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Why Americans are going hungry despite a strong economy
(www.nbcnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Because this isn't a strong economy....
The rich are making money, but they're just hoarding it
So amount of money in circulation keeps decreasing, and prices keep increasing because in capitalism if a company isnt increasing profit margins, the stock price isn't going up. And they finally figured out calling corporate greed "inflation" means around 2/3s of the country will accept it
Either we drastically raise taxes soon, or shits about to get really really bad.
Very few people will just sit back and calmly starve to death
Yep. There's a whole fucking lot of us.
Totally unrelated, but I've been teaching my friends to shoot and how to handle weapons. Also how to homestead your backyard. I pray those remain hobbies but I think im gonna live too long for that to remain true.
The number of people I know in this state (myself included) has only grown in the last year.
The 2/3 of the country can generally be fooled to believe anything.
However, just raising taxes in this case may have some similarity to extinguishing fire with a burnable substance.
You have to raise some taxes (say, on realty ownership, and some other possessions, and in general discourage possession of wealth without circulation) and lower some other taxes (say, anything taxing a transaction, I'm really not familiar with the way taxes work in USA, but in Russia plenty of taxes in hard numbers simply discourage economic activity). The goal should be increasing the actual inflation (not a good or bad thing per se). That's if you are right about the cause, which I'm in doubt about TBF.
In the US income taxes are different at different income levels and corporate taxes are separate entirely. We can absolutely raise taxes without raising them on lower income people.
And yes several studies over the last couple decades have shown that US money is going up and not coming back down.
Differentiating income levels is another thing.
I'm talking about encouraging people to put in use as much as possible of what they own, which means that making interaction cheaper via lowering some taxes is important to do not only for the "lower income level" people, actually it's most important for the "rich". That's the candy part of encouraging economic activity, and the boot part would be taxing properties (should be done carefully, or, say, large realty companies are going to be less affected than individual owners with only their apartment\house, which would be a complete failure).
That's trickle down. You just described what we've been trying for the last 60 years. And in that time the only thing that's happened is the wealthy take their tax breaks and hold on to it. They don't create more jobs. They don't pay their workers more. They store it in things like super yachts.
Lowering taxes does not create more economic activity unless they were burdensome to start with. Which is not a problem American rich people and Corporations have.
Either you are answering something else and clicked my post by error, or you haven't paid attention to a single word except for the "lowering taxes" parts.
This? This is the entirety of the comment, and it is the theory behind the massive tax breaks American politicians keep giving the wealthy. If you mean something else please let me know.
Yes, I meant what I wrote.
That you have to encourage circulation and discourage "hoarding", which means that the former should be much more beneficial than the latter. For "the rich" as well.
"Tax breaks" are selective bullshit which shouldn't ever happen.
Well then you're just plain wrong. Because we've been lowering taxes on the wealthy for 60 years and they still aren't circulating the money. We even tried giving them money. Just more yachts and stocks.
See, it won't make a difference if I repeat what I said for the third time. You are just not getting it just as you are not getting economics.
All the moaning in the world doesn't change history.
The actual history - yes, it doesn't. The subjective picture in your head or mine - of course it does. And naturally I prefer my subjective picture, especially since you refused to read its description, arguing with your imagination instead.
Nobody fscking cares what you say to another person when it includes "you think this, and not what you are saying you think", it's nuts.
The amount of money in circulation isn’t decreasing though. Wages have increased more than inflation, almost every month in the last year. Especially for median wage/salaries.
When they say strong economy they are talking about spending, jobs etc.
The answer is in the first few sentences:
Housing crisis
The recent increase in wages isn't even a patch on the vacuum the wealthy are using. If that was even remotely true then we wouldn't be seeing this article.
Did you read the article? Because it explains why
Short term holding - link
Long term holding - link
From the article - Food is up 25 percent along with rising rent and utilities.
I'm not sure you understand what economists mean by circulation. Money is going up and not coming back down. It has been doing this for decades. The more money that gets trapped at the top and put into the stock market means less money for the working class as a whole. While that sounds like some commie shit, it's really not. Because the working class is the major demand generator in a capitalist economy. Economists want to see that money making the rounds through the entire economy because anyone left out of circulation will impact demand over the long term (and by the time it's a short term problem you're looking at a demand crisis which usually results in pitchforks).
Now we need to talk about rent in the economic way. That profit a monopoly extracts because the market is not competitive enough and it can charge more without providing more value. Land/house rent going up is the classic. That's why the two words are the same. But other necessities are often seen in history as well, including food and utilities as also mentioned in the article. This is relevant because the world recently figured out that the inflation of the last couple years was actually greed and not cost push. They literally just figured out they could use it as an excuse to raise prices well beyond what was necessary. Of course that's not a surprise to anyone who listened to CEOs publicly telling their stockholders they were doing it.
So when you assert that it's not a problem with circulation because rent went up. I have questions about you understanding the economic meaning of those words. The primary means of rent seeking behavior have gone up and wages already were not keeping up. Nobody cares if wages beat inflation last month. We need them to beat decades worth of inflation and stagnant wages. We need 47 trillion dollars back from the wealthy leeches who did nothing more than raise prices and pay their workers less.
Just an FYI, you're using all of these terms incorrectly.
And your lack of understanding is why you say silly things like this.
Perhaps don't go on at length as if you know about a topic when your only exposure to said topic is internet forums.
Lmao. No. Rent seeking behavior is economics 101.
Indeed. Actual rent-seeking is, for sure. That's why it's kind of weird you're confused by it.
Sure buddy.