Yep, a huge portion of this recent ‘inflation’ is not cost increases or actual inflation… just basically the wealthy class turning the screws on everyone else because they can.
Don’t worry, my Econ 101 class states that surely a competitor will come in and operate at a lower cost to recoup that cost for the customers!
Wait… what do you mean the competitors are all increasing prices by the same amount knowing demand for diapers is inelastic and the Nash equilibrium is for them to all match price increases so that they all make more money together?
Surely a new entrant will help!
Wait… what do you mean nobody will invest in a new competitor because the market is “saturated” and even if they did the big brands would just decrease prices in the areas they operate until they run out of cash and fold?
Surely a regulator will help!
Wait… what do you mean the regulators feel price increases are due to “too much demand” for products and are turning the screws on consumers?
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Gotta say it. This line of humor is a problem.
It keeps people from doing more than “heh heh, yeah this sucks”.
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Totally understand satire.
This is defeatist humor which weakens the stance of the subject.
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Continuous use of irony eventually makes the person communicate the idea unironically. Be careful with how often you are spouting this before you start believing it.
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“Actual inflation” is just some capitalist a bit further up the supply chain “turning the screws on everyone just because they can”. Inflation is the ultimate proof capitalism is an inherently flawed system.
This is just false. The OP had the correct idea, demand for essential goods is inelastic. This doesn’t go away if you “get rid of capitalism”. All economies have price increases. If you ban them, you just get shortages and things get sold on the black market (as was the case in the Soviet Union).
The real issue is: what is “essential”? The items we think of as essential are mostly conveniences. Disposable diapers are not essential. Washable diapers existed for thousands of years, and they are way better for the environment. Your kids don’t have disposable clothes. You just wash them when they are covered in vomit or feces. So why not diapers?
Maybe we should consider alternatives to “essential” items. Toilet paper is expensive? Get a bidet. Baked goods are expensive? Get some butter and flour. Beer is expensive? Good news: alcohol just appears for free when you give yeast food! Your home repairs are expensive? Literally watch a YouTube video.
It’s easier than ever to do things on your own. Don’t hand out money unless you want to. And realize the choice you are making.
Washable diapers are somewhat different from regular clothes. They need to be natural fibre (cotton or similar) that can handle being washed at high temperatures - because you want to make sure those diapers are properly clean. Natural fibre is expensive - there is a reason why most denim pants on the market are stretch now. Washable diapers also harken back to a time when one parent - usually the mother - was at home all day to look after the household and the kids. Water and electricity were cheap back then - nowadays if you’re running several loads of washing each week just to clean the diapers, you’re quickly transferring that cost.
Your other analogies are similarly flawed. Home repairs are expensive, sure - but watch a Youtube video? Really? For one, some skillsets are not transferrable through a video - these people make it look easy because they know what they’re doing. Then, even if I can comprehend what I’m supposed to do, I still may not have the required tools - and boy some of them can be expensive. Thirdly, certain kinds of work are regulated, at least where I live (plumbing, electrical), so DIYing those can get you into very hot water if something goes wrong. Lastly, if I botch a repair or break something else in the process, I’m left holding the bag. A tradesman has the required insurance - at least where I live - and has to warrant their work.
“Just eat less avocado toast.”
You think cotton is expensive? And you think electricity and water were cheaper? None of that is true. I actually looked up what a load of laundry costs in terms of energy and water. It’s about a kWh to wash and another to dry. Water is maybe a dollar per wash.
So $1.50 per wash and dry at most for a couple dozen new diapers. And you forget the best part: you never run out! So you save time by not needing to go to the store.
If you think doing your own repairs is impossible to “comprehend”, I don’t know what to tell you. You may currently live in a house built by illiterate people. And I mean that, literally. Most repairs are very approachable with just a screwdriver and a wrench. You probably have the tools already (or $10 to buy them).
I don’t know what you class as ‘repairs’ if you think ‘most’ of them can be done with a screwdriver and a wrench. I do plenty of DIY and repair work on my house, and have invested in a number of tools, some of which would be completely out of range or over the top for an average family. I’ve had to teach myself some plumbing skills to fix drainpipes and other stuff - screwdriver and wrench get you exactly nowhere with that kind of stuff.
Also, I’ve watched more than enough Youtube DIY videos to know that many of them contain incomplete and misleading instructions, and that some of the people who make them are idiots.
Let’s go further. Why bother with gas? You can just get things delivered, or walk to the store
Why bother with medicine? You could just grow herbs that have the same compounds in unmeasured dosage, or you could synthesize them at home
It’s not that I think you’re wrong, I just think this is an impractical way forward. It’s voting with your wallet, and it doesn’t work
Sure in a perfect world we all the time and money to install a bidet, or bake everything you need, or brew beer, most people don’t have the time and or money to experiment with this kind of stuff.
You got solid points about time and money spent, but it’s not all like that and OP has points as well.
A bidet is $20-$30. My Filipina wife asked for one, and rejected the nicer units I wanted to buy. Busted out all the tools, which some may not have, only needed simple pliers to get the old fitting loose. Rest was done by hand in 10-minutes, tested and working.
Now how much you spending on toilet paper again?
I know we can’t all grow our own food, but some things are worth looking into.
Another one; My fridge is failing. Pretty sure it’s a worn fan, but I’m clueless. As OP said, find a YouTube video. Frustrating? Good, you’re learning.
I’ve had my AC fail a few times. It was a $20 capacitor in every case, took 45-minutes to figure out the first time. 10-minute fix now.
How much was hiring a pro to come to your house?
Hell, maybe you even got some tools you didn’t end up needing, but those are yours forever.
DIY ain’t cheap. But baby steps are a thing.
Worst case, you fail and learn.
My 76 year old mother, with arthritis and osteoporosis, living on a fixed income, is not fixing her own air conditioner.
Of course I’m not bashing the thought of DIY but, as we have all seen the effect of “handyman specials”. There is good and bad, but sometimes, and for many people they have neither the time or money, that’s all.
Inflation doesn’t come from demand, it comes from someone raising the price of something - a raw material or a finished product. The combined effect of all those pricing hikes is what we call “inflation”, and they are almost always done in the name of increasing profit, not to meet demand (whether elastic or not). A system that demands infinite growth cannot work in a finite world, that’s the problem at the root of capitalism.
“But people are still out here buying staples and maxing out their credit cards, so we can turn the screws just a bit more, right? Right?”
-Rich People Probably
“There still aren’t enough homeless people. We can keep going.”
What’s terribly sad about that is we’re genuinely reaching crisis levels in some cities. These people need housing *with functioning plumbing stat.
I don’t understand people’s hesitance to house them because it’s like… all you people do is complain about them existing and wanting them “out of your downtown.” Well shit, it’s my downtown too and their downtown as well and all I want is for them to be housed, and holy shit that actually solves your whole fucking complaint because now they’re not in “your” downtown.
The amount of human feces that has to be cleaned daily in some cities is genuinely approaching crisis levels. It’s literally a public health emergency. It absolutely can get to the level where enough fecal matter is in a general area that large amounts of bacteria will be floating in the air, and people can end up getting ill from food that this bacteria has landed on. No direct contact with feces needed, once it has reached that level. We don’t want it to reach that level.
There’s my rant about how absolutely fucked the homeless situation is, because its inhumane and should be classified as “cruel and unusual punishment” in my opinion.
The issue is indeed fucked, but imma NIMBY this one.
Nuclear reactor in my backyard? Go for it, I understand the risks, and lack thereof. Prison? Fine by me.
Homeless people in my hood? Hard no. And anyone says different hasn’t known or been around homeless people. Only time I consistently carry a pistol is downtown. I’d be hard pressed to pull it, but still…
Many, many are blameless. But fuck me. If you can’t figure out a way to get a roof over your head in America, you’re kind of a fuck up. And I know that statement will piss people off, but if pissed off, how many homeless have you personally known? They’re almost all fuck ups, and not the kind you want around your home.
And yes, I’ve been that desperate, that out of options. Spent a night or two in the woods and under a bridge. Jail would be far preferable. And some take that option.
It’s clearly cheaper to just provide housing. But where?! Are we going to build concentration camps in the boondocks? And not my boondocks thank you very much. I approach my camp every weekend with a pistol in hand for two reasons; 2 or 4-legged crazy animals have set up camp and think it’s theirs.
Mental health care? Again, have you ever met or personally known homeless folks? They will NOT willingly go for help. I got stories. We going to force them into hospitals? Hell, if so, let’s just cut to the chase and build concentration camps.
Lotta sick people walking the streets. And I ain’t got answers. And if anyone gives you a simple answer? That person is ignorant at best, or more probably an asshole.
Best I got for Americans? Some sort of universal health care. Devil and details and all, but my ex-wife, while training in the hood for her RN, talked of men throwing themselves in front of cars on freezing nights. Free ride to the ER. Yeah. We’re that fucked up.
I usually try to see both sides of an argument, give 'em a chance.
For example; Supply chains were truly fucked over by COVID. And believe it or not, it’s still an issue in late 2023.
But inflation now is almost entirely corporate greed. They saw what they could get away with and pressed it.
Say you have egg laying chickens. You were selling a dozen for $1, but prices spiked and people were happy to pay $2.
You going to drop your prices out the goodness of your heart? And at the same time, feed prices went up (but came down again). Everything went up! Need to repair the fence? $20 worth of wire is now $40 (but that price came down).
That extra $20 was nothing to me, but I can justify keeping my prices up, or even raising them!
Expand that to megacorp’s kinda thinking. In my simplistic case, you are solely responsible for the morality of your decisions, and it might be a hard decision. You gonna take less money nice guy?
For a monster corporation? Nah, that greed is spread over a thousand actors, all sanely acting in their best interest.
Capitalism is the best economic system we got, but the flaws are clear. We need strong worker unions and strong legislative oversight. And that is clear as well.
One problem is that we allowed corporations to go global without a global labor unions and global regulation.
I think corporations learned some very dangerous lessons from the pandemic.
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The demand for essential goods is inelastic. They can charge whatever and people still have to but things, especially food, household products, and a place to live.
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They can understaff and underpay employees, and people will choose to fault people for laziness rather than the deliberate corporate choices that lead to the situation.
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Corporations have built such a large market share so as to have created giant barriers to entry that there is zero competition from new businesses.
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Even larger competitor corporations are happy to wink and nod as you both raise prices, cut staff, and give paltry raises because it just means you both make more money, and so long as you don’t say it out loud, it isn’t collusion.
They already knew these things, they just needed an excuse to not cause too much of an uproar. Egg prices went up by way too much too quickly that even the government, who rarely actually does anything about this sort of thing, started an investigation. Magically the prices dropped by a lot, but unfortunately still higher than it used to be.
Chickens got hit with a bird flu during the start of the pandemic, which made egg prices even higher. A big reason for the drop in price was because the farmers were able to stabilize. It’s probably 50/50 between the fowl epidemic and inflation.
Except egg production didn’t drop all that much: https://www.statista.com/statistics/196096/total-egg-production-in-the-us-since-2000/
It hit one producer and the others decided to jack up their prices as well to take advantage. There’s a reason why they were being investigated.
Hey, I didn’t finish reading #2, but why isn’t my mocha latte ready yet?
It became DIY while you weren’t looking. You have to make it yourself but they provide the supplies. Saves on cost cause now they only need 1-2 people at a time running the store.
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They literally lock up the baby formula in a cage at my local grocery stores now. You know, so criminal scum with starving babies don’t pillage them.
If that doesn’t signal imminent collapse I don’t know what does.
There’s a drug store chain near me that has a sign, if you need formula and can’t afford it, they’ll let you have their brand generic formulas for free. You just bring it up to the desk, let them know and they’ll scan it and give it to you.
That isn’t a sign of collapse. That just shows that the average retailer would let a baby starve than lose a dime. Its a reflection of the morality that these people have. But of course they never examine themselves deep enough to have that realisation.
The devil’s advocate in me says that dealers often cut drugs with formula so there’s at least one other reason to keep it locked, but I don’t know how well that statement holds up under scrutiny, because it’s not like they check to see if you actually have a baby when you buy formula, and it’s probably not worth the risk to steal it as opposed to just buying it with the kind of return you’d get from diluting your product.
And yeah, I see razor blades, shampoo, and fucking laundry soap under lock and key in stores all the time. Nobody’s cutting drugs with any of those. Shit’s getting real fucked up.
Also I’d much rather have drugs cut with baby formula than cut with fentanyl
It’s not an either-or situation. Something like baby formula is only added as a filter. Fentanyl is far too potent to use as a filler. It’s added to other drugs to give a better high so users are less likely to realize they’re not getting what they paid for.
I’ve heard the baby formula drug thing before, but I find it hard to believe you can’t mix it with something cheaper like regular powdered milk or flour.
A lot of this stuff is easily resellable down your local flat-roofed pub, and there’s practically no punishment for shoplifting.
I asked at Safeway and the guy told me it’s because people steal it and then try to return it for cash, not so much for starving babies. Same with the name brand laundry detergent that is now in a cage.
In the US, we have WIC (nutrition assistance for pregnant women, infants and children under 5) that covers formula for parents whose income is less than 185% of the federal poverty level. That does mean that parents who fall over the benefits cliff (make 186% of the fed poverty level) are seriously fucked.
This NYT article from 2005 says it’s also stolen to cut drugs, but the bigger thing is reselling it for profit. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/us/baby-formula-the-locked-case-at-the-front-of-the-store.html
People likely are cutting their drugs with razor blades. Just not in the way you mean here haha.
Formula tins have a tamper-evident seal.
Corporations. Do. Not. Care.
Their incentives go directly against our incentives quite often
Make. Them. Care.
Not sure how exactly, but I was inspired by your assertive capitalization.
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I’m sure all the pro-life politicians who want to save the poor babies will be very concerned about this and congressional investigations will be forthcoming.
Right?
RIGHT?
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narrator no, they were wrong.
Unless there is a way to pin it on Biden they aren’t interested in doing anything.
Nah babies can live just fine with cloth diapers, they’ll just tell you to use those if you’re not motivated enough to hustle for bare essentials
Diapers? Those babies should be shitting into their bootstraps.
The work required of us in an economy like this is obscene. Comparing deals and coupons and dodging scams and trying ti save time while every corpo is trying to waste it. I’m not a mother, yet, but imagine realizing you can’t afford disposable diapers this week and this is the week you have to spend extra hours cleaning and sanitizing cloth diapers. And all the extra stress on top. Thats if you could afford kids in the first damn place.
Because poor people definitely have washing machines.
No, because that’s socialism! Trickle down economics and what not!!
Don’t worry the market will regulate itself. /s
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Antitrust? How quaint. Microsoft showed everyone that antitrust just means “drag out the process until you get a sycophant in office and saunter away with a slap on the wrist.”
They also showed that you can aquire a whole company over a weekend with little to no oversight at all.
Sam Altman can eat shit.
Regulatory
Capture
Whachu gonna do ‘bout it bitch?
- Bezos
The inflation we are experiencing is artificial
In other news, guillotine futures are up 20% in Q3.
Since the abandonment of gold standard it’s definitely artificial.
Money is made up either way. It doesn’t matter if it’s tied to gold. The value of gold is made up, even if there’s a quantifiable physical amount of it. The problem here is a lack of regulation on capitalism. Or just capitalism tbh.
Feels pretty real to my bank account.
Artificial doesn’t mean imaginary.
Save imaginary money for crypto
Someone should have Robert Reich be their vice president. He could come out every second day and rip into some fucking companies for the shit they do to keep dragging the whole world down.
I didn’t realize Sam Reich’s dad was so cool
I keep waiting for Robert Reich to end up on Game Changer somehow. I want to see the two of them make some shenanigans happen.
Having him deliver the “I’ve been here the whole time” would be incredible haha
So I propose a solution:
We start and fund a non-profit organization designed to produce basic living essentials and sell it at the cost to manufacture, regardless of market pressures. Then we all collectively buy from this non-profit and have a functional means of production legally owned and controlled by the people.
Set up strict rules to ban anyone who has ever worked in any upper management position in any for-profit basic essentials producing company from ever holding any position of power in the non-profit. No one from the corporate world at all. No one from any position in state or federal government. No lobbyists or consultants or members of their think tanks or any of their goons.
Use open source designs for the factories and everyone in the community works together to automate them as much as is possible.
Sounds an awful lot like communism to me.
I’m in.
I’m surprised no one here has organized something like this yet.
I don’t really get where the money is coming from.
By selling the products like any other manufacturer? The startup costs are the main issue, but people crowd source things all the time, no reason this couldn’t work in theory.
I’m down
Yes this is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time, I think it’s basically inevitable that it’ll happen eventually but an actual effort to make it happen faster would be such a positive thing in the world.
The reason I say it’s inevitable is because design tools are getting consistently better, hardware is cheaper than ever, and ever more useful stuff is being added to the commons. With ai assisted CAD and ai assisted manufacture we’re going to see so many amazing new open source designs getting built.
People are going to start moving away from for-profit designed homegoods like washing machines and printers because they’ll be able to get a community designed and tested product modified to their specific needs and tastes then have that fabricated at whatever local firm or tinkerer you want to give your business to.
You’ll have to make the way the non profit organisation is run or organised, also impossible to gather autocracy in.
Not just hard, impossible. No one should be able to mess with any aspects of the nonprofit, incorruptible, people-owned, affordable (NIPA) organisation.
And even if it is hard and not impossible, it should be made such that it is easier to get back to that situation, than to remove any of the NIPA aspects.
Shareholder primacy is upheld by the state putting every publicly owned company antagonistic to its workers and customers, id est, the public.
This means the companies are forced to charge what the market will bear, and it’s the responsibility of the government to regulate prices to keep things affordable.
But this means lobbying by companies is an attack on the public. (It’s highly profitable to bribe officials and should be illegal. It also means officials who take lobby money are traitors to the public, the nation and their office, whether or not doing so is legal.
So the justification for bullets is there, and has been for several decades. We’re just not very good at seeing when we have nothing left to lose.
I wonder what it would take to convince people to fight for what is right.
Remember this discrepancy every time you hear “they’ll just pass the costs on to the consumer” with regards to regulation and taxes. It works the same way in both directions; the price is based on what you’re willing to pay, not their operating costs.
research “diaper inflation” for more
Do we know who is setting the price higher? Is it more like it’s 6% higher but so is everything else or more of the manufacturer selling to the storefronts at a higher cost thus forcing grocery stores to set the price higher by 6%?
Because it informs who we should be mad at
Manufacturers set minimum prices for their products. Generally, suggested retail price and minimum advertisable price.
My ex-favorite tea brands silently cutting 20% of tea bags in the box and raised the price 15%, while keeping the same sized box and make the printed weight and contents smaller and harder to find.
And people call me crazy for getting frustrated.
