The root of what’s going on here can feel obvious: blame inflation, which picked up in mid-2021 and throughout 2022. But that isn’t really the issue anymore, at least not at the current rate, because inflation is coming down. The actual problem here is prices.
They’re not going up nearly as much as they were in, say, the middle of last year, but they’re by and large not declining en masse, either. And in most cases, they won’t get back to where they were in the Before Times.
Still think this is just greedflation. Raising prices because you can. Not because of rising labor costs, supply chain problems, inflation., etc. That might have been true at the start of the pandemic, but it isn’t now. Want an example, streaming prices. There is no reason for increases except greed.
Been saying this for a while. It’s off that all these companies raised prices and also started seeing record breaking profits in the same year. Almost like they didn’t really need to raise them all that much or at all.
They say as much in the article, companies are basically bragging about it at this point. They keep raising prices and we keep buying anyway.
IDK if streaming is a good example. Seems like streaming costs were under calculated and streaming services are adjustingntonreality. NPR talked about how previously, before streaming was anything, movie productions would get kick backs for movies in the theaters, tv spots, movie purchases and rentals. Theater’s are still alive,but not doing well and rentals have had a dynamic shift. No more renting so much as streaming, which is technically rather cheap. The issue stems from the small amount of kick backs going to the show/movie productions since it was a new market. Now, movie productions want more money from streaming since their other sources of income have diminished which is where the streaming cost increases are probably coming from.
Yep!
Why lower profits when you can keep on chugging?
I really hope at some point it catches up with the corporations without anything resembling an economic crash.