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> No it hasn’t. The current economic turmoil has been caused by companies using the stimulus as something they can blame inflation on when they raise prices even though they’re actually increasing their margins. You can trivially see this by looking at the financial reports of public companies that have raised their prices: If they were raising prices to cover increased costs, their margins wouldn’t change; in reality, lost of companies have taken the opportunity to increase their margins.

Why do you think those greedy companies got greedy since 2020 and didn't in 2019? They were always greedy, they are just responding predictably to market conditions caused by the Fed and Congress. That's what changed, not the companies.

> Why do you think those greedy companies got greedy since 2020 and didn't in 2019?

That's a misinterpretation of the point. The companies were greedy in both years, but 2020 gave them an external thing to blame. Consumers largely accepted the "it's COVID, what can you do?" explanation.

In my city, the privatized gas/electricity utility is blaming COVID now, in 2023, for massive billing issues where folks are getting $10k bills and I'm only getting a bill every other month. It's not very plausible, but they're still using it as an excuse.

It's a shame your gas utility is behaving badly, but that's got nothing to do with tech CEOs.

Again, missing the point; it's an example of using COVID as an excuse. Which tech CEOs, non-tech CEOs, and my energy supplier have engaged in.

I think it's entirely possible that there's been a more severe than usual change in culture, there really does seem to be a vibe out there where ultra rich people have absolutely no shame anymore at their greed...I mean, at some point the gap has to get so staggering wide between the rich and the poor that the notion that these people have any morals has to go out the door, doesn't it?

But then 10 years ago I'd have never imagined it possible for things to ever get to this point, so what do I know.

>>>The whole “Many Americans got an extra few grand in 2020 and that caused inflation!!!” narrative is as fake as the “Organized shoplifting is causing retailers to lose a huge amount of money!!!” fake story and the “Our cities are burned out hulks because we defunded the police!!!” fake story and the “People aren’t applying for these open jobs because they’re lazy and can get paid to sit around!!!” fake story.

I cant tell if this is sarcasm or trolling.

Between PPP and the stimmy checks sent out, amassed to about 6 trillion dollars of direct stimulus during the COVID outbreak. Yes, this will have an effect on inflation. No I am not an economist but you would have to be trolling or demented to think not.

> The current economic turmoil has been caused by companies using the stimulus as something they can blame inflation on when they raise prices even though they’re actually increasing their margins.

This is not how economics works. Companies don’t need an excuse to raise prices, and margin has nothing to do with what the price point should be; margin simply sets a floor for the price, and it gets too low the business is not viable and shuts down to move the capital to another business with better margins.

Prices are increased if and only if the overall profit increases because the lost sales due to the higher cost are offset by the increased revenue from the price increase.

This is not due to any artificial excuse or fake stories. This situation can be caused for a lot of reasons, but macroeconomic situations are certainly part of it.

Imagine you sell eggs and bird flu kills a ton of chickens around the country, but you’re chickens are fine. Your comment makes it seem like you are supposed to keep selling your eggs at the same price, because your margins haven’t changed. It still costs you the same amount to raise the chickens, so raising the price is just going to increase your margins.

But if you don’t raise prices, you are just going to sell out too fast and there will be an egg shortage. The correct thing to do is to raise prices to match the supply with the demand. Yes, this means the margins will increase, but that isn’t dishonest or wrong. There is a reduced supply, it has to happen.