Submitted 10 months ago by DichotoDeezNutz@lemmy.world to [deleted]
They keep raising prices, stating that it’s due to inflation, but then they keep having record profits.
Meanwhile, the average American can barely afford rent or food nowadays.
What are we to do? Vote? I have been but that doesn’t seem to do much since I’m just voting for a representative that makes the actual decisions.
Inflation means money is worth less than before. Record profits are only records because the nominal value is higher, but the real value isn’t.
Companies operate on gross margin, so 30% margin is always 30% of the total price. The actual value is irrelevant.
You’re not wrong that it’s the profit margin that tells the story, and you can’t tell just from the nominal amount alone.
But average profit margins in the United States have reached a record high percentile not seen since the 1950’s. So it’s not just the dollar amount that’s gone up for corporations, it’s the margin percent that’s gone up too.
The actual value of groceries seems quite relevant…
Of course, if you’re not getting an actual pay rise. Then you strike until you get a better deal or start making money without exchanging it for units of time.
The value is the same. Join a union.
The answer is “vote” but not just once. Not just for federal elections. Every election, you should be there. Show up to candidate forums and bother your current electeds.
Every government is like a ship of various size, it takes a while to see the turn even start, let alone have the course actually get corrected. The bigger the government, the harder it can be to get long lasting positive change accomplished. (This isn’t a “small government is better” thing either, it’s just how large organizations work.)
If you can, run for office. If you can’t, find someone you trust who can and support them. Not just Congress or president or governor. City council, county government, school board, on and on…
What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices?
Ask their boss for a raise.
Switch jobs if they don’t get the raise.
If they can’t switch jobs, go to school and get an education in a different career path, then go back to step one.
And before you hate on me for expressing the above, just realize I’m stating what the realities are, I’m not the one who created Capitalism.
I personally believe in regulations, including the regulation of wealth, but unfortunately we as citizens don’t seem to be able to elect people to office to pass those kind of laws.
I honestly wonder if FDR would be able to pass the ‘New Deal’ in today’s environment.
Regarding our choice of politicians. Find your state version of fairvote.org and start there
Try to still be alive when the cog in the machine breaks and the pendulumn swings the other way
What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices?
In a healthy economy, they are supposed to provide more value to society in order to receive more money
This isn’t super viable right now, but it’s true.
If you want to do something about it: start a company, and be reasonable. There will be a lot of pressure to do otherwise, though.
It’s not enough to vote. We ALL need to vote. And not just in the Presidential election. In all elections, including local, state, and most importantly PRIMARIES. We have an FPTP Voting System, which trends us towards a 2 Party system.
In such a voting system, the only way to meaningfully change the position of the parties is to make sure the party is compromised of and is led by people who share your positions and who will actually represent your interests effectively.
1 person voting in a general election that’s already narrowed down to a few swing states isn’t going to do it. Get everyone you know to get off their asses and vote in primaries, for in general elections, and any other local elections you can manage.
If you can only have time to vote in one election? Make it the primary for your party.
Voting is the lowest hanging fruit. It will cause the biggest impact for the least amount of effort. If we cannot get our asses to polls we aren’t going to get our asses up to do anything harder than voting. Not until people get much more desperate, much hungrier, and much more miserable. I think our voter turnout for primary elections is around 20%. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
Imagine a world where the shittiest candidates were all weeded out months before the general election. That’s what the Primaries are for.
If companies were just greedy they could have raised prices at any time before. They didn't because they're trying to find the optimal point between supply and demand to make the most profit (as we all do -- are you willing to take a pay cut or eschew a raise you can probably get?)
All the money pumped into the economy is why they could raise prices -- not just in 2020, but pretty consistently for the past 20 years. Lots of normal people are getting screwed but it's fine for these companies because guess who gets much of the money being printed? Hint: donors.
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The term wage slave is a thing. Capitalism is the same as slavery except it’s seen as acceptable because we’re mislead to believe we have power to change. The system itself is stepping on the lower wage people and using their work for the corporations at and owner’s profits, not just lower local wages but abusing labor from even lower wage countries.
Civil War.
Recently watched this interesting Gary Stevenson interview.
Not very optimistic but might give you some ideas.
Tl;dr: do everything you can to buy a house and get the rich taxed (much) more.
Do everything you can to buy a house? Don’t you suspect the housing market is going to take a dramatic fall within the next few years? That seems like asking people to catch a falling knife.
Tax the wealthy more for sure, but I guess I would suggest keeping powder dry and punching in at some point during the housing market deflation. Else you risk watching your equity dissolve and be worse off for the effort.
The video responds much better than I could. But in short, Gary doesn’t believe the housing prices to fall until the rich are taxed more. So get in soon if you can, it’s only going to get worse.
Might be wrong, who knows. I’m not able to buy a house currently anyways so I’d have to wait either way.
Stop voting Democrat, obviously. Since it was their policies that caused the high prices.
violent uprising?
i mean- be complacent and accept that there’s totally nothing that can be done about it?
AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Buy stock in the companies posting record profits.
K1nsey6@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Sure, we cant afford food or rent, but there’s always stock money sitting around.
AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
Are you just here to tell people there’s nothing they can do?
What’s your suggestion?
metaStatic@kbin.social 10 months ago
Delete this
andrewta@lemmy.world 10 months ago
why? honest question. if they are making record profits and their stock is going up why would you not buy their stock?