This is an interesting example of a pangram false negative. It's very obvious from the jump that substantial AI assistance was used, but feeding some samples in I got a 100% human rating. I wonder if it's a case of adversarial prompting?
> constrain supply, raise prices far beyond what the constraint justifies, and then refuse to lower them
In a healthy competitive market, this doesn't work. In a Ronald Reagan / Robert Bork / Consumer Welfare Standard market, where the idea that antitrust policy should promote competition is scoffed at and all M&A is allowed so long as a business can scribble with crayons on butcher paper a tall tale about how their merger will totally reduce prices (pinky promise!), an unhealthy low-competition market is the intentional and inevitable result.
> Corporate profits drove more than a third of inflation from the start of the pandemic
This seems like it’s getting causation backwards. Shortages directly result in corporate profits somewhere, because there are companies that can raise prices. Most recently, in the oil industry, and in memory chips, and so on. Also, housing.
If there’s enough competing supply then they can’t raise prices. If there isn’t, they can and usually will.
Strategy often means anticipating shortages and having something to sell when they happen, but not overdoing it. It might be temporary but it can take years to resolve.
Deciding not to build new factories in anticipation of a memory shortage is a strategy. Often it’s justified by saying the shortage won’t last.
The people saying that the AI bubble will collapse are justifying a wait-and-see strategy that makes it worse.
I feel like I am living in a different universe to the author. My beef still costs around $5/lb, my milk is still roughly $3/gal, similar on a lot of staples I buy regularly. My shirts cost about $5 for a t-shirt, and my jeans cost $20 or so. I spend 80% at Costco and 20% at King Soopers (Kroger).
Ancedota I know, but the author is writing like Big Business has 100% coverage of the whole market.
The article contains 31 references. Of course, no report on the _general_ market trends are going to cover every anecdote in the US. It could be that the staples you mentioned aren't affected to the same degree. How about your non-staples? How about cars? Houses? Vacation expenses?
In fact, your comment could be read as the exception that proves the rule: you haven't been affected by rising costs because you stick to staples and avoid "frivolous" purchases (that is, you live frugally, as suggested by the article).
Energy stands out as actually being noteworthy, but is not discussed in the article compared to food, consumer goods. It is pretty inelastic for most people, especially gas/diesel.
When the general pop talks about beef prices they’re not referring to premium beef (organic, grass fed) they are talking about 80/20 at working class retailers.
This isn't going to get solved at the consumer level. Yes, one perhaps can & should attempt to vote w/ one's wallet, but the real fix is anti-trust law enforcement. TFA knows this,
> Every pattern above can be explained without conspiracy.
(… and in a section titled "Ongoing collusion", too!) but conspiracy also explains some of it: the egg price increases were industry collusion[1]; Americans lost something like $3B to $6B in egg prices due to it. The DOJ permitted them to settle for what effectively amounts to "don't do that again".
Did I try avoiding eggs while they were $6/dz? Absolutely, but meanwhile Tyson ate one of our local meat suppliers, and those prices immediately went up 50%.
Whenever I see someone quoting economic statistics I look them up on FRED and zoom out a little. Usually I close the article at that point. The "Ongoing collusion" table in this article is interesting, though. Capitalism breaks down without competition.
In a K-shaped economy a business will not succeed by making quality goods at reasonable prices. Who are the customers for that? The middle class no longer exists.
Every successful business will do one of two things. Some will make ludicrous luxury goods at preposterous prices for customers that are not price conscious. Others will make mass produced garbage at insanely low margins in vast quantities.
The shortage is only the strategy in the sense that a large part of luxury goods is status. If you have a luxury product, you have to make it into a status symbol to get sales. Limited availability increases desirability. If something is too popular, wealthy people don’t want it anymore at any price.
The only solution is to end wealth inequality and restore the middle class. Tax the rich.
The US is cooked. China is the new economic and industrial super power. The US "free market" is actively blocking all the future tech that the US can't compete with, first cars, latest is robotic parts. The rich are just soaking the rest of us for everything they can get before they GTFO.
Everywhere is cooked, but some places are less cooked than others. See how China reacted to the oil shortage: they just cut their oil imports and carried on. Arguably, China prevented a total meltdown in oil-dependent countries (USA).
Elison has his own island - wont take much to subdue the rest of it. Thiel's setting up in Argentina. A US in revolt is a markedly worse place for them than places already set up for repression.
"NoOneIsHappy.com" appears to be some sort of low-effort demoralization psyop or something. Who'd have guessed with a name like that?
I assume it’s a reference to “everything is amazing and no one is happy.”
This is an interesting example of a pangram false negative. It's very obvious from the jump that substantial AI assistance was used, but feeding some samples in I got a 100% human rating. I wonder if it's a case of adversarial prompting?
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, what did you think of the play?”
> constrain supply, raise prices far beyond what the constraint justifies, and then refuse to lower them
In a healthy competitive market, this doesn't work. In a Ronald Reagan / Robert Bork / Consumer Welfare Standard market, where the idea that antitrust policy should promote competition is scoffed at and all M&A is allowed so long as a business can scribble with crayons on butcher paper a tall tale about how their merger will totally reduce prices (pinky promise!), an unhealthy low-competition market is the intentional and inevitable result.
> Corporate profits drove more than a third of inflation from the start of the pandemic
This seems like it’s getting causation backwards. Shortages directly result in corporate profits somewhere, because there are companies that can raise prices. Most recently, in the oil industry, and in memory chips, and so on. Also, housing.
If there’s enough competing supply then they can’t raise prices. If there isn’t, they can and usually will.
Strategy often means anticipating shortages and having something to sell when they happen, but not overdoing it. It might be temporary but it can take years to resolve.
Deciding not to build new factories in anticipation of a memory shortage is a strategy. Often it’s justified by saying the shortage won’t last.
The people saying that the AI bubble will collapse are justifying a wait-and-see strategy that makes it worse.
I feel like I am living in a different universe to the author. My beef still costs around $5/lb, my milk is still roughly $3/gal, similar on a lot of staples I buy regularly. My shirts cost about $5 for a t-shirt, and my jeans cost $20 or so. I spend 80% at Costco and 20% at King Soopers (Kroger).
Ancedota I know, but the author is writing like Big Business has 100% coverage of the whole market.
The article contains 31 references. Of course, no report on the _general_ market trends are going to cover every anecdote in the US. It could be that the staples you mentioned aren't affected to the same degree. How about your non-staples? How about cars? Houses? Vacation expenses?
In fact, your comment could be read as the exception that proves the rule: you haven't been affected by rising costs because you stick to staples and avoid "frivolous" purchases (that is, you live frugally, as suggested by the article).
Most of the references are not to actual price data, eg CPI basket of goods, so here is the actual link.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...
Energy stands out as actually being noteworthy, but is not discussed in the article compared to food, consumer goods. It is pretty inelastic for most people, especially gas/diesel.
Sincere question: where are you buying beef for $5/lb? I shop at Costco and ground beef is close to $10/lb
I think the only beef you can find for $5/lb is the ground beef that comes pre-weighed in sealed tubes -not at the meat counter.
all 88/12 ground. Choice sirloin is $8/lb. Boneless chicken breast is $2.5/lb.
Beef on craiglist (1/4, 1/2 or whole) is averaging $6-12/lb for mostly grass fed beef raised <50 miles from me.
When the general pop talks about beef prices they’re not referring to premium beef (organic, grass fed) they are talking about 80/20 at working class retailers.
Define "beef"? My beef is $20/lb for flank!
https://www.macrotrends.net/4487/us-steak-prices
This isn't going to get solved at the consumer level. Yes, one perhaps can & should attempt to vote w/ one's wallet, but the real fix is anti-trust law enforcement. TFA knows this,
> Every pattern above can be explained without conspiracy.
(… and in a section titled "Ongoing collusion", too!) but conspiracy also explains some of it: the egg price increases were industry collusion[1]; Americans lost something like $3B to $6B in egg prices due to it. The DOJ permitted them to settle for what effectively amounts to "don't do that again".
Did I try avoiding eggs while they were $6/dz? Absolutely, but meanwhile Tyson ate one of our local meat suppliers, and those prices immediately went up 50%.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Clearinghouse#Price_fixing
> credit card debt hit an all-time high last year ($1.28 trillion, Q4 2025)
Let me inflation adjust that for you: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUpo. Even better, as a percentage of disposable income: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUpt
> real hourly wages, only 3%
Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUpE. Doesn't look so dire to me?
Whenever I see someone quoting economic statistics I look them up on FRED and zoom out a little. Usually I close the article at that point. The "Ongoing collusion" table in this article is interesting, though. Capitalism breaks down without competition.
This is the wrong way to look at it.
In a K-shaped economy a business will not succeed by making quality goods at reasonable prices. Who are the customers for that? The middle class no longer exists.
Every successful business will do one of two things. Some will make ludicrous luxury goods at preposterous prices for customers that are not price conscious. Others will make mass produced garbage at insanely low margins in vast quantities.
The shortage is only the strategy in the sense that a large part of luxury goods is status. If you have a luxury product, you have to make it into a status symbol to get sales. Limited availability increases desirability. If something is too popular, wealthy people don’t want it anymore at any price.
The only solution is to end wealth inequality and restore the middle class. Tax the rich.
TLDR: the article describes stagflation in a novel way.
Yes, it’s happening, just as it did in the seventies. Invest appropriately.
We do not have high unemployment (yet?). And the economy is growing, just slowly.
Isn't that due to gig work (effectively -EV for a huge chunk of people) and other math shenanigans?
The US is cooked. China is the new economic and industrial super power. The US "free market" is actively blocking all the future tech that the US can't compete with, first cars, latest is robotic parts. The rich are just soaking the rest of us for everything they can get before they GTFO.
> The US is cooked. China is the new economic and industrial super power.
The US economy has outperformed every economy on earth for the last fifteen years.
China is at a permanent disadvantage because the United States and Russia are the largest producers of petroleum and natural gas on earth.
Anyone who thinks China is going to be passing the US anytime soon is uninformed.
> The US economy has outperformed every economy on earth for the last fifteen years
In nominal dollars, not production/output
China is also cooked.
Everywhere is cooked, but some places are less cooked than others. See how China reacted to the oil shortage: they just cut their oil imports and carried on. Arguably, China prevented a total meltdown in oil-dependent countries (USA).
And go where?
Elison has his own island - wont take much to subdue the rest of it. Thiel's setting up in Argentina. A US in revolt is a markedly worse place for them than places already set up for repression.
So what if none of that happens? Say 10yrs from now it's basically the same as now, would you change your opinion?