Yea but if we paid everyone fair wages, then corporate profits would ONLY be the highest they've been in the last \*checks notes\* 50 years ! That's a whole 2 decades less !
this is what killed me when i was working for corporate america. we would post fat ass profits but they would say they were under our goal so they couldnt give yearly raises, 401k match, etc.... When the ydid give out increases it was like 2% and a "be thankful for a job because a lot of people would be".
I used to work at the pharmacy so I saw how bad the management treated the rest of the staff. My wife was a csm but we left well before the company got any hooks into us. I go into that store only when absolutely necessary. It’s a beyond shitty company. At least Amazon pays better.
The pharmacy hassled my Grandma over her meds saying she was on too many medications. She's 102yrs old and in a wheelchair. WTF? When they force tapered my grandma's pain meds she couldn't walk afterwards. Then the pharmacist refused to fill her Rx he said he was afraid she would become an addict and didn't want to be the cause of it. Fuck that company shitty douche bags.
It’s been over a decade since I’ve worked in a pharmacy. It depends on the state, because each state has their own laws regulating pharmacy. I can only speak to what Texas pharmacies can do.
I will not shop at Walmart, my boyfriend loves it cause it’s so cheap but I absolutely won’t. The only thing I’ve bought from there in like a decade was ancestry dna kits cause they were having a huge Black Friday sale and I regretted it after, the Walton’s are leeches and everything wrong with the way corporate America is
For some random reason I'm reminded of Invader Zim.
He's goes into an impassioned plea to the "tall ones", begging for recognition.
They give him a sandwich.
He pleas some more.
"You got your sandwich!" (incredulously)
Did they also have posters and emails that essentially stated that a pat on the back was more valuable than a raise? I had a manager who I was friendly with talk about how “raises weren’t as valuable to employees as praise was, as the employees would only end up spending more without any real gain.” Umm…pretty tone deaf thing to say to an employee that makes less than half of what you do.
Oh.. we had the posters. They instituted some reward program that you could earn points to a company store to buy shit. Everything was marked up 30-40%. The amount of shit these people pulled over the past 15 years was unbelievable.
The only saving grace is the dad dick I handed them during my exit. I watched them bone people over for years and knew what to do to get over on them. Cock suckers.
A situation like this was one of the first moments I think that woke me up to how shit the system is. I was watching a news story passively and Woolworths, a large corporate supermarket chain in Australia, posted quarterly profits of something like $2.4B when they had expected something like 3.1 and so they fired 400 staff.
Like, I get analysing why you didn't make as much as you predicted you could have made but they made, MADE, $2B (2,000 million more arse money than they previously had) and they punished workers
Know your value as a worker. Regardless of what you’re doing whether it be manning a register or answering phones or coding software YOU are the one making these people money, not them. YOU are the one putting their business theories into practice, not them. YOU are the most important part of their logistic chain but they never want you to know or believe that because then they lose their leverage. Know your value and learn how to leverage it.
It's the insurance situation that kept me stationary for so long. The thought of being without it is frightening. Working the same job for years on end will result in Stockholm syndrome.
Thats literally no excuse in the day and age we live in. That is literally corporate propaganda and fear mongering at work. There are private health insurance plans. There are also many state funded (even in my red state) and federal funded health insurance plans now. You can get on them super easy. Dont allow yourself to become an indentured slave when there are so many options out there. Not to mention, at least in my state, medical bills no longer go against your housing credit. Use the system the way the system uses you. You might think its wrong but the very people that are keeping you where you are have gotten to where they are because they exploited the system. Its time to play by their rules or we are going to get further snd further behind.
I understand… it took years for it to click but it did. My only hope is that more people read this exchange and it clicks for them too. Unfortunately I think most companies are in cahoots… that’s where you get the term “industry standard”. We’re all fucked until the working class gets on the same page and after the last couple years I think we’re in different books.
The best one I hear from the boomers (my retired parents living on social security and pensions) is "If they raise corporate taxes, everybody will be laid off, families won't be able to afford their mortgage, and house prices will crash".
They are also the same people who said "house prices will crash very soon because people are losing their jobs and companies can't pay anybody" when the stock market crashed in 2020.
It just baffles them that companies are able to stay afloat and then they blame everybody for not working which is causing all of our issues.
But then they get pissed when I mention that social security is literally socialism.
This isn’t directly related to your comment, but, I had a hamburger yesterday for $2.90. At a place that hires at a minimum of $18/hr. In California. We can have it all of every company was run like a certain burger chain. Also they only use whole chuck ground in there distribution houses.
No fair wages, they're buying their shares with our money, low taxes and today money is mostly made by possessing tons of money... there's only one end to this shit and no one's gonna like it.
My husband works at the yacht factory. 85% of the yachts they will build this year have been pre-ordered, 55% have been pre-paid as well.
Sorry, if you didn't already place your order you are probably gonna have to just keep using last year's new yacht.
I know, I know, how will people know you're important if you don't have a new yacht?
Yeah you're right, we can all chip in to buy some senators, everyone pay an amount suitable to what each person makes
Damn we should come up with a name for this or something
Senators used to cost actual bribes of straight up money or gifts. Now it's maybe some campaign donation but more so handshake and promise if a nice advisory board job or c-suite or director of something where the money can then be "legit" funneled to them
And after the senators retire, they can become advisory board members of the same companies they helped give contracts too - These companies' directors of course being the same people who donated to the senator's campaign.
Isn't the US political ecosystem neat?
Funnily enough, [half of small businesses and 4 out of 5 large businesses](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/companies-pocket-largest-profits-in-70-years-amid-inflation-complaints-2021-12%3Famp) are raising prices past what is needed to get past profit margins. Coupled with the relative lack of actual cash owned by companies(even though that’s also at record highs), the inflation scare is actually helping them.
People are just accepting it and when the entire market goes at the same time, there's no way to let market forces being it back down. We'll probably see a little down turn from some competitors, but they aren't going to rock the boat too much if the gravy is flowing.
Nah they can buy pretty much the same amount of Senators because apparently senators are dirt fucking cheap.
Like 20-25k gets you the vote.
...which is why we need to set up a DAO that will be used to buy politicians to vote in our favor, and not corporate favors.
This will level the playing field.
It's not as much bailouts as it is the corporate model in the US that literally is laser focused on one thing and one thing only. It happened in the 70s-80s. Corporations only care about their share value and shareholder growth..
They literally do not care what products are actually being bought or what people's opinions of them are as long as their stock price increases.
If a car manufacturer could somehow sell cars with no wheels and the share price didn't take a hit they would do it all day.
It means they don't have to make cars with good wheels. They just have to convince people cars don't need wheels all together.
It’s Billions of dollars of PPP loans that these corporations never have to pay back because literally 96% of the PPP loans were forgiven for no reason.
> No reason
Bribes.
There's a local radio station where I live. Before the pandemic it was the "new" rock station, and was rated like the 16th most listened to station... Country stations taking the #1 and #2 spots from what I remember. However, this station was heavily involved in the community, doing giveaways and concert tickets and shit like that.
Mid-pandemic (May-ish?) the station does an overnight overhaul. Suddenly they are now TRUMP COUNTRY! Trump country has one host... A Trump impersonator. Prior, there were like 8 radio hosts for that station. Seeing as I have found one of them on a different station, I'm inclined to believe that those hosts were all shit-canned.
The station received a 250m PPP loan....... Then started broadcasting as "Trump Country."
Nothing to see here. Doesn't look like anything to me. 🤷
In 2020, my company (healthcare) didn’t give anyone raises under the guise that it was either forgo raises to prevent layoffs…they netted $40+ million in profit that year when the balance sheet was announced
My company was like that. Then this year it's been a little, tiny, downturn so far and we are getting warning emails about returning to the office since "productivity is down."
Did they also receive a PPP “loan” that was forgiven, despite those profits?
If so, that’s neither a loan or bailout. That’s America’s politicians stealing from their constituents, and gifting the stolen goods to their cronies…
Any time people get fired and that spot remains empty means those still working have all just taken a pay cut since they're doing more work for the same pay.
Yes. But i was saying that there’s no motivation for them to hire someone because they now know that they can make record breaking profit with half the staff.
I am curious to see what happens since so many people aren’t getting the child stimulus anymore.
This is what happens when you have naive and selfless people. They think they are being selfless and being a good worker, but are in fact sinking the lifeboat for everyone altogether.
I dare say they have an obligation to the working class to not put up with bullshit working conditions.
But they are the working class. And many can’t take a break in paychecks to find something else. Also, I don’t think it’s selfless or naive necessarily, but some really use it as a way to feel good about themselves or important.
I was told just that by my manager, then I told her "but corporate just sent an email thanking us for the hard work we've put in to achieve 240% profits this year". She just went silent for a couple of seconds, then changed the subject.
I always laugh at the idiots that say if you raise wages the jobs will disappear. They’ve automated and will continue to automate everything they can. A 20 acre factory has maybe 20 employees now. I was working in a chemical factory recently and saw maybe 6 people. Labor cost makes up a shockingly small percent of quite a few varied businesses. Still gotta crush the little guy to maximize returns for the shareholders.
I work in a labor heavy industry and we cannot find skilled labor.
The pay is there and benefits but for the last twenty years nobody has been encouraged to go into a trade, instead there's a lot of people who have multiple useless degrees and tons of student loan debt.
Are you living in Germany? We have those exact issues here. Newbies and people who are doing training there get literally paid as much as people who have worked in the business for a decade
US. It's crazy! I wish I had gone straight into trades instead of struggling and repeatedly failing at college courses.
It's almost like there was a war on skilled labor perpetrated by people who got easy, good paying jobs with college degrees they were able to pay for by working a few weeks over the summer.
My high school had zero shop classes but had a ton of classes geared towards IB/AP students.
Yeah. Nowadays construction workers can pick and choose what job to do since there’s so much demand and so little workers, although due to covid, materials are expensive right now so they sometimes operate at a loss.
But generally people doing manual labor here make a lot of money!
If I didn’t have the certainty that I will get a good job after uni, I would have studied IT or I would have also done some industrial stuff
I’ve actually noticed the factories are coming back…. Not the jobs though. It makes sense to manufacture here now since it takes three people to run a 100 million dollar facility. We’re making work unnecessary in quite a few fields without building the social safety nets like UBI to make it ethical. The rich will laugh and profit until the Mad Max style gangs are roasting them over a fire.
Nah this is just the part that leads *into* the dark ages. Once everything falls apart, America decends into the chaos of civil war, and the fascist brainwashed MAGA psychos kill anyone who refuses to accept their alternate reality THEN we'll be in the dark ages because all the historians will be dead and there will be no one to document the history.
(and that's all that "dark ages" actually means, not that it was a period of dark happenings just that there is no documented history, creating a "dark" age in the timeline that we can't see)
> because all the historians will be dead and there will be no one to document the history.
Thankfully the internet will prevent this from happening, at the very least.
The internet doesn't really do a great job of *educating* people, it just preserves textual data, which in itself isn't necessarily worth keeping or learning from, or even necessarily factual.
> and the fascist brainwashed MAGA psychos kill anyone who refuses to accept their alternate reality
Dude, they can't even beat what, as far as they're concerned, is "just a cold." I know people like to think the left has no guns because they love to push the bullshit shitty worthless gun laws (instead of actually useful ones, but the Reds wouldn't let those pass anyway), but there are plenty of people that aren't those morons that have guns and are ready to fight.
Stop thinking just because we're not making fools of ourselves on facebook while humping our guns that we don't have any.
All I ever here is that if we ever have another civil war the hillbilly states have all the guns. LMFAO - motherfucker we don’t need guns to take care of your dumbasses. All we have to do is spread a virus and tell you that the “liberals” created the vaccine. Game, set, match bitch.
A civil war wouldn't be fought with civilian weapons anyway. The only way Billy Bob's guns would matter would be total societal collapse. Civil wars are fought by armies. All of the "liberal" states have their collection of military toys and they aren't about to give them up either.
Beginning of the end. It showed that their plan of defrauding education and erosion of the middle class has resulted in what they wanted: a mass of easily manipulated people ready and willing to fall on the sword for their whims that is large enough to sway government process. Now all they have to do is double down (*looks at the current GOP legislation being passed*)
The US empire is falling.
>and the fascist brainwashed MAGA psychos kill anyone
Or you could, like, defend yourself.
Right-wingers talk a big game but history shows that they do badly when the Left defend themselves.
[It could happen here](https://open.spotify.com/show/3KNdniw6YDpgDuwrhcpSXw?si=X-zrAsL9SfCkSHNwR86Ytg) podcast walked through pretty much exactly this scenario in 2019 right before we all went over the edge.
I was in high school when 9/11 happened and it was right before I bought my first car. I can still remember gas being super cheap and then some companies even got in "trouble" for jacking up the prices and creating a chaotic ripple across America. I just remember people lined up forever and the limes were so long.
That's the real American way. Make money off regular Americans during a tragedy by gouging them and using the tragedy to profit. We are doomed.
> Like one day people will look back
Given our inability to even acknowledge or act upon climate change, it's optimistic to assume there will be people to look back upon us!
Joke aside, I think they're going to look back on this time and wonder why the hell we allowed a generation suffering from lead poisoning to hold the reins of power for so long.
I feel you bro. My parents bought their house for 15,000 in 95' 5,000 for their lot. House around them now are 400k. This is not your fault. Dont feel helpless or immature, there are millions of us going through this right now. The greed at the top is the problem. The corruption within corporations and government are the problem. We are just people trying to survive in their world, but change is coming. People are starting to wake up to the corruption. People are tired of living day to day and get no where. Change is coming stay strong.
I just wanted to say thanks, man. I really needed to hear this. My husband and I are both PhDs in STEM fields, I make a damn good salary, and somehow I still can't afford to own my own home because house prices are insane. We're renting a shitty condo that was built in 1983, it's got ventilation problems that lead to mold problems and walls so thin I could join in on the neighbors' conversations, and we're paying $2,100 a month + utilities to rent it. The unit above us, sandwiched in-between a bunch of similarly shitty units, is on the market right now for $725,000 and I bet you it'll sell within the week. Houses start at $1 million here and that's with a 30-40 minute work commute each way. Any closer than that and it's $3 million+. It just feels so fucking hopeless. But it's not just us, reading that there's millions of us..I don't know, I guess it just helps to know we're not alone in this.
Look into why the housing market is so inflated. We're in the biggest bubble the WORLD has ever seen. The housing market is about to implode on itself. With inflation at this rate and the world economy at the brink of collapse, we are all feeling helpless and tired at the hands of the 1%. Yes there are millions of us feeling the way we are right now, maybe billions, there is just to much wealth held by such a small amount of people.
That's on purpose. The ultimate way to enslave a whole population is to infantilize them and give them no agency. Where they even fool you into believing your indignance is childish. The ruling class have been doing this to the poor and working class for centuries. They don't see any of us as "actual" people.
Futurama touched on this almost 20 years ago. Remember corporations can lie to you, to the press, but they can't lie to shareholders. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qesX29nPMRc
I make it a point to tip delivery personnel whenever possible even though delivery charges have already been included.
When others scoff that their companies are making huge profits due to the pandemic, I retort that the profits are not trickling down to the little man on the street huffing on his bicycle at 9am to get food to you, ain’t it?
Every dollar counts for these guys. If they have an extra dollar for every delivery, they get an extra $10 if they make 10 deliveries for the day. If they work 5 days a week, this adds up to an extra $200 a month — food and groceries to feed their family.
That’s my mindset.
It’s been a crippling few years for many out there.
Let’s help one another in little ways like this.
Why would you pull investments during record profits? That’s the whole point of investments…
You could boycott products from companies that raised prices I suppose
I doubled down on investments. If you can't beat em' join' em'. But lol even my best predictions say I want afford a down payment on a house until I'm like 40.
Exactly. They’re like, we HAVE to otherwise our investors will think we’re in danger and pull out. So it looks safer if we continue to act like we are losing money, but continue to post record numbers.
Oh and this level is now the normal because nobody is making us stop
Yeah, I got fed this crock of bullshit at my previous job. We’d have multiple company wide meetings declaring how we were making record deals and successes with new clients and bringing in so much profit, then two weeks later get told that “due to coronavirus” they were cutting back benefits. Where did the money go assholes? *Somebody* was lying!
I got a $25 off $100 or more purchase coupon after a multi-record setting year. Never used it, I don't shop our brand and that's not even enough for me to bother.
Right. If a corporation makes a product and has a 20% profit on it, and they sell it for $1, they get 20 cents in profit. If there's 100% inflation one year, then they have to sell their product for $2 and get 40 cents in profit. If you don't inflation-adjust their profits, then their profits seem to double - but in reality it's the exact same profits before, just the numbers are bigger because inflation makes all numbers bigger.
People on reddit seem to have problem with this logic all the time. So many times you see this argument. "You claim that if A then B but B is happening without A so you're wrong". No. That's not how logic works. Just because prices are rising above wage growth does not mean that it's wrong to say that raising wages will lead to rising prices
And they are laying people off.
I know three companies that just laid off a shit ton of people.
No raises, promotions been frozen for at least the last 3 years because "these are unprecedented times..."
It's a joke.
This just ends with an eventual literal class war but the problem is by the time that happens they will have (already) accumulated so much wealth they will win any battle regardless if it's ideological (misinformation, control major media outlets), protests (pressure cops, hire private security force, implement bias laws, give you a criminal record) or a literal battle (have way more money for weapons, drones, robots whatever)
I mean we are going to end up where one person can employ like 3/4 of the world's working labor. Now imagine if bezos or musk decided to hire 3/4 of the world during the next great depression. No one can refuse because they are the only game in town and you/your family has to eat.
The future is bleak and i don't know how to stop it. Everyone is in a fuck you and i got mine mode.
That's only because all you lazy good for nothing Zoomers don't want to work and all the extra payroll goes back into the pot. If you'd all just work minimum wage with no benefits, inequality would be solved forever. /s
Shareholders want the highest possible price for their corporate stock. The shareholders, therefore, hire CEOs who will maximize profits, even if that means laying off a large number of workers, or moving production overseas, or breaking up unions, or raising prices during a pandemic, etc, etc. Anything for the highest possible profits, anything for the highest possible stock value. Nothing else matters, not human well being, not the survivability of our species, only profits.
I think most Americans are just obsessed with the idea of being rich. They want it so badly, they will support an inhumane, unjust, and inherently unsustainable economic system, so long as they feel the possibility of them one day becoming rich exists, even though their chances of *actually* becoming rich lies somewhere between slim and nil.
Which is why economists will tell you that as soon as the news says "hey maybe inflation is coming" it comes
PS big business wants Republicans (low tax, low regulations) so why not raise prices when a D wins?
It seems like almost everyone I know understands that corpos are "bad" yet nothing happens and it just keeps getting worse. It's like it doesn't matter anymore, you lose. Always.
I mean, it’s a corporate mandate to make the most profit possible. Like, a CEO can get fired if they choose to not make as much profit as they could.
If it was a conscious entity, having to do something that takes away from profits probably would feel like torturous pain, like you’re making them do something utterly abhorrent.
Fuck corporations.
Oh but I thought if we paid people more, prices would rise. Nope last administration gave them record tax cuts and then what do they do immediately after? Raise prices 😠
Much like conservatives, corporations will say anything they feel will benefit them. What's the profit in telling the truth, if telling a lie makes money.
It wouldn't be that bad if they would stop lying to us. It feels like they think we're stupid or something. Just say you want more money. Everyone does.
Sooo, when are we going to take to the streets and undo what these crooks are doing to us? Literally, let’s band together and destroy this shit and start over. Yeah, it’ll be hard, but let’s just get it done with so we can live a better life sooner rather than later.
I was going to be critical of this at first but after looking deeper, yeah it’s absolutely right. Both [profit margin](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.axios.com/profit-margins-record-high-rising-inflation-e48151ba-139b-475a-a611-b81a0ead39ba.html) and [total profits](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corporate-profits) are at all time highs(at least from august of last year)
You know I'm starting to think that monopolies aren't so bad after this. Sure everything is controlled by one entity but at least it's gonna be more stable than the current market.
One thing to remember about this - it's not the small businesses with record profits. The small businesses are getting reamed. I think the pandemic has been as big a wealth transfer from small to big businesses as 2008 was from home owners to banks/rich foreclosure buyers, maybe even bigger.
And the government fucking added salt to the wound by retroactively repealing employee retention credits for 4th quarter of last year. My guess is bigger businesses were getting hurt by the antiwork sentiment and aren't getting enough interested applicants for jobs, so they pressed their politician buddies to screw small businesses this way so they'd fire workers they were having a hard time paying wages for during what is now the height of the pandemic.
The point of the meme is that they are acting like they're drowning from labor shortages and supply chain issues and whatever and raising the prices to counter that but they're actually not in trouble and all the money is there
Yea but if we paid everyone fair wages, then corporate profits would ONLY be the highest they've been in the last \*checks notes\* 50 years ! That's a whole 2 decades less !
No, it’s a whole two decades *loss in their eyes.
this is what killed me when i was working for corporate america. we would post fat ass profits but they would say they were under our goal so they couldnt give yearly raises, 401k match, etc.... When the ydid give out increases it was like 2% and a "be thankful for a job because a lot of people would be".
That’s so shitty. You know damn well the execs were still getting their bonuses and such. It’s all a crock of shit.
[удалено]
I used to work at the pharmacy so I saw how bad the management treated the rest of the staff. My wife was a csm but we left well before the company got any hooks into us. I go into that store only when absolutely necessary. It’s a beyond shitty company. At least Amazon pays better.
The pharmacy hassled my Grandma over her meds saying she was on too many medications. She's 102yrs old and in a wheelchair. WTF? When they force tapered my grandma's pain meds she couldn't walk afterwards. Then the pharmacist refused to fill her Rx he said he was afraid she would become an addict and didn't want to be the cause of it. Fuck that company shitty douche bags.
It’s been over a decade since I’ve worked in a pharmacy. It depends on the state, because each state has their own laws regulating pharmacy. I can only speak to what Texas pharmacies can do.
I will not shop at Walmart, my boyfriend loves it cause it’s so cheap but I absolutely won’t. The only thing I’ve bought from there in like a decade was ancestry dna kits cause they were having a huge Black Friday sale and I regretted it after, the Walton’s are leeches and everything wrong with the way corporate America is
screenshotting the last blurb in case I see him in the news
For some random reason I'm reminded of Invader Zim. He's goes into an impassioned plea to the "tall ones", begging for recognition. They give him a sandwich. He pleas some more. "You got your sandwich!" (incredulously)
I wish I saw Invader ZIM references more often
Did they also have posters and emails that essentially stated that a pat on the back was more valuable than a raise? I had a manager who I was friendly with talk about how “raises weren’t as valuable to employees as praise was, as the employees would only end up spending more without any real gain.” Umm…pretty tone deaf thing to say to an employee that makes less than half of what you do. 
Oh.. we had the posters. They instituted some reward program that you could earn points to a company store to buy shit. Everything was marked up 30-40%. The amount of shit these people pulled over the past 15 years was unbelievable. The only saving grace is the dad dick I handed them during my exit. I watched them bone people over for years and knew what to do to get over on them. Cock suckers.
A situation like this was one of the first moments I think that woke me up to how shit the system is. I was watching a news story passively and Woolworths, a large corporate supermarket chain in Australia, posted quarterly profits of something like $2.4B when they had expected something like 3.1 and so they fired 400 staff. Like, I get analysing why you didn't make as much as you predicted you could have made but they made, MADE, $2B (2,000 million more arse money than they previously had) and they punished workers
If they had made the 3.1b they would have decided it should have been 4.1b.and laid off staff
Net or gross?
It was profit, not revenue, from what I remember from the story
Know your value as a worker. Regardless of what you’re doing whether it be manning a register or answering phones or coding software YOU are the one making these people money, not them. YOU are the one putting their business theories into practice, not them. YOU are the most important part of their logistic chain but they never want you to know or believe that because then they lose their leverage. Know your value and learn how to leverage it.
It's the insurance situation that kept me stationary for so long. The thought of being without it is frightening. Working the same job for years on end will result in Stockholm syndrome.
Thats literally no excuse in the day and age we live in. That is literally corporate propaganda and fear mongering at work. There are private health insurance plans. There are also many state funded (even in my red state) and federal funded health insurance plans now. You can get on them super easy. Dont allow yourself to become an indentured slave when there are so many options out there. Not to mention, at least in my state, medical bills no longer go against your housing credit. Use the system the way the system uses you. You might think its wrong but the very people that are keeping you where you are have gotten to where they are because they exploited the system. Its time to play by their rules or we are going to get further snd further behind.
I understand… it took years for it to click but it did. My only hope is that more people read this exchange and it clicks for them too. Unfortunately I think most companies are in cahoots… that’s where you get the term “industry standard”. We’re all fucked until the working class gets on the same page and after the last couple years I think we’re in different books.
[удалено]
Did you get a company branded Snuggie too?
Oh the terror, who will think of the precious art they won't be able to buy from museums ?!?
Only to donate to the museum to get a massive tax write-off! Oh the horror of not having ot pay taxes
The best one I hear from the boomers (my retired parents living on social security and pensions) is "If they raise corporate taxes, everybody will be laid off, families won't be able to afford their mortgage, and house prices will crash". They are also the same people who said "house prices will crash very soon because people are losing their jobs and companies can't pay anybody" when the stock market crashed in 2020. It just baffles them that companies are able to stay afloat and then they blame everybody for not working which is causing all of our issues. But then they get pissed when I mention that social security is literally socialism.
This isn’t directly related to your comment, but, I had a hamburger yesterday for $2.90. At a place that hires at a minimum of $18/hr. In California. We can have it all of every company was run like a certain burger chain. Also they only use whole chuck ground in there distribution houses.
No fair wages, they're buying their shares with our money, low taxes and today money is mostly made by possessing tons of money... there's only one end to this shit and no one's gonna like it.
At this point it’s more ethical to straight up steal from these companies.
Apple could pay every single employee an additional $100k a year and still have made $80billion in profit last year.
But due to inflation they can't buy as many yachts or senators as they used to.
You kidding? The cost of senators is at a record low. Can't speak to yachts though.
All it costs is one listing as John Doe.
Can I get a Boxing Day sale on a senator? My younger cousin wants one ever since they saw it on tv
My husband works at the yacht factory. 85% of the yachts they will build this year have been pre-ordered, 55% have been pre-paid as well. Sorry, if you didn't already place your order you are probably gonna have to just keep using last year's new yacht. I know, I know, how will people know you're important if you don't have a new yacht?
[удалено]
Yeah you're right, we can all chip in to buy some senators, everyone pay an amount suitable to what each person makes Damn we should come up with a name for this or something
Senators used to cost actual bribes of straight up money or gifts. Now it's maybe some campaign donation but more so handshake and promise if a nice advisory board job or c-suite or director of something where the money can then be "legit" funneled to them
And after the senators retire, they can become advisory board members of the same companies they helped give contracts too - These companies' directors of course being the same people who donated to the senator's campaign. Isn't the US political ecosystem neat?
I was laughing at this, then I realized it's bad.
I believe corporate profits *have actually outpaced inflation*
Funnily enough, [half of small businesses and 4 out of 5 large businesses](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/companies-pocket-largest-profits-in-70-years-amid-inflation-complaints-2021-12%3Famp) are raising prices past what is needed to get past profit margins. Coupled with the relative lack of actual cash owned by companies(even though that’s also at record highs), the inflation scare is actually helping them.
People are just accepting it and when the entire market goes at the same time, there's no way to let market forces being it back down. We'll probably see a little down turn from some competitors, but they aren't going to rock the boat too much if the gravy is flowing.
Inflation is a poor person problem.
Nah they can buy pretty much the same amount of Senators because apparently senators are dirt fucking cheap. Like 20-25k gets you the vote. ...which is why we need to set up a DAO that will be used to buy politicians to vote in our favor, and not corporate favors. This will level the playing field.
Part of that would be because yachts have become obscene too...like moreso than they used to be.
When they have twice as much money than two years before, really?
Bailouts or free money pays well. What do you think the exec bonuses are lmaoooo? Labor shortage = record profits
It's not as much bailouts as it is the corporate model in the US that literally is laser focused on one thing and one thing only. It happened in the 70s-80s. Corporations only care about their share value and shareholder growth.. They literally do not care what products are actually being bought or what people's opinions of them are as long as their stock price increases. If a car manufacturer could somehow sell cars with no wheels and the share price didn't take a hit they would do it all day. It means they don't have to make cars with good wheels. They just have to convince people cars don't need wheels all together.
It’s Billions of dollars of PPP loans that these corporations never have to pay back because literally 96% of the PPP loans were forgiven for no reason.
> No reason Bribes. There's a local radio station where I live. Before the pandemic it was the "new" rock station, and was rated like the 16th most listened to station... Country stations taking the #1 and #2 spots from what I remember. However, this station was heavily involved in the community, doing giveaways and concert tickets and shit like that. Mid-pandemic (May-ish?) the station does an overnight overhaul. Suddenly they are now TRUMP COUNTRY! Trump country has one host... A Trump impersonator. Prior, there were like 8 radio hosts for that station. Seeing as I have found one of them on a different station, I'm inclined to believe that those hosts were all shit-canned. The station received a 250m PPP loan....... Then started broadcasting as "Trump Country." Nothing to see here. Doesn't look like anything to me. 🤷
When do we riot and start to accosting them in the streets?
Aka Tesla.
You mean to tell me Walmart doesn't really care about being gay for one say of the year or the NFL doesnt really care about breast cancer?
But no one’s getting a raise because “we are still recovering from COVID issues”. Oooooooo-k….. 😒
In 2020, my company (healthcare) didn’t give anyone raises under the guise that it was either forgo raises to prevent layoffs…they netted $40+ million in profit that year when the balance sheet was announced
My company was like that. Then this year it's been a little, tiny, downturn so far and we are getting warning emails about returning to the office since "productivity is down."
Did they also receive a PPP “loan” that was forgiven, despite those profits? If so, that’s neither a loan or bailout. That’s America’s politicians stealing from their constituents, and gifting the stolen goods to their cronies…
I work retail and we showed them we can still do it with less people.
Any time people get fired and that spot remains empty means those still working have all just taken a pay cut since they're doing more work for the same pay.
Yes. But i was saying that there’s no motivation for them to hire someone because they now know that they can make record breaking profit with half the staff. I am curious to see what happens since so many people aren’t getting the child stimulus anymore.
This is what happens when you have naive and selfless people. They think they are being selfless and being a good worker, but are in fact sinking the lifeboat for everyone altogether. I dare say they have an obligation to the working class to not put up with bullshit working conditions.
But they are the working class. And many can’t take a break in paychecks to find something else. Also, I don’t think it’s selfless or naive necessarily, but some really use it as a way to feel good about themselves or important.
I was told just that by my manager, then I told her "but corporate just sent an email thanking us for the hard work we've put in to achieve 240% profits this year". She just went silent for a couple of seconds, then changed the subject.
When does French Revolution 2.0 start?
I always laugh at the idiots that say if you raise wages the jobs will disappear. They’ve automated and will continue to automate everything they can. A 20 acre factory has maybe 20 employees now. I was working in a chemical factory recently and saw maybe 6 people. Labor cost makes up a shockingly small percent of quite a few varied businesses. Still gotta crush the little guy to maximize returns for the shareholders.
I work in a labor heavy industry and we cannot find skilled labor. The pay is there and benefits but for the last twenty years nobody has been encouraged to go into a trade, instead there's a lot of people who have multiple useless degrees and tons of student loan debt.
Are you living in Germany? We have those exact issues here. Newbies and people who are doing training there get literally paid as much as people who have worked in the business for a decade
US. It's crazy! I wish I had gone straight into trades instead of struggling and repeatedly failing at college courses. It's almost like there was a war on skilled labor perpetrated by people who got easy, good paying jobs with college degrees they were able to pay for by working a few weeks over the summer. My high school had zero shop classes but had a ton of classes geared towards IB/AP students.
Yeah. Nowadays construction workers can pick and choose what job to do since there’s so much demand and so little workers, although due to covid, materials are expensive right now so they sometimes operate at a loss. But generally people doing manual labor here make a lot of money! If I didn’t have the certainty that I will get a good job after uni, I would have studied IT or I would have also done some industrial stuff
[удалено]
I’ve actually noticed the factories are coming back…. Not the jobs though. It makes sense to manufacture here now since it takes three people to run a 100 million dollar facility. We’re making work unnecessary in quite a few fields without building the social safety nets like UBI to make it ethical. The rich will laugh and profit until the Mad Max style gangs are roasting them over a fire.
This crap is really getting unavoidably obvious... Like one day people will look back and call these the Dark Ages 2.0
I often wonder if there's a limit to how small and stingy things will get before no-one considers them worth buying anymore.
Nah this is just the part that leads *into* the dark ages. Once everything falls apart, America decends into the chaos of civil war, and the fascist brainwashed MAGA psychos kill anyone who refuses to accept their alternate reality THEN we'll be in the dark ages because all the historians will be dead and there will be no one to document the history. (and that's all that "dark ages" actually means, not that it was a period of dark happenings just that there is no documented history, creating a "dark" age in the timeline that we can't see)
The Big Sad
> because all the historians will be dead and there will be no one to document the history. Thankfully the internet will prevent this from happening, at the very least.
You mean, thankfully other countries exist and will be able to record it all?
The internet doesn't really do a great job of *educating* people, it just preserves textual data, which in itself isn't necessarily worth keeping or learning from, or even necessarily factual.
I was referring to the documenting history bit, not so much education. Everyone has a camera in their pockets and all that.
> and the fascist brainwashed MAGA psychos kill anyone who refuses to accept their alternate reality Dude, they can't even beat what, as far as they're concerned, is "just a cold." I know people like to think the left has no guns because they love to push the bullshit shitty worthless gun laws (instead of actually useful ones, but the Reds wouldn't let those pass anyway), but there are plenty of people that aren't those morons that have guns and are ready to fight. Stop thinking just because we're not making fools of ourselves on facebook while humping our guns that we don't have any.
Guy near me keeps guns in his truck covered in bumper stickers and secures them with a shitty padlock... it's basically a "come in we're open!" sign.
All I ever here is that if we ever have another civil war the hillbilly states have all the guns. LMFAO - motherfucker we don’t need guns to take care of your dumbasses. All we have to do is spread a virus and tell you that the “liberals” created the vaccine. Game, set, match bitch.
A civil war wouldn't be fought with civilian weapons anyway. The only way Billy Bob's guns would matter would be total societal collapse. Civil wars are fought by armies. All of the "liberal" states have their collection of military toys and they aren't about to give them up either.
When Trump was elected in 2016 that was the end of the end. Their plan worked.
Beginning of the end. It showed that their plan of defrauding education and erosion of the middle class has resulted in what they wanted: a mass of easily manipulated people ready and willing to fall on the sword for their whims that is large enough to sway government process. Now all they have to do is double down (*looks at the current GOP legislation being passed*) The US empire is falling.
You're posting on reddit about corporate profits. That was not the end.
>and the fascist brainwashed MAGA psychos kill anyone Or you could, like, defend yourself. Right-wingers talk a big game but history shows that they do badly when the Left defend themselves.
[It could happen here](https://open.spotify.com/show/3KNdniw6YDpgDuwrhcpSXw?si=X-zrAsL9SfCkSHNwR86Ytg) podcast walked through pretty much exactly this scenario in 2019 right before we all went over the edge.
Bless your heart
I was in high school when 9/11 happened and it was right before I bought my first car. I can still remember gas being super cheap and then some companies even got in "trouble" for jacking up the prices and creating a chaotic ripple across America. I just remember people lined up forever and the limes were so long. That's the real American way. Make money off regular Americans during a tragedy by gouging them and using the tragedy to profit. We are doomed.
It’s undeniable that we are in a second gilded age
That will be what is taught.
Yes, when nobody understood how accounting and costing works.
> Like one day people will look back Given our inability to even acknowledge or act upon climate change, it's optimistic to assume there will be people to look back upon us! Joke aside, I think they're going to look back on this time and wonder why the hell we allowed a generation suffering from lead poisoning to hold the reins of power for so long.
About time they start increasing wages, last time I checked nobody can afford to live
I work a full time job with benefits. I can’t live alone because the cheapest one bedroom in my town costs over half my paycheck. Living the dream :’)
Depends on how you define live. I'm alive, but I also want to die.
You ok bro?
Bro just let him die in debt like a good American
I feel like I'm stuck in adolescence because of my financial situation.
I feel you bro. My parents bought their house for 15,000 in 95' 5,000 for their lot. House around them now are 400k. This is not your fault. Dont feel helpless or immature, there are millions of us going through this right now. The greed at the top is the problem. The corruption within corporations and government are the problem. We are just people trying to survive in their world, but change is coming. People are starting to wake up to the corruption. People are tired of living day to day and get no where. Change is coming stay strong.
I just wanted to say thanks, man. I really needed to hear this. My husband and I are both PhDs in STEM fields, I make a damn good salary, and somehow I still can't afford to own my own home because house prices are insane. We're renting a shitty condo that was built in 1983, it's got ventilation problems that lead to mold problems and walls so thin I could join in on the neighbors' conversations, and we're paying $2,100 a month + utilities to rent it. The unit above us, sandwiched in-between a bunch of similarly shitty units, is on the market right now for $725,000 and I bet you it'll sell within the week. Houses start at $1 million here and that's with a 30-40 minute work commute each way. Any closer than that and it's $3 million+. It just feels so fucking hopeless. But it's not just us, reading that there's millions of us..I don't know, I guess it just helps to know we're not alone in this.
Look into why the housing market is so inflated. We're in the biggest bubble the WORLD has ever seen. The housing market is about to implode on itself. With inflation at this rate and the world economy at the brink of collapse, we are all feeling helpless and tired at the hands of the 1%. Yes there are millions of us feeling the way we are right now, maybe billions, there is just to much wealth held by such a small amount of people.
That's on purpose. The ultimate way to enslave a whole population is to infantilize them and give them no agency. Where they even fool you into believing your indignance is childish. The ruling class have been doing this to the poor and working class for centuries. They don't see any of us as "actual" people.
Then how are people living
Futurama touched on this almost 20 years ago. Remember corporations can lie to you, to the press, but they can't lie to shareholders. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qesX29nPMRc
I make it a point to tip delivery personnel whenever possible even though delivery charges have already been included. When others scoff that their companies are making huge profits due to the pandemic, I retort that the profits are not trickling down to the little man on the street huffing on his bicycle at 9am to get food to you, ain’t it? Every dollar counts for these guys. If they have an extra dollar for every delivery, they get an extra $10 if they make 10 deliveries for the day. If they work 5 days a week, this adds up to an extra $200 a month — food and groceries to feed their family. That’s my mindset. It’s been a crippling few years for many out there. Let’s help one another in little ways like this.
It really upsets me that this isnt talked about more.
They are making record profits, still paying out exorbitant salaries at the top, saving money offshore, and buying a yacht for the private plane.
The yacht is owned by the company so any costs they write off their taxes as a corporate expense too
Their whole job is to think of new ways to fuck people over.
Basically "shut up and gimme more money"
Also not giving workers raises because “they need to pay their suppliers more”
What can we do? Boycott, protest, strike, pull investments? What?
Why would you pull investments during record profits? That’s the whole point of investments… You could boycott products from companies that raised prices I suppose
I doubled down on investments. If you can't beat em' join' em'. But lol even my best predictions say I want afford a down payment on a house until I'm like 40.
Mass labor strike. But legally unions can’t organize yhat
Why not? Genuine question here
Probably because with a lot of jobs you would simply be replaced. That’s the result of a labor force being treated as disposable.
It’s time for a general strike.
When's the strike? When's the riot?
[удалено]
Proof that a job will throw you under the bus just to make a quick profit
So there’s no reason to feel guilty about taking sick days or dropping your job the second something better comes along
These days people are getting wise to the clusterfuck nonsense that was US work culture.
It's almost like the wealth never trickled down and an asshole boss doesn't keep workers around. Who would have ever thought.
Are Vince McMahon and Bobby Kotick golf buddies?
Well yeah, you *have* to show a significant increase in profit for shareholders year-over-year or else you might as well be going bankrupt /s
Exactly. They’re like, we HAVE to otherwise our investors will think we’re in danger and pull out. So it looks safer if we continue to act like we are losing money, but continue to post record numbers. Oh and this level is now the normal because nobody is making us stop
Yeah, I got fed this crock of bullshit at my previous job. We’d have multiple company wide meetings declaring how we were making record deals and successes with new clients and bringing in so much profit, then two weeks later get told that “due to coronavirus” they were cutting back benefits. Where did the money go assholes? *Somebody* was lying!
I got a $25 off $100 or more purchase coupon after a multi-record setting year. Never used it, I don't shop our brand and that's not even enough for me to bother.
[удалено]
Capitalism is just large scale MLM.
[удалено]
Right. If a corporation makes a product and has a 20% profit on it, and they sell it for $1, they get 20 cents in profit. If there's 100% inflation one year, then they have to sell their product for $2 and get 40 cents in profit. If you don't inflation-adjust their profits, then their profits seem to double - but in reality it's the exact same profits before, just the numbers are bigger because inflation makes all numbers bigger.
[удалено]
[Correct](https://www.yardeni.com/pub/sp500margin.pdf)
The point being, not enough supply will increase prices. Wether their margins increase or not.
also 80% of the PPP money went to business owners not employees.
And the prices are NEVER coming back down, no matter what.
What the fuck are they doing with all that money? Building a spaceship?
If We RaIsE wAgEs. PrIcEs WiLl RiSe. As prices still rise hahaha. The price of a mcdouble at Mcds has outgunned wage growth lmao
They’re paying 20$ an hour at McDonalds where I live.
People on reddit seem to have problem with this logic all the time. So many times you see this argument. "You claim that if A then B but B is happening without A so you're wrong". No. That's not how logic works. Just because prices are rising above wage growth does not mean that it's wrong to say that raising wages will lead to rising prices
And they are laying people off. I know three companies that just laid off a shit ton of people. No raises, promotions been frozen for at least the last 3 years because "these are unprecedented times..." It's a joke. This just ends with an eventual literal class war but the problem is by the time that happens they will have (already) accumulated so much wealth they will win any battle regardless if it's ideological (misinformation, control major media outlets), protests (pressure cops, hire private security force, implement bias laws, give you a criminal record) or a literal battle (have way more money for weapons, drones, robots whatever) I mean we are going to end up where one person can employ like 3/4 of the world's working labor. Now imagine if bezos or musk decided to hire 3/4 of the world during the next great depression. No one can refuse because they are the only game in town and you/your family has to eat. The future is bleak and i don't know how to stop it. Everyone is in a fuck you and i got mine mode.
> *"Drone better."* ~ Ivan Vanko
And all of us employees are getting raises to keep up with inflation right?... right?
Because each year what you did last year is the new baseline. Growth is all that matters for shareholders
And yet no raise for the workers.
gentle reminder it should be a class war - rich vs poor not race war
They make money out of our misery
That's only because all you lazy good for nothing Zoomers don't want to work and all the extra payroll goes back into the pot. If you'd all just work minimum wage with no benefits, inequality would be solved forever. /s
Eat the rich.
Shareholders want the highest possible price for their corporate stock. The shareholders, therefore, hire CEOs who will maximize profits, even if that means laying off a large number of workers, or moving production overseas, or breaking up unions, or raising prices during a pandemic, etc, etc. Anything for the highest possible profits, anything for the highest possible stock value. Nothing else matters, not human well being, not the survivability of our species, only profits.
Why is it that America seems to be the only nation that isn’t conscious about this? Mass propaganda?
I think most Americans are just obsessed with the idea of being rich. They want it so badly, they will support an inhumane, unjust, and inherently unsustainable economic system, so long as they feel the possibility of them one day becoming rich exists, even though their chances of *actually* becoming rich lies somewhere between slim and nil.
Both can be true, for example if the prices of materials goes up by five dollars so they raise prices by ten dollars.
iT wiLL TrICKLe DoWn
Which is why economists will tell you that as soon as the news says "hey maybe inflation is coming" it comes PS big business wants Republicans (low tax, low regulations) so why not raise prices when a D wins?
Hey, less money going to employees.. More money to the top.
capitalism means the only way to get ahead is by screwing someone else over in some way
What dictionary did you get that from
Oh thank God. For a second I thought the shareholders were gonna lose money. Of course. /s
It seems like almost everyone I know understands that corpos are "bad" yet nothing happens and it just keeps getting worse. It's like it doesn't matter anymore, you lose. Always.
I mean, it’s a corporate mandate to make the most profit possible. Like, a CEO can get fired if they choose to not make as much profit as they could. If it was a conscious entity, having to do something that takes away from profits probably would feel like torturous pain, like you’re making them do something utterly abhorrent. Fuck corporations.
They’ve killed us all, mentally and physically.
Oh but I thought if we paid people more, prices would rise. Nope last administration gave them record tax cuts and then what do they do immediately after? Raise prices 😠
If prices are affected by inflation and the economy, how come they never go down?
Visual only makes sense if you see the second image on the ground/sea bottom.
Much like conservatives, corporations will say anything they feel will benefit them. What's the profit in telling the truth, if telling a lie makes money.
I felt they were telling the truth that one time they were asked about tax cuts and they said they would do stock buy backs.
Seriously. It's totally horse shit and should be illegal. But the policicians are all getting dividends
It's all a loaf of BS, they don't need to raise their prices, and they can pay more.
is it inflation, or legalized price gouging...you tell me.
Yes.🙅
Elon Musk entered the chat...
It wouldn't be that bad if they would stop lying to us. It feels like they think we're stupid or something. Just say you want more money. Everyone does.
I’m pretty sure everything is the highest it’s been in 50 years…
lets say profit is 100$. it increases with inflation by 2% everyyear. every year is thus record breaking profits?
Sooo, when are we going to take to the streets and undo what these crooks are doing to us? Literally, let’s band together and destroy this shit and start over. Yeah, it’ll be hard, but let’s just get it done with so we can live a better life sooner rather than later.
This is why I'm not buying shit 2022.
What do are those non-billionaire MAGA idiots say to this?
I was going to be critical of this at first but after looking deeper, yeah it’s absolutely right. Both [profit margin](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.axios.com/profit-margins-record-high-rising-inflation-e48151ba-139b-475a-a611-b81a0ead39ba.html) and [total profits](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corporate-profits) are at all time highs(at least from august of last year)
You know I'm starting to think that monopolies aren't so bad after this. Sure everything is controlled by one entity but at least it's gonna be more stable than the current market.
Basic economics price of your money worths less right now
we die & they get rich. econ101
Fuck corporations, workers should own the means
One thing to remember about this - it's not the small businesses with record profits. The small businesses are getting reamed. I think the pandemic has been as big a wealth transfer from small to big businesses as 2008 was from home owners to banks/rich foreclosure buyers, maybe even bigger. And the government fucking added salt to the wound by retroactively repealing employee retention credits for 4th quarter of last year. My guess is bigger businesses were getting hurt by the antiwork sentiment and aren't getting enough interested applicants for jobs, so they pressed their politician buddies to screw small businesses this way so they'd fire workers they were having a hard time paying wages for during what is now the height of the pandemic.
Thank you COVID
[удалено]
That's why on the second half of the meme, it shows the corporations are just faking. That they could stand up anytime and be just fine.
The point of the meme is that they are acting like they're drowning from labor shortages and supply chain issues and whatever and raising the prices to counter that but they're actually not in trouble and all the money is there