So the attorney general can open an investigation on this asshat profiteering off of hand sanitizer but when it comes to companies price gouging in the wake of the pandemic we get this limp dick response? Sure I’m glad he said something but we need more
Apparently a state of emergency needs to have been declared for them to actually do anything about price gouging directly.
I read about it when Southwest airlines went completely down for a week last year over the holidays and I was stranded somewhere. Other airlines had astronomical prices and car rentals were over $500 for one day. It was disgusting. But apparently there was nothing to be done.
They need to change the rules surrounding it because they’re not working. But any amount of government intervention in the economy gets conservatives screaming about “communism,” or socialism, or whatever scapegoat they’re using that day that they don’t know the actual definition of. And yet, if there’s no government intervention in the economy it’s “Biden’s not doing enough/Biden is personally raising gas prices every week” etc.
Of course there wasn’t a single peep from them when Trump was fucking shit up, other than those “this is Biden’s America” memes when Biden hadn’t even taken office yet and the photos were a year old. Nothing will get done about it as long as conservatives have any say in congress. But they’ll always be the one’s complaining and pointing the finger at “the libruls” while profiting.
Corporations: “Make us.”
Biden: “no”
How could Biden make them do it?
Why would he even be willing to?
This is a bad faith argument.
Make them, under force of real economic consequences, or this is just begging.
I thought the President doesn’t control the price of goods…
They don’t. Congress with the President could but won’t.
I’ve no illusions friend. Neither the Republicans nor the Neoliberals aka 90+ percent of Office holding Democrats have the slightest interest in helping anyone, only taking bribes and reinforcing their party’s power.
This nation is over. Reaganomics saw to that and Citizens United dashed the last of the faintest of rational hopes for self-repair. This is just leftover momentum. This labor camp we call the US will eventually collapse under the weight of its own corruption, but until then, we suffer generationally with zero recourse.
No one with any power, no one from the right families is coming to help their capital livestock. This exploitation machine is exactly what they wanted and spent decades lining pockets to achieve.
Yes, both parties are cancelling school lunches for impoverished children, reverting environmental regulations, overturning Roe v Wade, forcing women to become baby incubators, cutting social safety nets. Yes, they are both the same…
The Neoliberals that coopted the former Republican opposition party helped Reagan and Clinton destroy the social safetynet. Neoliberal Clinton championed destroying the social safetynet, partnering with Nute Gingrich to do it, around the same time neoliberal biden championed draconian sentencing reform to feed for profit prisons.
Modern Democrats are better than Republicans, but if you want to look for politicians that don’t work against you? Look to the non-neoliberal Democrats that the Neoliberals revile more than their supposed opposition party. There’s about a dozen of them between both Chambers. Most democrats are nice on social issues, but defend this rigged market capitalist hellscape lockstep with republicans.
Clinton at the time was the furthest left that the US as a whole would elect. The third way stuck because it actually worked.
I’m not going to make a snarky comment about how others should’ve put in more work, because I honestly don’t think it would’ve mattered (and it’d be rude). Leftism just wasn’t going to win by any viable margin. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone – when the electorate won’t go further, you have to meet them where they are. I’d love it if Sanders would’ve been elected in the 90s instead of Clinton, but that just wasn’t possible.
The fact remains there has been no attempt on the nation’s part in living memory to actually run the nation by left wing policies. It hasn’t been attempted and yet it is treated in the zeitgeist as if it was repeatedly and was an utter failure. I Consider FDR to be the last remotely progressive President we have attempted.
So when people reduce acknowledging both of our major parties to be varying degrees of economically right wing, center-right(D) to fascist® these days as ‘both parties are the same’ it reeks of bad faith. We can acknowledge both of our parties work against their people economically while not being absolutely interchangeable. It’s just an intential tactic to muddy the waters because some prefer to play team sports, which is exactly the distraction it’s meant and pushed to be.
And you’re right, our people currently have the government they deserve, because they won’t entertain one that works for them and protects them from the capitalist’s whims, that would be evil buzzwords they never bothered to understand or something.
I think there’s still important differences economically even when considering them both to be center right. There’s a strong push for higher taxes on the wealthy and a higher minimum wage among Democrats – the only reason we didn’t see a minimum wage increase is because 1 Democrat opposed it vs the 49 other senators. And while our system still needs work, it doesn’t mean there haven’t been significant changes.
There’s a brilliant provision in the Inflation Reduction Act for instance that ends the corporate tax loophole for the largest corporations. A company above a certain size that makes very high revenue (>1 bil iirc) is required to pay at least 20% in taxes. They can’t loophole their way to $0. The big corporations are going to have to pay actual taxes now.
I’m not going to pretend that Democrats are perfect, but I do think there’s a messaging problem and a tendency to let good works speak for themselves – which doesn’t work. If you remember the rail worker strike that Congress and Biden stopped, that actually wasn’t the end of it. Union leaders have said that the administration continued to work behind the scenes with the unions to pressure the rail companies, and because of that, they’ve gotten the sick days they were demanding.
I would need to do a lot of research to say more about if leftism ever had a serious shake in the US or not, I’ll admit. My assumption is that it was rejected, given the progressivism of the New Deal era didn’t persist. But I do need to do more reading.
I hear you, and mostly agree with some of what you say. Though I take issue with the right families, those being the ones benefitting from the power. What I will point out is the gilded age, and how bad it was back then. Many of the same issues we have today, corruption, bribery, the net worth of the robber barons adjusted for inflation was probably about double the net worth of our current crop of scumbag billionaire villains.
I don’t subscribe to the hopelessness, and I do believe we can end this second gilded age. I just don’t see the ability to do that with either political party’s leadership. We have to reject them both equally while recognizing exactly the issues you’re pointing out with regards to the power structure and inequality. That is essentially what happened when we ended the first gilded age.
“bOtH sIdeS ArE tHe SaMe”dolan pls
They aren’t the same, they differ on social issues, but have the same bribers on economic policy.
Your vote has sway on things that don’t cost the owner’s money.
This nation is over.
IMO it’s better to phrase it as, “The economic system has already collapsed for the majority of Americans, and it’s getting worse. What will happen next?” Because it’s not like people will magically disappear overnight, it’s not like life is terrible for everyone all the time, and some things have improved over the last few decades.
Some people want to say “If we don’t do X, the world will end.” or “We didn’t do X, and it all went to hell, and we’re permanently doomed.” Most of the time, though, end-of-the-world stances are oversimplifications.
No one with any power, no one from the right families is coming to help their capital livestock.
That’s an interesting sentence right there. What does that even mean, the “right” families? Are you seriously expecting the people who created the problem to now help solve it?
This exploitation machine is exactly what they wanted and spent decades lining pockets to achieve.
No, of course you aren’t. But by God, let’s also not ask for help from the “wrong” families…
I meant internally right. Goes to the right country clubs. Is on the right museum boards. Is in the little owner’s club that starts with having a 9 figure net worth at absolute minimum.
That’s what I meant by “right” it was a mocking term for the self-protecting, self-elevating wealth class made up of a few thousand of the right families that lord over all of us and believe they are where ultimate authority belongs, and have used their great wealth to secure generationally. This is their system, by their design, and they will continue to use their vast power to defend it.
Ah yes, if only one of those country club going billionaires would decide to use their power to try and come help us…
Yeah, I think I’m just gonna let you stew and simmer on that one.
I’ve belabored the point that they won’t, have no reason to, literally created such conditions to begin with, and actively defend against any change to it.
Do you have some sort of a point? If so speak it.
I do, but if I said it outright I would just be accused of a lack of empathy and intelligence, plus a whole lot of other things far worse than that, so I won’t.
So if you didn’t get my broad hint, I’m not going to be upset, and if you do, like I said, perhaps take my advice to stew and simmer over it before posting a response in affect.
Corporations: “or what?”
He’s gonna blast em, and they will officially be On Notice
Ooo he might even slam them!
He’ll make a tweet that starts with “Let me be clear…”.
Old man wags his finger.
Old man yells at cloud, functionally.
Corporations: lol no
He probably went to go buy his own ice cream for the first time in 3 years and said “holy shit.”
Any legislation to go with that or are you just asking nicely?
I’d be surprised if even saying this didn’t have political ramifications. There’s nothing, besides; military budget, tax breaks to millionaires, and their own pay raises, that would get through both houses of Congress right now.
Asking nicely is at least virtue signaling, maybe it’ll be something we can address if a couple R’s ever see the consequences of their illegal actions.
L-O-L
He could threaten to cancel federal contracts with any vendor found to be price gouging. That would have actual ramifications and doesn’t require Congress.
The president isn’t powerless here. He just wants credit for purely performative actions.
The price gouging is mainly coming from consumer facing markets, not government contracts. Even with discretionary spending there isn’t that much that pure executive branch actions can do to dissuade the price gouging that we’ve been seeing.
Well to be fair, there is A LOT of price gouging from government contracts, but they just print the money for it so they don’t REALLY care.
Yup.
If the President threatened to void federal contracts, you’d see immediate change.
But the president doesn’t work for us.
void federal contracts
I’m sure Walmart and Chipotle are shaking in their boots. I guess a president DID get McDonald’s delivered to the White House once.
Never fails to amuse me the extent to which people make excuses for the leader of the free world.
I agree. Angry orange man was known for pushing every single loophole to make bad things happen.
If Joebob wanted to actually do something about it, he’d find a way to work it through the system. Isn’t that the point of politics??
I despise Trump, but yes, I’d love to see a Democratic president who is actually willing to wield power.
Would also be nice to see 49% of voters no longer content to make excuses and vote Green instead.
In presidential systems like the US has legislation originates from congress. The President only has veto power over legislation, and controls the enforcement of existing legislation. They can’t force congress to create new legislation, though of course they can propose legislation (anyone can do that). This is very different from parliamentary systems where the Prime Minister is the head of the majority party of the parliament, and can thus directly propose legislation and get their party to support it.
He added, “come on, man”
Oh shit, he means business.
“My good friends in congress will, well they uh, I mean titwinkle, and corn pop was a bad dude!”
Corporations after seeing how Black Friday netted over $9.8 billion: Uhhhh…no. According to these numbers, people LoVe the prices!
That was $10b in online sales, not total.
That’s almost 10 billion of sale prices though, for products they literally needed to offload.
And while a record amount, it was only 7.5% above normal, coming off all this Covid stuff it’s no wonder people are cutting loose and splurging a bit.
7.5% … Wasn’t that the rate of inflation recently as well? Not sure what it is at now, but we were getting up there. Higher prices wouldn’t necessarily mean a new record, I am guessing.
As far as I can tell it’s just people being “savvy” and waiting for the big sale day.
Black Friday e-commerce spending popped 7.5% from a year earlier, reaching a record $9.8 billion in the U.S., according to an Adobe Analytics report, a further indication that price-conscious consumers want to spend on the best deals and are hunting for those deals online.
Not the current rate of inflation. Inflation over the year from October 2022 - October 2023 was 3.2%.
To get to 7.5% you’d have to go back to the year from November 2021 to November 2022.
Our month to month inflation is currently about flat, meaning there was no change in prices from September 2023 to October 2023. But sometimes there’s a jump one month or a drop the next, it’s a little uneven, which is why people talk about the entire past year summed up. It’s a confusing way to phrase it though, because if you just say inflation was 3.2% in October, people often assume that means prices raised 3.2% in October. What it actually means is prices raised 3.2% over the entire past year altogether.
Anyways this is a true new record. People’s spending increases for black Friday are outpacing inflation.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/cpi-inflation-report-october-2023.html
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/
Above normal. The data suggests US citizens still have credit limit or not feeling the pinch as all the news articles suggest.
I was expecting a big decrease this year according to what I’ve seen on lemmy. From now on, I’ll read negative news and say “meh, probably not.”
It isn’t just lemmy, there’s plenty of external evidence showing that people think the economy is in a bad state. Changing your entire perspective because of big spending day on black Friday makes no sense.
Not just a big spending day, an all-time record-breaking spending day, up 7.5%. That’s absolutely insane and doesn’t jive. If everyone is hurting, can’t pay their rent and bills, credit is maxed out, then how did they also crush this record on inflation-priced “sales?”
All I’ve said, I’m choosing to go by data, not news agenda. BF helped me realize our economy is thriving. That’s great!
If prices are up because of inflation by 20% and you sell 7% more than you did last year then you actually sold less.
Same way every movie breaks records. They charge $20 for a ticket when it used to be $6.
You would need to see spending for the year to say anything definitive. They could all be pinching pennies waiting for deals and not spending normally the rest of the time.
We don’t know.
Also that number is online only and could just be again more people bought online than in person, meaning overall spending can atill be down. But also yeah inflation of prices really lets it look like each year is better even if you have less buyers overall.
Its a game of perspective. That people and corps are bery careful to play or else the casino runs dry.
Wealth gap. What you are actually saying is everyone is being squeezed, allowing corporations to sell less and make more.
This is why I’m kinda pissed off about it all. Americans all went shopping and kept spending as per usual, which allows corporations to report “green” to investors and continues to allow unbelievable CEO / executives wildly insane pay to continue.
Or they just know that Americans would rather go into significant debt, than having a lighter Christmas and/or buying less for a year or two.
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First of all “lighter” does not mean “sad”. I remember, growing up, there were a few years where our parents would tell us that Christmas was going to be a little “lighter” this year due to whatever financial reasons that they didn’t want to burden us with. They were lovely every time, and there was absolutely nothing “sad” about it.
Second, you are presenting a false choice:
So it’s sad Christmas and lots of debt, or regular to light Christmas and still crushing debt.
It could just be a financially responsible Christmas where you learn to appreciate your family and loved ones. People will often make homemade gifts instead of buying them, and those are often far more memorable than many pricier gifts.
As someone who has been consistently been paying down debt (student loans mostly, but some CC thrown in there), it hasn’t ever stopped me from enjoying Christmas.
And this is coming from someone who isn’t even really a big Christmas fan to begin with. It’s fine. I just think you presented an absurd dichotomy.
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I’m glad I have friends who can live without needing presents every year to feel validated on keeping a friendship alive.
I keep hearing other people just tear themselves apart because they worry about “ohhh I need to go shopping next week!” or “I can’t figure out what this person wants who barely gives a shit about me but I need to gift them SOMETHING!”
Like damn people, is it worth it that much to gift someone things at the cost of your own sustainability?
Windfall taxes
Actually do something about it you crypt keeper lookin ass fuck
Like what?
Oh cool. When is that passing the Senate?
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is cosponsoring the legislation in the Senate, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) will introduce companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
It won’t pass, but if Biden can put the blame of it failing on Republicans it could help win elections.
That’s something realistic he could do. For an unrealistic but satisfying option, he could pick the worst offender and make that company an example. Send every OSHA, EPA, and IRS agent they can get to swarm the company and bury them in fines and legal actions.
Using agencies as weapons like that outside of their intended purpose is… despotic.
I don’t know that it’s wise to take attention away from the Republicans own clusterfuck to place it on something the Dems can’t get done.
I’m with you in spirit; I just think there are more layers to this than we tend to give it credit for.
I don’t think they meant “use agencies as bully goons.”
More like, those agencies are usually left under-resourced and under-staffed, so many companies flagrantly violate safety and employment laws because it’s more profitable to just make more money and pay off an unlikely fine if they get caught.
So, if you focused all the existing attention of those agencies on the worst companies, they’d find tons of legitimate lawbreaking going on, and hopefully punish the crap out of said company.
But, you know how it is “You stole how many millions in employee wages?!?.. that’s $25,000 penalty for you, company. Naughty naughty!”
Exactly, even if they do get caught, the fines are so goddamn low it’s barely worth it. A warehouse in my city got caught using 11-year-olds in their labor force, including having them driving forklifts. Their penalty? The kids can’t work there anymore and the company that owned the warehouse got a $30k fine.
It’s exactly what Republicans would do if they didn’t like a company. Playing nice with these people is what got us to this point.
Exactly. With apologies to Michelle Obama, “They go low, we go high!” does not work. It was never intended to work.
Democrats have a ton of sportsmanship trophies, and what do Republicans have? Well, they’ve got the SCOTUS, the House, and tons of State governments.
It’s despotic to direct agencies to perform the tasks they were specifically created to perform? I don’t think so.
It’s not something that Biden would realistically do or that I think should be done in this situation, but it is far from despotic.
Maybe add a pretty please in front of the request if he isn’t going to take any forceful action.
forceful action
like what? Or is the purpose of this just to make people mad, even when it doesn’t make sense.
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Pick the worst offender corporation, invite their whole executive board to DC, and when they arrive, guillotine them on the white house lawn.
…then repeat this request.
Dude, they are gouging because they want you gone so they can have more tax breaks. Fuck then over already.
Bad corpos!
*slaps them on the wrist
Corpos = “Slap me harder Daddy Biden! Tell me that I am destroying the middle and the working class for pursuit of increaseing shareholder value and increased profits.”
Stop slapping and start jailing. No teeth will never stop this.
You generally want laws to do that kind of thing. Good luck trying to get a price fixing law through the House.
We have antitrust laws. Republicans and neoliberals have de-funded the agencies that would enforce those laws to the extent that they can’t take action on 99% of what’s happening.
Yeah! Say more words, Joe. That’ll teach em.
