this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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I mean, that’s 4 years of our lives taken! 4 years of opportunities that were more challenging because they wanted a number on a computer to go up! 4 years of feeling worse than necessary about my finances and management of them and general personhood because i felt like i couldn’t afford anything because everything was priced egregiously!

And now they’re saying ‘oh well we fixed it now’. Fuck you!!! Get over yourselves! Holy shit, I can’t wait to happily be friends with the giant corporations again!! Just the arrogance that we’re happy to once again be at their beck and call because they changed the numbers they could’ve always changed. Sickening.

And I feel like I have a brain disease because i’ve been worrying and posting for years about how disgusting it is that they’re just cranking the numbers up to see what’ll happen and obviously no one will stop them because this is an oligarchy — and i kept getting well-ackshullyied into the ground by esteemed logical posters explaining how supply chains work. Well look at this shit you motherfuckers!

Just the amount of incredibly deep and sophisticated social engineering is so disgusting:

It’s a savvy play for shifting perceptions of value, crucial for consumers in the decision-making process of where to shop for bread and eggs. Customers benefit by saving some money; retailers possibly benefit even more by being known as the company that magnanimously trimmed prices.   

Go to hell, stop shifting my value perception. I should be able to decide what I feel about milk or zucchini. When I think about a croissant I should be thinking about France, not Target pricing strategies.

Most importantly, the theater of making grand pronouncements about lower prices is great for retailers’ reputations. Forget about all the price hikes grocery retailers and food brands implemented in the last few years — now companies would like consumers to focus on the savings they’re offering. “They’re all leaning into this inflation-oriented messaging,” says Stambor, which he notes is interesting because food inflation isn’t high at the moment. It’s the accumulation of past inflation that we’re still feeling the sting of; the prices just didn’t come down.

And we’re meant to thank them for this! I hope to god they can’t put the genie back in the bottle with this. I won’t forget 2020, I’ll hate these bloodsuckers til the day I die.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (2 children)

We got robbed blind during the pandemic. Not just in terms of price gouging, mind you. There's a reason that billionaires' cumulative wealth went up with the exact same amount it went down for ALL THE REST OF US. 95% of all dollars in existence were "minted" (digitally, ofc) in the last couple of years. That essentially means the dollar in your pocket is already worth just a few CENTS, you just don't know it yet. But we will.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not to doubt, but 95% seems high. Is there a source?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

You're correct, 95% is overblown, but it's still mindboggling: 20% of the total M2 supply was created in 2020 alone, and it has gone up since:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/53091/were-a-large-fraction-of-us-dollars-in-existence-printed-since-2020

Which still amounts to theft by inflation, which is something the founding fathers warned explicitly about.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

95%, 20%.... whats a 400%+ difference amongst friends on the internet, right?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

20% in 2020 alone. If they kept up the same rate, that would make 80% in 2024 which isn't THAT far off of 95%.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Except...they didn't keep up that same rate? M2 ij Jan 2020 was about 15.4 trillion, in April 2024 it was 20.9 trillion. So 26% of M2 supply was created since 2020, not 80%, not 95%.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

95% of all dollars in existence were “minted” (digitally, ofc) in the last couple of years.

No way this is true. Anyway, the act of printing money isn't the problem here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I see where they are coming from due to the other comments they made. If the various world governments had continued printing money the way they did in 2020, then almost 80%, maybe as much as 85% of the total money supply might have been printed in the last 4 years. That isn't what happened, and The US should be super fucking pissed about how it happened here, because 95% of the stimulus packages were aimed at the rich, shareholders, and corporations. Normal people were lucky if they got the full $2400 of all three stimulus packages over an 18 month time span. $2400 is only an average of a bit less than 3 months rent on average.

Meanwhile, the corporations got, on average, between $1,500,000 and $100,000,000 during the same time period.

Almost every other country spent the majority of the money on their people, creating an economic boom. If the amount of money printing had happened for the last four years, continuously, then most of the top economic countries in the world would have no poverty or homelessness.

Russia, China, The US, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and New Zealand don't count as top economic countries in the world. None of their economies are sustainable, or serve their citizens.