Hey there,
The last year or so I keep hearing the term ‘Greedflation’ pop up more and more. The Idea here is that there are greedy capitalists that are raising the prices on goods and services faster than their own costs are increasing and this is causing prices to rise.
Now if I think about it inflation is always based on some price increasing, and sometimes because there is some shock that limits how mch of something is available. Oil is scarce because of some natural disasters or war, food is scarce because of drought, etc.
Most of the time there are other sources of the same resources (different crops), or the resource was horded before (‘strategic’ oil reserves), in both cases someone is able to charge more (eg Profit) from the situation.
So now it sound to me that normal inflation and greedflation are both simply based on one entity in the supply chain increasing the price to take advantage of the situation. Whether you call it greedflation or not depends on whether your personal “in” group is profiting from or or not.
Where is my thinking error here? Is greedflation a real thing?
Its as real as the phrase “get woke go broke” is. Its a political chant. If we’re being pedantic, greedflation is actually just price gouging. Sure it manifests as “inflation” to the average consumer, but inflation is a devaluation of currency whereas price gouging is the raising of the price of a product or service above market price.
Ahh yes, that’s why so many companies have posted record profifs. Record profits during these checks notes “tough” times.
Tough times for who?
No no you don’t understand. Every single company needs to double its profits every quarter until we can find a way to turn matter itself into profit, consume all of it, and become pure energy, setting ourselves up for the next big bang. The growth must continue until all existence is consumed
Are you under the assumption that Im defending these actions?
Calling greedflation not real is absolutely functionally running cover for it. You are either wrong or gaslighting. If you don’t know you are wrong, then you are still functionally gaslighting, just also gaslighting yourself.
Stop gaslighting. Greedflation is real. So is Shrinkflation. They are terms for phenomina that actually happen. Things ACTUALLY DO go up in price just because the rich execs are afraid their profits might slip. How many times did you hear, “macroeconomics” to try and blanket dismiss people complaining about food and other things near doubling in some cases last year?? They didn’t have anything specific to point at. They just said, “things are financially scary” and raised prices… They absolutely also make their products smaller to reduce per-unit costs in a way the end user is unlikely to notice.
Not everyone does it, but it doesn’t have to be an across the board standard practice to be true.
On the other hand, go woke go broke has NEVER been true. Disney STILL makes tons of money and many of their new movies are beyond vapidly “woke” and creatively bankrupt. All the TV shows those idiots whine about are B-tier off hours TV: Even the channels they air on know they’re not very good!! Yet conservative morons insist that a B tier or below TV show is supposed to get rave reviews…
One thing correlates with reality and the other does not. Do not pretend otherwise.
Yeah… You’re arguing points I never disagreed with. Just because I think greedflation is a moronic term doesn’t mean Im a gaslighter lmao. Price gouging is an awful practice. It is actually illegal in the civilized world, unlike America.
I dont care if get woke to broke is a real phenomena or not. My point is that its a political chant. So is greedflation. The actual term is price gouging. Its an actual real term not driven by american political nonsense.
Take a deep breath and a step back mate. You’ll feel better.
You might want to read this comment I posted elsewhere on the thread, but greedflation objectively isn’t a thing, at least not in the US during and immediately after the COVID epidemic. It definitely feels like it, as one can tell from your…heated rhetoric, but that’s due to a lot of other issues, not because it actually happening.
So-called “shrinkflation” is definitely real, but I don’t think anybody is arguing otherwise, and it’s not exactly a new phenomenon. It’s been happening and being measured for decades and decades.
But what is the market price? If people are willing to pay for it then its the market price. So its adjusting the price to the current demand. There are times where this is unethical for example profiting from wars and disasters, but generally this is how things go.
While you’re correct within the definitions of the words you’re using, it completely misses the point of what Ive said.
I am not sure. If I understood correctly then you separate between price gauging and currency devaluation. But even in the most perfect currency devaluation, where every one in the supply chain would increase their price by exactly the rate of inflation. What would happen to everyones profits? They would also go up.
Im separating them because they are different things. That doesn’t mean they don’t work in tandem. It just means they are different words with different definitions.
Also your statement is incorrect most likely due to operating costs associated since those also go up. But that instance wouldn’t be price gouging.