In the last three months of 2023, after-tax corporate profits reached an all-time high of $2.8 trillion. This is part of a long-term growth in corporate profits that began in the 1980s, picked up steam at the turn of the millennium, and exploded since 2020.
Under Pres. Biden, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are doing historic work to combat monopoly. They are successfully reviving the field of anti-trust litigation that had been shelved under the so-called "free market" ideology that reigned from the late 1970s until Biden's election. Enforcement of anti-trust laws can reduce the ability of firms to raise prices more than their costs would justify, but it will take a few more years for this indispensable weapon in the fight for economic justice to bear fruit in terms of wealth and income distribution.
Did everyone see Lina Khan's lengthy interview by the comedian Jon Stewart on the Daily Show Monday night? Should be available on YouTube. "Lina M. Khan is Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces the nation's antitrust and consumer protection laws." A wonderfully informative interview.
LOL. Sure. That is the media narrative. Meanwhile the actual regulatory work has been to kill small business and support more large corporate consolidation.
Biden's folks have gone after "Microsoft and Meta, as well as politically powerful corporations like American Airlines, Booz Allen, JetBlue, Illumina, Simon and Schuster, and UnitedHealth Group." (https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/in-lake-wobegon-all-antitrust-enforcers) FTC is challenging proposed Kroger-Albertson merger, and DOJ has also sued Google for anti-competitive practices. There's a lot more.
Smoke and mirrors for people like you to have your talking points. Corporate consolidation has exploded under Biden. Regulation that kill small business has also exploded. It is global, national and local. Elite liberals are pushing their collectivist nightmare. In Oregon for example they are abusing water rights regulations to destroy small farms, dairy and ranches. They are doing the same in Europe.
I would be interested if you have clear examples you can cite. Can you explain how water rights regulations are being abused and by whom? Or give me a citation? Just showing an angry tone is not very convincing.
In general Democrats have a clear track record over the last couple of decades of becoming the big-business, Wall Street and big bank-friendly party. The actions of blue states and Democrat-dominated local government during the pandemic was disastrous to small business while big corporations had their best time ever.
Some of this is just the DNA of Democrats favoring "safety and control" over the creative destruction and growth from the dynamism of free enterprise. But today there is copious evidence that the Democrats are in-bed with the WEF Great Reset and Agenda 2030 project that seek to move more the global economy to central control. As Brexit and Trump proved the middle class is not happy with that direction, and thus making more of the middle class dependent on the administrative and corporatist centralized power is a way to neuter that middle class democratic power.
Mr. Lee, I agree that Democrats have been a "big-business, Wall Street, and big bank-friendly party." (So are Republicans, who passed multiple rounds of tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-wealthy that did not produce the promised capital investment.) Clinton actively supported two rounds of bi-partisan financial deregulation that directly led to the real estate crash of 2007-8. He followed advice from big banker Robert Rubin. These laws undid reforms enacted in the mid-1930s by Congress and FDR that kept our financial system mostly stable for over 6 decades. In only eight years, the deregulation scheme foisted on us by Ds and Rs led to disaster.
This brings us to Obama who came into office just as the shit was hitting the fan. He followed the advice of his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He gave hundreds of billions of dollars in relief to big financial institutions, prosecuted none of the criminals, and left individual homeowners swinging in the wind.
When the pandemic struck, Trump happened to be president. The policies of the Federal Reserve were very favorable to big finance and multi-nationals
Biden has turned around much of this attitude and has brought about the biggest pro-union and anti-monopoly reforms since the Roosevelts. However, it is true that these kinds of reforms will take many years to restructure the economy. I recommend that you subscribe to the blog BIG by Matt Stoller.
I watched most of the video about the water situation in Oregon. I really don't see how it is responsive to the comments I made about federal policy favoring big corporations. It's not about federal regulations as best I can infer.
By the way, I'm very critical of the Biden foreign policy. I'm not a fan, but I try to be an objective observer.
We definitely need corporate taxes to be higher than 28% even. In 1980 the corporate tax was 46% and the highest individual tax rate was 70%. Let’s start there.
They are owned by the same people who benefit the most. I heard in NPR 1A yesterday that the journalists at big media are beginning to rebell. Apparently Rona at NBC being hired, then fired was backlash from employees as well as people like you and me loudly sounding our opinions. Likely I will never watch Meet the Press an
again. Once a week I tell MTP I am still boycotting the bimbo host.
This is what monopoly power really looks like. forget the 1890s and the railroad monopolies. They controlled steel and manufacturing.
Now we have private equity With a voting share on literally everything that is made, done, broadcasted, sold, grown, rented, or leased.
The whole return to office thing was clearly been written and scripted as a Sinclair broadcasting story for local news. We've seen hints of it for a long time, but now it is in lockstep.
Can this ever be dislodged? I don't know. Who's willing to give up Amazon? Who's willing to give up doordash?
Whether you eat at a Chipotle or shop at Kohl's, you are putting the money into the same sets of pockets. Finding local and shopping there is time consuming and expensive. The whole system is gamed.
We saw a possible remedy during the pandemic, though we didn't know it. Just stop. Stop working. Stop playing the game.
A series of general strikes over an extended period of time would test the shareholders resolve to weather storms.
The 1% have such a huge cash reserve and are not personally affected by it so who knows.
The government should tie corporate profits to the support costs of government infrastructure, defense expenditures and social upgrade issues such as child education and the ending of poverty. The taxes from the physical workers across all sectors of business sector provide an unfair bulk of funds for building, maintaining, and defending the infrastructure that allow businesses to trade their wares both domestically and internationally. It is now time for outrageous corporate profits to be redirected to cover these costs on an analytic basis. What are the real costs of doing business?
I have been buying diapers for my newborn grandson. 31 of said are 10.99 - 11.99 here at Walmart depending on brand.
I am thrifty, so I am buying diapers on FB marketplace, ie open large quantity boxes that someone else's baby outgrew the size before the box was empty. 136 diapers for $20 my last haul. How many others can't afford to shop like this.
It burns the heck out of me that corporate greed replaced doing the right thing across the board in every area of our economy.
Diapers and last 2 years of formula shortage have taken plenty of young couples from having children. Housing , gas, cost of daycare, diapers, formula, medical care, etc.
No wonder we have the lowest birthrate since the Great Depression.
Eventually the chickens will come home to roost on the greedy.
Does the American celebration of capitalism that results in a few billionaires in any way fulfill the "American Dream" and the ideals of those Founding Fathers? We have unbalanced our economy--the less than 1% who possess inordinate amounts of wealth are playing life as a game. In the billionaire game, if you lose--become ill, homeless, nutrition deprived, and wretched...too bad.
If the "Corporate Profit Bonanza" is not evil in the Earthly challenge of good versus evil, how else can we describe this success? Looking more carefully, we see the lack of empathy, compassion, and any form of love for fellow humanity. To be more specific and call on recent corporate events, let's look at Boeing. The board that runs Boeing stopped including engineers who knew and understood how these airplanes work, and replaced them with financial "geniuses" who focused on profits at the expense of maintaining their product. They trashed Whistleblowers and ignored safety protocols all in the interest of competing with Europe's Airbus. I'm reminded of why we developed the atomic bomb--Germany was working on this same bomb and NO MATTER WHAT we had to be first.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, pizza dough, (16 oz) was $1 at Walmart, $1.09 at Aldi. With the fear that wheat production would suffer (or not make it to markets), the price soared by 75% in a few months. But agreements were made to protect (most) of the vital crop. After a sharp spike, wheat prices fell steadily.
Walmart's pizza dough price went from $1 to $1.78. (in several steps) Aldi also raised their price, topping at $1.69. As wheat prices fell, Aldi's price started coming down (again in steps). Walmart stayed elevated.
Wheat commodity pricing is still a bit higher than pre-invasion and that's reflected in the most recent price at Aldi - $1.23. Walmart recently RAISED their price to $1.98.
I feel that this encapsulates where we are. Walmart knows that consumers THINK they have the best prices. And, they have vowed to shareholders that they will stay ahead of inflation with their prices (thus creating inflation). Any government action is going to take a long time. The only tool is consumer diligence. I am a Walmart shareholder and have told investor relations several times how disappointed I am that WM has given up its lowest cost mantle. I don't need the extra pennies per share profit at the expense of American households.
TO be clear - this is the end result of the libertarian free market. This is the very reason why James Buchanan and Milton Friedman both stressed the need for "stealth" when promoting their ideas. They both avoided analysis of what would happen with the economics of their platforms when confronted brushing aside that the moves would allow for wealth concentration and more monopolies to develop.
Not sure he was a philanthropist. This James was a professor that was a pure libertarian. He advised the Virginia schools to lock their doors when Brown v. Board was decided. Kind of started the voucher idea and the use of public funds for religious/private schools. Was the subject of Nancy MacLean's book Democracy in Chains.
Thank you, he's a different James Buchanan--just read about his background. Interesting that these guys who grow up poor often feel inferior to the Eastern Elites and then dislike them and everything they promote. Nancy MacLean is brilliant!
While I enjoy a conspiracy theory just like the next guy I try and confine these flights of imagination to “who shot JR?” And how much hairspray does Donald Trump use.
Just about everyone is a profit maximizer including most individuals. We move jobs for more money or more free time. If a corporation discovers that the profits from higher prices more than offsets loss of customers then they charge more. Compared to cloth diapers disposable diapers are cheaper and easier. Corporations exist to fulfill a need not employ people. As an individual my job is to acquire the skills and experience that make someone want to pay for them. There’s a lot about capitalism that is unfair but if anyone visits the Darien Gap they will find that everyone is walking away from socialism and towards a better future. Talk more about the b/s claims about immigration and the shortage of labor this country is facing. Talk about how these desperate people are the people who will grow the economy.
to me this like responding to a rape epidemic by saying “everyone has an instinctual drive for sex, and that means rapes can happen. if you don’t like rape, you can just move to a place with less rape”
maybe the government could do what good governments do — and what our government hasn’t done for 40 years — and GOVERN. four decades of blind government eyes to corporate price gouging — essentially unchecked capitalism — has gotten us here.
after 40 years, maybe we should stop letting corporations dig these holes and our government could start filling in the holes a bit … which is its JOB.
The FTC, SEC, FAA and FDA have been defanged by successive Republican administrations and Congresses. The first two above are essentially extinct. I blame Democrats for being so pathetic about messaging that they couldn’t ever come up with a coherent counter to the deregulation. Maybe it was hubris to assume that “protecting the electorate” would sell itself. But the DNC arrogance is alive and well today
Well if your employer is the SEC or FTC then I would say that the inmates in the asylum are usually the last ones to know. But I’m not alone in my opinion that consumer/investor protections are extinct. The impunity by which predators feed off the vast majority of the electorate harks back to the gilded age.
What cliche? When has any regulatory agency gone after someone before the train wreck? Name an agency and everyone can name at least two disasters where fines were paltry and how many companies plead guilty without any admission of wrongdoing. Toothless
I mentioned (in reply to Charlie Cooper above) "Lina M. Khan is Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces the nation's antitrust and consumer protection laws." who gave an extensive and informative interview thanks to Jon Stewart on his Daily Show Monday night. (maybe watch it on YouTube)
The faux moral outrage and right wing hand wringing about decreasing birth rates, abortion, and contraception should be connected to this topic. Whether, when, and with whom to have a child are in part economic decisions. When wealth concentration at the top pushes people to have less children because children aren’t affordable, instead of helping it become more affordable, the response is forced birth policies. Modern robber barons want to force the breeding of the next generations of consumers and take their profits every step of the way rather than have slightly less imbalance in their favor.
In all successful and enduring systems negative feedback regulation is essential to stability and indeed survival. This is abundantly clear to anyone who studies nature. That some people accept without evidence the notion that the world is otherwise only documents their irrationality and ignorance. I keep harping on this, that economics is akin to religion, and as such disconnected in many respects from reality.
We need to stop humoring those who posit nonsense like trickle-down or "free" markets, and regulate corporations to make them our servants rather than our masters. /r
Our Democratic friends need to condense all this down into a brief "Trump wants you to think he's your hero, but here's what he's done to you - here's what Biden is doing to help you" campaign ad spread abroad in forms that MAGAites will actually see and hear, including ads on AM talk radio. The MAGAites (and the rest of us) are feeling the pain of these rip offs, but far too many of us don't know where they're coming from. We really need to pound this home. Meanwhile, I'm buying generics, buying used where possible, fixing up my old stuff when it breaks, and doing everything else I can to deny profits to the companies doing these unjustified price increases. We can all do a lot to starve the name brand beasts. We should do as much as we can.
Under Pres. Biden, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice are doing historic work to combat monopoly. They are successfully reviving the field of anti-trust litigation that had been shelved under the so-called "free market" ideology that reigned from the late 1970s until Biden's election. Enforcement of anti-trust laws can reduce the ability of firms to raise prices more than their costs would justify, but it will take a few more years for this indispensable weapon in the fight for economic justice to bear fruit in terms of wealth and income distribution.
Did everyone see Lina Khan's lengthy interview by the comedian Jon Stewart on the Daily Show Monday night? Should be available on YouTube. "Lina M. Khan is Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces the nation's antitrust and consumer protection laws." A wonderfully informative interview.
LOL. Sure. That is the media narrative. Meanwhile the actual regulatory work has been to kill small business and support more large corporate consolidation.
Biden's folks have gone after "Microsoft and Meta, as well as politically powerful corporations like American Airlines, Booz Allen, JetBlue, Illumina, Simon and Schuster, and UnitedHealth Group." (https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/in-lake-wobegon-all-antitrust-enforcers) FTC is challenging proposed Kroger-Albertson merger, and DOJ has also sued Google for anti-competitive practices. There's a lot more.
Smoke and mirrors for people like you to have your talking points. Corporate consolidation has exploded under Biden. Regulation that kill small business has also exploded. It is global, national and local. Elite liberals are pushing their collectivist nightmare. In Oregon for example they are abusing water rights regulations to destroy small farms, dairy and ranches. They are doing the same in Europe.
I would be interested if you have clear examples you can cite. Can you explain how water rights regulations are being abused and by whom? Or give me a citation? Just showing an angry tone is not very convincing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4XL1bD_9f4
In general Democrats have a clear track record over the last couple of decades of becoming the big-business, Wall Street and big bank-friendly party. The actions of blue states and Democrat-dominated local government during the pandemic was disastrous to small business while big corporations had their best time ever.
Some of this is just the DNA of Democrats favoring "safety and control" over the creative destruction and growth from the dynamism of free enterprise. But today there is copious evidence that the Democrats are in-bed with the WEF Great Reset and Agenda 2030 project that seek to move more the global economy to central control. As Brexit and Trump proved the middle class is not happy with that direction, and thus making more of the middle class dependent on the administrative and corporatist centralized power is a way to neuter that middle class democratic power.
Mr. Lee, I agree that Democrats have been a "big-business, Wall Street, and big bank-friendly party." (So are Republicans, who passed multiple rounds of tax cuts for corporations and the ultra-wealthy that did not produce the promised capital investment.) Clinton actively supported two rounds of bi-partisan financial deregulation that directly led to the real estate crash of 2007-8. He followed advice from big banker Robert Rubin. These laws undid reforms enacted in the mid-1930s by Congress and FDR that kept our financial system mostly stable for over 6 decades. In only eight years, the deregulation scheme foisted on us by Ds and Rs led to disaster.
This brings us to Obama who came into office just as the shit was hitting the fan. He followed the advice of his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He gave hundreds of billions of dollars in relief to big financial institutions, prosecuted none of the criminals, and left individual homeowners swinging in the wind.
When the pandemic struck, Trump happened to be president. The policies of the Federal Reserve were very favorable to big finance and multi-nationals
Biden has turned around much of this attitude and has brought about the biggest pro-union and anti-monopoly reforms since the Roosevelts. However, it is true that these kinds of reforms will take many years to restructure the economy. I recommend that you subscribe to the blog BIG by Matt Stoller.
I watched most of the video about the water situation in Oregon. I really don't see how it is responsive to the comments I made about federal policy favoring big corporations. It's not about federal regulations as best I can infer.
By the way, I'm very critical of the Biden foreign policy. I'm not a fan, but I try to be an objective observer.
We definitely need corporate taxes to be higher than 28% even. In 1980 the corporate tax was 46% and the highest individual tax rate was 70%. Let’s start there.
Great comment, Rebecca!
“Corporate profits drove 53% of inflation . . . “ ? Waiting for that headline to hit NYTimes, CNN, etc. But not holding my breath.
They are owned by the same people who benefit the most. I heard in NPR 1A yesterday that the journalists at big media are beginning to rebell. Apparently Rona at NBC being hired, then fired was backlash from employees as well as people like you and me loudly sounding our opinions. Likely I will never watch Meet the Press an
again. Once a week I tell MTP I am still boycotting the bimbo host.
Check it out on 1A
I hope that with all the GOP harping on inflation that these numbers are broadcast by Dems.
Please share this with your town's local leaders and state reps. Post a letter to the editor if possible. In other words, get the word out.
But - remember that some folks use their feelings, not facts. They are impervious to facts like water off of a ducks back.
This is what monopoly power really looks like. forget the 1890s and the railroad monopolies. They controlled steel and manufacturing.
Now we have private equity With a voting share on literally everything that is made, done, broadcasted, sold, grown, rented, or leased.
The whole return to office thing was clearly been written and scripted as a Sinclair broadcasting story for local news. We've seen hints of it for a long time, but now it is in lockstep.
Can this ever be dislodged? I don't know. Who's willing to give up Amazon? Who's willing to give up doordash?
Whether you eat at a Chipotle or shop at Kohl's, you are putting the money into the same sets of pockets. Finding local and shopping there is time consuming and expensive. The whole system is gamed.
We saw a possible remedy during the pandemic, though we didn't know it. Just stop. Stop working. Stop playing the game.
A series of general strikes over an extended period of time would test the shareholders resolve to weather storms.
The 1% have such a huge cash reserve and are not personally affected by it so who knows.
Stay tuned I guess.
The government should tie corporate profits to the support costs of government infrastructure, defense expenditures and social upgrade issues such as child education and the ending of poverty. The taxes from the physical workers across all sectors of business sector provide an unfair bulk of funds for building, maintaining, and defending the infrastructure that allow businesses to trade their wares both domestically and internationally. It is now time for outrageous corporate profits to be redirected to cover these costs on an analytic basis. What are the real costs of doing business?
I have been buying diapers for my newborn grandson. 31 of said are 10.99 - 11.99 here at Walmart depending on brand.
I am thrifty, so I am buying diapers on FB marketplace, ie open large quantity boxes that someone else's baby outgrew the size before the box was empty. 136 diapers for $20 my last haul. How many others can't afford to shop like this.
It burns the heck out of me that corporate greed replaced doing the right thing across the board in every area of our economy.
Diapers and last 2 years of formula shortage have taken plenty of young couples from having children. Housing , gas, cost of daycare, diapers, formula, medical care, etc.
No wonder we have the lowest birthrate since the Great Depression.
Eventually the chickens will come home to roost on the greedy.
Wonderful resourceful work on your part!
Does the American celebration of capitalism that results in a few billionaires in any way fulfill the "American Dream" and the ideals of those Founding Fathers? We have unbalanced our economy--the less than 1% who possess inordinate amounts of wealth are playing life as a game. In the billionaire game, if you lose--become ill, homeless, nutrition deprived, and wretched...too bad.
If the "Corporate Profit Bonanza" is not evil in the Earthly challenge of good versus evil, how else can we describe this success? Looking more carefully, we see the lack of empathy, compassion, and any form of love for fellow humanity. To be more specific and call on recent corporate events, let's look at Boeing. The board that runs Boeing stopped including engineers who knew and understood how these airplanes work, and replaced them with financial "geniuses" who focused on profits at the expense of maintaining their product. They trashed Whistleblowers and ignored safety protocols all in the interest of competing with Europe's Airbus. I'm reminded of why we developed the atomic bomb--Germany was working on this same bomb and NO MATTER WHAT we had to be first.
Capitalism is the bane of economics. My millenial daughter and her friends bang that drum constantly as being the root of the world's problems.
It has a long despicable history for sure.
Immigration from Latin America today has roots in American Capitalism 40 years ago.
Iran -Contra anyone?
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, pizza dough, (16 oz) was $1 at Walmart, $1.09 at Aldi. With the fear that wheat production would suffer (or not make it to markets), the price soared by 75% in a few months. But agreements were made to protect (most) of the vital crop. After a sharp spike, wheat prices fell steadily.
Walmart's pizza dough price went from $1 to $1.78. (in several steps) Aldi also raised their price, topping at $1.69. As wheat prices fell, Aldi's price started coming down (again in steps). Walmart stayed elevated.
Wheat commodity pricing is still a bit higher than pre-invasion and that's reflected in the most recent price at Aldi - $1.23. Walmart recently RAISED their price to $1.98.
I feel that this encapsulates where we are. Walmart knows that consumers THINK they have the best prices. And, they have vowed to shareholders that they will stay ahead of inflation with their prices (thus creating inflation). Any government action is going to take a long time. The only tool is consumer diligence. I am a Walmart shareholder and have told investor relations several times how disappointed I am that WM has given up its lowest cost mantle. I don't need the extra pennies per share profit at the expense of American households.
Thank you, I appreciate the breakdown. Aldi has made humane and caring gestures before. Walmart...never?
TO be clear - this is the end result of the libertarian free market. This is the very reason why James Buchanan and Milton Friedman both stressed the need for "stealth" when promoting their ideas. They both avoided analysis of what would happen with the economics of their platforms when confronted brushing aside that the moves would allow for wealth concentration and more monopolies to develop.
Which James Buchanan? the President or the philanthropist?
Not sure he was a philanthropist. This James was a professor that was a pure libertarian. He advised the Virginia schools to lock their doors when Brown v. Board was decided. Kind of started the voucher idea and the use of public funds for religious/private schools. Was the subject of Nancy MacLean's book Democracy in Chains.
Thank you, he's a different James Buchanan--just read about his background. Interesting that these guys who grow up poor often feel inferior to the Eastern Elites and then dislike them and everything they promote. Nancy MacLean is brilliant!
While I enjoy a conspiracy theory just like the next guy I try and confine these flights of imagination to “who shot JR?” And how much hairspray does Donald Trump use.
Just about everyone is a profit maximizer including most individuals. We move jobs for more money or more free time. If a corporation discovers that the profits from higher prices more than offsets loss of customers then they charge more. Compared to cloth diapers disposable diapers are cheaper and easier. Corporations exist to fulfill a need not employ people. As an individual my job is to acquire the skills and experience that make someone want to pay for them. There’s a lot about capitalism that is unfair but if anyone visits the Darien Gap they will find that everyone is walking away from socialism and towards a better future. Talk more about the b/s claims about immigration and the shortage of labor this country is facing. Talk about how these desperate people are the people who will grow the economy.
to me this like responding to a rape epidemic by saying “everyone has an instinctual drive for sex, and that means rapes can happen. if you don’t like rape, you can just move to a place with less rape”
maybe the government could do what good governments do — and what our government hasn’t done for 40 years — and GOVERN. four decades of blind government eyes to corporate price gouging — essentially unchecked capitalism — has gotten us here.
after 40 years, maybe we should stop letting corporations dig these holes and our government could start filling in the holes a bit … which is its JOB.
The FTC, SEC, FAA and FDA have been defanged by successive Republican administrations and Congresses. The first two above are essentially extinct. I blame Democrats for being so pathetic about messaging that they couldn’t ever come up with a coherent counter to the deregulation. Maybe it was hubris to assume that “protecting the electorate” would sell itself. But the DNC arrogance is alive and well today
today i learned that the agency for which I have been an enforcement attorney for the last 17 years is “essentially extinct.”
Well if your employer is the SEC or FTC then I would say that the inmates in the asylum are usually the last ones to know. But I’m not alone in my opinion that consumer/investor protections are extinct. The impunity by which predators feed off the vast majority of the electorate harks back to the gilded age.
so just cliches then. okay
What cliche? When has any regulatory agency gone after someone before the train wreck? Name an agency and everyone can name at least two disasters where fines were paltry and how many companies plead guilty without any admission of wrongdoing. Toothless
I mentioned (in reply to Charlie Cooper above) "Lina M. Khan is Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces the nation's antitrust and consumer protection laws." who gave an extensive and informative interview thanks to Jon Stewart on his Daily Show Monday night. (maybe watch it on YouTube)
The faux moral outrage and right wing hand wringing about decreasing birth rates, abortion, and contraception should be connected to this topic. Whether, when, and with whom to have a child are in part economic decisions. When wealth concentration at the top pushes people to have less children because children aren’t affordable, instead of helping it become more affordable, the response is forced birth policies. Modern robber barons want to force the breeding of the next generations of consumers and take their profits every step of the way rather than have slightly less imbalance in their favor.
In all successful and enduring systems negative feedback regulation is essential to stability and indeed survival. This is abundantly clear to anyone who studies nature. That some people accept without evidence the notion that the world is otherwise only documents their irrationality and ignorance. I keep harping on this, that economics is akin to religion, and as such disconnected in many respects from reality.
We need to stop humoring those who posit nonsense like trickle-down or "free" markets, and regulate corporations to make them our servants rather than our masters. /r
Our Democratic friends need to condense all this down into a brief "Trump wants you to think he's your hero, but here's what he's done to you - here's what Biden is doing to help you" campaign ad spread abroad in forms that MAGAites will actually see and hear, including ads on AM talk radio. The MAGAites (and the rest of us) are feeling the pain of these rip offs, but far too many of us don't know where they're coming from. We really need to pound this home. Meanwhile, I'm buying generics, buying used where possible, fixing up my old stuff when it breaks, and doing everything else I can to deny profits to the companies doing these unjustified price increases. We can all do a lot to starve the name brand beasts. We should do as much as we can.
Now, graph inflation and wage growth on the same chart, and tell us that wage increases are responsible for inflation.
An honor coming from you the reader whom I respect so much on PI. Thank you!