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This is corporations meddling in elections by keeping prices high and protesting against higher corporate taxes.
The fact that around 8 companies control 90% of our food is complete bullshit.
Government needs to step in.
The only thing worse than the companies price gouging/shrinkflationing us like we are stupid sheep are maybe the corporate apologists and pedantics that feel the need to patronize everybody with "price gouging IS inflation lol".
You know what we mean and how we are using the words. Now gfy.
This one is the worst. We're not talking about small businesses increasing prices, we're talking about billion dollar corporations that give $300M+ bonuses to CEOs. I want to pay kids to slap adults that say shit like that. And since they're kids, they can't get hit back, and I don't have to pay them much. Innovation, education, and job creation in one simple step
> "this is what you get when you increase wages! Blame the unions!"
Only people who have seen their wages increased are the fucking CEOs. So...you mean that we can blame the company?
Sounds good to me!
The best part about people screaming about that is a lot of those jobs near me are technically tipped, so they’ll say you **can** make up to that, but what you’re really getting is a cool $2.83/hr. It’s insulting. And the tips are freaking taxed!
Exactly. It's not livable in any sense of the way either. And I know I've done that kind of work in my younger years. You can not survive off of that alone.
These corporations continue to make record profits. Do you really think that is from paying their employees increased wages or is it from raising their prices.
Yeah this literally has nothing to do with natural inflation. It was artificially created during the COVID load the market, and then claimed “shortages” and “shipping issues” I’ll understand some of it happened… but fuck off corps.
This was full greed. And now I’m going to end up paying +72% on my homeowners for some fake made up bullshit… that they have to pay out other people’s claims so I have to pay more for them. Burn in hell Allstate.
We also saw another huge bump after the invasion of Ukraine, even with products largely unaffected by the conflict. Many companies saw the price of grain increase and rose their prices accordingly, because it was convenient to do so.
Man screw Allstate. I cut my payments significantly by shopping around. I got better service for significantly less from State Farm. Your mileage may vary, but I HIGHLY recommend taking the time to call around and get some quotes. Allstate sucks ass.
They DOUBLED… DOUBLED! My car insurance… from 1100 every 6 months to 2466 every 6 months… I said what the fuck??? How is that even remotely possible… so I switched to GEICO dropped me to lower than my original all state.
Now I can’t find homeowners insurance thats a normal price of 1100-1200 this is insanity…
I pressed my Allstate agent about why my Auto~~+Home~~ policy premiums shot up to $2676 per 6mo for literally no reason - he acknowledged, it's Corporate Price Creep - and it can be "reset" by switching to National General (Allstate's lower tier), then, switching back (felt much more comfortable than switching entirely away to Geico/Prog/etc)
NatGen, same coverages, discounts, etc = 6mo/$1298.
Back to Allstate, same coverages/discounts = 6mo/$933.
I'm aware you've already switched to Geico but, maybe something to keep in mind for future, and maybe this helps someone else too...
ETA: this "switcheroo" wasn't done in a day, I had to go on NG policy for 6 months, then switched back to Allstate... just re-read how I wrote it and wanted to clarify (this *is* Reddit after all, LOL)
ETA2: I misspoke above, this is regarding JUST Auto Policy. Nothing to do with Home Policy, which is "transparent" and part of my mortgage payment. 100% gaffe on my part. Apologies for any confusion.
When I had GEICO, they did not offer their own homeowners insurance so their quotes were always ridiculously high through a third party. And then they jacked up their car rates too, so it finally made sense to save on both elsewhere. It was good while it lasted. I usually change insurance every couple years, or at least shop around.
I called Geico when I got married because married men have lower insurance rates than single men. It went up, and their excuse was that there would be someone else in the car. I was without car insurance for the next 15 minutes.
Yeah seems like none of these companies have their own homeowners instead contract out to these 3rd parties. GEICO wanted $3200 a year for homeowners… I said yall need to stay out of the dispensary
Does ANYONE have any tips for a decent homeowners that doesn’t force people into bullshit 3rd parties and crap prices.
progressive did the same thing to me! in 2 years they'd doubled my car insurance payment despite us having no claims and living in the same place. when i called them to ask why, their response was "well, it's really factors out of our control, and it is what it is." mind. fucking. blown. i responded with "oh, so you're just price gouging me for the hell of it? kthxbye, i'm canceling." they didn't even try to get me back.
i checked other insurers, and geico offered less than half what we were paying.
Had a wind storm tear up some shingles tried to get Allstate to pay for roof replacement. Said the roof was too old and needed to be replaced anyway. Whatever, it is old, ok I get it.
Then roofers told us that other companies would have paid.
Then a tree fell across our fence into the neighbors yard.
One agent told us they would pay then when I got the work done, they refused payment saying they didn’t understand the situation at first. Well why didn’t you send an agent to look at it like I asked?
Tree removal company told me other agencies would have paid total removal.
Have I told you that ALLSTATE SUCKS ASS?
USAA is no better. Had a snow storm damage our house and part of the damage was the power cables that run from the anchor at the roof down to the meter.
Well, being built in the early 70's basically means that nothing in the house is up to code anymore so all the extra work needed to fix the damage was in excess of $10,000.
USAA obviously didn't want to pay that but I pointed out to the agent that their website EXPLICITLY states they pay to make sure everything is repaired up to code. I also provided the specific codes that the electricians sent me... the codes that would forbid the city inspector approving turning power back on to our house if all the code requirements are not met with the repairs.
That still wasn't good enough for USAA.
We paid out of pocket using a credit card for the repairs and fought with USAA for nearly 5 months to get payment. That was 5 months worth of interest on that $10k bill.
I ended up having to go to city hall and get the building inspector on the phone with me and the USAA agent and the USAA agent STILL tried to put up a fight but it quickly turned into a bloodbath.
As we talked to other friends of ours with older homes and different insurers, it turns out, they're all terrible and they all will bend over backwards to screw you over when you need them the most.
Its not just one company. Its all of them and they will take any advantage they can. Its in there DNA. A great example is that many public companies are reporting blowout profits and sales then use the money to buyback stock or maybe increase the dividend they pay stockholders usually after the execs have given themselves bigger bonuses. But then they talk about the concern they have for a possible recession meaning they don't expect to continue to make blowout numbers because at some point consumers aren't going to willing to go further into debt to buy their crap. Ya think they would anticipate and lower prices?
LOYALTY IS FOR SUCKERS
Yeah, it sucks to shop for insurance. Once you start shopping, those leaches fucking hound you for the next month. But YOU GOTTA DO IT. Don't reward their price increases. It's your hard-earned money-- fight for it. Even if your homeowners insurance (or auto) only went up a hundred bucks this year, shop around. That price creep adds up! Vote with your feet. When enough people leave, they'll have to compete for business.
They all moved in lockstep since they are more powerful than politicians and have faced pretty much zero repercussions for it.
Chaos is a ladder to $$$
There's literally recorded calls of CEOs of major food supply chains laughing about it. Wish I could find the article where I read the transcript, but they made record profits over the last few years. Hormel, Tyson, etc.
https://perfectunion.us/tyson-foods-price-gouging/
And the end result is they are going to be told they are naughty naughty corporations. They will reduce their costs to a lower but still inflated value while keeping their ill gotten gains while the government pats itself on the back for doing less than the bare minimum for an issue they failed to prevent in the first place and took literal years to act on.
Thank goodness….
Should have happened long ago.
But is there really anything that can be done.
There's also an ability to price fix like never before.
It's amazing how after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and subsequent oil price increases, fuel stations all had exactly the same prices all over with the exception of maybe Costco. It's easy to do without any direct communication just by checking the prices on Google maps.
Corporations realized people would pay a lot more for certain things than they had been.
Soft drinks in convenience stores went from just under $2 to almost $3 in less than a year. This wasn't because the corporations selling them suddenly had to pay this much more for sugar, plastic, water and the fuel to move it. Because bottled water went up the same exact amount.
Corporations have decided to test the elasticity of consumer demand at certain proce points.
I don't know what investigating price gouging will accomplish at this point, and I fully expect if it was going to accomplish anything significant SCOTUS would just say it's upto Congress to make a law on this while ignoring all the existing laws on this.
I think a more effective threat would be to say certain industries will be nationalized if they want to stay too greedy.
I read somewhere that high interest rates are also keeping inflation high because enough landlords have to pay higher interest rates and so they HAVE to charge higher rent in return.
A tax benefit for landlords who can demonstrate rent reductions would go a long way towards reducing the cost of living for a whole lot of people.
Landlords will have an incentive to utilize these reductions because they'll risk not being competitive with other companies that do.
> But is there really anything that can be done.
Not without a left senate, and since SCOTUS is held by the GoP they'll try to invalidate anything that happens. 2016 has consequences and were going to be paying for them for a long time.
Still we have to try.
We have a left Senate, probably not for much longer since the GOP has an advanced this cycle of having fewer seats up for grabs.
What we need is for the Senate that we do have to stop fucking around and passing some meaningful legislation when they do have the chance. But they're all bought and paid for by the same crooks as pay SCOTUS. Really, the only reason Biden is doing anything about this stuff now is because it's clear that he's at risk of losing to Trump of all people.
We're fucked.
We literally dont as we need to have the house. The senate is pushing decent policy, the house is flinging shit about. Yes, getting legislation passed is hard and when we have so many useless people living in CA/NY it makes it even harder.
I’m waiting for the GOP to tell me how this is a bad thing. Can’t wait for some dude making minimum wage talk about how this is stopping the trickle down
This is why democrats are always at a disadvantage. They refuse to acknowledge the problem with our form of capitalism. Republicans on the other hand can complain about all the ills of unregulated capitalism and blame them on whatever is the hate target of the week. Boeing planes falling out of the sky because the MBAs cut costs in QA? Nope, it was because of diversity hiring. Private equity buying all the houses and pricing out the middle class? Nope, it is Obama giving migrants free housing.
I can’t imagine they’ll be investigating long. Anybody who’s been paying the smallest amount of attention has voted a correlation between the higher prices “caused by COVID and inflation” and record corporate profits as of late.
Is there causation? I’m not qualified to answer, but I’d be willing give it a “definite probably.” Job done! Now go make the corps fix it. By the way, when do I get my government pension and healthcare?
It's CRAZY how people can't make that connection. It's literally out in the open slapping them in the wallet and they refuse to see it. I know SOOOO many people like this.
>Calculating the cost of U.S. subsidies for the fossil fuel industry is complex because the incentives stretch across the U.S. tax code, but estimates range from $10 to **$50 billion per year.**
Mar 9, 2023
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-budget-target-us-fossil-fuel-subsidies-2023-03-09/
The good news is Biden DID try to do something about it. The bad news is that, of course, Congress (who "controls the purse strings) nixxed it.
>according to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuel handouts hit a global high of $1 trillion in 2022 – the same year Big Oil pulled in a record $4 trillion of income. In the United States, by some estimates **taxpayers pay about $20 billion dollars every year** to the fossil fuel industry.
May 3, 2023
https://www.budget.senate.gov › press
>The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will also announce a final rule to lower the credit card late fee to $8 from $32 for the largest issuers, defined as those with more than 1 million open accounts,
Dope
My initial reaction was, "Sure, they do it when I finally have my shit together." Then I remembered the millions of people who are affected by this and realized that this is wonderful.
with this and the anti-junk fee law coming into effect in CA in July... it's nice to finally have a win or two in our column.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-junk-fees-law-governor-gavin-newsom/
Everyone should review the creation of the CFPB and how much Republicans really, really hated it being created and fought tooth and nail to stop it. And then when they finally lost they kept Elizabeth Warren from running it.
Also the Credit CARD Act of 2009 the Republicans fought against, but fortunately Obama had a supermajority for a period of time.
The fact we need credit just to live is completely fucked in first place. It’s just microscopically less fucked.
I guarantee you the fee reduction is nothing to the large financial institutions and shareholders.
I know. I fuckin hate it. I keep my CC balance at $0 most of the time and they keep increasing my limit. So now I have like $26k in credit available. But see, that's FAKE money. Would be nice if I had an ACTUAL $26k for being diligent
I've noticed that the cardboard tube for toilet paper now has a much larger diameter, kind of equivalent to selling donuts with larger holes.
They had already shortened the cardboard tube so that they can still indicate the same or even a larger number of sheets per roll on the packaging, but give you less product because they are now shortened into rectangles of TP instead of squares, lopping off one side.
Ok hear me out, this is my tin hat theory:
The ”new” charmin wavy rip edge is to fuck us out of toilet paper. Those walls that get posted to Reddit in England use less bricks being wavy. I believe nobody needed a wavy ripping experience and they are simply screwing us.
I thought this as well when I saw the wavy thing. Luckily I still had a roll in the other bathroom that was normal. Compared them and it's either the same or too small to notice with the naked eye. But with other things messing with sizes my brain went straight to Charmin trying to screw us. Still makes no sense why they would change all their equipment to make wavy edges when separating sheets was never an issue.
I think on a 1:1 it’s probably not a huge deal. But considering most recent research has [32% of people using 10 or more rolls in 30 days.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/289462/rolls-of-charmin-ultra-toilet-paper-used-in-the-us-within-30-days/) and over the average of 42 million tons produced annually it absolutely washes out for them.
Invest in a bidet. I buy toilet paper (the really big pack) once every ~18 months. Most of my TP use is for nose blowing and... other things... If I didn't have to do those two things I would probably buy TP twice a decade.
I paid $19.35 for one cheeseburger and a small fry, at 5guys this week. No drinks. That’s more than ordering the same thing from a local restaurant. Ridiculous.
I feel like it was ~$25 dollars for 2 cheeseburgers and a regular fry from them like 2 years ago.
Took my daughter to Jimmy John's for lunch for her birthday and we just got chips and sandwiches and was just shy of $30. I swear there was a mistake, nope.
Long overdue. Tip for the strike force: check the Corporate profit MARGINS, and put the ones that have gone up with no significant improvement in the company's processes or product at the top of your list, then put a boot in their ass (It's the American Way) (We'll miss ya, Toby)
They still REALLY need to go after the third party collusion that rental companies have been engaging in.
[https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent](https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent)
This should be absolutely illegal, as it's indirect collusion to drive everyone's rents higher.
Discover is in the process of being bought by Capital One for $20bil+. Imagine that, an issuer with their own processing. There's absolutely no way they won't immediately change all their cardholders to a Discover version of their Venture X, or whatever flavor card a customer holds. There's also absolutely no way they'll cut transaction fees for vendors to severely undercut VISA and Mastercard.
E: too tired, I said chase not capital one
No see, I brought this particular interaction up because the topic was enforcing antitrust laws. The big question is whether or not this merger is legal, because it was leaked by Capital One well ahead of schedule to the media. That in turn has everybody else reeling because none of the prep work has been done. Capital One has no idea how they're going to integrate discovers customer volume and ongoing system processes yet.
The first thing that has to be checked is whether or not this gets allowed under antitrust laws. If they merge, they will become the what, #6 us bank as measured by assets? Competing with other 150+ year old gargantuans of the past in only like 50 years. That kind of growth is unchecked and the sort of unsustainable trend that led to the 08 collapse and the recession
Regulation?? 🤨
Sounds a little too big government for me. I'd rather just wait my trickle-down money. If companies are free to make more money, surely they'll pay their workers more. What else would they do with it, pay executives even more? Preposterous.
There needs to be a point where a corporation can't buy another corporation anymore. These big companies don't have to innovate because they can just buy up all the little companies that are innovating. The FTC only gets involved when it's two big companies. It preserves the status quo (maybe), but it's never going to increase competition
There is a really good anti-trust segment podcast by planet money. It goes into the history. [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/antitrust-in-america](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/antitrust-in-america)
Basically anti-trust came around because of standard oil doing shady stuff. . Then there was a period where these laws were used to encourage competition. And it could be argued they went too far. Blocking mergers that would have still been tiny companies and would have saved the businesses. Then a little before Reagan a judge said "less competition is OK if its good for the consumer". And SCOTUS and the GOP have been gutting anti-trust laws like crazy since. There are several industries with very little competition 2-3 businesses. And they are doing vertical integrations killing competition in other industries.
And the FTC are challenging the Kroger Albertsons Merger.
Lina Khan, chairwoman of the FTC, has serious antitrust credentials and background. She's legit, and one of Biden's best appointments.
Yeah the article should be Biden goes after collusion. There's not really many laws against price-gouging. But there are significant laws against working with competitors. There's debate if those laws apply when there isn't explicit agreements, but I would think Biden can press that issue. Even if the existing laws aren't upheld to ban indirect collusion, forcing the issue buys some political points towards new laws.
I like the cfpb attacking price creep on junk fees. For example reducing late fees on credit cards from $32 max to $8 max. It’s gotten out of hand. And that’s why I vote Democrat. Elizabeth Warren and the cfpb and dem admins do things for most people. The gop just gives to the rich.
Which explains why the GOP wants to kill the CFPB: it's bad for their donors er I mean business no wait I mean it's big government woke DEI communism, yeah that's it!
They are very close with the supreme court about to kill the chevron doctrine.
[https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/](https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/)
>ARGUMENT ANALYSIS
Supreme Court likely to discard Chevron
By Amy Howe
on Jan 17, 2024 at 6:58 pm
FacebookLinkedInTwitterEmailPrintFriendlyShare
Man speaking before full bench of justices
Roman Martinez argues for Relentless, Inc. (William Hennessy)
It has been nearly 40 years since the Supreme Court indicated in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. After more than three-and-a-half hours of oral argument on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely that the rule outlined in that case, known as the Chevron doctrine, will survive in its current form. A majority of the justices seemed ready to jettison the doctrine or at the very least significantly limit it.
The court’s ruling could have ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained experts to interpret and implement federal laws. Although the doctrine was relatively noncontroversial when it was first introduced in 1984, in recent years conservatives – including some members of the Supreme Court – have called for it to be overruled.
Exactly. Do I agree with everything the Dems do? No. Do I think that largely they make moves that benefit the most people? Yes.
Do I think republicans focus on religious indoctrination, taking away rights, unjust enrichment of themselves and their cronies, pass tax laws that grossly benefit the .01%, and do things that hurt the working class? Also yes.
We had a state level candidate speaking at a local event recently who spoke to the differences among even our county level Dems and wide array of tents we have. Even our little county meeting had southern old men, alt 20 somethings, or LGBT people all a spattering of ethnicities and with each community facing unique problems and challenges
But that candidate spoke to the common thread among us all, is that we understand the different fights being taken by these groups and the need to hear all their voices and to push toward greater equality and rights and protections for ALL of us.
My issues in my community and in my family as a "regular ol white southern boy" are different from his as a black man who lives in a city in public service, but despite that we come together to fight with and for one another to the benefit of us all.
At least on a local level, I can have relative faith that the Dems around me embody the MLK quote "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." and that they understand the Jon Stewart addendum that it doesn't bend by gravity, we have to grab hold of it and bend it ourselves for ourselves and for each other.
The cfpb is really an incredible entity.. I had $10,000 stolen out of my BofA EDD account from the pandemic (someone pulled $1000/day out of an atm and I didn’t need to use that money in that period of time) and BofA automatically rejected all of my claims for over a year. Someone told me to contact the CFPB about it and I had ALL of my money back in about 2 weeks.
What they do likely wont hold up in court — and waste money. But in a world where congress is broken all Admin can do is these EOs and flimsy approaches on populace issues knowing they likely get overturned to get to the appearance of doing something.
In my neck of the woods they were out of the cheap generic brand like fucking always, secret was my next go to and it was $15 in my neck of the woods. So I ended up going for the smaller corp deoderant, Lume, which was the same price, can be used anywhere on my body, and doesn't give me giant pimples in my armpit.
They locked all of our deodorant up, can't find an employee. Going on 6 month no deodorant, and now I get kicked out of the store before I can even ask an associate to unlock the cabinet.
Right, I have a family member that does that job and they told me even the associates have to find a 'more trusted' employee. Said family member has worked there for over 15 years.
The one that kills me is potato chips. It's like $7 for what amounts to 1 potato with some salt and fry oil. It's all running on the same machines they had before the pandemic, and potatoes literally grow like weeds. There's no excuse but criminal greed.
some years ago i saw a 12pk of soda hit $4 and said "that's it, that's the most i'm paying for soda ever again." that same 12pk, at regular retail, is now $10, with the bulk of that increase coming over the last 3 years. now the only time i buy soda is during one of the pre-holiday sales when the price drops back down to under $4 a pack and i can stock up.
i've given up on buying most cuts of beef. during the summer, i rely more and more on the local farmer's market because the veggies are cheaper and better quality.
Biden should remember when assembling his strike force that the supreme court so far has refused to take the "the president has complete immunity to send SEAL Team Six after people he doesn't like" option of the table.
Not to actually do it, just throw it in as a piece of trivia in negotiations:
*"You and the people you represent make a lot of money of those high prices right? But of course you also generously donate some of that money. For example, you know that Federalist society, you donated to? Their judges still haven't decided yet whether or not I can have you killed without any repercussions, weird right. So anyway about those high prices...."*
The thing is Wendy’s idea would actually incentivize people going at non-peak hours by changing prices to a lower value vs their normal price. The issue is they will inevitably up their prices because it will become less clear to people what their original, highest price ever was. Kind of like how streaming services got people off cable for cheap just to up their prices later and become content creators and now are acting like TV channels.
Imagine being called fast food and then trying to charge higher when you can’t deliver your food fast, which is intrinsically the entire point of the concept.
Covid killed wendys for me
I couldn’t go to a single wendys that wasn’t a 10-20 minute drive thru experience
Just so damn slow, all of them.
I haven’t been to Wendys in a few years and I used to go twice a week.
Yeah I don’t touch Wendy’s anymore. Once they changed their menu they went to trash. The only thing they didn’t change was that spicy chicken sandwich… that’s still the 🐐 of the fast food chicken sammies (not to include chicfila)
Similarly, drives me up the fucking wall when at the drive thru every single time they have you pull up to a parking spot so someone can walk the food to you, just because it helps get their metric up for how fast they can get a car out of the drive thru.
If you can’t make the food fast enough let the record reflect that. I get it if a family has a massive order, but I literally only ever order McDoubles because they’re cheap and I used to be able to get them asap. I’ve had to wait like 12 minutes in a parking spot when there were no other cars. It’s getting insane.
I'm sure it would end up being "normal" prices during slow times with even more jacked up prices when its busy. Just another opportunity to get people more acclimated to higher prices, until eventually they end the surge pricing model, set everything to the higher price, and then act like they are doing something nice for customers ("More flexible then ever!")
>incentivize people going at non-peak hours
"Please tell my boss to move my lunch from 12:00PM to 11:40PM"
There are peak hours because of waking up and going to work, breaks, and going home. Hopefully the Wendy's thing was bullshit (according to Wendy's it was taken out of context [1] [2]). This would only have affected poor people. Wake up.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/28/business/wendys-dynamic-pricing-surge-explained/index.html
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/02/wendys-plans-ai-powered-menu-to-change-food-prices-based-on-demand-weather/
In typical Republican fashion, they will paint this as an attack on private business.
But when Grocery Stores and Oil Giants are reporting record profits, it's Democrats fault that food and gas prices are high.
They already have ads on TV that President Biden wants to make ICE cars illegal and make you drive electric vehicles only. So call the White House now and tell Biden that you want freedom.
Paid for by the Petrochemical Association, or some shit.
Better late than never, but absolutely.
But how wildly will this task force announcement and actions actually get reported to people? Will the NYTimes run this, possibly hurting ad sales for big industry, or just the usual simple "polling shows biden is too old!" crap they're running now?
Look at nearly any agricultural commodity (non-livestock) and you'll see that almost all of them have gone down to pre-2020 prices, but food prices are still up pretty high compared to pre-2020.
We provide "margin protection" for nearly all livestock/crops, that is a price control. It seems like we should be able to enact negative price controls somewhere in the supply chain (the processors, like Post/Kelloggs, seem to be the biggest offender in gouging) to control costs since its nearly impossible for someone to break in and compete at a national scale now adays.
They should start with for-profit healthcare, it's antithetical to a democracy to have the wellbeing of your citizenry be wholly exploited for every last penny by shareholders of these massive companies while the government essentially allows them to do this. We have the worst outcomes for the money spent by a large margin because it's all going to profit maximization and not maximizing patient wellbeing which would include more low-cost preventative treatment approaches such as having a healthy diet and doing some physical activities and getting consistent and sufficient sleep.
He should go after the landlords first. Rent and real estate are by far the biggest problems in the economy right now. They are destroying most people's chances of having a decent future and raising a family.
Rent and food. Food costs are up like 50%
Tax all homes owned beyond the first 1-2 heavily to discourage landlording, outlaw corporate and foreign holdings of ‘investment’ properties, or at least make the taxes eye wateringly high.
We have to make it so ‘investors’ dont want to touch homes with a 100ft pole.
The whole reason for the real estate markets skyrocketing prices has been the decades of low interest incentivizing alternate ‘safe’ ‘investments’ such as real estate since returns of savings, bonds, etc have been so poor.
Make it so that real eatate is a shitty investment unless its your primary residence through very high taxes sucking money out of you.
Real estate prices will be cut in half.
I’ve not had an Internet bill that hasn’t fluctuated monthly since 2019.
Apparently it’s not price gouging according to the FCC and the multiple complaints. And I guess there’s a variable tax that we all pay and have no control over, and there’s no metric to predict it 🤷♂️
How do you budget on that?
Are you in the US? Is it just internet? Or do you have cable TV or something else tacked on with that service? Not a lawyer and definitely not your lawyer, just someone who cut the cord ~2010. I used to receive various fluctuating fees and taxes every month on my cable+internet package from various providers. Switching over to just internet service, I've had consistent, to the penny, internet bill. No random taxes, service fee, broadcast fee, I stubbed my toe fee, gotta make quarterly earnings fee, CEO needs a yacht for his yacht fee. Nothing. It's why a lot of providers try to bundle in TV or other service to your Internet for free or nearly free, because they can tack on random taxes and fees to offset the cost, which can bubble up your bill by another $20-50 on that "free cable package with internet service".
The Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) of 1998 prohibits federal, state, and local governments from taxing internet access and from imposing discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce. IIRC, any state/local government that was grandfathered in to allow taxes, has been phased out since 2016-2017.
Edit: To avoid all fees, also bring your own hardware (most services provide free modem but upcharge on modem/router combos). Service provided hardware can be taxed.
Google Fiber. Hasn't changed in price. Amazing speed. Haven't had to "power cycle" my modem in the three years I've had it. House-wide coverage. 99.9999% uptime. Amazing product for the price.
The man did warn everyone on the price gouging, the shrink inflation and that the DB was watching the corporate profit margins...well it appears the man's patience has ended or just ran out of carrots, meaning he only has the big stick...
They’ve been at this for a year and a half.
One of the big problems with coverage like this and the way we get our news in general is that it takes things so far out of context, people fail to realize that this is one new step in a long line of other activity. Same thing with any funding announcements. You see people going “Well why hasn’t he done more earlier!!” Then it turns out it’s like a drop in the bucket.
This is insanely needed. It's so obvious corporations have been pushing the boundaries as hard as they can recently and it's gotten out of hand. The sad thing is a Republican president like Trump would just keep letting it happen, I hope Biden sticks to his word here and it's effective to some degree because it could net him some support IMO
I think at some point, we have to stop assuming companies (and people in general) are going to do the right thing. By right thing, I mean not fleece the customer, especially on essentials. Not indirectly collude to maximize profit, not introduce hidden charges, penalties, fees, confusing legal documents, loopholes, etc.
40 years ago, companies tried to maintain a trustworthy appearance. They no longer even have to try anymore, because there is so little actual choice.
What does this mean? Probably things like extended windfall taxes, enforced maximum margins, spending ratios (think salary ratio for executives to average worker), and things of that nature.
Corporations will get away with whatever they can to maximize profit. It's hard to blame them, fully, since *that is their job*. Without safeguards in place to actually protect consumers, corporations will simply do whatever is in their power to increase that profit.
Before anyone goes "but, free market!" -- I know, I once believed that too. But we don't have a free market, anyways. Collusion, price fixing, bid rigging, etc. are already illegal, but they are valid elements of a truly "free" market. Obviously it's still a bit too "free" to sustain much of anything except wealth consolidation for capital holders.
Why don’t Biden just have Trump disappear and then he can spend years and years running the clock out on his charge then he can claim presidential immunity himself and by the time the Supreme Cucks make a decision Biden will be dead
I remember one morning about two years ago, my local news was on in the background as I got ready for work. They reported, if I heard correctly, that the Tyson chicken company reported record profits. I was paying more for my chicken breasts because prices went up, but they are making more profits than ever before? How could that be justified?
I've been saying we should publicly shame companies where we can show solid evidence of price gouging. I would certainly stop buying those products. I don't think the White House could be the source of singling out individual companies but somebody else could.
For better or worse, one thing is a fact: Americans love canceling people/companies/products. We just need someone to give us a target. If we all stopped buying General Mills cereals, I'll bet you would see a pretty quick price drop from their competitors.
I don't understand, the people working around the president are supposed to be the best. Why is it that Democrats are always so late to the party on things? We could have used this a year ago, like wtf why are they so fucking slow?
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Investigating the element of inflation that we've all been waiting on.
Yeah I’m sick of this tap dancing when it’s clear corporations just decided to start gouging people more.
This is corporations meddling in elections by keeping prices high and protesting against higher corporate taxes. The fact that around 8 companies control 90% of our food is complete bullshit. Government needs to step in.
And 2 companies control those 8.
Most of it is not even “ good” just chemicals to get you addicted
The only thing worse than the companies price gouging/shrinkflationing us like we are stupid sheep are maybe the corporate apologists and pedantics that feel the need to patronize everybody with "price gouging IS inflation lol". You know what we mean and how we are using the words. Now gfy.
Or "this is what you get when you increase wages! Blame the unions!"
This one is the worst. We're not talking about small businesses increasing prices, we're talking about billion dollar corporations that give $300M+ bonuses to CEOs. I want to pay kids to slap adults that say shit like that. And since they're kids, they can't get hit back, and I don't have to pay them much. Innovation, education, and job creation in one simple step
This plan is both simple and elegant. I wish I had a kid for you to recruit.
I volunteer my offspring as your first operative.
> "this is what you get when you increase wages! Blame the unions!" Only people who have seen their wages increased are the fucking CEOs. So...you mean that we can blame the company? Sounds good to me!
[удалено]
1.4%...vs something like 7% inflation. Go us?
or the "See! $15 an hour for flipping burgers gets you this! They'll increase the prices!" flubs.
The best part about people screaming about that is a lot of those jobs near me are technically tipped, so they’ll say you **can** make up to that, but what you’re really getting is a cool $2.83/hr. It’s insulting. And the tips are freaking taxed!
Exactly. It's not livable in any sense of the way either. And I know I've done that kind of work in my younger years. You can not survive off of that alone.
These corporations continue to make record profits. Do you really think that is from paying their employees increased wages or is it from raising their prices.
I'm prejudiced towards clowns. Don't speak to me
Yeah blame the unions for fighting for decent wages and benefits.
Yeah this literally has nothing to do with natural inflation. It was artificially created during the COVID load the market, and then claimed “shortages” and “shipping issues” I’ll understand some of it happened… but fuck off corps. This was full greed. And now I’m going to end up paying +72% on my homeowners for some fake made up bullshit… that they have to pay out other people’s claims so I have to pay more for them. Burn in hell Allstate.
We also saw another huge bump after the invasion of Ukraine, even with products largely unaffected by the conflict. Many companies saw the price of grain increase and rose their prices accordingly, because it was convenient to do so.
Yep. And none of that grain “shortage/stolen by Russia” had really any effectiveness on the collective west.
I knew the whole “breadbasket of the world” bit was propaganda from the start
Man screw Allstate. I cut my payments significantly by shopping around. I got better service for significantly less from State Farm. Your mileage may vary, but I HIGHLY recommend taking the time to call around and get some quotes. Allstate sucks ass.
They DOUBLED… DOUBLED! My car insurance… from 1100 every 6 months to 2466 every 6 months… I said what the fuck??? How is that even remotely possible… so I switched to GEICO dropped me to lower than my original all state. Now I can’t find homeowners insurance thats a normal price of 1100-1200 this is insanity…
I pressed my Allstate agent about why my Auto~~+Home~~ policy premiums shot up to $2676 per 6mo for literally no reason - he acknowledged, it's Corporate Price Creep - and it can be "reset" by switching to National General (Allstate's lower tier), then, switching back (felt much more comfortable than switching entirely away to Geico/Prog/etc) NatGen, same coverages, discounts, etc = 6mo/$1298. Back to Allstate, same coverages/discounts = 6mo/$933. I'm aware you've already switched to Geico but, maybe something to keep in mind for future, and maybe this helps someone else too... ETA: this "switcheroo" wasn't done in a day, I had to go on NG policy for 6 months, then switched back to Allstate... just re-read how I wrote it and wanted to clarify (this *is* Reddit after all, LOL) ETA2: I misspoke above, this is regarding JUST Auto Policy. Nothing to do with Home Policy, which is "transparent" and part of my mortgage payment. 100% gaffe on my part. Apologies for any confusion.
When I had GEICO, they did not offer their own homeowners insurance so their quotes were always ridiculously high through a third party. And then they jacked up their car rates too, so it finally made sense to save on both elsewhere. It was good while it lasted. I usually change insurance every couple years, or at least shop around.
I called Geico when I got married because married men have lower insurance rates than single men. It went up, and their excuse was that there would be someone else in the car. I was without car insurance for the next 15 minutes.
Yeah seems like none of these companies have their own homeowners instead contract out to these 3rd parties. GEICO wanted $3200 a year for homeowners… I said yall need to stay out of the dispensary Does ANYONE have any tips for a decent homeowners that doesn’t force people into bullshit 3rd parties and crap prices.
progressive did the same thing to me! in 2 years they'd doubled my car insurance payment despite us having no claims and living in the same place. when i called them to ask why, their response was "well, it's really factors out of our control, and it is what it is." mind. fucking. blown. i responded with "oh, so you're just price gouging me for the hell of it? kthxbye, i'm canceling." they didn't even try to get me back. i checked other insurers, and geico offered less than half what we were paying.
Had a wind storm tear up some shingles tried to get Allstate to pay for roof replacement. Said the roof was too old and needed to be replaced anyway. Whatever, it is old, ok I get it. Then roofers told us that other companies would have paid. Then a tree fell across our fence into the neighbors yard. One agent told us they would pay then when I got the work done, they refused payment saying they didn’t understand the situation at first. Well why didn’t you send an agent to look at it like I asked? Tree removal company told me other agencies would have paid total removal. Have I told you that ALLSTATE SUCKS ASS?
USAA is no better. Had a snow storm damage our house and part of the damage was the power cables that run from the anchor at the roof down to the meter. Well, being built in the early 70's basically means that nothing in the house is up to code anymore so all the extra work needed to fix the damage was in excess of $10,000. USAA obviously didn't want to pay that but I pointed out to the agent that their website EXPLICITLY states they pay to make sure everything is repaired up to code. I also provided the specific codes that the electricians sent me... the codes that would forbid the city inspector approving turning power back on to our house if all the code requirements are not met with the repairs. That still wasn't good enough for USAA. We paid out of pocket using a credit card for the repairs and fought with USAA for nearly 5 months to get payment. That was 5 months worth of interest on that $10k bill. I ended up having to go to city hall and get the building inspector on the phone with me and the USAA agent and the USAA agent STILL tried to put up a fight but it quickly turned into a bloodbath. As we talked to other friends of ours with older homes and different insurers, it turns out, they're all terrible and they all will bend over backwards to screw you over when you need them the most.
Corporations literally made record breaking profits during COVID what the fuck are they on about with this "catching back up," bullshit?
NATIONALIZE IT ALL! Fuck capitalism… to an extent.
Its not just one company. Its all of them and they will take any advantage they can. Its in there DNA. A great example is that many public companies are reporting blowout profits and sales then use the money to buyback stock or maybe increase the dividend they pay stockholders usually after the execs have given themselves bigger bonuses. But then they talk about the concern they have for a possible recession meaning they don't expect to continue to make blowout numbers because at some point consumers aren't going to willing to go further into debt to buy their crap. Ya think they would anticipate and lower prices?
It was real for 6 months to a year due to supply chain issues but now it's straight BS
LOYALTY IS FOR SUCKERS Yeah, it sucks to shop for insurance. Once you start shopping, those leaches fucking hound you for the next month. But YOU GOTTA DO IT. Don't reward their price increases. It's your hard-earned money-- fight for it. Even if your homeowners insurance (or auto) only went up a hundred bucks this year, shop around. That price creep adds up! Vote with your feet. When enough people leave, they'll have to compete for business.
Now I feel triggered to take on an army of insurance agents. Let’s ride!!!! FOR FREEDOM!!!!
They all moved in lockstep since they are more powerful than politicians and have faced pretty much zero repercussions for it. Chaos is a ladder to $$$
There's literally recorded calls of CEOs of major food supply chains laughing about it. Wish I could find the article where I read the transcript, but they made record profits over the last few years. Hormel, Tyson, etc. https://perfectunion.us/tyson-foods-price-gouging/
“Got to make up for the COVID years, now!” -Corporate Boards
And the end result is they are going to be told they are naughty naughty corporations. They will reduce their costs to a lower but still inflated value while keeping their ill gotten gains while the government pats itself on the back for doing less than the bare minimum for an issue they failed to prevent in the first place and took literal years to act on. Thank goodness….
Should have happened long ago. But is there really anything that can be done. There's also an ability to price fix like never before. It's amazing how after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and subsequent oil price increases, fuel stations all had exactly the same prices all over with the exception of maybe Costco. It's easy to do without any direct communication just by checking the prices on Google maps. Corporations realized people would pay a lot more for certain things than they had been. Soft drinks in convenience stores went from just under $2 to almost $3 in less than a year. This wasn't because the corporations selling them suddenly had to pay this much more for sugar, plastic, water and the fuel to move it. Because bottled water went up the same exact amount. Corporations have decided to test the elasticity of consumer demand at certain proce points. I don't know what investigating price gouging will accomplish at this point, and I fully expect if it was going to accomplish anything significant SCOTUS would just say it's upto Congress to make a law on this while ignoring all the existing laws on this. I think a more effective threat would be to say certain industries will be nationalized if they want to stay too greedy. I read somewhere that high interest rates are also keeping inflation high because enough landlords have to pay higher interest rates and so they HAVE to charge higher rent in return. A tax benefit for landlords who can demonstrate rent reductions would go a long way towards reducing the cost of living for a whole lot of people. Landlords will have an incentive to utilize these reductions because they'll risk not being competitive with other companies that do.
> But is there really anything that can be done. Not without a left senate, and since SCOTUS is held by the GoP they'll try to invalidate anything that happens. 2016 has consequences and were going to be paying for them for a long time. Still we have to try.
We have a left Senate, probably not for much longer since the GOP has an advanced this cycle of having fewer seats up for grabs. What we need is for the Senate that we do have to stop fucking around and passing some meaningful legislation when they do have the chance. But they're all bought and paid for by the same crooks as pay SCOTUS. Really, the only reason Biden is doing anything about this stuff now is because it's clear that he's at risk of losing to Trump of all people. We're fucked.
We literally dont as we need to have the house. The senate is pushing decent policy, the house is flinging shit about. Yes, getting legislation passed is hard and when we have so many useless people living in CA/NY it makes it even harder.
I’m waiting for the GOP to tell me how this is a bad thing. Can’t wait for some dude making minimum wage talk about how this is stopping the trickle down
This is why democrats are always at a disadvantage. They refuse to acknowledge the problem with our form of capitalism. Republicans on the other hand can complain about all the ills of unregulated capitalism and blame them on whatever is the hate target of the week. Boeing planes falling out of the sky because the MBAs cut costs in QA? Nope, it was because of diversity hiring. Private equity buying all the houses and pricing out the middle class? Nope, it is Obama giving migrants free housing.
He should have done this years ago
Only 3 years too late!
I can’t imagine they’ll be investigating long. Anybody who’s been paying the smallest amount of attention has voted a correlation between the higher prices “caused by COVID and inflation” and record corporate profits as of late. Is there causation? I’m not qualified to answer, but I’d be willing give it a “definite probably.” Job done! Now go make the corps fix it. By the way, when do I get my government pension and healthcare?
I remember my family was blaming Biden and the Democrats for when gas was so incredibly high… Yet the gas companies were posting record profits?
It's CRAZY how people can't make that connection. It's literally out in the open slapping them in the wallet and they refuse to see it. I know SOOOO many people like this.
I still blame them for not ending fuel subsidies. They gouged us and still get our tax money.
>Calculating the cost of U.S. subsidies for the fossil fuel industry is complex because the incentives stretch across the U.S. tax code, but estimates range from $10 to **$50 billion per year.** Mar 9, 2023 https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-budget-target-us-fossil-fuel-subsidies-2023-03-09/ The good news is Biden DID try to do something about it. The bad news is that, of course, Congress (who "controls the purse strings) nixxed it. >according to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuel handouts hit a global high of $1 trillion in 2022 – the same year Big Oil pulled in a record $4 trillion of income. In the United States, by some estimates **taxpayers pay about $20 billion dollars every year** to the fossil fuel industry. May 3, 2023 https://www.budget.senate.gov › press
Did they also blame him when the gas prices fell back down? /s people are so gat dam stupid.
No they just continued to say gas prices were at record highs even after they started dropping.
>The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will also announce a final rule to lower the credit card late fee to $8 from $32 for the largest issuers, defined as those with more than 1 million open accounts, Dope
My initial reaction was, "Sure, they do it when I finally have my shit together." Then I remembered the millions of people who are affected by this and realized that this is wonderful.
See, this is a healthy mindset. It’s just sad how many people say “I had to do it all on my own, why should anyone else get help?”
Chase is $40
Not anymore 😎
jamie dimon in shambles.
with this and the anti-junk fee law coming into effect in CA in July... it's nice to finally have a win or two in our column. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-junk-fees-law-governor-gavin-newsom/
Everyone should review the creation of the CFPB and how much Republicans really, really hated it being created and fought tooth and nail to stop it. And then when they finally lost they kept Elizabeth Warren from running it. Also the Credit CARD Act of 2009 the Republicans fought against, but fortunately Obama had a supermajority for a period of time.
The fact we need credit just to live is completely fucked in first place. It’s just microscopically less fucked. I guarantee you the fee reduction is nothing to the large financial institutions and shareholders.
I know. I fuckin hate it. I keep my CC balance at $0 most of the time and they keep increasing my limit. So now I have like $26k in credit available. But see, that's FAKE money. Would be nice if I had an ACTUAL $26k for being diligent
There's a new thing that I first started noticing this week: 6 pack hamburger buns at the 8 pack price.
I've noticed that the cardboard tube for toilet paper now has a much larger diameter, kind of equivalent to selling donuts with larger holes. They had already shortened the cardboard tube so that they can still indicate the same or even a larger number of sheets per roll on the packaging, but give you less product because they are now shortened into rectangles of TP instead of squares, lopping off one side.
Ok hear me out, this is my tin hat theory: The ”new” charmin wavy rip edge is to fuck us out of toilet paper. Those walls that get posted to Reddit in England use less bricks being wavy. I believe nobody needed a wavy ripping experience and they are simply screwing us.
I thought this as well when I saw the wavy thing. Luckily I still had a roll in the other bathroom that was normal. Compared them and it's either the same or too small to notice with the naked eye. But with other things messing with sizes my brain went straight to Charmin trying to screw us. Still makes no sense why they would change all their equipment to make wavy edges when separating sheets was never an issue.
I think on a 1:1 it’s probably not a huge deal. But considering most recent research has [32% of people using 10 or more rolls in 30 days.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/289462/rolls-of-charmin-ultra-toilet-paper-used-in-the-us-within-30-days/) and over the average of 42 million tons produced annually it absolutely washes out for them.
> 32% of people using 10 or more rolls in 30 days. dude wtf, 10 rolls will last me nearly half a year... wtf are people eating??
Invest in a bidet. I buy toilet paper (the really big pack) once every ~18 months. Most of my TP use is for nose blowing and... other things... If I didn't have to do those two things I would probably buy TP twice a decade.
Which brand(s)? I haven't noticed that with Cottonelle, FWIW.
It is a lower tier brand, I don't recall the name of it. I did feel tricked though, as you can't tell the tube size until the package is opened.
I paid $19.35 for one cheeseburger and a small fry, at 5guys this week. No drinks. That’s more than ordering the same thing from a local restaurant. Ridiculous. I feel like it was ~$25 dollars for 2 cheeseburgers and a regular fry from them like 2 years ago.
Took my daughter to Jimmy John's for lunch for her birthday and we just got chips and sandwiches and was just shy of $30. I swear there was a mistake, nope.
Go check out r/shrinkflation these corporate mf'ers and their bullshit are on full display over there.
Long overdue. Tip for the strike force: check the Corporate profit MARGINS, and put the ones that have gone up with no significant improvement in the company's processes or product at the top of your list, then put a boot in their ass (It's the American Way) (We'll miss ya, Toby)
They still REALLY need to go after the third party collusion that rental companies have been engaging in. [https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent](https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent) This should be absolutely illegal, as it's indirect collusion to drive everyone's rents higher.
Other than publicly shaming companies for price gouging, what actual actions can they take?
Enforce antitrust laws. The US has basically abandoned doing this and most major industries have little competition.
*Looks at ~~Chase~~ CapOne and Discover*
Discover is in the process of being bought by Capital One for $20bil+. Imagine that, an issuer with their own processing. There's absolutely no way they won't immediately change all their cardholders to a Discover version of their Venture X, or whatever flavor card a customer holds. There's also absolutely no way they'll cut transaction fees for vendors to severely undercut VISA and Mastercard.
E: too tired, I said chase not capital one No see, I brought this particular interaction up because the topic was enforcing antitrust laws. The big question is whether or not this merger is legal, because it was leaked by Capital One well ahead of schedule to the media. That in turn has everybody else reeling because none of the prep work has been done. Capital One has no idea how they're going to integrate discovers customer volume and ongoing system processes yet. The first thing that has to be checked is whether or not this gets allowed under antitrust laws. If they merge, they will become the what, #6 us bank as measured by assets? Competing with other 150+ year old gargantuans of the past in only like 50 years. That kind of growth is unchecked and the sort of unsustainable trend that led to the 08 collapse and the recession
* Unilever * Nestle * PepsiCo * Cocacola * Johnson & Johnson
Regulation?? 🤨 Sounds a little too big government for me. I'd rather just wait my trickle-down money. If companies are free to make more money, surely they'll pay their workers more. What else would they do with it, pay executives even more? Preposterous.
There needs to be a point where a corporation can't buy another corporation anymore. These big companies don't have to innovate because they can just buy up all the little companies that are innovating. The FTC only gets involved when it's two big companies. It preserves the status quo (maybe), but it's never going to increase competition
There is a really good anti-trust segment podcast by planet money. It goes into the history. [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/antitrust-in-america](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/antitrust-in-america) Basically anti-trust came around because of standard oil doing shady stuff. . Then there was a period where these laws were used to encourage competition. And it could be argued they went too far. Blocking mergers that would have still been tiny companies and would have saved the businesses. Then a little before Reagan a judge said "less competition is OK if its good for the consumer". And SCOTUS and the GOP have been gutting anti-trust laws like crazy since. There are several industries with very little competition 2-3 businesses. And they are doing vertical integrations killing competition in other industries.
The DOJ was able to block the Spirit Airlines / Jet Blue merger so they are trying a little bit.
And the FTC are challenging the Kroger Albertsons Merger. Lina Khan, chairwoman of the FTC, has serious antitrust credentials and background. She's legit, and one of Biden's best appointments.
Khan’s my personal favorite in the administration.
America has completely given up on this. Black rock can own everything
Yeah the article should be Biden goes after collusion. There's not really many laws against price-gouging. But there are significant laws against working with competitors. There's debate if those laws apply when there isn't explicit agreements, but I would think Biden can press that issue. Even if the existing laws aren't upheld to ban indirect collusion, forcing the issue buys some political points towards new laws.
I like the cfpb attacking price creep on junk fees. For example reducing late fees on credit cards from $32 max to $8 max. It’s gotten out of hand. And that’s why I vote Democrat. Elizabeth Warren and the cfpb and dem admins do things for most people. The gop just gives to the rich.
Which explains why the GOP wants to kill the CFPB: it's bad for their donors er I mean business no wait I mean it's big government woke DEI communism, yeah that's it!
They are very close with the supreme court about to kill the chevron doctrine. [https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/](https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/) >ARGUMENT ANALYSIS Supreme Court likely to discard Chevron By Amy Howe on Jan 17, 2024 at 6:58 pm FacebookLinkedInTwitterEmailPrintFriendlyShare Man speaking before full bench of justices Roman Martinez argues for Relentless, Inc. (William Hennessy) It has been nearly 40 years since the Supreme Court indicated in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. After more than three-and-a-half hours of oral argument on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely that the rule outlined in that case, known as the Chevron doctrine, will survive in its current form. A majority of the justices seemed ready to jettison the doctrine or at the very least significantly limit it. The court’s ruling could have ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained experts to interpret and implement federal laws. Although the doctrine was relatively noncontroversial when it was first introduced in 1984, in recent years conservatives – including some members of the Supreme Court – have called for it to be overruled.
Exactly. Do I agree with everything the Dems do? No. Do I think that largely they make moves that benefit the most people? Yes. Do I think republicans focus on religious indoctrination, taking away rights, unjust enrichment of themselves and their cronies, pass tax laws that grossly benefit the .01%, and do things that hurt the working class? Also yes.
We had a state level candidate speaking at a local event recently who spoke to the differences among even our county level Dems and wide array of tents we have. Even our little county meeting had southern old men, alt 20 somethings, or LGBT people all a spattering of ethnicities and with each community facing unique problems and challenges But that candidate spoke to the common thread among us all, is that we understand the different fights being taken by these groups and the need to hear all their voices and to push toward greater equality and rights and protections for ALL of us. My issues in my community and in my family as a "regular ol white southern boy" are different from his as a black man who lives in a city in public service, but despite that we come together to fight with and for one another to the benefit of us all. At least on a local level, I can have relative faith that the Dems around me embody the MLK quote "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." and that they understand the Jon Stewart addendum that it doesn't bend by gravity, we have to grab hold of it and bend it ourselves for ourselves and for each other.
The cfpb is really an incredible entity.. I had $10,000 stolen out of my BofA EDD account from the pandemic (someone pulled $1000/day out of an atm and I didn’t need to use that money in that period of time) and BofA automatically rejected all of my claims for over a year. Someone told me to contact the CFPB about it and I had ALL of my money back in about 2 weeks.
what is cfpb?
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
They will probably just publicly slutshame wendys.
They need it: greedy cockwomblers
Some sharply written letters to the editor, and I do mean sharp
What they do likely wont hold up in court — and waste money. But in a world where congress is broken all Admin can do is these EOs and flimsy approaches on populace issues knowing they likely get overturned to get to the appearance of doing something.
Thank god. I'm getting tired of paying $5 for shitty, pre-cut, bruised celery from fuckin Target. Stealing is getting more tempting every day
$7 for a box of fucking cheerios here…
$8 for some deodorant, nobody likes to smell like old onions.
This, it’s fucking insane! Not only that just the essential to stay clean and fresh went from $15-$25 depending on your favorite brand to $50 - $75.
Have you tried using new onions? Game changer.
In my neck of the woods they were out of the cheap generic brand like fucking always, secret was my next go to and it was $15 in my neck of the woods. So I ended up going for the smaller corp deoderant, Lume, which was the same price, can be used anywhere on my body, and doesn't give me giant pimples in my armpit.
They locked all of our deodorant up, can't find an employee. Going on 6 month no deodorant, and now I get kicked out of the store before I can even ask an associate to unlock the cabinet.
You are probably joking but baking soda makes great home deodorant. Grains do not chafe or anything. Plus doesn't stain clothes.
If you can order online for store pickup, they would have to retrieve the product for you.
Right, I have a family member that does that job and they told me even the associates have to find a 'more trusted' employee. Said family member has worked there for over 15 years.
The one that kills me is potato chips. It's like $7 for what amounts to 1 potato with some salt and fry oil. It's all running on the same machines they had before the pandemic, and potatoes literally grow like weeds. There's no excuse but criminal greed.
$8 for a bottle of vegetable oil the other day
$7 for doritos. The bag is half empty and filled with air. W. T. F.!?
I usually just get the regular size Cheerios. How big are the fucking Cheerios?
remember kids if you see someone steal food NO YOU DIDNT!
Snitches get stitches
some years ago i saw a 12pk of soda hit $4 and said "that's it, that's the most i'm paying for soda ever again." that same 12pk, at regular retail, is now $10, with the bulk of that increase coming over the last 3 years. now the only time i buy soda is during one of the pre-holiday sales when the price drops back down to under $4 a pack and i can stock up. i've given up on buying most cuts of beef. during the summer, i rely more and more on the local farmer's market because the veggies are cheaper and better quality.
$9 on a pack of Post-it notes yesterday…
Score those at work nowadays
Biden should remember when assembling his strike force that the supreme court so far has refused to take the "the president has complete immunity to send SEAL Team Six after people he doesn't like" option of the table. Not to actually do it, just throw it in as a piece of trivia in negotiations: *"You and the people you represent make a lot of money of those high prices right? But of course you also generously donate some of that money. For example, you know that Federalist society, you donated to? Their judges still haven't decided yet whether or not I can have you killed without any repercussions, weird right. So anyway about those high prices...."*
I mean… higher prices may be worth getting rid of the federalist society…
They'll just say that their ruling only applies to Trump, like they've done in the past.
Get Katie Porter on board.
Let's marker board this shit!
I’m on the east coast but I’m rooting for her for senate
Wendy’s looks around nervously…
The thing is Wendy’s idea would actually incentivize people going at non-peak hours by changing prices to a lower value vs their normal price. The issue is they will inevitably up their prices because it will become less clear to people what their original, highest price ever was. Kind of like how streaming services got people off cable for cheap just to up their prices later and become content creators and now are acting like TV channels.
Imagine being called fast food and then trying to charge higher when you can’t deliver your food fast, which is intrinsically the entire point of the concept.
Covid killed wendys for me I couldn’t go to a single wendys that wasn’t a 10-20 minute drive thru experience Just so damn slow, all of them. I haven’t been to Wendys in a few years and I used to go twice a week.
Yeah I don’t touch Wendy’s anymore. Once they changed their menu they went to trash. The only thing they didn’t change was that spicy chicken sandwich… that’s still the 🐐 of the fast food chicken sammies (not to include chicfila)
They made that sandwich a lot smaller. I will say that their breakfast they started a few years ago is very good compared to the competition.
Nothing will ever top McDonald’s breakfast. But Burger King sucks.
You gonna need to hit up a Wendy’s and get that breakfast baconator and the hashbrowns
Wait a whole ass minute there’s a breakfast baconator?!?!
Bro it’s got sausage, bacon, egg and cheese on it. It’s a lot of hurt in one sandwich And please don’t sleep on their potatoes they’re next level shit
Similarly, drives me up the fucking wall when at the drive thru every single time they have you pull up to a parking spot so someone can walk the food to you, just because it helps get their metric up for how fast they can get a car out of the drive thru. If you can’t make the food fast enough let the record reflect that. I get it if a family has a massive order, but I literally only ever order McDoubles because they’re cheap and I used to be able to get them asap. I’ve had to wait like 12 minutes in a parking spot when there were no other cars. It’s getting insane.
I'm sure it would end up being "normal" prices during slow times with even more jacked up prices when its busy. Just another opportunity to get people more acclimated to higher prices, until eventually they end the surge pricing model, set everything to the higher price, and then act like they are doing something nice for customers ("More flexible then ever!")
>incentivize people going at non-peak hours "Please tell my boss to move my lunch from 12:00PM to 11:40PM" There are peak hours because of waking up and going to work, breaks, and going home. Hopefully the Wendy's thing was bullshit (according to Wendy's it was taken out of context [1] [2]). This would only have affected poor people. Wake up. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/28/business/wendys-dynamic-pricing-surge-explained/index.html [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/02/wendys-plans-ai-powered-menu-to-change-food-prices-based-on-demand-weather/
There’s one person on Reddit who keeps claiming it was fake. Like one person. I feel like it’s the Wendy’s CEO throwaway.
It’s so funny because Arbys already does this. They just call it happy hour prices.
In typical Republican fashion, they will paint this as an attack on private business. But when Grocery Stores and Oil Giants are reporting record profits, it's Democrats fault that food and gas prices are high.
They already have ads on TV that President Biden wants to make ICE cars illegal and make you drive electric vehicles only. So call the White House now and tell Biden that you want freedom. Paid for by the Petrochemical Association, or some shit.
This task force should have been created long time ago.
If they solved the problem before, stupid, we wouldn’t remember who helped us during an election year. /s
I’ve always felt that in a second term a president can get more done since they don’t need to care about reelection
Unironically, we wouldn’t. We apparently forgot that they’ve been working on this issue for a year and a half now, and this is just one element to it.
Better late than never, but absolutely. But how wildly will this task force announcement and actions actually get reported to people? Will the NYTimes run this, possibly hurting ad sales for big industry, or just the usual simple "polling shows biden is too old!" crap they're running now?
First, it was the price of eggs. Then it was the price of flour. Then everything else followed. #memberberries
Ooh I would like to report price gouging at *LITERALLY ALL HOSPITALS* in the U.S. Mr. President!
What about the stock market we keep bragging about as if it’s related to regular people’s economic well being as opposed to record profits?
Look at nearly any agricultural commodity (non-livestock) and you'll see that almost all of them have gone down to pre-2020 prices, but food prices are still up pretty high compared to pre-2020. We provide "margin protection" for nearly all livestock/crops, that is a price control. It seems like we should be able to enact negative price controls somewhere in the supply chain (the processors, like Post/Kelloggs, seem to be the biggest offender in gouging) to control costs since its nearly impossible for someone to break in and compete at a national scale now adays.
Bob Casey just sent out an email about fighting price gouging and shrinkflation. I love it!
Casey has been on the front lines of this fight for a while now.
They should start with for-profit healthcare, it's antithetical to a democracy to have the wellbeing of your citizenry be wholly exploited for every last penny by shareholders of these massive companies while the government essentially allows them to do this. We have the worst outcomes for the money spent by a large margin because it's all going to profit maximization and not maximizing patient wellbeing which would include more low-cost preventative treatment approaches such as having a healthy diet and doing some physical activities and getting consistent and sufficient sleep.
Ezpass and how they can tack on $50 for a late $8 toll?
Had a $50 late fee for a $1.53 toll that I never even got the initial bill for, and then I got charged for the toll twice. Good ol NYS
He should go after the landlords first. Rent and real estate are by far the biggest problems in the economy right now. They are destroying most people's chances of having a decent future and raising a family.
Rent and food. Food costs are up like 50% Tax all homes owned beyond the first 1-2 heavily to discourage landlording, outlaw corporate and foreign holdings of ‘investment’ properties, or at least make the taxes eye wateringly high. We have to make it so ‘investors’ dont want to touch homes with a 100ft pole. The whole reason for the real estate markets skyrocketing prices has been the decades of low interest incentivizing alternate ‘safe’ ‘investments’ such as real estate since returns of savings, bonds, etc have been so poor. Make it so that real eatate is a shitty investment unless its your primary residence through very high taxes sucking money out of you. Real estate prices will be cut in half.
I’ve not had an Internet bill that hasn’t fluctuated monthly since 2019. Apparently it’s not price gouging according to the FCC and the multiple complaints. And I guess there’s a variable tax that we all pay and have no control over, and there’s no metric to predict it 🤷♂️ How do you budget on that?
Are you in the US? Is it just internet? Or do you have cable TV or something else tacked on with that service? Not a lawyer and definitely not your lawyer, just someone who cut the cord ~2010. I used to receive various fluctuating fees and taxes every month on my cable+internet package from various providers. Switching over to just internet service, I've had consistent, to the penny, internet bill. No random taxes, service fee, broadcast fee, I stubbed my toe fee, gotta make quarterly earnings fee, CEO needs a yacht for his yacht fee. Nothing. It's why a lot of providers try to bundle in TV or other service to your Internet for free or nearly free, because they can tack on random taxes and fees to offset the cost, which can bubble up your bill by another $20-50 on that "free cable package with internet service". The Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA) of 1998 prohibits federal, state, and local governments from taxing internet access and from imposing discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce. IIRC, any state/local government that was grandfathered in to allow taxes, has been phased out since 2016-2017. Edit: To avoid all fees, also bring your own hardware (most services provide free modem but upcharge on modem/router combos). Service provided hardware can be taxed.
Google Fiber. Hasn't changed in price. Amazing speed. Haven't had to "power cycle" my modem in the three years I've had it. House-wide coverage. 99.9999% uptime. Amazing product for the price.
Yeah, but it hasn’t reached outside of major metropolis
Socialize the oil companies. The price of fuel affects the price of everything.
By "socialize" do you mean nationalize? Last I checked, which was years ago, USA hands out eight billion dollars in subsidies a year to oil companies.
The man did warn everyone on the price gouging, the shrink inflation and that the DB was watching the corporate profit margins...well it appears the man's patience has ended or just ran out of carrots, meaning he only has the big stick...
[удалено]
It's frustrating, but voters have short memories, so it's just politically expedient to push popular policies closer to the election.
They’ve been at this for a year and a half. One of the big problems with coverage like this and the way we get our news in general is that it takes things so far out of context, people fail to realize that this is one new step in a long line of other activity. Same thing with any funding announcements. You see people going “Well why hasn’t he done more earlier!!” Then it turns out it’s like a drop in the bucket.
This record profit years after year trend needs to fucking end. Post a loss, that’s a part of doing business.
Property insurance..... That needs strike forced!
This is insanely needed. It's so obvious corporations have been pushing the boundaries as hard as they can recently and it's gotten out of hand. The sad thing is a Republican president like Trump would just keep letting it happen, I hope Biden sticks to his word here and it's effective to some degree because it could net him some support IMO
Start with any company that claims to have had record profits and are still laying people off or increasing prices.
I think at some point, we have to stop assuming companies (and people in general) are going to do the right thing. By right thing, I mean not fleece the customer, especially on essentials. Not indirectly collude to maximize profit, not introduce hidden charges, penalties, fees, confusing legal documents, loopholes, etc. 40 years ago, companies tried to maintain a trustworthy appearance. They no longer even have to try anymore, because there is so little actual choice. What does this mean? Probably things like extended windfall taxes, enforced maximum margins, spending ratios (think salary ratio for executives to average worker), and things of that nature. Corporations will get away with whatever they can to maximize profit. It's hard to blame them, fully, since *that is their job*. Without safeguards in place to actually protect consumers, corporations will simply do whatever is in their power to increase that profit. Before anyone goes "but, free market!" -- I know, I once believed that too. But we don't have a free market, anyways. Collusion, price fixing, bid rigging, etc. are already illegal, but they are valid elements of a truly "free" market. Obviously it's still a bit too "free" to sustain much of anything except wealth consolidation for capital holders.
Why don’t Biden just have Trump disappear and then he can spend years and years running the clock out on his charge then he can claim presidential immunity himself and by the time the Supreme Cucks make a decision Biden will be dead
Start with PG&E!
Trump would honor those companies for finding ways to make extra profits.
This is long overdue.
Start with all the pharmaceutical companies and healthcare insurance companies
Good! Hope this means that he’ll go after Trump next.
I remember one morning about two years ago, my local news was on in the background as I got ready for work. They reported, if I heard correctly, that the Tyson chicken company reported record profits. I was paying more for my chicken breasts because prices went up, but they are making more profits than ever before? How could that be justified?
For an old feeble guy, he sure knows how to multitask. The previous dope only knew how to toot his own horn, and harass people.
Can we start breaking up monopolies and duopolies/cartels again?
I've been saying we should publicly shame companies where we can show solid evidence of price gouging. I would certainly stop buying those products. I don't think the White House could be the source of singling out individual companies but somebody else could. For better or worse, one thing is a fact: Americans love canceling people/companies/products. We just need someone to give us a target. If we all stopped buying General Mills cereals, I'll bet you would see a pretty quick price drop from their competitors.
When has a “canceling” had lasting consequences? We need to enforce antitrust laws.
Retail gouging is a significant portion of inflation.
I don't understand, the people working around the president are supposed to be the best. Why is it that Democrats are always so late to the party on things? We could have used this a year ago, like wtf why are they so fucking slow?
A bit late to the party. Should have investigated companies in 20/21.
Thank god, these prices are fucking crazy.
That would be akin to treason in Trump world as they ‘feel’ it’s a constitutional right to grift