They keep raising prices, stating that it’s due to inflation, but then they keep having record profits.
Meanwhile, the average American can barely afford rent or food nowadays.
What are we to do? Vote? I have been but that doesn’t seem to do much since I’m just voting for a representative that makes the actual decisions.
Join a more radical organisation than the democrats. Participate in rallies, protests and put up flyers. Its not easy.
Instructions unclear: Joined the Trump campaign.
Prices aren’t coming down. Our financial systems are built around inflation and drastic measures will be taken to fight deflation.
You can only reduce expenses so far. As purchasing power fell, steak was replaced with ground beef, and ground beef is getting replaced with beans and rice. What can replace beans and rice? Already, too many people are having sleep for dinner.
The answer is both simple and difficult: we need to get paid more.
Cry and hope for a revolution. Since the Supreme Court decided money is speech, we have no power. Representatives don’t care about their constituents unless a message comes with a “charitable donation”. The rich are seemingly immune to laws, but somehow there’s a surplus of money available to fuck over the little guy. This is a failed country of the corporations, and for the corporations.
France has the right idea about what we were supposed to do.
Protest about every single issue then vote for the most milquetoast president possible, with a side helping of fascist Russian-puppet as a runner up?
Stop voting Democrat, obviously. Since it was their policies that caused the high prices.
Eat the rich. Bring back the guillotine.
There’s surely appetite building around the world for this. Who will throw the first stone that starts the landslide?
France
What a horrible take, encouraging violence against people. For shame.
Literally nothing has ever been won from kings and oligarchs by asking nicely you naive child.
Don’t sling insults. By doing so it demonstrates that you have no argument worth making.
Didn’t have this problem under Trump.
My dude, we had covid prices and insane global shortages under Trump.
Not that the huge supply chains were his fault, but my 4 year old GPU appreciated 300% during that period.
Don’t you get tired from losing?
No one loses because of the ranting of fools. I take the down votes here for what they are, the desperate clinging of a false narrative by people that refuse to see reality and instead of thinking for themselves rely on others to do it for them.
The ranting of fools has actually lost us quite a lot
Looks like someone got high by sniffing their own farts again. You’ve been proved wrong with facts that don’t care about your feelings. You don’t get to act enlightened here. Try 4chan’s /pol, you might find a couple of your fellow bleach-drinking friends there.
Wow, the self-righteousness just oozes from you. You haven’t proved anything. Keep trying kid.
What?? The inflation problems literally STARTED under Trump. He’s not to blame for the covid supply chain issues, sure, but “didn’t have this problem under Trump” is an easily fact checked lie.
That’s a fucking stupid thing to say (or even think).
Look at their post history, lol
Yeah… I actually did that immediately after I commented that and then just blocked them since I knew there was zero chance of rational discussion.
Yeah. When you already know there’s nothing better coming, no point in waiting.
People started complaining about inflation when Trump was still president, after people started hoarding toilet paper, then at a larger scale after the first stimulus cheques. I’m not blaming him personally for that specifically, COVID was hard for all countries on Earth, but facts are facts.
Bullcrap. Nice revisionist history. Inflation was non-existent under Trump. This is all on Biden and his doing everything his feeble mind is able to tank the economy.
It was non-existent at the end of Obama’s last turn.
But it definitely is back once Trump started.
Don’t let statistics hit you on your way out.
Roll over and die
Stop buying their shit. Obviously there’s things you need to live and that’s fine but stop wasting your money and making them rich by buying all the ancillary shit.
This is the answer. Its simple but not easy. Do you think the average person knows what they’re spending money on each month? And how much? One chick I knew was spending almost $500 a month dining out!! A MONTH!
It is difficult to not have any “fun” purchases tho, nearly impossible imo. But you have to have spending discipline and next to no people have that.
But let’s say everyone stops spending on non essentials, taken to its conclusion that would leave only grocery stores, dr offices, mechanics, and banks left to do business lol maybe a few others.
But… those places all price gouge too :(.
Everyone starts growing veggies and fruit, and only buying direct from farmers.
Shoplift
Start being an actual adult and start making your own shit.
The only way to free yourself from the slave racket is to stop being dependent on it to survive.
Easy mode: Learn how to cook, and cook clean whole foods. Stop buying processed junk garbage.
Hard mode: Get tools and equipment and learn how to build and fix your own shit. Difficult and will take time, but 100% worthwhile.
Both methods allow you to produce goods and offer services you can sell to other people, too. That way, those that actually can’t make or do for themselves can turn to you and not shitty corporations for survival.
I agree with you, but you can’t do it for everything.
I see so many people just throwing money away it’s crazy.
Like you said, cooking for yourself and your family. Don’t eat out. Bring packed lunches to work. My family might get fast food once or twice a month max, the rest is all from the grocery store. Eating out is stupid expensive now.
When it comes to your cars. Learn to change your own oil, battery, and air filter. Dealers and repair shops charge stupid prices for this stuff and it’s easy enough to do that you can do it in 15-30 minutes yourself. Remember to properly dispose of your fluids.
Learn to fix your own tech, tech jobs pay a lot which means that you as the customer will pay a lot to get your shit fixed.
Learn how to fix simple plumbing in your house, repair drywall, install/repair simple electrical stuff. When I see people in my local area paying handymen $500 to install a ceiling fan (not the electrical part like running wires, just hanging the damn thing), I about lose it.
Here it is illegal for anyone who isn’t a licensed electrician to install anything permanent and electrical, such as a ceiling fan
My father was a freakin electrician and I helped him with many jobs over the years, but I’m not allowed to install a ceiling fan, even if there’s existing wiring…
I don’t think that’s the initial point of OP.
The point is that quality of life and real income are in strong decline, and it doesn’t seem like it will get better in any observable future, should policymakers stay the same.
Sure, there are easy methods to cut expenses or even make some beer money, but a)many have already implemented it, and b)everyone already could.
The question can be formulated as “how can we improve the living situation for everybody?”. So that you wouldn’t need to figure out how to live cheaper or get some side hustle as you see your income shrinks.
Honestly, if we all grew and shared our own food, that alone would be enough to turn the tide and improve our lives.
We could use the money we save from groceries and use it to buy land, and with that land take back economic power from corporations, politicians and the ruling class.
We could organize and pick representatives amongst us that aren’t part of either party to take local offices and use their powers to change zoning laws to enable more housing to be built, and to allocate funding for such, and to pass laws banning anyone other than primary residents from buying the properties.
Assuming you want to do it legally. Arguably one individual could accomplish a lot more with the proper use of a .50 cal.
I’d argue you can’t outplay corporations in their own game. If you start saving on groceries and make it a trend, they’ll just find a way to cut your income once more. Because why paying so much if you can now get on with less?
Besides, the sum saved from sharing food is not nearly enough to buy any significant amount of land anyway, and you also need all the machinery and equipment to make it work, and even then this entire thing should be set at an enormous scale to combat the scale benefit of existing corpos (which would be very tough considering such scaling will cause immense oversaturation of the market and fierce price wars, to which independent businesses are not ready due to lack of reserves, i.e. corpos will just dump the price, see your community die off without money, and raise prices back up again the minute it happens, as they constantly do to manage competition).
Local representatives could work, but first something needs to be done with human perception of independent parties.
Honestly, .50 cal seems to be the most risky, violent, but most workable option. No wonder most such big changes were accompanied by bloody revolutions.
That’s not true, people have been making their own stuff for thousands of years before these corpos came up and we can do it again.
And we can collectively set up our own nonprofits we all own and that actually serve us, too.
You just have to believe it’s possible, which it is. And you have to believe in yourself. If you think those are lies, your worldview is just negatively skewed. People can and do make change all of the fucking time. It’s time for our generation to be among them.
For those thousands of year people lived in extreme poverty, because “just making stuff yourself” is actually extremely inefficient. There’s a reason industries started to centralize in the first place - the scale effect is huge, and we can’t expect to beat well-coordinated, centralized entities by just “doing stuff for ourselves”.
We need to organize and unite, but as I said, in a capitalist competition, unless you accrue capital bigger than the corporations (which is, well, problematic), you’ll just die to a price war (unless you convince everyone to go starve).
The only way is to change the system, to put already existing production capabilities to serve general population. This means strikes. This means protests. This means instating the new government if need be. Those are exactly the methods that drove us to more equality and prosperity in the past, the thing you talk about.
We cannot move further in an existing frame, and “just believing your dream” won’t change objective economic issues discussed in every economy 101. People who ignored basic economics for their idea ended up very poorly.
Making stuff ourselves and breaking free of the corporate vice grip is the only way we can make doing that viable.
Unless you thought corporations won’t just stop producing until the people surrender.
The only way is to capture the means of production - they’re only owned by corporations because some legal papers say so.
Corporations can and constantly do kill independent initiatives. It’s actually super easy, and doesn’t require anything but big cash reserves allowing them to wage price wars.
Besides, it is simply impractical to reinvent existing economy, and it will get to the same point over time. We can skip this and move directly into the factories that are already built.
Yeah, lots of people in here saying “stop supporting corporations” as if it is not only easy, but simple to do.
Wanna cook whole foods? You growing your own or buying them from the Amish?
Wanna fix your own house (something I am currently doing), good luck finding a hardware/lumber supply that isn’t owned by one.
Want to use the internet?
It isn’t so simple. I think doing what you can with what you have is all anyone in the working class can really do. For some people it’s more, others less.
In the end, it seems like human history is a series of people with wealth and resources screwing over others, with brief bursts of progress.
Ugj.
I actively enjoy cooking, but it’s shocking and shameful how little a classic education does for one of the most fundamental aspects of living your life. Nearly every relationship I’ve been in I have the been the primary chef for, purely because I know the basics. Home Ecc should be a mandatory class because every single one of us needs to eat and should be able to provide a solid meal for ourselves (and it should also include finance education but that’s a whole other thing). I don’t put the fault on any individual person for not knowing, but it is a skill that EVERYONE should foster.
Check in to the American test kitchen YouTube for all sorts of advice, or go to the library and check out their extensive catalog. You’d be suprised how easily obtainable restaurant quality food is from your own kitchen.
You need to be the example you want to see in this world. Buy ZERO Corporate.
That’s it.
Delete subscriptions. Replace your music collection with pirated MP3s. Same with movies.
Learn to cook.
Obviously you’ll have to buy gas. Nothing is perfect.
Make a start.
Voting with your wallet is literally plutocracy – those with more dollars get more votes.
Not only is our theoretically bad, but it’s practically bad: the impact of a boycott is negligible, but the impact on the people doing the boycott is huge: not having access to the conveniences everyone else has puts us at a significant disadvantage compared to our peers.
And finally, it’s not just practically bad, it’s actually contraindicated. The executives of a corporation are legally required to maximize immediate returns to their investors. It’s literally illegal for a CEO to move a company in the direction of civic responsibility over profit. And it’s not just “profit” – it has to be increasing profit. Line has to go up; they can’t just keep it flat, even if “flat” is hugely profitable. To withdraw our financial support will just cause them to squeeze harder on everyone else.
(There’s an argument that there might be more profit in social responsibility, but unless you have numbers to back that up, and it demonstrates immediate returns in addition to long term benefits, then it’s just a guess, and a guess is never going to be more convincing to shareholders than facts.)
The only way to change this is with regulation, and a cultural shift away from “line goes up” mentality. And you can’t effect political change when you’re spend 3x as long making dinner because you’re boycotting processed food.
Suggesting that we just give up all the conveniences that our labor, our creativity, and our cultural contributions have enabled, for the sake of convincing a CEO to be nicer is just ineffectual.
The executives of a corporation are legally required to maximize immediate returns to their investors. It’s literally illegal for a CEO to move a company in the direction of civic responsibility over profit. And it’s not just “profit” – it has to be increasing profit. Line has to go up; they can’t just keep it flat, even if “flat” is hugely profitable.
Pretty sure this is a myth. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders
This moves me.
Thank you.
I’m so distanced from all regulatory processes that they seem literally as impossible as your vision of boycotts. And yet, I now see how pressuring regulatory bodies for the change we want is a very effective tactic.
But it look how long legalized marijuana has taken — that process started in the 70s.
Look how fast Musk was able to turn Twitter into the mouthpiece of fascism. Weeks.
This is what we are dealing with.
I want to push back on your sense of “convenience.”
I am not covetous of streaming. I have abandoned it.
I’m in charge of my media libraries.
What I’m saying is that we can do both: apply pressure on regulatory bodies WHILE abandoning crushing predatory capitalism.
I eat healthily. It does not hurt ME that I refuse to eat corporate bile.
I choose my media. It does not hurt ME that I never see ads.
Anyway — hoping that you can appreciate you have made me value the regulatory pressure argument while I still believe we are powerful.
Tbh, in the digital world Lemmy is actually a nice step imo. But more steps can always be taken (as long they’re reasonable). Whether its physical or digital.
Buying clubs, when you and all your neighbors and friends buy directly from producers can cut out a lot of the graft. This lowers prices, connects you to your neighbors, and lowers the divide between the rural and urban. There may already be buyers cooperatives local to you. Some even give food based on volunteering.
My favourite theory of revolution is where these clubs start to encroach into housing and medicine. Eventually you have an economy based on mutual dependence and responsibility.
How does one start a buying club?
Food co-ops are the most popular form of buyers club and an excellent place to start. Here’s a how to guide.
I read this as “buying clubs”. Like, buy clubs and hit stuff. My first take was “Ah, the violent revolutionary type.” :)
Only in my darker moments 😅 Most of the time I think their punishment is having to be a working stiff like the rest of us
you are suppose to live with it or die according to the law.
The only solution is to demand more money and buy less. Buying less will decrease demand and cut their profits, having more money will cover inequity.
This pretty much already happened with the “nobody wants to work” bullshit. People moved to better jobs, and jobs that could no longer pay a living wage either raised wages or closed their doors. Workers need to keep demanding more, unionizing, and raising wages to keep the money in their pockets. The people complaining are complaining they can’t have 4 car garages when the employees can’t afford rent. Fuck those people.
