Retailers fear things that would help consumers consume? Sounds like retailers don't know how to succeed without gouging.
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
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The last time USA had extended deflation, the Great Depression happened. When people stop consuming, retailers fire their workers. Then fewer people can consume, so more people get fired. This goes on enough, then its not just stores who fire workers, but it trickles to factories, R&D, office workers, etc. etc. The longer deflation happens, the further it spreads and the more people lose their jobs.
Ever since the Great Depression happened, US Policy has been strongly anti-deflation. Our policy is to "err" on the side of slight inflation.
So what happens when retail workers don't get paid enough to consume even with jobs?
Prices drop, causing more people to get fired. IE: The Great Depression. Or if you want a modern economy that's undergoing this shift, just look at China right now.
If people can't afford things, your only choice is to fire workers and drop prices further. That's just economics. (Why do you need workers? No one is buying anything, so fire your workers. Duh). The more people realize that this is the only strategy to survive, the lower prices get, the more people get fired, and the less that people can consume. It gets worse and worse until economists change policy and pull you out of this.
This is why we have large pseudo-government central banks keeping watch over our economy. Deflation cannot be tolerated. Yes, inflation sucks, but at least people still have jobs and livelyhoods in times of inflation or hyperinflation even. That's actually survivable. Deflation is NOT survivable, it sucks so much worse. Deflation is all-hands-on-deck we need to work together kind of situation. We never want to push the economy to that direction.
China isn't doomed btw. China's plan is to exports goods to Europe and hope that Europe buys enough Chinese crap that they can kickstart demand again. And as prices drop further and further, Chinese goods will get cheaper, and crap like Temu will pop up to sell these cheaper goods to everyone. Now there's geopolitical repercussions to this (not everyone will want to support such "dumping" of goods into our countries), so there's no guarantee that China will be successful on this front.
In that case tie minimum wage to inflation so no matter how bad inflation gets the poorest don't lose their shirts (and stop consuming)
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We're only at risk for people stopping food consumption if prices don't fuckin fix themselves, and I'm serious about that. People are gonna eat if they can eat.
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We are not at risk for any sort of sustained deflation. Inflation is currently over 3% (higher than the Fed's target of 2%) and interest rates are very high. We have a lot of wiggle room if inflation starts dropping.
The cause of the great depression was overextended credit and stock market gambling. Deflation was present because people didn't have as much money (or credit) to spend, but it was merely a symptom of an economic downturn, not the cause.
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Line go up….this quarter, or else.
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Inflation is a funny word for "price gouging."
Right?
Like... It's not some great mystery. We see inflation at 5% and prices go up 8, 10...15%...and the companies say it's because inflation.
I am a private music teacher, and while most private teachers will go through a school to do lessons, I've just gone freelance and do it all myself. I get to set prices and recruit or not and I have so much freedom, but one thing I found was that in setting prices, people will pay what you say. If they can't I'll chat a bit to see what the situation is and see where I can make discounts of course, but wealthy families are willing to do $100 an hour easy. I know I could bump it to $150 for some.
Basically all I'm saying is inflation is BS for companies making up higher prices.
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No we are tired of price gouging by corporations. They’re fucking price fixing.
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This article makes me want to vomit. All these companies and CEOs talking about inflation like it's this intangible phantom that nobody can get a grasp on.
“If one looks at inflation over time, we very rarely get into periods of sustained deflation. That’s just not a consumer effect,” Coke CEO James Quincey said Feb. 13."
It's the companies and CEOs price gouging. Call a spade a spade for Christ's sake.
They're incapable of sincerity.
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Pay board members less. There you go, you now have more money to pay employees.
I'm sorry, I don't understand.
Perhaps you could try again, in english?
/Executive
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Question for the economists in this thread. Everyone seems to be saying that a lack of at least some inflation is bad but also that wages going up to meet it is bad. Isn't this a system automatically doomed to fail? Eventually in such a setup no one can afford anything and the economy collapses.
Inflation is fine as long as wages rise with it.
The issue is our economy is entirely built around low interest rates and low inflation. It's been that way for a generation. This benefit asset-holders like home owners and the wealthy. Hence why they are doing everything possible to avoid wage-growth. They don't care about inflation, what they are terrified of is wage growth and higher interest rates.
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Not an economist per se, but what my econ prof in college put on the test is, more or less, that workers' penury will eventually force them to take action to raise wages. This includes everything from strike actions to workers in general simply refusing to take the lowest-paid jobs anymore. The fact that employers will delay this process as long as possible and keep the raises as small as possible and workers will have to fight like hell to get even pitiful raises is also part of the theory. It's a story of gIvE aNd tAKe that ignores the government took massive action last year to prevent the labor market from responding to the new market conditions and routinely acts to prevent wages from rising "too fast." The price of everything can inflate to hell, but if the price of labor goes up in direct response just like every other commodity, whoa now, stop the presses, that's an economic problem.
Some inflation is necessary to prevent wealth hoarding. It's one reason we moved away from the gold standard.
Minimum wage needs to be tied to it though because we're still seeing a huge amount of wealth disparity which is exactly what inflation is meant to solve.
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Inflation is easier to handle and not as bad for the economy as deflation, so that's where we are always at.
2% inflation and 2.5%-3% wage gains where the difference is made up by productivity gains would be the ideal.
The thing people are scared of is a wage-price spiral where inflation is 10% so wages have to rise 10% which increases employer costs so they raise prices 10% so wages have to rise 10% etc. High inflation that becomes self-perpetuating.
Wages rising faster than inflation is good, but the risk of a wage-price spiral is what people are afraid of with rising wages.
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New challenges for retailers such as:
Not hitting record profits year after year. Reducing their CEO from a five yacht household to a four yacht household. Finding ways to hardline lobby to reduce taxes to zero.
Hah. Like the CEOs will bear any brunt of this burden.
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They tighten their belts, we tighten our belts, everybody loses. All because they got to have all the money and never leave anything on the table for the working class.
Yall made your nut with pandemic price hikes, now eat your fuckin crow.
They won't. They will continue to cut costs by skipping health and safety requirements and laying off employees. There must always be profit.
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It's time to stop spending.
I've cut back on everything, not just because its expensive but because I want to send a message.
If even 10% did this, the corps would shit themselves bloody.
100% agree. I have personally stopped eating fast food months ago. The quality is the worst it has ever been and it is outrageously priced. Same goes for soda, chips, and other junk food. Junk food was supposed to be cheap. When you stop making it cheap....you don't have a consumer base.
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When's the last time the US saw significant deflation? The 30's? Can't say I blame them for their fear. But they'll see no sympathy from me! We've seen two whole generations born, raised, and passing away in the age of "Number always go up!" business. At least the greatest generation grew up hearing stories of difficult times when it was the unions and collectives that brought them through the darkness. I'm sure current business leadership has no clue how to face this. It's passed out of living memory.
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Profits must always go up.
Fuck retailers. Have less shareholder profit and get over it. They want profit to be fixed or increasing. They view it in an accounting sense as something they cannot have decrease, ever. This is unrealistic and makes them do stupid things.
There is no sin greater in capitalism than uncaptured profit, none.
Fuck capitalism and the barbaric world it creates. We are better than this but the sociopaths like to count big numbers.
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