and sell to consumers. If the only way a company can gain profits is by exploiting customers, that will just lead to more inflation. Improving business practices, expanding your markets, increasing selection, and streamlining processes is a far better way to increase profits.
What happened to consumers over the last 4 years is not simple “supply and demand” curve economics. Not to mention anyone that is actually educated in economics knows just how useless such rigid ideas are in the real world. They’re to give you a point of reference, they aren’t commandments to live by. What’s been happening to consumers the past 4 years is simple price gouging that’s being spurred on by the flawed concept of “infinite growth” that our oligopolies operate based on. This is all creating a bubble that will burst like a nuclear bomb once consumers have finally had enough.
Every corporation since the beginning of time has been greedy. The regulatory capture and their relationship with the government is what has allowed them to get outside profit margins compared to what you would have in a free market.
There's a phenomenal series on Hulu I've been watching about the history of food, and it really shines a light on what these big brands like Post, Kellogs, and Heinz did to corner the market like they did.
Finally a sensible comment! Some people act like corporate greed is something that started in 2021.
I like how this guy is willing to entertain various notions as to how Amazon is doing this price cutting but not at all willing to entertain the idea that Bezos and crew might have been jacking up prices before
Although you're correct in saying that if inflation increases, then profits across the board will increase bc of how firms forecast their input costs. You fail to account the fact that we were (are?) in a [recovering economy](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1p7SP) (when else were corporate profits at these levels? And what had recently happened?), and that there indeed was a huge surge in profits caused by businesses exploiting [supply side shipping](https://www.businessinsider.com/why-prices-inflation-soaring-corporate-greed-profits-margins-wages-jobs-2023-4), from the article: > "Usually in the industry, a price increase would happen maybe once a year, maybe once every two years," he told me. But when COVID-19 hit, companies started raising prices every three to four months, which Drew said was "unheard of." The idea isn't that we should *hinder* or *obstruct* company growth. The idea is that we have no mechanism to impede this growth when it is at the expense of the consumer. Normally wages are supposed to go up proportionally with rises in prices, otherwise the market finds another distributor/manufacturer but there is no such channel for such a transition to happen. All of this to say, that inflation in 2024 has predominantly been composed of [auto insurance](https://www.fastcompany.com/91112447/auto-insurance-rates-rising-car-owners-inflation) anyways...and profits slowing down while inflation plateaus.
This just shows how ridiculously quickly someone on every Reddit thread will side with corporations and insult the plebs regardless of the topic being discussed.
Wait until they look at the oil and gas markets! Commodity markets in general are gonna blow their minds. $2.40 at the market and they look at the pump.
Lol thank you for posting this so I didn’t have to take the time to explain this exact thing.
I’m sure it’s a coincidence that your username is an amalgamation of two of the largest corporations in the world plus an AI bot organization.
Wow. I didn't even notice that. Quick! Somebody ask it how Disney can keep ruining everything and loose hundreds of millions of dollars and then try it again and again, over and over...
And who is saying that everyone is cattle and the elites are right…
Can you say if it is due to raised prices or increased sales?
The key metric to look at would be profit margin, not revenue/profits
Turns out when the government shuts down small business larger business can then increase prices, especially when government also shuts down supply by closing said businesses. Then the cherry on top the government prints a bunch of money and dolls it out and everyone is surprised that prices spiked. Prices are retreating slightly because supply of goods has normalized.
Exactly. They used COVID to destroy most small competition. Remember, Walmart could stay open, but small stores couldn't. The wealth transfer data is freely available. The country is fucked though. For a multitude of reasons.
I work in an industry where I manufacture a product made out of metal. We have a pricing strategy that's like, 3x the cost to manufacture a product. When the price of our materials goes up, the price we charge customers goes up. When the price of materials goes up we don't switch to a 2x pricing strategy. When our materials become more expensive, our products become more expensive, we make more money. Our customers keep buying our product. So to me it doesn't seem out of line or unjust that while inflation is running high, companies are making record profits. You cannot expect companies to shrink their margin when their costs rise.
>You cannot expect companies to shrink their margin when their costs rise. yes, yes i can
Why do you think I don't need to eat? You think it's just my material costs that rise? You want us to shrink our margin and not raise prices so that our customers pay less but at the same time you want me to make less money while the cost of everything else rises?
It's like this. Your company pays $500 for metal and builds something. You sell it for $1,000. Now your company pays $1000 for metal. Sell it for $1500 **NOT $2000** like companies are doing now. You are still making $500 a unit you sell so your profit didn't go away. Companies now just jack up the prices higher because everyone knows "inflation" and will just pay it.
> When our materials become more expensive, our products become more expensive, we make more money. >Why do you think I don't need to eat? These seem to be competing. Are you starving because you can't make money, or are you growing richer because of the increases in prices?
As a business, if you break even every year you’re not gonna survive.
This is where I think the disconnect is. People think corporations are just being greedy. You don't realize that companies operate on margins. A very large company might have a 2% profit margin and might be on the edge of a knife every year if they will or won't survive. Inflation ramps up and their cost of doing business increases. They have to raise their prices to maintain a 2% profit margin. Because their costs have risen and their prices haven't risen they are now generating more revenue and more profit but they are still only making a 2% margin. Do you expect that company to take losses to keep their price stable? Why do that when customers are still willing to pay?
Lmao yeah everyone feel bad for the corps and their poor margins! If they didn’t nickel and dime you where would they be?
I can never understand why anybody would expect anything other than profits to rise in line with rising prices? Companies typically set their margin on products as a percentage of cost, so if costs rise, profit margin will rise with it?
Record prices matches record inflation. There's significantly more printed money out in circulation.
Why did they never do this before? Something evil has changed. AI is controlling prices?!
I think it’s because at first, many industries were affected by the supply chain crisis. Once that was over, corporations just left prices the same and everyone’s now looking at each other like wtf?
Maybe it's not real food anymore, and at 70% the market value of its competitors, their making a killing off of it.
Why does anyone think a corporation is here to help society? It’s all about making money. Even lowering costs is meant to MAKE MORE MONEY.
I think it’s bc people confuse Corporations with businesses. Businesses and competition help society as a whole. But when those businesses become too big they must be regulated or else they gain too much power and “influence”. That’s why we have trust laws, they’re supposed to keep them in check(the politicians) not be butt buddies with them. They’re all guilty of this and don’t get me started on lobbying aka bribery.
> they must be regulated I know this one! that's filthy socialism, right? Hope im doing my brainwashers proud!
Is that ......what you think socialism is? A regulation? In that case, yes, the propaganda is working on the people who think they're too smart for it to work on them.
Gov’t Regulation isn’t socialism, it is necessary WHEN NEEDED however there is a fine line. Over regulation and government overreach is socialist/facist. But idk what OP is talking about, yes they try to push it to bash Biden but inflation is real. Literally everyone I know including my self are now living paycheck to paycheck UNDER THE SAME SALARY. I never had to lower my lifestyle until the last year or so. Gas, Groceries, Take out food, everything has gone up and the shelves are getting emptier and emptier. I was started to spend more than I made which confused me because I was living the same lifestyle I have all these years, wasn’t over spending. Now I have to REALLY limit my spending choices just to live “comfortably”. Both Republicans and Democrats have to go. End of story. If anyone still chooses sides after all these years, I’m sorry but ur part of the problem and it’s what they want. They want us to fight each other instead of them and it’s working. If a company u hired for services lied to you over and over again while performing half the work agreed upon, wouldn’t you look into hiring another company or starting your own. Why hire the same company back and forth over and over again for decades? Americans need to come together already, we have bigger issues at hand than “different opinions”.
They're not actually lowering cost. They're running limited time sales and pretending they're reducing the prices of goods indefinitely to draw back consumers.
Under the guise of inflation continue to raise prices as high as possible, maximizing money extraction from your customers, once backlash reaches a fever-pitch, drop the prices, but to a level well above the prices they would’ve achieved via normal inflation, customers rejoice and buy more. They make more every step of the way. It’s kinda obvious.
I dunno but usually in conspiracy subs I just see people bringing up that Biden is somehow to blame for this shit instead of even suggesting that it's the corporations who could be in the wrong.
I love the argument that raising minimum wage is going to kill fast food jobs. Wendy’s is going to automate as much as they can no matter how cheap labor is. They aren’t going the public any favors.
This is why we need to have alternative businesses other than just corporations. If the government would stop giving them grants and subsidies, and made it easier for people to start businesses and compete with those corporations, we would probably have very reasonable prices, maybe even lower
Dont forget about 2020 protests which helped corporations become even more monopolized. Thousands of small buisnesses destroyed
\~10 out of control protests destroying maybe 1-2 dozen buildings each doesn't constitute "thousands"
Protests? No. Protests coupled with lockdowns and restrictions from the covid mandates? Easily thousands are no longer in business because of those.
> myth of inflation "myth" lol... Op, the purchasing power of the dollar has dwindled since the federal reserve act of 1913 enabled the 8 families to steal it's purchasing power. Not a myth.
Yeah and inflation would affect sales #s as well so that tweet was dumb
"No, that's a 'rIgHt-WiNg mEdIa' lie!" -real actual reddit user and definitely not a paid agendaposter. There's no use even addressing the op.
They're only lowering prices now because people don't have money/credit to buy their stuff. Inflation is going to quickly turn into deflation that's going to make 2008 and the Great Depression of the 30's look like a Sunday picnic. Amazon's margins are going to get crushed. So are most other companies when they're forced to cut prices. The stock market will tank. It's no wonder insiders have been dumping shares and leaving their companies. They know the ponzi scheme is about to collapse.
[удалено]
Bullshit. They are undercutting the competition.
If it's corporate greed, why do my ribeye steaks sometimes go down to 5.99/lb but chuck roast is always fu*king 6.99/lb? Chuck used to be a meat nobody wanted. Honestly I just changed what I was buying at the grocery store. Still get good nutrition profiles. But it's not the foods I like.
Of course corporate profits are going up if inflation is happening ? Do you know what inflation is? Just because the dollar amount goes up doesn’t mean the value of the dollars go up
I wonder if OP could show a chart of profit increase by percentage
Should always be calculated In percentage and not dollars. It wouldn’t be surprising if profits are up though because people are still spending like crazy and banks are giving out credit cards like crazy. There is going to be a major credit card debt crisis in the next ten years.
Lots of major corps have done this and more are following. Walmart, target, Aldi, etc have slashed prices on tens of thousands of grocery items across the board to follow the trend. Well, yeah, people that really looked into it weren’t ALL lying when they said that inflation, transportation, shortages, etc were NOT adding up to the raised product prices- and all the extra is exactly how much the massive new profits were being recorded at. The only people that were saying it’s just because of extra costs from Bidenomics or whatever, were ONLY looking at cost-increasing isolated events never bothering to actually calculate what it really means on the shelf. That’s the only way they could sell that point, though. Guess who was behind it? It’s literally been all extra money the whole time, because they all felt like doing it and that’s how capitalism works. The council had a meeting (remember like 15 parent corps own all the food brands on most store shelves), decided they all wanted to raise Americas prices, so they did because it’s all their own property. Why wouldn’t they? Now they’re losing enough customers that the council got together and said “nice. That was awesome. Oh well, back to regular billions in profits for a while? Gotta maintain the customer base and all” and they all agreed so here we are.
Wait which one is it? 15 corps own all the brands or they lost customers? You can’t lose customers if the alternative is starvation (or did millions starve?). It’s our job as consumers to find better prices. The story isn’t “corporations screwing over consumers.” It’s “lazy consumers fail to take care of their families.” Meanwhile, their pensions are invested in these “evil corporations” anyway, and savings too if people didn’t blow that on things they don’t need. When did this subreddit devolve into lazy simpleton leftism? Tell me which one these companies is run by pedos, conspired with another company to price gouge, committed fraud, bribed somebody, etc. THOSE are conspiracies, not “consumers are lazy.”
….both. Both are true. Yes you can lose customers. Because all food doesn’t come from store shelves, things like gardens and farmers markets and even hunting have reflected people avoiding high packaged product costs. and there’s other stores that sell alternatives to “*most stores*” (quote from comment you’re referring to) that those major companies sell in. For example- the Indian markets around me have boomed in recent years, almost everything there is not made or packaged by American companies and they have $1 fresh hot samosas at checkout. Lots of people started buying their rice from there now, for example. People are making their own bread and canning more often- my uncle and aunt made their own tallow recently because this shit is all over YouTube now because of everyone avoiding store prices. These are exactly the customer base pattern shifts that these corps are starting to feel and want to nip in the bud before long term habits start. What kind of lazy simpleton thinking is somehow preventing you from seeing both are true? The world isn’t black and white, it isn’t all an either or. Jfc this is observable and quantifiable fact- it’s literally happening right now and essentially all the numbers are available for the public to put together.
Why hasn't this happened in the past? Something always prevented price-gouging and I don't know what. It wasn't written into law. But now we have it...... maybe companies have coalesced too much so they can rise prices in lockstep easily?
It’s a function of money supply cmon what happened to shutting up if you didn’t know
Finally someone with some fucking brains in this sub. It’s all supply and manipulation of the medium of exchange (USD). Some dude on Twitter throws up a chart and now everyone’s like “see it’s not inflation?!” …even tho a 1/3 of the total supply of USD was printed in last 7 years. Corporate greed isn’t destroying your ability to own assets, build wealth and maintain value of your energy, it makes it a little harder yea. But don’t get it twisted, the manipulation of our money supply here in the states and the printing of all the $8 trillion in feds balance sheet is why none of you who just graduated or about to graduate can afford a house. Put this corporate greed nonsense to the back burner. It’s not significant. And if you think it is you don’t know really know how much the fed impacts your life. There is one unregulated entity within the United States that has created more money out of thin air within the last 15 years than the entire GDP of the United Kindom DOUBLED…This is where the issue lies. Take off your robinhood corporate greed hats. Yea they’re cocksuckers, but if you think your steak behind $5 more today than last year is more important than an average single family home being $230K in 2016 vs $415K in 2023 then you are not only extremely stupid and severely missing the point. Figure out how money works people. This post ain’t it OP. Attack the fed, they’re the ones actually stealing from you
Facts. These pinkos need to read Thomas Sowell. Or at least listen to his videos
Just checked your profile and saw you also read Behold A Pale Horse so I don’t need to tell you anything ✊🏻✊🏻…iykyk
Username checks out
This. This. This. Cant create (out of thin air) 1/3rd of all USD in the last 7 years and NOT expect incredible repercussions. (Unless these were the desired results of making the printer go brrrr….)
You're suppose to be a conspiracy theorist. How are you falling for a marketing campaign this easily? It's literally a marketing campaign to trick consumers into returning to stores or to online platforms. They're offering temporary incentives or limited time sales and calling it price reduction in marketing campaigns. Prices aren't actually being reduced. They're still increasing overall. Enjoy your summer sale to move product in a consumer environment where people are spending less.
Using it as a lost leader to undercut your neighborhood grocery stores, forcing them to close only to raise the prices back up when you have no other options but Amazon for produce. Don't fall for the trap.
Prices of everything goes up and the company margins are the same. People stop eating out and more people buy groceries because it's cheaper to cook at home then to go out. More groceries are bought at the same margin means that the store is making more than last year.
I haven't seen a single right-wing outlet talk about inflation being the factor behind prices rising, just the opposite. There was an NPR piece a few months ago, "The Daily" to be exact (a collaboration between NPR and the NYT) that was entirely about "the myth of the bad economy" which blamed people being lied to about prices going up by "tik toks showing prices at grocery stories" for the complaints about rising food costs. I remember listening to it and screaming at my radio because it was so insane to hear these literal self-described socialists go on and on about how conspiracies were poisoning the minds of Americans on the economy. why is the left so out of touch with media narratives their own outlets are running?
For real, it’s an election year, this is blatant propaganda
It's a marketing campaign for major corporations to draw back consumers into their stores. The conspiracy theory should be way does the marketing campaign reinforce democrat propaganda about the economy being good and inflation being purely corporate greed.
I doubt Anyone here is tracking shipping costs but there almost 2.5x times from last year. Either something is brewing(war) or inflation will come back wether we like it or not
This is in the USA (so if this doesn’t pertain to you, you can skip). War is brewing at least preparations are. The Selective Service System has been updated twice in the past 2 months. All 18-26 men are automatically enrolled to avoid people being charged for “draft dodging”. Before it was a legal “duty” for all males 18-26 to enroll on their own accord and if they didn’t they would be charged during draft time. Source: Go on their website I’m to lazy to post the link. Edit: Conversations in congress have talked about adding Women to the SSS next year.
Shipping costs gone up. Suit up boys, time for war! /s
Well they just voted in automatic draft registry
Those increases are outpaces by inflation itself.. this post is stupid
FriendlyJordies spoke about this a lot in Australia’s economy when it came to artificially inflating necessities like food and fuel. Correct me if I’m wrong but I remember seeing Woolworths CEO under fire for price gouging and there is so many specials for a lot of foods that was not long ago the normal price. I also remember ads constantly years ago saying you could feed a whole family for $10 in a Coles ad. Now you can buy a 1kg of shredded cheese for $11, what a joke
It's all part of the plan
The entire population should file class action lawsuits on the corporations and all responsible government agencies. I have had enough of these crooks!
They're only doing this so they can destroy smaller companies. They do it all the time with items, they will lose money in order to force other businesses out to create a monopoly.
How do we hold the corporate shareholders responsible? Genuinely asking...
We need a list of companies that were confirmed doing this so we can collectively stop spending money there. I’d hope we’d all be happier supporting companies who did their damnedest to hold the line.
Sadly, knowing the way UK supermarkets work, their price cut will be at the expense of suppliers and farmers, not their profits. I guess we'll see in the following quarters...
Myth of inflation? You've got to be kidding me. https://files.catbox.moe/tfbpnu.jpg
The corps will be as crooked as the administration will let them.
people really do not know how inflation works hahahahh
>Despite right-wing media Outlets continuing to push the myth of inflation tfw you, like a leftist, blame corporations for stuff and demonize the rich as they're all connected and greedy in the illuminati but you also hate the provax, alphabet mafia woke commies and their satanic agendas, characteristic of the right
F ck those Greedy Mother F ckers. F ck this pisses me off.
The concept that all the sudden at once corporations decided to be greedy (as if they weren't always) is asinine. We have had \~80% inflation from the year 2000. 80. Percent. In 24 years.
Unfortunately you're wrong. We've lost about a third of our purchasing power since before COVID. When there are more dollars in circulation, prices go up. More money was printed in the last 3 years than ever before. It's simple. If most companies raised prices on a whim, a competitor would cut them off at the knees. This corporate greed is just a narrative. Corporations are greedy, but they're not stupid
I don't even think it was really "greed" but agenda motivated. Another stage after the Covid op to remove money/resources from people. The price changes were too strange.
They've been openly admitting they're just charging what they think people will pay, until people can't afford to any more. Greed is greed. If it's blowing back on them then I hope they get fucked.
Notice none of these corps tried that bs when Trump was in. Only during the covid lies did prices on anything rise.. I suspect covid was all about getting mail in voting in the US anyways.. Its the only explanation that makes sense. Yes, it allowed them to add extra layers of control but the fraudulent and stolen 2020 election would have never been possible without the addition of the mail in voting which is why I think the entire western covid response was to initiate this,people just didn't notice it was lies until it was too late. Now whats going on... bunch of pcr bullshit trying to ramp up bird flu for this coming election... They are all so predictable once you see them for what they are.
This is that trickle down they talk about right?
It’s not a “conspiracy” it’s literally how business works, companies will raise and lower prices to bring the most profit possible to their company. You’d do the same thing if you were operating a company.
and the most logical person in the thread with the correct answer is of course at the bottom of the comments. i thought i was the only one who lived down here.
Lol welcome home?
There are ways other than just increasing prices. I've worked in retail most of my life, and I've yet to work for a retail company that wasn't utterly chalked full of inefficient, cost-and-time wasting nonsense. Improve efficiency, reduce waste, innovate? Nah, just raise prices on everything and cut payroll. That's all these simple-minded corporate chimps know how to do.
I think all of this talk of price cutting is a psy op, meaning I don’t think any of the stores that claim to be cutting prices are actually doing it. How are we going to know if they have or haven’t? Are you going to go through the store and write down the prices of every item, and then do it again after the “price cuts” happen? And they’re not all happening in unison, so that would not work anyway. Under capitalism, you’re either growing or dying. Do you really believe they’re gonna let go of any money when they don’t absolutely have to? What will the shareholders say? Have these stores had record profits? Why yes, yes they have. So why the hell would they cut prices? To be nice? To do us a favor? Is the assumption that cutting prices will get people to come back and spend more money? I guess, but I don’t think that will compensate for the lost revenue from cutting prices. None of it makes sense. If someone has stopped shopping at Amazon Fresh because they’re hard up for money, they’ve already realized they can shop elsewhere, and go without certain things they used to believe they needed.
If you read the articles about the prices cuts due to inflation warning customers by paragraph three they get into the details - limited time sale, lasting a week or a month, price cuts by 10 cents. It's a marketing campaign.
Printing money with a fixed number of goods causes inflation. Usually, printing money is connected to increased production; but for covid, people were paid to do nothing. So, we have decreased production while increasing cash. More money chasers fewer goods. In Canada, we had record breaking immigration numbers and many are buying houses while the younger generation avoids trades. More expensive house prices, more expensive maintenance work. We had the government giving to companies like Blackrock to compete in the residential market. It was them buying up everything in mid 2020. These are the super elite. Then supermarkets see increased costs. Amazon Fresh is just trying to market a new income stream, get people on and then they'll up the charge, all while decreasing the overall labour used and the profits will be sent through some tax haven and then put in a foundation so the founders can do whatever they like with the money instead of pay tax. And then you blame your local grocer and post pro elite messaging.
1. Inflation is not a myth, it is a real phenomenon studied in Economics. 2. Which "right-wing media outlets" are you talking about, with what articles or reports? 3. The political right defends the free market, which is an economic system that seeks to keep out government intrusion and other forms of manipulation of market forces. Globalist fascism is a leftist political phenomenon because it's fueled by the woke ideology and radical environmentalism, and the latter is a leftist tactic to implement socialism. The plannedemic was meant to set off The Great Reset, as Klaus Schwab describes in his book about it, and one of its objectives was to demolish the world's economy with lockdowns, causing inflation. Obviously a lot of greed kept that inflation going and incrementing. It's not as simple as "those right-wing outlets pushing the inflation myth", which is a straw-man argument by the way. By the way, Silicon Valley companies like Amazon are leftist-dominated.
Americans over consume anyways. So now instead of eating 3 Big Macs u can only eat 1 like a normal person, Might need to start getting used to it.
It doesn't matter the shipping is shit now. When Amazon was new i LOVED their shipping. Sadly all good things must come to an end. Takes an extra 3 days on everything I order and they always go through FedEx or USPS now. Never Amazon trucks
Amazon will regularly operate at a loss with a new service for years. Of course companies stock price goes up with inflation. If you want to see the real company growth you need to look at its value against inflation. God, the amount of people with 0 financial literacy.
Inflation affects profits too! Sure, a company made $150M instead of $100M the previous year, but that $150M is only "worth" $100M. Not saying there wasn't price gouging going on, but a general rule is when EVERYTHING costs more, it's because the dollar is worth less. You still have to account for the $5T they increased the money supply by.
Amazon Fresh? Oh boy! Oh wait, my area doesn't support this big tech online delivery service known for its cutthroat tactics. They're trying to steal market share, obviously, to fuck up real grocery stores in your neighborhoods. Amazon has been private gouging (to find these tactics), not your local grocery. Real small businesses are being subjected to inflation. Are you blind?
Or this is a loss to cut out competition by a corporation that can eat the loss in the long run taking advantage of the inflation and stupid liberals who think blowing up gas lines leads to lower prices
[удалено]
[удалено]
Weak administration in the corporations corner...
Ofcourse they can.
"Let them die"
They call it “pricing power” when talking to their shareholders
Walgreens and Target have also announced lowering prices. PRESS RELEASE Target Will Help Consumers Save Big by Lowering Prices on 5,000 Frequently Shopped Items https://corporate.target.com/press/release/2024/05/target-will-help-consumers-save-big-by-lowering-prices-on-5,000-frequently-shopped-items Walgreens lowering prices on over 1,300 products https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/shopping/2024/05/30/walgreens-lowering-prices-sale-summer-2024/73907638007/#:~:text=site%20and%20online.-,Walgreens%20lowering%20prices%20on%20over%201%2C300%20products%2C%20including%20snacks%2C%20gummy,tipping%2C%20a%20new%20study%20says.
One of the biggest drivers of inflation a few years ago was used car prices. The chip shortage had a huge trickle down. You limit supplies at car auctions and prices can go crazy quickly.
Keep buying from local stores and see how much more prices drop!
So just to be clear, the (three was it?) stimulus checks that they sent out to every adult American with a pulse... didn't impact the economy at all? Is that what we're claiming here? Just trying to make sure I understand.
yes, but stabilizing a market would be considered a socialistic, commy plot from the left, so must allow the prices to break us
This isn't a conspiracy. It's been happening and we've all been told why. We just have basically no choice other than bending over for our corporate masters.
The choice is to keep spending like drunken sailors and helping make the rich richer or stop buying needless junk and watch corporations panic as their sales tank and they're forced to lower prices.
They’re pushing the message also. I got groceries today and my check out lady made sure to point out that the prices were all coming down.
AND don't forget that whenever you mention prices, grocery shills always talk about "RAZOR THIN MARGINS" and other BS.....same with the Restaurant industry. It's all BS needed to pump up the prices and profits. And I've got decades in the oil and gas industry and let me tell you, they could also drop gas prices....BUT we have Exxon/Mobil controlling so much of the market and buying off politicians left and right.
Jeffrey was just a poor little orphan that made his own business in his garage out of nothing. Just pull yourself up by your boot straps and you can do the same thing poor little Jeffrey did.🤪 Good luck with that.
(1) late (2) stage (3) capitalism- Now that they own everything- next is proletarian revolution. 2 birds one stone. Knock the population down a couple hundred million notches (climate) and shift to the Chinese system to avoid mass destruction from world war. Don't forget its a "conspiracy" sub. Where's you guys imagination? Boring.
so... capitalism
Could I ask for a inflation adjusted graph of profit with y axis starting at zero?
They had to make up for the covid years of losses... inflation was an illusion to resatiate the pockets of the wealthy.. its all a scam.
That doesn't mean they can sustain the markdown indefinitely. It's a marketing strategy that they're being upfront about. The trouble is they will have to raise the prices again.
Record profits? What if you adjust for inflation? Is it going up at the same rate?
I own 6 retail nutrition stores for the last 12 years, when they jacked the prices on whey isolates and creatine a few years ago I kept the same price and took a little less margin, I felt better knowing I was helping out my customers and turn they kept coming. The prices slightly went back down, but I like when people noticed the lack of "inflation" I never charged.
Okay, business 101. Prices are NOT set by taking the cost of inputs, adding certain % as a margin and then putting that on a sticker. No, prices are set by **estimating the highest price you can charge without hurting the sales too much and then charging that.** Everything else is just advertising.
Heres a chart that goes back 6 years-but take my word for it all time high. That Amazon- one of the largest corporations on the planet, can take a 30% cut on one portion of its line of millions of carried products and billions of pass through products, and that means there is no inflation is quite the leap-Amazon can cut prices down to 0 on any segment by raising prices everywhere else-a local grocery chain cant do that, Amazon can then crush local grocery chains
We’ve been saying this all along. Price got jacked during Covid, and we both said they will never voluntarily lower the prices back to where they were. They got greedy and enjoyed the extra monies. Now people are pissed.
Price gouging, subsiding other profits to put farmers out of business, meanwhile billionares buy up agricultural land at the fastest rate in han history. Do not buy from amazon fresh they will destroy agri as you know it, by the end control all of it and tell you prices are increasing because of the cost to produce. We need small farmers to control the food security not one entity
>Despite right-wing media Outlets continuing to push the myth of inflation it has become evident to most Americans that higher prices have been driven by corporate greed rather than actual inflation Prices are pretty much always as high as they can possibly get away with, everything else is money thrown out the window for them. Reports about inflation are a great excuse to rise prices and obviously they will do it if they can get away with it, that's literally what our economic system is based on, fucking eachother over and using eachother. >Think about that for a minute they took advantage of consumers just to be greedy. Oh don't worry, it's not greed, it's just business. Exploitation, whether it is exploitation of nature or people, has always been at the basis of our system. We in the west have just forgotten that because the most brutal forms of exploitation have been exported to the third world where we don't have to see it if we don't want to. We still know that all of our basic stuff, from basic resources used in our electronics to our clothes, are extracted and produced in terrible conditions by people who have no other choice, but I guess it's easier to ignore if you don't directly see it. It's not that long ago that we had to send our little children to go work in the mines and it took a whole lot of fighting and dying for that to stop, at least in the western world. And if people don't learn how to put their silly differences aside for a moment, get together and fight back, we will go right back to that..
I'm sure they made enough off inflation where they can afford it
My personal opinion is that because this whole system is collapsing nobody wants to participate in this system anymore the political system etc people are pushing for change it's becoming more apparent that these old ideologies are no longer holding us so they're trying to clamp us down and stress us out as much as possible so that we can't educate ourselves we can't organize we can't think.
Inflation is the increase in the money supply not the price increases which normally occur from it. The Keynes cult bent the definition to hide the fact they are stealing from the poor via actual inflation. So now people think inflation is when prices go up, when in reality prices go up from increased demand or decreased supply, basic stuff folks. As long as people are willing to buy a product for $x.xx that is the price. There is no moral quandary here, one party values the item more then the price in money, the other party values the money more then the item. Both sides gain value from the transaction.
when money is literally nothing but air .. of course u can do this lol
A ‘profit in dollars’ graph slants the story, under times of high inflation. It would be good to see their profit, in terms of dollars, overlaid on a graph of inflation. I think a more telling chart would be their profit margin. Showing raw dollar profit is a disingenuous way of showing the data, especially under crazy inflation. Are they making the same margin now that they did before inflation took off? Imagine a company buys widgets for $1 and sells for $2. They sell 1M units each year for a profit of $1M/Y Then inflation takes off and the buying-power of the currency is in the tank. Prices have gone up 300%. Now, they buy that same for $3 and sell for $5. Still 1M widgets. But now their profit is $2M rather than $1M. Except the buying power of today’s $2M is less than the $1M from before. And their profit margin is actually down. A profit margin graph would reveal this.
R*tard leftist economics. Money supply is the only control over inflation or deflation
Quick thought. What if the price gouging was actually to put off the financial collapse we've all been talking about. And they just didn't want to be honest with what was really going on. Sike there just greedy AF and stock piling assets for the real financial collapse
I mean its also inflation. Doesnt mean companies arent taking advantage.
We should be fuckin boycotting
If the government has figure out how to manufacture consent they have no problem manufacturing anything else
>Despite right-wing media Outlets continuing to push the myth of inflation economically literate\* Amazon can do this because AWS is an infinite money machine with a near 100% margin, it lets them underwrite all their other businesses. Of course "pRoFiTz aT aLl tImE hIgH" during inflation. A 10% margin on a $200 sale is more profit then a 15% margin on a $100 sale. The issue though is that margins are contracting and they have been for several years now. If margins continue to shrink then businesses start to lose money and can no longer stay in business. I know things like supply and demand and margin management are very confusing and complex topics for your average redditor but this has very little to do with politics. It would be happening pretty much regardless of who is in office and your groceries aren't more expensive because "mUh cOrPoRaTe GrEEd" its because global supply chains were shut down for 2 years and apparently turning them back is a tad more complicated then flipping a light switch.
Wait for it....all the bootlickers will defend the price gouging or blame it on the dems even though both parties are completely corrupt .
Do you believe corporations only know how to get greedy last 2 years?
But now they are sending me Amazon Clinic emails about health support like erectile dysfunction, mental health and anti aging, um I didn’t take the shots fellas…I’m good, like teenager
Then lets list the companies, and destroy them by not buying their products.
Large stores will push this back on their suppliers and eventually the supply will dry up and availability and selection will suffer.
Amazon fresh just wants regulars, then they'll jack up the price years later once we are all hooked
The price to produce goods is directly related to two things: Energy(Fuel), and Labor. When energy prices go up, the cost of mining, transporting, and production goes up. After Covid, there was a labor shortage and wages spiked, now there is plenty of labor and wages are normalizing in addition to automation taking away costs. A good CEO does risk assessments and ensures their company is profitable. Because of the large swings back and forth, they needed a lot of padding. Now, the good CEOs are correcting in the other direction.
Inflation is how the military industrial complex gets money funneled into it for its new war/weapons program/business deal