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- news@lemmy.world
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In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to hike prices in search of profits.
“The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism,” Edwards wrote. “This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”
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Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Seriously, promise?
I and my family will take the painful collapse and rebuild, because at least that provides hope for a better future, unlike today’s path, further enriching a few thousand sociopath’s ego scores in their race to see who can burn up the the planet for private profit the fastest.
Living under the tyranny of the greed class is just pain by design. Pain in generational perpetuity.
Yeah, seriously. The path is so obvious and linear for society today due to that. I feel like it just gets easier to predict the future, from axioms such as “the rich are powerful and will always try to expand their influence and cement their rule”.
It’s easy to see that climate change will never be solved for as long as something big doesn’t change, wealth inequality will keep rising, it will just keep being more and more expensive to live and own things, working conditions won’t improve or may even worsen, automation will put out more and more people out of a job, creating a massive crisis, poor countries will get worse leading to wars or other crises, and ever more commercialization of everything, such as art and hobbies.
At least, unless it collapses/a revolution happens.
This is all a bit optimistic. The collapse of society will have a measurable human toll and may seal the deal on the chance of a better future. Very optimistic to think the resulting power struggle will result in anyone other than a dictator taking power.
but that’s all already happening anyways. it’s not a risk to changing things if it is a given in the status quo
Happening, hasn’t happened. Op is suggesting we just succumb. If I have to explain why that is a stupid notion I’m not even going to start with you.
We’ve had political, social and economic revolutions before without shit collapsing. Lots of death and destruction though generally. People don’t give up power easily unfortunately.
He’s literally complaining about capitalism while saying it might end capitalism. Fucking wild.
He’s an economist at one of the worlds top financial company, of course he considers capitalism has some good and wants to preserve it.
it’s telling how capitalists are worrying they’re fucking us too hard and might blow up the whole system in the process. their own stability in massive wealth and inequality would be safer if they’d back off a little but they can’t help themselves
I feel as though there’s a lot of one-upmanship in the capitalist class that prevents them from working in their own long-term best interest, coupled with a sense of infallible invincibility. Many capitalists believe they have what they have because they deserve it, and any moves to redistribute wealth that would maintain the status quo become untenable because of that constant drive to have more than your neighbour.
Accelerationism is a fucking dogshit ideology, but just like all dogshit ideologies, there’s an element of truth to it. Shit like this could literally end capitalism.
if you literally break the economy to the point where average people can’t afford necessities, it’s over. people won’t work if there isn’t food and a roof as rewards. they’ll be forced to seek those needs outside the system. many will die in this process but none will work for capitalist profit
The thing is, it’s an inevitability of capitalism. When you have a system who’s measurement of success is how much material wealth you can accumulate, people are going to do their best to accumulate as much wealth as possible. Which means putting basic needs on the back burner if they don’t make you enough money.
I think people wanting stuff is pretty much endemic to people, whatever economic system happens to be in place.
True, but capitalism incentivises wanting beyond what you can possibly use. Billionaires could never genuinely spend all of their money on themselves. It’s human to want what you don’t have; it’s inhuman to want to amass more than you could use by taking it from the mouths of others.
He’s literally complaining about capitalism while saying it might end capitalism. Fucking wild.
Capitalism could work with very strong governmental oversight. You have the hustle and means to get filthy rich? Good for you. You want to get filthy rich x 10,000? Get fucked.
I can’t wait for capitalism to end. Here’s a good video explaining it…
‘Why it’s a hard time imagine life after capitalism’ https://youtu.be/PaASqPnpq5Y
Next thing we know it they’ll be lying about shoplifting or something else that sends a little of they pain they’re causing us back home.
The shoplifting lie was posted yesterday I believe. Both are repeated articles that have just constantly been found to be true, but nobody has the energy to even be mad because we’re so busy trying to survive.
Not really sure what the tenor is of your reply but I would just say they steal a lot from us (shrinkflation, price-fixing, straight up lying about amount of product in unit, etc), people steal some of that back. Sunrise, sunset
Edit: on the retail side, a lot of those businesses are abusing the social safety net to reduce the amount they pay and socialize the losses while bitching their privatized profits would be higher if it wasn’t for all the socialized theft that was occuring on their watch!
Don’t forget that wage theft outstrips all other forms of theft combined
And its basically only ever dealt with on the dime of the victim and only civilly where it vastly exceeds the dollar value threshold required for big boy criminal charges on the part of the non-person person (person/non-corporation)
Australia is in the process of passing a law that criminalises wage theft - very much looking forward to our government taking actual theft seriously. I’m looking forward to seeing unscrupulous bosses and CEOs in handcuffs, even though I know it’s going to be extremely rare.
Its insane its not already the case. Good on them for actually attempting to stop fucking around
I think GDP theft is the biggest form of theft. Or possibly number of atoms in the universe theft. That’s probably the biggest form of theft.
straight up lying about amount of product in unit
Just saw an article this week that shoppers in Canada were purchasing things like cereal with tens of grams less than what they were paying for.
I’ve seen about four different versions of this over the last few years. It’s nothing new, much like the greedflation thing having been discussed for years.
All our regulations are so eroded, our government bodies so toothless and captured, that these companies are just fucking around with people’s lives because they can. There is no recourse. Burn your local chain store today.
This has been public knowledge since the very first quarterly earnings call in the greedflation era.
No surprise there, really. Those corporations were posting record high profits… In an environment of “real” high inflation those companies don’t get to increase their profits and their margins like that. Yet most news publications lend then a microphone for them to spread their lies instead of calling their bullshit. It’s not inflation, it’s greed. Why would they want you to pay less instead of more? It’s not like capitalism was invented yesterday. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed
An economist worth his salt should be considering. “Why didn’t this happen earlier?” Instead of being “shocked”.
We actually already know the answer to that. In a normal environment raising prices is something consumers are very sensitive to. But when there’s already inflation consumers are very bad at gauging what the new price should be. The corporations know this and have for some time. They were just waiting for a good moment to raise their prices.
They absolutely do get to increase their profits and margins like that. They did, and they will again.
Welcome to c a p i t a l i s m
But the trillion dollar company told me times were tough for them and their billionaire ceo. I should trust them, they know everything about me and have no reason to decieve me
“Times are tough” = everything from “1 week til collapse” to “might not meet our growth stretch targets, that trigger my massive bonus”
Well, no shit. You don’t need a study to know a case of water going from $2 to $5 is greed, not inflation. People who made $70k a couple of years ago were considered “living a comfortable life” in a lot of parts of the country. Not anymore. It’s just ridiculous how we have to fight tooth and nail with these assholes who want to drain every last fucking penny we have for their fucking quarterly fucking profits.
Oh no, I’m so surprised. Such an unexpected turn of events. Flabbergasted I tell you.
Yea, this happens every single time there is any excuse to raise prices. My first time was when my country switched our currency from Kroon to Euro and everyone said that will not cause an increase in prices. About a year later everything was about 30% more expensive.
This is not new and nothing will be done to fix it would be my prediction from like the last 10 times this has happened.
Same in Portugal. A 100 escudo coin was actually quite similar to the 1 euro coin but it was worth half. In one year what costed 100 escudos was now 1 euro. A 100% price increase.
And so people say we gotta tighten our belts and work just a little harder. Like in the good old days. We don’t want any handouts, do we? Do it for our country.
I literally saw someone quote JFKs “ask not what your country can do for you” yesterday, opposing a raise of social security payouts here in Germany. A raise that was necessitated by the galloping inflation which is hitting poor families the hardest. Coupled with an unwillingness of corporate management to adequately pay their workers, i.e. pay the very people who are making stock indices rise to record heights.
People are stupid. Mark my words, we will have a fascist government again soon. Because it’s all the brown people’s fault, so they say. And the queers and the trannies and the intellectuals, so they must all be purged.
Never again, we used to say here. Well, we’re almost there.
I wish I lived in a country that raised social security payments to lift people out of poverty. Sadly, I live in the U.S. where, apparently, if you’re poor, it’s your fault.
If this surprises you, you’re an idiot.
Perhaps, although a little harsh. Most people just don’t think that deeply about things.
The accepted narrative is that inflation happens when poor people get too much money.
Yes it’s obvious that there’s more going on if you think about it for a few moments, but no one does.
I guess one way it’s surprising is that, it takes a degree of coordination for this to happen. I mean you have some major international event that can trigger international economic consequences like some degree of inflation and then some genius thinks that since the public have been forced to swallow price rises across the board because of this, what if we just raise our prices some more and it will be assumed it’s for the same unavoidable cause. Okay, I get the scam, great. But, whether consumers believe the pretense or not and have sympathy or not, wouldn’t stop them going elsewhere if someone else didn’t come up with the same clever scheme or hasn’t launched it yet, and still has higher, but not extra high prices. Or maybe they do all see a great caper and jack up the prices at the same time, eventually, for the same greedy reasons, those businesses would want to take the other’s lunch if they could and would see the benefit of being at least just a little bit cheaper which is supposed to create a cycle that is the way capitalism supposedly works.
This doesn’t happen when you see monopolies or near monopolies. Supermarkets in Australia are in particular being talked about for price gouging and there’s an associated near duopoly between 2 dominant chains. In that context it’s definitely not very surprising. I’d bet that this particularly recent example of price spikes without adequate explanation are associated particularly with sectors where there is very little competition. The article was pay walled so I can’t tell if they’re referring specifically to prices for groceries or economy wide problems.
When 6 corporations owns 90% of the market it dosen’t require a great deal of coordination.
Exactly. The article is pay walled so I couldn’t get too specific since I don’t known it’s scope but my suggestion here is that it’s not complete naïveté not to have automatically assumed the war in Ukraine would lead to both actual inflationary pressure as well as cover for just plain old price gouging because that price gouging behavior on its own doesn’t make good business sense even hard nosed and cynically motivated, it requires both greed and concentrated ownership in cartels. Presumably we should see this greedflation happening unevenly in particular sectors where cartels or cartel like conditions have flourished.
Then that should lower the bar to prove collusion
removed by mod
I prefer fire. I just want to start burning things.
Deep fryer.
The billionaires yearn for it!
We know, just goes to show how out of control these capitalist pigs truly are
No, but workers getting a $2 raise because unemployment rate is not high enough is the problem. /s
I thought having a society was to avoid this kind of mad max landscape of unchecked greed. Evidently capitalism gets a pass to ruin even that idea.
