this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023

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'Excess profits' at big energy and consumer companies pushed up inflation, report claims (www.cnbc.com)

submitted 11 months ago by return2ozma to c/news

30 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (3 children)

This article is pussyfooting the issue. Oil companies have reported record profits for 2-3 years in a row. The article claims "greedflation doesn't have an exact science" while also quoting the same thing "... reap ‘excess profits’, setting prices higher than would be socially and economically beneficial".

i can't say I speak for others, but I was accepting of a year or two of companies "making up" for the hit they took during the height of the pandemic, but governments need to put them back into place and regulate their latest exploits. Enough has now been enough.

wherever governments are going to support the freedom for companies to make money at the cost of many thousands of people even being able to afford necessities. Either there needs to be a limit their profits to benefit all, or we need to restructure to tax those earnings to provide a UBI that provides all necessities.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Even with UBI, energy companies will just jack up prices. They charge the money you have because there's no real alternative. Them, medical care, and housing are all pretty inelastic in terms of demand until you're literally past the point where people have the ability to pay. (Which i think most of the Western world is.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

So at what point do you think folks in the western world will take inspiration from other places to not allow things to get to that juncture? Whether it be expansion of unions like Sweden to ensure power is returned to the people or we start having protests that escalate and start burning things down like France?

[–] SoleInvictus 3 points 11 months ago

I'd say when the level of discomfort from doing nothing begins to exceed the level of discomfort from doing something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

All profit from oil is excess…..

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't quite understand your point, please elaborate.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 11 months ago

It’s pretty clear

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It doesn't have an exact science because it's in the interest of the powers that be to not let that science get too exact.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Bet you there's been at least one person who has done the math.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago

Oops, we made excess profits! How did that happen?

[–] danekrae 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No shit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

[–] stjobe 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor, the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody Knows, Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man, 1988

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

No fucking shit.

[–] alienanimals 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Executives need to be jailed in order to stop the average American from getting fucked.

[–] SoleInvictus 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

But why would American politicians write laws that would effectively send themselves to jail?

But hard agree.

[–] qooqie 10 points 11 months ago (4 children)

They keep saying we’re doing wonderful and coming out of it, but I hit up my big local mall recently and holy shit. You can really tell when we’re heading towards the shitter by looking at your mall. I’m not in a small town by any means and half the stores were closed at it. I think it’ll get worse and worse and worse until maybe next year this time. And then maybe we’ll start pulling out of this recession, but I’m not optimistic that we’re in a recession, I’m thinking this is normal now

[–] CosmoNova 23 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Dying malls are a sign of bad urban planning, not of a shrinking economy. Malls in America have been closing down for probably decades now while there are still new ones opening in European cities.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Malls were bad urban planning in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Malls in the US were killed by the Internet. The ones that are still around are a macabre husk of what shopping malls once were here. There's a Spencer's, but no arcade. There's an Orange Julius, but no record store. Dillard's and Macy's are there, but Sears is long dead. Half of the closest one to me is a giant police station.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Malls aren’t very good economic indicators. They been dying for years regardless of the economic conditions - checkout /r/deadmalls on reddit. Partly due to tastes of consumers, who got tired of walking half a mile to get to a store, and partly due to online commerce.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I’ve heard that the regulatory environment had a big impact on some places. Something like there were a bunch of subsidies/incentives to invest in the real estate aspect of malls. When those incentives dried up, the increased operating costs got passed on to tenants, some of which couldn’t afford the increase. Closing shops make the mall less attractive for customers, which reduces sales at the remaining shops, some of which end up closing down, and the whole thing spirals into the situation we have now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I wouldn't be surprised if artificial incentives played a role. It's also worth noting that in general, malls were built and flourished at the expense of downtown shopping areas, and many cities had hollowed out, dead commercial cores by the era when malls were going strong.

[–] blanketswithsmallpox 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Malls have been dead for half my lifetime lol.

There's a reason nearly all of them have been converted to city resources centers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Maybe, but also people just don't go to malls as much as they used to.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Buh buh buh..,.them fox people told me it was the bidyn cryum famuly the reason why everything is expensive

[–] Gruntyfish 9 points 11 months ago

Water is wet, more at 11.

[–] Fedizen 7 points 11 months ago

it seems like either there needs to be some trust busting or that modern communications and automation is so good now its impossible to keep companies from price fixing and that price controls need to be implemented.

[–] masquenox 6 points 11 months ago

Under capitalism there can be no such thing as "excess profits."

[–] anon_8675309 5 points 11 months ago

Excess profits == stealing. The trust is broken.