I find this one frustrating because it’s on tape over and over and so many people don’t notice or care or process it. CEO/CFOs/whatever on corporate calls all coming up with a new way to say “things are great, our profits are way way up because we are exorbitantly raising prices and it’s not super obvious because we blame inflation”
edit: nevermind Katie Porter’s on it of course
I acknowledge the reality, and I understand the frustrations of corporate profits rising when households feel financially stretched. And yet … does it make ANY sense whatsoever to try to name and shame corporations for, um, doing exactly what they are designed and incentivized to do? This feels more like a failing of government than a failing of corporate leadership. When designing policy we should expect for-profit corporations to maximize profits and shareholder value in every single economic environment. If that means raising prices, we should expect them to raise prices. If we don’t like that their profits are getting “too big” then tax the shit out of them and, more importantly, their shareholders. I get that people like Katie Porter and Bernie Sanders should be banging the drum to win political points and to educate the population on what is happening, but it is simply foolish to expect that companies would convene their Boards and C-suites and say “You know what, we could make more money by raising prices but let’s not do that because we want to put the interest of the public ahead of the interest of the shareholders”. Do you want to get sued? Because that’s how you get sued.
My frustration stems from the population not absorbing the information Sanders, Porter and others are putting out there. Simply that corporations’ drive for increased profits is substantially fueling this inflation. That’s it. Expecting corporations to run counter to their mission statement (almost universally “maximize profits for shareholders”) is hopelessly naive and not at all what I’m advocating.
Understood. We’re on the same page, I think just expressing a similar frustration from different perspectives. I also would like to see the general population better understand the role of corporate profit motive in rising prices, that’s fair. But some of this is going to blow back on eDems as well - Biden’s tax goal of “raising” the corporate tax rate to 28% (less than when Trump became President) isn’t exactly winning hearts and minds in the “corporate profits are bad” battle.
Dems really should be all-in on trying to make people hate corporations the way Republicans hate wokeness. I’d say even people like Bernie are too nice because they don’t want to encourage hatred.
New Rod piece just dropped.
The thing that I wanted more than anything else in this world, and have wanted from the time I was a little boy, is to feel at Home in the world, with a father who approves of me. That was not to be mine, except, by God’s grace, in heaven.
This is going to be hard for me, because I’m hurting, and my kids are hurting, and my ex-wife is hurting. I want it to stop so badly, and have for the past ten years. But none of us can share in Christ’s victory unless we also share in his suffering. The events of the last ten years could destroy me … or it could make me, and make me into someone through whom grace passes unmixed with the corrupting force of sin. That choice belongs to me. That choice belongs to all of us.
Give me a fucking break, Rod. You can see what I’m talking about here. Rod’s entire religious obsession has to do with his disastrous relationship with his father. He takes his whole trauma and psychodrama and projects it all out there, makes it a feature of objective reality. So of course he can’t just be having a rough divorce and experiencing human suffering which, like most human suffering, is devoid of any greater meaning or purpose. Instead, his suffering has to be part of some grand cosmic battle which is playing out. It is nothing less than literally a share of the suffering of God himself in human form.
This won’t work. Deplorables can rage about imaginary wokeness freely because it doesn’t cost them anything. Plenty of voters work for corporations and plenty of voters own shares in corporations, so it’s easy to fear monger about the personal cost those people could incur if corporations are adversely impacted by policy.
The problem I see is the rhetoric the companies use where they pretend that they just have no choice but to adjust prices. Their costs (energy, materials, labor etc.) have risen just so much that it’s either that or go broke.
Is there more to this story? Seems…fine?
I saw an absolutely baffling linkedin post from some executive bemoaning the general reaction to a post someone else made about how apparently it’s now common practice for companies to charge you for “training cost” after you leave a job - the guy was like “waddaya expect them to do, they GOTTA protect their investment!”
like, no they don’t. The company gets immediate value from any additional training they provide an employee, unless they quit on the spot. Of course in any business investment has risk, but why should that risk be mitigated by someone with zero leverage or real personal stake in the business itself? That’s fundamentally psychotic, but the whole “well of course a corporation GOTTA be evil” takes that exist out there are insanely common and ingrained in the american worker.
Do with a little less on the same budget, entitled consumer. The zero-sacrifice mentality we manufacture in this country is really laudable.
I’ll laud YOUR able, pal
Let’s all ration our posting, and do with a little self-editing
My son’s in first grade. One of the students in his after school program told him about four words he shouldn’t say:
dumb
stupid
shutup
fuck
To which I say, shut up, stupid dumb fuck.
More or less, yes. He spent some months there recently.
Eleven years ago, I moved here [rural Louisiana] with my wife and children to be close to my Louisiana family. I expected to stay in St Francisville for the rest of my life. I wanted to. Now I am leaving Louisiana with all of that in ruins. I have been careful not to give too many details, out of the respect for the privacy of others, but when I tell you it’s all in ruins, I don’t exaggerate . If I could stay here in Louisiana, I would, but circumstances are such that there is nothing left for me here but pain and brokenness. (I owe it to others not to get into the details in public, and anyway, that’s not important; I would only remind you who are eager to judge, and who think you know what’s going on, that you really, really do not have all the complicated facts.)
But apparently his eldest son is going to join him in Budapest after his college semester finishes, so not all his family bridges are burned I guess.
Here is what I don’t get. This should mean STONKS. But this year has been decidedly NOT STONKS. Why?
Corporations are super woke when it comes to diversity and pronouns, but savages when it comes to profit margins and union busting. We hear for you.
One marines heart warming story of trying to steal a baby from Afghanistan, that so far has been successful