Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds

[kpete]

Thinktank report says ‘resounding evidence’ shows companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop

A new report claims “resounding evidence” shows that high corporate profits are a main driver of ongoing inflation, and companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.

The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative thinktank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits

[chicoescuela]

1. It is capitalism. The choice is the for the consumer.

[Voltaire2]

3. It's capitalism in its monopolistic phase where the lack of real competition

allows monopolistic rent seeking behavior.

[chicoescuela]

8. True in many industries, I will concede that .

[Farmer-Rick]

12. Pre-Famine Ireland had many of the same characteristics

A rent based society where foreign English men owned all the land and rented it out to the Irish people. In order for the Irish farmer to keep his land (Some families had lived on the land for hundreds of years, never gaining ownership.) He would have to grow crops and raise livestock that the owners collected as rent. But he still had to feed his own family from that same land that he regularly improved and that's where the potatoe came in.

But when the potatoe blight wiped out the method the Irish used to feed themselves, everyone blamed the Irish.

Ireland still transported tons of food to England, in the middle of the Famine, all the while the Irish were dropping like flies due to starvation and then disease set in. Capitalism at its best.

Capitalism is unable to adequately address crisis like this. It is a cumbersome and stagnant economic system that can not adjust to change or respond to emergencies. During floods, weather emergencies and pandemics, it's not hard core capitalist principles we use to help people. Capitalism is not a dynamic and functional economic system.

[Justice matters.]

33. Exactly, but... a selective "few" get billions upon billions...

Never enough new billions, and always too much taxes so they buy out elected politicians on all sides or those who want to get elected so why don't "you" try to do like them?

[Voltaire2]

36. Unfortunately capitalism is quite resilient.

Despite the massive crises of the last 150 years, the system adapts. The way it evolves and persists has been the subject of a lot of study by social researchers with a leftist perspective.

I was visiting my brother in Ireland and we went to Roscommon where our grandfather was born. The national famine museum is there at Strokestown Park. It is quite the emotional experience.

[Botany]

2. Yup and our buddies in big oil and fossil fuel business (gas and oil) have made record profits ...

… as the GOP and the media blamed President Biden for what the Americans paid at the
pump for gasoline or @ a McDonald’s for their Egg McMuffin. (McDonald’s made big time
Jack too)

Time to quit playing nice and use the truth like a blow torch on those mother fuckers.

[FalloutShelter]

4. Exactly right.

Let’s make the dumbasses put the blame where it should rest.

One of the other things the MAGA Era did was to destroy critical thinking with the help of the MSM.

[summer_in_TX]

51. Too true.

Brain connections atrophy when too little stimulation occurs. Being mesmerized by the rants on FOX News or other RW media may just possibly briefly stimulate thinking as well as anger, but pretty soon it only stimulates anger. The shriveled brain connections make it nearly impossible to react to novel problems with anything but rigid, dogmatic pronouncements that don't offer true solutions.

It takes diverse and sometimes contradictory information to stimulate the brain to think things through. One-sided media literally dumbs us down and makes us far less able to solve complex problems.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. The cost of transportation fuel affects everything else.

Our oligarchs know what and when to gouge.

[Marthe48]

24. I heard an old man in Aldi complaining about the price on the cheese

ending with 'thanks, Biden' I was about 20' away and laughed out loud, very loud. As I continued walking, I turned around and said, 'How can you be so stupid and buy groceries?' I doubt he heard me. I stared at him a few seconds, and finished my own shopping.

I try not to get confrontational in a store, but as far as I'm concerned, the rwnj are causing inflation to make President Biden look bad. They did the same thing to President Carter in the 1970s. I know who is behind the high prices and they aren't fooling me.

[DENVERPOPS]

26. Exactly Marth

Almost all fortune 500 corporations are reporting RECORD profits. The Corporations are making a ton of money to pay humongous bonuses to executives, to pass along as dividends and stock buybacks for shareholder stock prices.

AND telling the 70 Million Trump Humpers that it is all Biden's fault......two birds with one stone..............

[Botany]

31. Don't even bother to tell "them" that oil and gas prices are also based in part that they are a function ....

…. of publicly traded commodities such as oil and gas futures along with the large oil companies
and our buddies such as the people from the House of Saud who see their job as to jack up gas
prices so people will be mad @ President Biden for the price of gas.

I

[3auld6phart]

34. For gawd dam. Sure

Big oil , is the worst of the lot. Sucking up and draining, Up what is left underground. The manufacturing billions of plastic bags which be comes so much garbage.piss on it. End of rant.

[Botany]

35. And don't bother telling "them" that under President Biden we are now producing more oil than ever,

but the GOP, the fossil fuel companies, the super rich (including our good friend MBS of Saudi Arabia),
MAGA/Christo Fascists, and media cancers such as Fox are not bothered by the truth. They see
disinformation (much from Russia), gerrymandering, and court packing as their key to keeping power.

Btw Joe Biden is the best President of my lifetime and he has hired the best cabinet and other people
to work with him and the American people too.

We need to use the truth like a blow torch on those mother fuckers and have a blue tsunami in 2024.

Sorry to

[Charging Triceratops]

5. Big Grocery has a bag over our heads

and our wallets.

[Attilatheblond]

15. And they started the 'holdup' back in 2019, but MSM didn't mention inflation until Biden took office

Also, is anybody but me thinking the surging rounds of layoffs by big, highly profitable corporations is actually about supporting GOP candidates who won't raise their taxes? Me thinks corporations have found a way to make campaign contributions to bad candidates without showing up on required paperwork tracking donors.

Rampaging Capitalists really don't want Biden to be re-elected, and they will throw a good economy in the crapper to get their wish and more tax cuts.

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Ah, but will any of the American media dare to proclaim this to the masses?

[progressoid]

17. You mean the media corporations who make their money from other corporations?

[Lonestarblue]

20. No. And the Trump masses don't read anyway. It's Fox and Newsmax to get their daily dose of hatred and lies.

[spudspud]

32. Honestly, that's on Biden and Democratic surrogates to get out there and pound that issue...

on the podium and whenever they're guests on a program. Same way Repubs all have talking points that they always get in, the Dems need to be more disciplined in getting out these kinds of kitchen table issues and truth bombs. We shouldn't rely on MSM to carry the message for us--Biden and surrogates need to jam it in their faces when interviewed/guests on shows.

[Ligyron]

49. They are our only hope.

Ray gun would get Air Time just to tell people to demand their congress people bow to his wishes. Biden could surely do the same to lay a little truth on the incandescently gaslit American people and as has been mentioned, some Democratic talking points need to make their way into people’s consciousness via our extremely talented Representatives across the board. It’s corny and hardly intellectually stimulating I know, but apparently it works so we/they may need to suck it up and appeal to the lowest common denominator for a change. Message discipline is what is called for here.

[GuppyGal]

9. Yes it's quite odd that I saw prices drop on lets say pet food but now it's suddenly back up again.....

Hmmmm fucking corporate scum fleecing us for all we have

[dalton99a]

10. Kick

[ck4829]

11. K&R

[Wednesdays]

13. Of course, it takes a BRITISH publication to point this out.

Betcha you won't hear this very much on our own M$M.

[ArkansasDemocrat1]

18. Not from the Complicit Corporate Catamites that are our media

[dchill]

19. You have succinctly defined the GOP.

[Mosby]

22. Who is funding Groundwork Collaborative?

We don't know.

[dpibel]

25. Marxists? George Soros?

The Groundwork Collaborative is a left-of-center activist group with a particular focus on economic issues. It is a fiscally-sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) arm of the Arabella Advisors “dark money” network of liberal pass-through funding organizations. 1 The organization was launched in 2018 to promote left-wing economic policies. 2

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/groundwork-collaborative/

[Mosby]

30. Well Soros is a capitalist so I doubt he's funding them.

Nt

[dpibel]

37. So you're thinking Marxists? n/t

Last edited Fri Jan 19, 2024, 04:19 PM - Edit history (1)

[Mosby]

43. We don't know because Arabella Advisors doesn't disclose their donors.

Nt

[dpibel]

44. In any case,

very suspicious.

Am I correct in understanding that to be your point?

Do you object to ascribing part of inflation to gouging?

[Mosby]

45. When do profits become "gouging"?

I don't know.

As someone who has spend decades in retail though, I'm glad people are finally noticing manufacturer pricing strategies. Companies like P&G, Kelloggs, General Mills, Kraft, Nestlé, Tyson etc have been overcharging since forever, because they know the retailer will take the blame. OTC and HABA manufacturers are even worse.

We all just got screwed by the egg manufacturers, only retailers will recover some of the excess profits.

[Fla Dem]

14. Surprise, surprise, surprise!

When will we see this as a top headline on the news shows?

We won't because those media companies are just as culpable.

[Emile]

16. Predatory Capitalism

[AllaN01Bear]

21. gee. greedflation.

highly overstated prices . super hyper markets for a very long time, and so fourth cant be sustainable .

[Wicked Blue]

23. Only HALF?

[Jerry2144]

27. The 2017 billionaire's tax cut caused this

It opened the door for excessive profit taking. Tax cuts for corporations are the primary cause.

There is no reason a civil society should have billionaires. How much money is enough?

[ScratchCat]

29. It also caused an extreme uptick in residential investment

This is one of the big factors of a shortage of homes available to purchase as wealthy investment groups bought them all up with 3% interest rate loans. No media will talk about this. Only a brief mention here and there.

[Warpy]

28. Please don't say it went to stockholders, it didn't

There were bonuses, executive pay raises, and stock buybacks, the latter the most important, Shareholders are typically the last on the list these days, the pirates at the top are robbing us all.

[AllaN01Bear]

38. half? half? what about all of it . half?? my eye.

[PatrickforB]

39. Well, I've said it and said it! Under our current legal doctrine of 'shareholder primacy,' the ONLY fiduciary

responsibility of the C-Suite parasites in any publicly traded company is to generate profits for shareholders. That is IT.

Want to change that? Then we need to FORCE and then ENFORCE a small change to the rules of corporate governance here in the United States.

We need to impose a stakeholder approach to corporate governance whereby the interests of truth (in publicly traded media), the environment, workers and consumers are held to have equal weight with shareholder profits. Also, CEO and other C-Suite 'earnings' needs to be capped. It is obscene that these parasites who supposedly add so much 'value' make over 300X what their average worker makes in some cases. Just an offense against common decency.

Do this and we solve a plethora of problems.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

40. Corporate price gouging drove more than half of the price increases last year.

President Biden's team has been successful in fixing the supply side issues that gave rise to inflation but the Biden team cannot deal with the corporate greed factor other than getting the word out

Link to tweet

[JoseBalow]

41. Tony Montana said it best...

[IronLionZion]

42. Voters need to know that the president doesn't set prices

it's not like Biden is forcing these companies to make record profits. People are buying stuff. So companies get away with jacking up prices. Corporate consolidation has greatly reduced competition for lots of consumer goods, especially food products and household staples.

But it's easier to blame migrants for stealing low paying farming and food preparation jobs that nobody else wants. Biden is causing the labor shortage too somehow.

One of the dumbest arguments I saw online was: so many foreign born workers have been stealing so many jobs for so long, that it causes Americans to not want to work anymore, which causes the labor shortage.

[kwijybo]

46. More than that.

It's way more than half, IMO. Check the prices of bananas. They have the same pipeline, the same oil costs, increase in shipping, and so on. Yet, the prices haven't really changed, pre-COVID to now.

Shipping costs are driving it?
Oil costs are driving it?
Labor costs are driving it?

Then why isn't it affecting bananas in a similar fashion?

Just my weird look at econ.

[Uncle Joe]

47. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for the thread kpete

[Scalded Nun]

48. No Fucking Shit. How many millions did that did that investigation cost?

[jaxexpat]

50. Oh really?

I've been schooled here that inflation is always a natural economic response to scarcity.

The crooks, big and small, were always in on the gift under the cover of covid.