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.
Short answer: get paid more
Medium answer: become unionized so that you can bargain collectively for more pay instead of individually. It’s like forming a political party with your labour, and then voting for yourself
Unions are a very good answer to this. They aren’t a complete solution, but they are a big step in the right direction. And they’re something almost everyone can do.
Unions wont do shit unless they also stop supporting capitalist owned politicians thats keeping them down
Unions did shit when the corporations and government could literally shoot them, stop being a larper and get to work
Die
Cry and hope for a revolution. Since the Supreme Court decided money is speech, we have no power. Representatives don’t care about their constituents unless a message comes with a “charitable donation”. The rich are seemingly immune to laws, but somehow there’s a surplus of money available to fuck over the little guy. This is a failed country of the corporations, and for the corporations.
Voting is necessary but not sufficient.
The big other thing is to build external power. That’s not like militias per se (though with the rising fascism it’s not a bad idea), but rather stuff like gardening, learning to do repairs, and practicing mutual aid. Reduce your and your community’s dependence on the corporations. And make it an issue people around you care about.
Unions! Rising prices are irrelevant when workers are paid fairly.
Giving everyone more money will not fix the price of housing, It’ll do the opposite.
It will partially fix it because part of the problem is wealth inequality; housing is a form of wealth and becomes more out of reach as wealth concentrates away from people. Giving everyone money serves as redistribution.
Think about it. If everyone has more money that means so do the other people bidding against you. It’s like the college tuition problem. Everyone can get student loans, so colleges have no incentive to keep costs reasonable. Giving college students more money doesn’t fix the problem of college being too expensive.
Die in a ditch?
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…
Prices aren’t coming down. Our financial systems are built around inflation and drastic measures will be taken to fight deflation.
You can only reduce expenses so far. As purchasing power fell, steak was replaced with ground beef, and ground beef is getting replaced with beans and rice. What can replace beans and rice? Already, too many people are having sleep for dinner.
The answer is both simple and difficult: we need to get paid more.
Cutting back on spending is the only thing I know that works. When consumers don’t buy things, the prices come down.
For groceries this means splurging less, avoiding things you don’t need (drink tea instead of soda, don’t buy snacks and chips). Fruits and vegetables are definitely still cheaper than prepared foods in many cases. Even when frozen. And they can be used to make a meal stretch, along with beans and rice.
Buy cheap bar soap and store brands of basic things.
Coupons aren’t really a thing anymore, but you can use the app for stores like the grocery, Target, Walmart, to “clip” deals and save.
A lot of the high prices right now are just greed. They aren’t tied to actual supply chain or labor issues. A grocery store in France just told PepsiCo to take a hike because their prices were so outrageous.
If you want the government to get involved, I encourage you to write your representatives about enforcing existing anti-trust laws. The mega mergers and buyouts are driving prices up because of less competition. Kroger wants to buy Albertsons for example. That just means more layoffs and higher grocery prices.
Hope this helps.
Eat the rich. Bring back the guillotine.
What a horrible take, encouraging violence against people. For shame.
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While it isn’t magic, there is a newfound pressure on the Democratic party to finally break some meaningful ground.
Unfortunately one of the biggest obstacles had been the radically conservative Supreme Court.
Simple arithmetic tells us that if just two Supreme Court Justices were to suddenly disappear from our reality, and re-emerge in another, the court would lean more progressive to allow debt relief, bodily autonomy, and hopefully more.
While there are many ways to suddenly remove people from our plane of existence, there’s no proven way to have them re-emerge in another. Obviously it would be illegal and deeply unethical to suggest such removal without the safe relocation to another plane.
So I guess just learn to kiss fascist ass 🤷♂️
America needs to nuke the entire structure, not just one party. Its two wings of the same bird. Dems are only “progtessive” and “trying to make meaningful change” because they have an excuse not to. Otherwise that stuff would have been implemented or secured years ago.
Unironically the answer is “shop less.”
Prices on goods rise when demand for goods stays sufficient to support the price going up. The less everyone buys, the less things will cost.
Prices for goods have almost nothing to do with the price of rent, but the mechanisms there are the same - it’s just that you have to encourage building rather than “live somewhere less” because the second option really isn’t tenable, for obvious reasons.
If you want rent to come down, campaign for, vote for, or even run for office to be the candidate that will change zoning laws and encourage building multifamily housing.
the myth of supply based economics, and other fairytales.
Realistically there is no reason for produce or rent to be increasing in price, there is not any actual reason for the hikes in COL other than “record profits”
Move. Why stay somewhere that is taking advantage of you?
If you aren’t receiving benefits for the taxes you’re paying or representation for your votes, you can run for office or move and find immediate relief in less expensive countries, which is almost every country.
As if it’s that easy.
It really is.
It costs money to move, especially to another country.
Spend several hundred to move and get set up, cut your yearly expenses by tens of thousands of dollars.
It’s not a tricky equation.
… Several hundred? LOL
To go to most countries, you’ll be spending tens of thousands just to get there. I don’t know where you’re getting your numbers from, but it’s not reality.
No you won’t. It’s much cheaper to travel than you are pretending.
My numbers are from experience and current ticket prices.
It’s under $300 right now to fly to most countries in South America or Europe, the Bahamas, under $500 to fly anywhere in Asia and this is the most expensive time of the year because of the lunar New Year, my ticket last month was 270 usd from new York to Hong Kong.
several hundred
LOL okay boomer
Here you go, boomer.
Do me a solid. Just go get on a plane to any one of those places. Just step off the plane and just live there. No visas or any other nonsense. You’re the smart one and know better. Only 300 bucks to fly! These guys are just dumb.
Go grab a job and just live there.
Have fun, smart guy!
Prices from New York, boomer:
Here’s what I’m doing:
- MAXIMIZE INCOME. I just got a much overdue promotion. More income helps. I’m going to try for a second one soon. This can be difficult because if your skills are not very marketable it may mean giving up more of your time…which sucks. Move up where you are and when you can’t do that any more move over to somewhere else with more headroom.
- BE WISE. Be fiscally conservative. I think you need a decent income for this, if you’re barely scraping by then you don’t have this luxury. Have the recommended months of savings, avoid unnecessary expenses, save for retirement, buy instead of rent, avoid borrowing, etc. All that stuff financial advisors and personal finance classes teach.
- MINIMIZE EXPENSES. Do you need a brand new car or can you get by on a 5 year old car? My vehicle is about 15 years old. Vehicles are almost always a liability. Can you take public transportation instead of owning a vehicle? Buying groceries at Whole Foods? Stop that, go to Aldi and Costco. Burning incandescent bulbs? Get LEDs. Can you live with a roommate? Etc.
Some things I’m considering:
- BITCH ABOUT IT. Write your representatives and tell them to get off their FUCKING ASSES and DO SOMETHING.
- Downsize my living situation.
- Rent my current house and buy a duplex. Let someone else pay for the duplex with the other half’s rent.
- Move to Vietnam and live like a king.
Ah, landowner class, checking in with bullshit as per usual
The vast majority of Americans own houses
It’s very funny how effectively you can turn “a statistically average person” into some ominous sounding elite other by just dressing it up in class language.
I’m not going to apologize for who I am but I’m no1%er.
Sorry you have to hate.
Your post reads like a buzzfeed article.
Next you’re going to tell me to lay off the avocado toast
Didn’t have this problem under Trump.
My dude, we had covid prices and insane global shortages under Trump.
Not that the huge supply chains were his fault, but my 4 year old GPU appreciated 300% during that period.
That’s a fucking stupid thing to say (or even think).
What?? The inflation problems literally STARTED under Trump. He’s not to blame for the covid supply chain issues, sure, but “didn’t have this problem under Trump” is an easily fact checked lie.
Don’t you get tired from losing?
No one loses because of the ranting of fools. I take the down votes here for what they are, the desperate clinging of a false narrative by people that refuse to see reality and instead of thinking for themselves rely on others to do it for them.
Looks like someone got high by sniffing their own farts again. You’ve been proved wrong with facts that don’t care about your feelings. You don’t get to act enlightened here. Try 4chan’s /pol, you might find a couple of your fellow bleach-drinking friends there.
Wow, the self-righteousness just oozes from you. You haven’t proved anything. Keep trying kid.
The ranting of fools has actually lost us quite a lot
People started complaining about inflation when Trump was still president, after people started hoarding toilet paper, then at a larger scale after the first stimulus cheques. I’m not blaming him personally for that specifically, COVID was hard for all countries on Earth, but facts are facts.
Bullcrap. Nice revisionist history. Inflation was non-existent under Trump. This is all on Biden and his doing everything his feeble mind is able to tank the economy.
It was non-existent at the end of Obama’s last turn.
But it definitely is back once Trump started.
Don’t let statistics hit you on your way out.
Buy stock in the companies posting record profits.
Sure, we cant afford food or rent, but there’s always stock money sitting around.
Delete this
why? honest question. if they are making record profits and their stock is going up why would you not buy their stock?
Because you’ll be investing in, and therefore helping that company. Only a small fraction of the company’s profit is going to reach you. You’ll be part of the problem with capitalism.
When you buy a stock that’s already ipo’d you’re not giving any money to the company.
That’s not really true.
If it were, why would a company care about their share price, post-IPO?
Although people generally conceptualize shares as an ownership of the company, there are a ton of mechanisms at play that make that notion essentially a farce.
It’s better to think of shares as a currency for which the company owns the printer. The reason companies want to keep their stock value high is that they can at-will conjure more shares from the ether and sell them. It’s not JUST during an IPO.
So, in a fractionally insignificant way, as a retail investor, every purchase adds buy pressure and shifts the order book towards a higher market price. The higher the market price, the more money the company can raise by issuing new shares while minimizing the dilution effect of the issuing of new shares.
