Clearing up inflation & economic lies
We are bombarded daily with lying economic & inflation data. With these articles I try to clarify. Our economic malaise is the fault of the private sector's greedy corporations and not the government.
Notes
Fareed Zakaria gives truths on inflation that Republicans & corporations don’t want you to know.
Worthwhile Reads
Chris Hayes: A closer look at Biden’s economy should please everyone
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Economist: Biden administration got it right. Err with some inflation rather than unemployment
Ezra Klein: Americans have more money in the bank than before the pandemic. Some truth-telling.
Notes
As a political activist who concentrates on economic and healthcare issues, it is upsetting to see how Right-Wing politicians, Neo-Liberal politicians, and most of the Right-Wing and mainstream media act more like they are wards to the American corporatocracy, our oligarchy, and the wealthy. Categorically, the economy is comparably good, and we must attribute the evils of inflation and other economic ills to the private sector, not the government.
Here are a few statements of fact they would like you to not know or disregard. You cannot have natural inflation unless there are shortages, Except for cars and select products, there are no shortages. Agriculture price increases are a choice by monopolies because they have pricing power.Even the supply chain issues are corporate greed issues. The private sector chose Just-In-Time-Inventory (JITI) which means even a short supply-chain disruption can cause shortages. As well, the chip shortages are caused by corporate greed. They decided to chase cheap labor overseas. The supply-chain disruption caused by the pandemic and JITI is the failure of the private sector, not the government.
And math always offers an answer. You cannot have record profits even before the realization of inflation and then claim you had to raise prices to maintain profits. Inflation is an excuse to further transfer the wealth of the many to the few. And if one does not call it out our decline to indentured servitude for 80% of Americans will continue. It is amazing how the powers of the plutocracy will coalesce. And too often we allow ourselves to be complicit because of circumstances.
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Fareed Zakaria gives truths on inflation that Republicans & corporations don’t want you to know
The Right-Wing and mainstream media have been hyperventilating about inflation. Fareed Zakaria puts it into perspective. And it is not bad at all.
Fareed Zakaria did the numbers and had the proper numerical narrative. But there was something missing.
"In recent decades, inflation had stayed unusually low from 1960 to 1980; for example, prices rose 166%," Fareed Zacharia said. "In the next two decades, they rose 117%. But from 2000 to January 2021, prices rose just 55%, including all of last year from 2000 through December 2021, prices rose 65.5%. That is a huge uptick in one year, and it is throwing household budgets out of whack. But taken as a whole, we are still in an era of low inflation. Now one reason prices probably stayed low for so long is because wages stayed low. … Workers didn't start to make real gains until the late 20 tens, and now inflation is eating into those gains. But they have made gains, and perhaps as inflation subsides, those gains will grow again. Cheap goods helped keep inflation down in the last two decades."
He had much more to say. But I think many commentators in our media, even good ones like Zakaria, fail because they rely on our economy's old guard's framing. It generally absolves the corporation and our economic system for the ills that affect us all.
Recently Facebook claimed a meme at our Coffee Party USA site was partly false after AFP reviewed it.
The meme said: Umm, can we stop calling it inflation and call it what it really is? Price gouging and corporate greed.
AFP FACT CHECK: Facebook posts claim that the rising cost of goods in the United States is due to price gouging rather than inflation. But the experts rejected the idea that corporations are the main culprit and said the spike in prices follows big federal spending, heightened demand, and supply problems, all of which accompanied the pandemic.
First of all, the fact check is wrong. It's corporations that raise prices, and thus nominally; they are the ones who cause inflation. But that is neither here nor there because they must raise prices if their costs go up. The question is why did their prices go up. Is it the private sector or the government?
When our Coffee Party USA group brought it to my attention, I had a message that I wanted to make clear. Most importantly, I hope everyone keeps in their minds and on the tip of their tongue.
The fact-checkers are completely wrong, and it is clear it is corporate biased. You cannot have natural inflation unless there are shortages. Except for cars and select products, there are no shortages.
Agriculture price increases are a choice by monopolies because they have pricing power. Even the supply chain issues are corporate greed issues. The private sector chose Just-In-Time-Inventory (JITI), which means even a short supply-chain disruption can cause shortages. As well, corporate greed created chip shortages. They decided to chase cheap labor overseas. The supply-chain disruption caused by the pandemic and JITI is the failure of the private sector, not the government.
Math always offers an answer. You cannot have record profits even before the realization of inflation and then claim you had to raise prices to maintain profits. Inflation is an excuse used to transfer the wealth of the many to the few.
If one does not call out the false inflation claims, including the fact-checkers carrying the load for the plutocracy, our decline to the indentured servitude of 80% of Americans will continue. It is incredible how the powers of the plutocracy will coalesce. And too often, we allow ourselves to be complicit because we are comfortable (by "we," I mean those doing generally well who have a platform. The poor and lower-middle-class are working too damn hard to survive).
Come on, America. Let's stop acquiescing to the fraud that is our economic system.
Chris Hayes: A closer look at Biden’s economy should please everyone
Chris Hayes asks the most pertinent question about Progressives & the economy, "Why won't the Left take credit for such an incredible accomplishment."
Chris Hayes highlighted a critical article Zachary D. Carter wrote in The Atlantic titled "The Economy Is Good, Actually" that everyone must-read. Zachary wrote:
Compared with the federal government’s response to the 2008 financial crisis, the recovery from the COVID-19 crash has been an extraordinary success. It took more than a decade after the onset of the previous recession for the unemployment rate to fall back to 4 percent, the level where it stands today. Even this figure understates the gap between the Great Recession and the pandemic-era economy. Most of the jobs created after the 2008 crisis paid poverty wages, and the country never recovered all of the manufacturing jobs it lost. Today, manufacturing jobs have nearly returned to their pre-pandemic levels amid a burst of onshoring activity across different industries. The stunning jobs numbers over the past two months were secured as the Omicron variant damaged commercial activity across the country.
So why is the Left refusing to take credit? As people were dying from Trump's incompetence, Trump and his minions found things to brag about irrespective of reality. So what is wrong with the Left? It is a sense of purity. How can they talk about accomplishments when many Americans are suffering. Many Americans are satisfied with the semblance of success irrespective of reality.
Inflation is somewhat of a problem worldwide. We must blame the right culprit for making the right kind of change. The private sector is entirely responsible for inflation. Their greed made them choose just-in-time-inventory, which leaves no slack to mitigate supply chain disruption. Additionally, significant corporations, which are often effectively monopolies, choose to cloak their price increases as natural inflation. It is not. It is a form of wealth transfer from the masses to the shareholders of the corporations and executives. As these corporations gain record profits, they leave Americans with record pain.
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Economist: Biden administration got it right. Err with some inflation rather than unemployment
The false debate about inflation is made immaterial by economist Jason Furman. One should err with some inflation over unemployment.
All In's Chris Hayes pointed out that the Biden administration's economic recovery has leap-frogged overall estimates. President Biden recently uncharacteristically bragged about it.
"This morning's report caps off my first year as president," Biden said. "And over that period, our economy created 6.6 million jobs, 6.6 million jobs. You can't remember another year when so many people went to work in this country. There's a reason. It never happened."
Economist Jason Furman continued his messaging a step further. He justified the possibility of short-term inflation.
"You know, you could have a situation in which prices are low, and inflation is low, and we've got unemployment at seven percent, at which point everyone would be complaining about unemployment obviously and not about inflation. But it seems to me like this is the better problem to have, which is part of the key to my understanding of the macroeconomic targeting that happened here. I'd much rather have a low unemployment rate and a high inflation rate than the opposite."
But let us be clear. Except for select items connected to the supply chain failure caused by the greed and shortsightedness of public sector corporations, there are no shortages to justify price increases on most products. And the President alluded to that. With a few statements in his speech, the President slammed the monopolistic nature of our corporations.
Do not allow the false narrative to take hold. Shortages are not responsible for today's price increases. Is there any product you want that you are unable to get? If the answer is "no," then increased prices, aka inflation, are caused by pricing power.
Ezra Klein: Americans have more money in the bank than before the pandemic. Some truth-telling.
The media, Right-Wing, & Centrists are misinforming about the economy. Ezra Klein points out that Americans are generally better off, quicker but ill-informed.
As stated by Ezra Klein, the Biden administration made sure they did not repeat the mistake of underfunding a recovery bill, as did the Obama administration. They were going to go big and fast. They did that, and it worked. The economy recovered much quicker than expected.
"You got to think about what the Biden administration did on two levels," Ezra Klein said. "One, they tried to not allow the mistakes of 2009 and 2010 to repeat. So when they came in building on the Cares Act, which passed before them. They passed the American Rescue Plan then later the Infrastructure Act. That was a huge infusion of demand into the economy, Huge transfers, the stimulus, a child tax credit, a ton more in those bills. And so you put that together with a very, very hot labor market they helped create alongside the Federal Reserve, and you get these numbers, very low unemployment, very high ability to wait and get another job, higher asset levels. The thing they did not anticipate is pretty high inflation, and so the danger that actually does truly darken the economic outlook for them."
Ezra Klein points out that the danger to the economy comes from inaction by Congress. Much needed support was not renewed with the failure of Build Back Better.
It will become clear that Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Right-Wing Republicans will be responsible for any strains in the economy.
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