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jerryphoto t1_iuisdp2 wrote

I'd vote for a mannequin before I'd vote for that idiot.

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throwawaitnine t1_iuiu5gj wrote

A senator doesn't lead. A senator is a legislature who represents their constituents. Presidents, governors, mayors are executives, they lead.

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User_Name13 OP t1_iuix4vd wrote

Senators vote on spending bills, which greatly effects inflation.

Inflation is the number one concern for voters rn, and understandably so, it's fucking everything up.

It's a kitchen table issue.

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dc122186 t1_iuixknm wrote

Inflation is currently being caused by companies jacking prices. Not much a senator can do about that.

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throwawaitnine t1_iuiyliq wrote

>Inflation is currently being caused by companies jacking prices.

No its not. Inflation is being caused by supply chain woes, a war in Europe, very generous fiscal policy during Covid and mostly, overwhelmingly by a decade plus of ZIRP and QE. Corporates are raising prices because they have to.

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dc122186 t1_iuizc22 wrote

Explain record profits then? They don't have to.

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throwawaitnine t1_iuj2pk6 wrote

Who has record profits that you want me to explain?

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dc122186 t1_iuj5lwg wrote

Kraft Heinz

>...benefited from price increases and improved supplies to retailers.

Exxon

>...this company moved forward, continuing to invest," Chief Executive Darren Woods told investors. Its quarterly profits "reflect that deep commitment" as well as higher prices, he added.

Nestlé and Procter & Gamble

>“Pricing will need to continue when it comes to the remainder of this year and next year as we’re still in catch-up mode towards repairing and restoring our gross margin,”

Tyson Foods

>...shares climbed more than 11% to an all-time high on Monday after the company reported that first-quarter profits nearly doubled due to soaring U.S. meat prices.

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throwawaitnine t1_iujwip9 wrote

The only company on this list that is recording record profits is XOM. Oil is a commodity and Exxon mobile does not control the price of that commodity. They are a publicly traded company with a legal fiduciary obligation to their shareholders, I am one btw, and they can't choose to sell their products below market price.

The rest of the companies you listed are all reporting earnings less than earlier this year or mid 2021. It might be hard to believe but at the beginning of this year the Fed was still buying securities.

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weebeardedman t1_iuiz8qt wrote

Even so, wouldn't it be congress that would introduce new legislation/has the power to address issues?

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BasileusLeoIII t1_iuizso1 wrote

cannot believe that people are unironically pushing this narrative

that companies have somehow gotten together and utterly beaten centuries of microeconomics, shifting the supply/ demand curve across the nation to raise the prices they charge for goods and services

No, inflation is currently being caused by the unprecedented and untenable amount of money the Federal Reserve is printing, or put more succinctly, the Money Supply

Absolutely reckless federal spending, and a skyrocketing deficit due to tax incomes not even approaching spending rates, are causing inflation, coupled with major supply chain issues

The dollars in your bank account are worth relatively less, because there are suddenly so many billions more of them in circulation

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Dryheavemorning t1_iuj1pwa wrote

>Absolutely reckless federal spending, and a skyrocketing deficit due to tax incomes not even approaching spending rates

Japan spent comparable amounts on Covid stimulus and also runs a big deficit but doesn't have bad inflation at all.

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TiberiusDrexelus t1_iuj23b1 wrote

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a-german-muffin t1_iujdyix wrote

>Since the late 1990s, a succession of governments favored a weak exchange rate to boost exports. Tokyo is now losing control over the yen as the Federal Reserve hikes rates.

It ain't just the last two years tanking the yen.

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Sir-Jawn t1_iujgcls wrote

For fucks sake. You guys will believe anything to defy basic economics 101. If supply/demand doesn’t dictate prices, and companies can charge whatever they want like you claim, why weren’t we seeing high inflation pre-Covid?

It’s supply and demand. We are having supply issues while we simultaneously juiced demand through unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus. Any economist could have predicted this (and many did).

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ZebZ t1_iujlj51 wrote

Businesses are using Covid and supply issues as cover to jack their prices. Those things weren't there before 2020 so they couldn't get away with it.

Pre-Covid, a widget cost $8 to make and sold for $10, thus giving a $2, or 20%, profit margin. Today, it may cost $11 to make the widget but now they can sell it for $15 and claim a $4, or 27%, profit. And just like they, they get to pocket an extra $2 per widget all while disingenuously blaming it entirely on being a supply issue.

Yes, there is a degree of legitimate inflation caused by policy and by supply issues. But that's only half the reason for the additional prices you pay.

It's not rocket science. It's right there in black and white in their quarterly reports that their profit margins are increasing.

Edit: maybe instead of reflexively downvoting because it challenges your myopic worldview, read about it from Bloomberg: US Corporate Profits Soar With Margins at Widest Since 1950

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Sir-Jawn t1_iujtfkk wrote

When the market is willing to pay $15 for that widget, then that’s the market price. There is enough demand to sustain $15. If your theory were true, a company would swoop in, build widgets for $11, and sell them for $13-14 undercutting competition. Why aren’t competing companies doing that?

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ZebZ t1_iujxxs3 wrote

They are raising prices accordingly, clearly. The new floor is set, why would they leave money in the table?

US Corporate Profits Soar With Margins at Widest Since 1950

> A measure of US profit margins has reached its widest since 1950, suggesting that the prices charged by businesses are outpacing their increased costs for production and labor.

> After-tax profits as a share of gross value added for non-financial corporations, a measure of aggregate profit margins, improved in the second quarter to 15.5% -- the most since 1950

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Dryheavemorning t1_iuiuqc9 wrote

After Trump, Republicans have now fully confused lying with leading. Oz has certainly prepared himself for the contemporary Republican idea of "leadership" via a career of lying to gullible dipshits.

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Careless-Vast-7588 t1_iuiwn35 wrote

And like Trump, actually killing some of them through bogus medical “advice” and “recommendations”. At a certain point, do we have to care about their health if they follow such “advice”?

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User_Name13 OP t1_iuit0cz wrote

Personally I'm shocked the Pittsburgh Post Gazette endorsed Fetterman.

I don't know much about this publication, but they are the 2nd biggest paper in PA.

I'm surprised a mainstream publication like this endorsed a Republican. The Inquirer endorsed Fetterman, but that was a foregone conclusion. They're the Inquirer, everyone knew they were going to endorse Fetterman.

I think the debate hurt Fetterman more than the media is letting on.

His campaign hid his health condition from the public, downplaying it at every opportunity.

IMO, they were hoping to get as many early mail-in votes cast as possible in his favor before the electorate could see how bad his aphasia is.

He still won't release his health records either.

I think Oz narrowly walks away with this one.

Inflation is just too bad, it's the number one issue in this election.

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NonIdentifiableUser t1_iuiu4wk wrote

And what does Fetterman or the democrats have to do with inflation? This is an international problem and pinning it to the Dems is simply taking advantage of a grossly ignorant and uninformed voter base.

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User_Name13 OP t1_iuiuqox wrote

>And what does Fetterman or the democrats have to do with inflation?

Fetterman would support greater government spending, resulting in even more inflation.

The money printer has been going non-stop since all these Covid relief bills started flying left and right.

You can't spend your way out of inflation, that's what got us in this mess in the first place.

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wrinklyweenus t1_iuixiea wrote

Gibberish

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User_Name13 OP t1_iuixlm0 wrote

Okay.

What do you think causes inflation?

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Keinichn t1_iuj2133 wrote

Inflation is typically caused by an increase in production, material, and/or logistical costs.

All three of those have increased worldwide over the last two years, some exponentially. Materials are more expensive worldwide, production costs are higher worldwide, shipping and supply chain costs have gone up worldwide. Demand is up, supply is down. That's another reason.

If it was solely due to national relief bills, inflation issues would limited to the US. They're not.

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User_Name13 OP t1_iuj40bw wrote

>Inflation is typically caused by an increase in production, material, and/or logistical costs.

You forgot a big one, labor costs.

Inflation is caused by overprinting a currency, like the US has been doing with the dollar the past 2.5 years.

You can't just print trillions of dollars out of thin air and expect your currency not to be devalued.

Look at Zimbabwe or Venezuela for a case study on runaway inflation.

Government's can't spend their way out of inflation, it's literally what got us in this mess in the first place.

It's supply and demand.

There's more dollars out there competing for products than there are actual products, so the price of those products is going to increase cuz there are more dollars out there chasing a finite amount of product.

The government printed trillions of dollars and handed it out to people, paying them to sit on the couch for over a year, instead of contributing to the economy for it like everyone else does.

My dollars that I worked for are competing with dollars that the government just printed and handed out for products.

That's why we are in this mess and we absolutely can't spend our way out of it, cuz that's how we got here in the first place.

If businesses have to raise wages to compete with the government that is paying people to sit at home, then they are going to pass that additional cost of business along to the consumer, further contributing to inflation.

That's why the government shouldn't pay people to sit around and do nothing, because it makes it harder for businesses to find workers.

−3

Keinichn t1_iujhug1 wrote

It's like you completely ignored my response, namely the last little bit, and responded with the same argument you made earlier. I'll quote it again:

>If it was solely due to national relief bills, inflation issues would limited to the US. They're not.

The relief bills may have been part of the issue, but they did not cause nearly the impact you're thinking they did. I will say this a third time, hopefully you'll actually see and understand it: If the relief bills were the sole cause of the issue, other countries wouldn't be having inflation issues as well.

>the government that is paying people to sit at home

Which they are not doing any longer. They printed three checks. It wasn't enough money per person to keep someone afloat longer than a few months, much less two years.

Businesses have to raise wages because the labor pool finally got together and decided they were tired of working 40+ hour weeks at shit paying jobs.

>That's why the government shouldn't pay people to sit around and do nothing, because it makes it harder for businesses to find workers.

I don't think you have a full understanding of the big picture here. You seem to want to pin everything on a few checks totaling a couple thousand dollars per person that stopped getting sent out over a year ago. It's not people sitting at home being lazy. Many of them left their shit paying jobs and got better paying ones. Others went from a two income family to one income because they found a way to make it work. The rest have decided that $7.25 an hour isn't worth their time (and it isn't) so they're outright refusing to apply at places that pay that terrible and are focusing their efforts on places that pay an amount they can live off of.

Please, I mean this as a reasonable human being to another one. Please take the time to thoroughly research, from multiple sources across the spectrum, and use some common sense rather than what the political folks you follow spout out of their heads.

People aren't as lazy as you think they are. Businesses are more evil than you think they are. This issue is way more complicated than you're making it out to be, and it's even more complicated than I'm explaining it as. Just, please, take a few hours, set aside your biases, and dig into it from non-political sources. I've seen people that had the "people are lazy" view do a total 180 after doing that.

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User_Name13 OP t1_iujk3q0 wrote

> If the relief bills were the sole cause of the issue, other countries wouldn't be having inflation issues as well.

Those countries also passed massive spending bills in response to Covid.

>Which they are not doing any longer. They printed three checks. It wasn't enough money per person to keep someone afloat longer than a few months, much less two years.

Did you forget the federally enhanced Covid unemployment payments people got? It was $600 a week by itself, and that was on top of whatever your state unemployment was.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/11/us/how-covid-stimulus-money-was-spent.html

$740 billion went to unemployment benefits.

Businesses had to compete with the government for hiring workers.

The government paid people to sit on their asses and it contributed to a massive labor shortage. If you give someone the option of either sitting at home on their ass and getting money for doing nothing or going into work and busting their ass to earn it, people will choose the free lunch.

−1

Keinichn t1_iujl6tk wrote

From your source:

>Workers received nearly $700 billion in unemployment benefits, including an extra $600 per week from March to July 2020

The $600 per week lasted 4-5 months and ended over two years ago. You can rightfully blame it for hiring issues in the summer/fall of 2020, but it's absolutely not the cause for current and ongoing labor/inflation issues in 2022 as that money is long gone. Do you have a source that those payments are still ongoing or are you going to admit it's a more complex issue?

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PhillyPanda t1_iuk7g6j wrote

Federal pandemic aid lasted through September 2021.

The $600 was reduced to $300 after a few months but the government was still paying people on top of unemployment.

−1

liquidbluenight t1_iuiyf96 wrote

Greedy companies irresponsibly jacking prices only to stuff more cash into executives’ wallets at the expense of paying living wages and decent benefits is a main driver of inflation. (Note these are predominantly large companies, e.g., Walmart or Amazon, who are seeing record profits and still raising prices, not mom-and-pop local businesses that are struggling to keep up like the rest of us.)

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babiesmakinbabies t1_iujf2p5 wrote

Current inflation is a global issue. What the USA spends has nothing to do with it.

−4

babiesmakinbabies t1_iujeyff wrote

You got your names mixed up there buddy.

The post gazette editorial page is run by Keith Burris, a conservative avowed trump supporter.

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