Browbeating a single mother of three to stop buying her crying kid a candy bar at the store because her pricey impulse buy is overheating the economy meanwhile my landlord who owns 1,500 properties buys a third private jet.
using my PC full of silicon and gold literally mined by third world child slaves to figuratively mine fake money and literally overheat the planet while complaining about single mother impulse buys figuratively overheating the economy
They're not wrong though. Inflation is our fault. If we would instead choose to use force to take the value of our labor rather than allow the ruling class to steal it from us, we wouldn't be suffering under inflation.
Weird because bourgeois economists have admitted, all the way up to the IMF and World Bank, that they don't understand and can't model for inflation (cause its caused by capitalist greed and their salary depends on not understanding). Marxist economists don't have that problem.
Always love when these op-eds encourage behaviors that they will shriek about the results of one month down the line. Annie probably already has her "Millennials are Killing the Luxury Goods Market!" written and ready to go
The thing is, luxury foods are ironically less expensive. The inflation is all in the shit we need to buy like food, gas, and rent. Their arguement is literally that we should stop buying food.
you know the contradictions are hitting all time highs when the capitalist media starts putting out "participating in capitalism is ruining capitalism". god bless.
Real hourly earnings for workers in the tenth percentile of wage distribution went up more than 8 percent in the past three and a half years, the economists David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew found.
Amazing how neither the article nor the linked study say how much that increase was in absolute dollars. Wouldn’t want people to know the baseline.
Three years ago, the pandemic gnarled supply chains around the world, leading to shortages of many consumer goods. At the same time, the American government transferred roughly $1.8 trillion to households in the form of generous unemployment-insurance benefits, an amped-up child tax credit, stimulus checks, and delayed or forgiven student-loan payments. Less supply, more demand—it was a recipe for higher costs.
Never mind the trillions the Fed spent to float the repo market or the numerous analyses showing corporate profits to be the main cause of inflation, no it’s you dirty consumers for not being frugal enough (also please don’t be frugal it hurts our stock investments).
went up more than 8 percent in the past three and a half years
By the magic of calculating what that is with compound interest, that's only 2.3% growth per year.
Everyone loves using misleading percentages of growth to paint whatever picture they want. Everything should only be in yearly compound growth numbers.
I skimmed the linked article and it's pretty clear to me that the rise in the 10th percentile (which is sub-minimum wage income as far as I can tell) is because inflation made the cost of working more than the fucking wages and that measly 8% increase from 15,700 to like maaaybe 17,000 a year (pre-tax, etc. etc.) was needed to make people not just stay home because the health, economic, and opportunity cost of going to work was more than just staying home for most people.
In a sane world I could simply look at this and go "Oh, this is an elaborate ploy by a depressed writer to make someone kill them." But now everybody in that millieu is on like seven layers of contranianism and copium so it's hard to know what to make of this.
The entire market literally only wants to sell to billionaires now, how is it my fault us poors literally got forgotten about as a consumer base? So much so that we are not needed even as consumers anymore?
Truly. The title and subhead are so angry they can’t even maintain a false veneer of academia or journalism. It just sounds like my angry uncle at thanksgiving.
ITT: People thinking they are geniuses for making comments like "hurr I won't buy basic necessities then!!!!"
People are buying titloads of luxury goods wether they can afford it or not, and you all know it. You also know that hiking the interest rates is done to stop people from having purchasing power and thus quelling inflation.
Paul Krugman repeatedly says that inflation is fine other than food and housing.
People who couldn't afford it always bought luxury goods. What does that have to do with food or housing inflation? People are spending less on Christmas gifts this year, your assertion has nothing to do with anything.
No matter your understanding on inflation, the food inflation is fucked. Whether that's under-production, rent-seeking at various levels of food production, etc.
ITT: one person mad at the poors for living in a world they do not control, instead of blaming the mode of production that creates everything in society and the few people who have ownership over it
People are buying titloads of luxury goods wether they can afford it or not, and you all know it.
Most households spend the majority of their income money on rent, utilities, and food. You neoliberal worm. And the price of necessities is going up right alongside the price of luxury goods.
Also, the reason the bourgeoisie produce luxury goods and weapons is because if they only produced necessities, the price of necessities would fall from an oversupply, and everyone would get the stuff they need for relatively cheap. Can't have that! Need an entire sector of the economy dedicated to producing overpriced garbage and killing machines. Oh, but the problem never starts at production. It's always blamed on consumers being stupid. Because planning production is impossible and communist and simply letting the invisible hand of the market chaotically decide that people should die is the best system that could ever exist.
You also know that hiking the interest rates is done to stop people from having purchasing power and thus quelling inflation.
yes, yes, the dirty proletarians need to stop having purchasing power with the money they work for. I, senator Holden Bloodfeast, who got a golden parachute severance package of $100 million dollars from an oil company when I moved from the private sector to the public sector, and have always made my money from insider trading of speculative financial assets rather than labor, agree with you!
Also, the reason the bourgeoisie produce luxury goods and weapons is because if they only produced necessities, the price of necessities would fall from an oversupply, and everyone would get the stuff they need for relatively cheap. Can't have that! Need an entire sector of the economy dedicated to producing overpriced garbage and killing machines. Oh, but the problem never starts at production. It's always blamed on consumers being stupid.
"If just everything was different it wouldn't have to be like this"
You're just saying nothing and for some reason defending the proles that think the immigrant is the problem and vote further right than your traditional conservative because they front some madman saying the immigrant bad.
Even Lenin and Trotsky said the proles were retarded.
Luxury goods aren't a major factor within the basket of goods that make up the consumer price index, and those that are may be weighted differently to show their discretionary nature.
How does that stop corporations from raising their prices and then never lowering them because they want more money. Acting like "Money line must keep going up into infinity or else you're a failed enterprise" isn't one of the main drivers.
I’m not even gonna reply with any kind of thoughtful answer because frankly you don’t deserve it. I just hate seeing comments like this out in public displaying ignorance for everyone to see while thinking your ideas are worth the same as any person on here who’s replied to you in a concise manner in good faith. It’s like shut the hell up, it’s okay to not know things, no one is going to fault you for it, just sit back and learn something instead for once. But no, you really had to say some dumbass shit for no reason other than to shit on people you don’t even know because of something you don’t actually understand. Aren’t you fucking embarrassed? Who would be proud of writing something like that? Just be quiet it’s not hard.
The best you've done is pretending that calling people who don't worship your opinion 'neoliberal monarchists' or equally silly name tags is knowledgeable.