this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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My right-wing coworker: Why is it we have record inflation whenever a Democrat is in office?
Me: Because the Republican they replaced left things an absolute fucking mess.
And this also applies the other way around. Why does the first year or 2 of a republican look ok? Because they were handed the country in a state that we were moving in the right direction due to the 4 previous years of decent decision making before blowing it all up again.
The joke of economic discourse is how you can always find something to complain about. "Inflation under Democrats" is just a way of complaining about economic growth and strong domestic income.
When the economy is running strong, we use more energy, so gas prices go up. When imports grow cheaper and prices fall, it means jobs are moving overseas to take advantage of low labor rates abroad. When job growth in the US is strong, it attracts migrants, whom we hate. When the global GDP surges, it means more international businesses start catering to foreigners - producing more entertainment and consumables that people in China and India and Africa and Latin America enjoy - which causes cultural conservatives and xenophobes to panic.
Literally show me any bit of "good" economic news, and I can spin it as something to whine about. And if I'm running a consolidated network of TV, Radio, and Internet publications, I bet I can make twenty or thirty million people believe up is down.
Its almost like the whole system is linked and intertwined, where change in one affects everything else.
As my econ tutor put it - nothing comes for free and the cost of anything good is usually inflation.
I mean, you can thread the needle if you really want to roll up your sleeves and get dirty. But that's "managed economy" tier shit. The dark forbidden arts of applying domestic policy to industry with a hands-on approach, rather than just tweaking the Federal Funds rate and hoping everything works itself out.
You have my attention on how to do it without inflation.
Not a dig, actually curious
Inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods. The logical solution is to identify how much of everything people actually need and domestically produce at that scale. And, along the way, cutting a bunch of the subsidy and industrial waste that dilutes retail buying power.
Shrinkflation, Greedflation, etc - these aren't symptoms of potato chips and bottled water suddenly becoming way more expensive to produce. They're purely profit-driven price increases. So establish a state mandate on a "small" / "medium" / "large" bag of chips at X / 2X / 4X oz of foodstuff, nationalize a potato chip factory that's been scraped by a manufacturer, and start putting out bags at that size for a fixed price relative to the input cost of potatoes, energy, and labor.
Then, if the private sector wants to compete, they can try and match a generic quality of food produced by a non-profit state actor operating at cost. And set the production quota of the non-profit state actor as "number of bags of chips people pre-order for next month" - "number of bags of chips private agents commit to produce at a fixed unit price".
Fill the supply gap so everyone who wants a bag of chips can have one at a designated price. Do it at cost, rather than at some ill-defined wholesale + retail markup rate. Distribute the bags through the USPS, just like Amazon distributes private potato chip bags through their privatized postal system.
I guarantee you'll be able to supply chips at a lower price than current retail rates and at a price that is far more stable than what we've seen in grocery stories nationally over the last ten years.
Ah, so a combination of price fixing and turning every supplier into a price-taker. I like it.
In your example marketing and differentiation come into play more than price differentiation - which is what the free market should focus on.
I’ve never heard of this model before. Where did you read about this? It’s cool and interesting and I’d like to read more about it.
Has this been implemented anywhere before?
Richard D. Wolff is a professional economist who covers this more extensively than I could do justice. "Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism" takes a deep dive into these ideas. But he's also got a ton of podcast media to listen to, if you want something more bit-sized and drive-time friendly.
Oh awesome I love Dr Wolff. I didn’t know he had a podcast. I’ll check that out, and I’ll probably pick up that book too.
"The People's Republic of Walmart" is another good one. Basically laying out how enormous corporate conglomerates have proven the functional efficiency of command economies.
You make some very convincing arguments.
But my gut tells me it's the democrats because they kill babies. Sorry.
You say that as a joke, but Biden's policy in Gaza is killing a whole lot of Arab children.
Oh, I'm not joking. I have it on good authority Joe Biden is personally running down children with a chainsaw over in Ghazarmibad.
You and me brother we are the same.
Donald Trump has never personally murdered anyone that we know of, so they are both equally good cool dudes and why is anyone even complaining?
Donald Trump is chosen by God himself. When they say "he grabs women by the pussy" he is really just cleansing their soul so they can be in the presence of the divine.
He also gets off on it.
It’s like I always say, the vagina is the doorway to the soul.