Here’s why: CORPORATE GREED
Not so fun facts:
- Food prices arent going down
- Inflation isnt going down either
- The price of everything will skyrocket (Biden will be blamed)
- Wages will remain stagnant in the absolute best case scenario (they will likley go down)
- In order to “reduce” the effects of the above regulations on products will rapidly disappear. Because of that the quality of food will decrease, houses will be made on a lower safety standard, and workplaces will became unsafe. Deregulation will cause a mass explosion in profit, none of it will be seen by the workers.
- The wealthiest will be made extremely wealthy (similar to the gilded age)
- Women, POC, Queer people, disabled people, poor people, and multiple other types of people will suffer
In the next four years the intelligence and strength of American workers will be tested. Do you fall in line or do you break your chains?
Women, POC, Queer people, disabled people, poor people, and multiple other types of people will suffer
One major group of people seems to be always left out of these lists as if they’re unaffected by everything.
Which one?
The middle class
These smug comments are the reason Trump is in office now
I meant men in general but otherwise you’re correct. Let’s ignore roughly half of the population and treat them as second class citizens and the cause for all problems in the world and then act all surprised they’re not voting for us.
Imma guess they mean rich white men
Ah truly the most oppressed people, rich white cishet male christians
Is that a “major group of people”?
Not really but the right thinks they are
How about just average (lower) middle class men? You know, the group of people voting for Trump due to being ignored/treated like shit by everyone else?
Inflation is already down, drastically and has been consistently so for over a year.
Just want to note here that inflation going down doesn’t mean the prices will drop. It only means they stop increasing or the increase slows down. For prices to go down we’d need to be experiencing deflation which is incredibly bad for the economy.
When people talk about “the economy” they almost always mean Wall Street. That has less and less to do with the economic environment that those of us outside of the 1% live with every day.
Lower prices are bad for “the economy”, but they are often good for the vast majority of us. We aren’t the ones who benefit, even indirectly, from businesses making more money.
Well, that’s a very U.S.-centric perspective, but no, I’m not talking about Wall Street - I’m talking about the economy as a whole. Deflation means the value of money is increasing, which discourages people from spending since their money will be worth more tomorrow than it is today. This hurts businesses across the board, creating a deflationary spiral where reduced spending leads to lower revenues for businesses, forcing them to cut costs, lay off workers, or close entirely.
As businesses suffer, incomes decline, further reducing consumer spending and exacerbating the cycle. Making big purchases is particularly disincentivized because waiting a year or two means you can get them cheaper. What’s good for the economy is people having money to spend and actually spending it, but deflation disrupts this balance.
That was a US-centric perspective, although I think it applies more generally. What you’re talking about is classic economic theory, which was a pretty accurate picture in the past. More recent developments suggest that some important things have changed in the actual economy over the last half-century, which have been reflected in new economic theories.
The central problem is that businesses are no longer as sensitive to traditional market factors. Monopoly, collusion, and the capture of regulatory functions have allowed businesses far more control over both their markets and their labor costs. Meanwhile, wealth inequality has drastically reduced the amount of discretionary income that is available. The traditional economic model still mostly applies to the wealthy and what’s left of the middle class. The majority of consumers no longer have the means to participate as they did.
Neither inflation nor deflation address wealth inequality. The relationship between salaries and prices is broken. Traditional economic indicators assume that businesses doing better means the average person does better, but that is no longer the case. Most of the gains now go to wealthy investors. That leaves us with a situation where the traditional economy looks great, but large numbers of people can no longer afford housing or food. Unless you are part of the 1%, that is not really a good economy.
Average rate of inflation means some things can come down in price, but are offset by other items going up. It’s not absolute.
The only thing that would cause deflation is innovation or reduced demand, and there’s not a lot of innovation in food, and everyone but anorexics seem determined to eat.
I skipped breakfast just doing my part to help…
Greed? Is it greed? It’s greed, isn’t it?
*Bob Saget narrator voice*
“…It was greed…”
Bob Saget? More of a Ron Howard line
“It was.”
This is a terribly written headline and article. Might be AI slop. In short it says:
Historically prices don’t go down unless there is an economic depression (for some reason that isn’t explained).
There is little government policy can do to bring prices down (for reasons that aren’t explained).
trump’s tariff and deportation policies will make prices much higher.
What the average American doesn’t understand is that
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The government only has control over inflation when it comes to prices
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Controlling inflation only controls the RATE of rising prices
Once prices are up, they don’t go down because prices always go up over time in a healthy economy.
Prices would go down if the government was serious about taking on the monopolies in the supply chain (meat packing, industrial farmers, grocers with local monopolies, etc.). If they were serious about antitrust, prices would go down and you wouldn’t get a recession, on the contrary, it would create jobs and grow the economy.
Fat chance of that happening under this administration (or an alternate universe Harris one either).
I’m not disagreeing with your suggestion, but in that situation what would actually happen over the short term is prices would stay the same for much longer. Which is healthy for an economy.
Over a longer term people will make more money and $10 eggs won’t feel as expensive.
It’s not as exciting of a proposition, which is why most people don’t bother explaining it.
Prices for other goods have gone down (TVs, computers, etc) in the past without being disastrous for the economy. You’re right if we’re talking about deflation generally (ie. ALL goods), but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about tackling prices in specific, anti-competitive sectors like food, health care, etc, where there’s plenty of room for prices to go down. And all of those things are necessities where consumers can’t delay spending on them, so deflation wouldn’t even have its disastrous effect there (which is customers withholding spending because they can get more with the same money if they wait a month).
If you were to introduce competition within the whole chain all at once between farmers and consumers, prices would definitely go down. Obviously that will never happen because the government acts slowly and it can take a decade for a case to make it all the way through the courts, so within the current political context of the USA you’d never see prices go down. Economics itself doesn’t dictate that, and it wouldn’t be harmful if say the prices of eggs halved overnight due to more competition in the market or price controls, as long as it’s still profitable for the producers of the good.
Monopolies don’t necessarily mean higher prices and breaking them up wouldn’t immediately solve high prices and would probably cause prices to go up further (as you’re creating instability).
Not that going after monopolies is bad, and long term would help, but it isn’t going to fix the current situation.
prices always go up over time in a healthy economy
LOL that sounds like a massively over simplified statement. would you care to elaborate?
prices go up, period–that’s true, but calling an economy “healthy” because of that is like saying “healthy people eat food”
i think the average american has very little understanding of what money actually is and why inflation is even a thing, rather, they just take it as a fact of life. like school shootings. like “yea, it’s not fun, but there’s nothing we can do” LOL
prices go up, period–that’s true
According to Piketty, anyway, general inflation did not actually start until the industrial revolution. The price level was otherwise stable throughout history up to that point. It’s not just an incontrovertible fact of life, although it seems that way now.
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Let’s be honest, if you’re clicking on headlines that end in “hErE’S WhY”, your news sources are all wrong
Prices go down due to competition. So the government can’t lower prices, unless it destroys demand so the existing levels of competition cause lower prices. The government can lower demand by raising taxes, or if the fed raises interest rates. Eventually leading to enough unemployment to lower demand.
In short, if the government makes prices go down, people tend to burn down the government before that happens. So it’s not really something they can do. Increasing prices is a whole different thing, inflation pisses people off in smaller doses, and keeps them in jobs, so they’re too busy to grab pitch forks and torches.
Instead of lowering demand, they could increase supply.
Bankrupting entire industries doesn’t end with lower prices.
If an entire industry is bankrupt, it is no longer needed and has been supplanted by a better industry. And that usually ends in lower prices. Tractors are way, way cheaper than oxen.
The industry goes bankrupt because it can’t compete with a government producer that doesn’t pay taxes, leading to a government program running without competition, paid for by deficit funding.
If you’re a currency issuer then your government programs don’t run on any funding. They are allocated a maximum amount of new currency.
But modern monetary theory aside, government competitors only eliminate shitty competition, not entire industries, unless those industries are themselves useless like the insurance industry.
Food prices aren’t high; the value of money has fallen - it’s called inflation.
The real problem is wages have not increased so the purchasing power of consumers remains low. So food becomes relatively expensive - consumers have had pay cuts.
Wages have increased.
Man, what sector do you work in bcz no they sure haven’t in mine…
Change jobs, companies don’t have unions forcing them to keep wages up with inflation, so it’s up to the individual. Or you know, vote for unions.
All the jobs for my position pay the same, that’s how wage stagnation works. Also, I am union.
Sounds like your union needs to hear from you.
Wage stagnation can affect unions just as much as anyone else. If you want an example, look at how little teachers get paid despite having one of the largest unions in the country, with an extremely high percentage of professionals having membership. Unions cannot magically make an entire sector start paying more, that’s just not how anything works.
Union teachers make 25% more than non union. There’s no magic, it’s always a fight. You can either fight alone, or with a team. Evidence says having a team works better.
Cool, now peg that to the cost of living so it is an accurate measurement.
Wages have not increased compared to any cost of living increases.
Yes, they have. I know it’s a “widely believed fact” here in lemmygrad that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” but by any objective measure wages have been around or keeping up with inflation. For 2024 wages beat inflation.They aren’t always lock step so there are times where they drift.
Wages have increased 5.5x what they were in 1950. Housing costs have increased 19x.
Wages haven’t kept up, period. Wages are not up nearly 30% since 2020.
How are computer costs since 1950? Or air travel? Or the costs of food?
You can’t cherry pick a single item like that.
Besides food those other items don’t enter into people’s lives, extreme luxuries don’t matter when you’re spending half your increase me on housing.
The story on wages is more complex. They have gone up, but have been outpaced by inflation. The pandemic throws a wrench in measuring things, though, and gives both sides of the argument valid data to work with.
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/06/competing-narratives-on-real-wages-incomes-under-biden/
Of course it’s complex. Markets and wages don’t react instantly. But “generally speaking” wages do catch up.
They haven’t for the last 70 years. You make less than you’re grand parents.
This is so simplified it’s basically a lie.
