Biden's America

[BigRedBuster]

13 minutes ago, Born N Bled Red said:

This is the real reason inflation is up. 

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/business/pandemic-savings.html

 

It's the continuous siphoning of any accrual of wealth by the middle and lower class. The nursing home and healthcare industries are designed to prevent the inheritance of generational wealth as well. 

 

I agree about with this about nursing homes and healthcare.  It's absolutely disgusting how often people spend their entire life savings on the last few years of life because of this.

 

However, I find it interesting that this comment is made when so often from the left people argue that people should be taxed heavily on inheritance because passing wealth to the next generation is bad.

[Born N Bled Red]

1 minute ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

I agree about with this about nursing homes and healthcare.  It's absolutely disgusting how often people spend their entire life savings on the last few years of life because of this.

 

However, I find it interesting that this comment is made when so often from the left people argue that people should be taxed heavily on inheritance because passing wealth to the next generation is bad.

 

 

There is no federal inheritance tax, but there is a federal estate tax. In 2021, federal estate tax generally applies to assets over $11.7 million, and the estate tax rate ranges from 18% to 40%.

 

I have NO sympathy for the Walton's, Clinton's, Bezos' Trumps, and others who made their wealth cheating the system with offshore accounts and tax havens they damn well should pay their taxes. Its probably the only time the US has collected on most of those funds. 

[BigRedBuster]

4 minutes ago, Born N Bled Red said:

 

 

There is no federal inheritance tax, but there is a federal estate tax. In 2021, federal estate tax generally applies to assets over $11.7 million, and the estate tax rate ranges from 18% to 40%.

 

I have NO sympathy for the Walton's, Clinton's, Bezos' Trumps, and others who made their wealth cheating the system with offshore accounts and tax havens they damn well should pay their taxes. Its probably the only time the US has collected on most of those funds. 

So, passing on wealth is a bad thing.  There's a big difference between 11.7 million and the Waltons and Bezoses of the world.

[Born N Bled Red]

5 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

So, passing on wealth is a bad thing.  There's a big difference between 11.7 million and the Waltons and Bezoses of the world.

 

It should graduated just like our tax code. If you're wealthy enough to pay for in home private caretakers that prevent your funds from being depleted by the nursing home and healthcare industries the system is rigged in your favor. 

[BigRedBuster]

4 minutes ago, Born N Bled Red said:

 

It should graduated just like our tax code. If you're wealthy enough to pay for in home private caretakers that prevent your funds from being depleted by the nursing home and healthcare industries the system is rigged in your favor. 

In home healthcare is more expensive than being in a facility.

[Guy Chamberlin]

3 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

It’s a strange thought process some people have. 

 

But isn't it also strange to call a temporary pause in massive profits and executive compensation "tanking" or "martyrdom?"

 

If the thought process is to make as much money as you can at every opportunity, and funnel it up to the privileged few. I guess. We'd also have to ignore that average taxpayers end up footing a lot of bills and bailouts for the fantastically wealthy.  

 

So are we resigned to this fact, or are we actually celebrating the freedom to profit by any means possible? 

[Lorewarn]

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

However, I find it interesting that this comment is made when so often from the left people argue that people should be taxed heavily on inheritance because passing wealth to the next generation is bad.

 

When you say 'people'...sounds like you're making a blanket statement about all wealth inheritance. Is that what you're claiming the left thinks? Or that they think there should be a cap, or a sliding scale of tax, that primarily or exclusively effects only the super rich people and not just...people.

 

 

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

So, passing on wealth is a bad thing.  There's a big difference between 11.7 million and the Waltons and Bezoses of the world.

 

There's also a big difference between "passing on wealth is a bad thing" and "the ultra rich hoarding wealth at the expense of the entire lower and middle classes of our country"

 

 

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

In home healthcare is more expensive than being in a facility.

 

Which means those that pay for it have a lot more money and are thus more unlikely to deplete their wealth.

[JJ Husker]

Who could have guessed that inflation (rising costs and rising sales prices) also causes profits to rise?

 

I didn’t take a tremendous amount of business classes but common sense tells me if a company is making 5% profit (for arguments sake) on $1B in sales, when those sales jump up to say $1.3B due to inflation, they still want to make 5% profit, which is an increase in real dollars but not in percentage. Is that wrong?

 

I won’t stick up for or justify a system that funnels so much to the top few or for legitimate price gouging but this is pretty much what occurs with inflation. Are some of you proposing that profits should not rise in line with rising sales? That strikes me as a little naive.

[Born N Bled Red]

20 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

Who could have guessed that inflation (rising costs and rising sales prices) also causes profits to rise?

 

I didn’t take a tremendous amount of business classes but common sense tells me if a company is making 5% profit (for arguments sake) on $1B in sales, when those sales jump up to say $1.3B due to inflation, they still want to make 5% profit, which is an increase in real dollars but not in percentage. Is that wrong?

 

I won’t stick up for or justify a system that funnels so much to the top few or for legitimate price gouging but this is pretty much what occurs with inflation. Are some of you proposing that profits should not rise in line with rising sales? That strikes me as a little naive.

 

A long ways from 5%

On an earnings call with Wall Street analysts this morning, the meat giant Tyson reported earnings per share up by 50 percent over last year, driven by price increases of 32 percent in beef, 20 percent in chicken, and 13 percent in pork. These price hikes to consumers go neither to farmers nor to supermarkets but to giant monopoly middlemen like Tyson.

 

[Born N Bled Red]

 

25 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

Who could have guessed that inflation (rising costs and rising sales prices) also causes profits to rise?

 

I didn’t take a tremendous amount of business classes but common sense tells me if a company is making 5% profit (for arguments sake) on $1B in sales, when those sales jump up to say $1.3B due to inflation, they still want to make 5% profit, which is an increase in real dollars but not in percentage. Is that wrong?

 

I won’t stick up for or justify a system that funnels so much to the top few or for legitimate price gouging but this is pretty much what occurs with inflation. Are some of you proposing that profits should not rise in line with rising sales? That strikes me as a little naive.

 

60% of the increase in inflation is going to corporate profits. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/corporate-profits-drive-60-of-inflation?utm_source=url

 

Just before the pandemic, in 2019, American non-financial corporations made about a trillion dollars a year in profit, give or take. This amount had remained constant since 2012. Today, these same firms are making about $1.73 trillion a year. That means that for every American man, woman and child in the U.S., corporate America used to make about $3,081, and today corporate America makes about $5,207. That’s an increase of $2,126 per person.

Still, in order to know just how significant that amount is relative to inflation, we have to figure out how much inflation is costing the average American. A rough way to get that would be to take the total amount America produces annually, which is the Gross Domestic Product, and multiply that by the inflation rate. That’s $23 trillion of GDP times the 6.8% inflation rate, which comes out to $1.577 trillion, or $4,752 per American.

Taking all of this together, it means that increased profits from corporate America comprise 44.7% of the inflationary increase in costs. That means corporate profits alone are absorbing a 3% inflation rate on all goods and services in America (44.7% of 6.8% annual inflation), with all other factors causing the remaining 3.8%, for a total inflation rate of 6.8%. In other words, had corporate America kept the same average annual level of profits in 2021 as it did from 2012-2019 and passed on today’s excess to consumers, the inflation rate would be 3.8%, not 6.8%. And that’s a big difference, indeed it is the difference between Americans getting a raise, and seeing real wages decline. (It also could explain why inflation is lower in Europe - corporate profits there were very good in 2021, but not as good as in the U.S. And in Japan both inflation and corporate profits were low.)

It gets worse, because this calculation assumes that all 6.8% of the inflationary increase in prices is new. But of course, inflation isn’t zero in normal years, the Fed has an inflation target of 2%. In 2019, inflation hit 1.8%. So if you take the pre-existing inflation rate in 2019 of 1.8% and back that out of the numbers, then it turns out that 60% of the increase in inflation is going to corporate profits.

3% to corporate profits + 1.8% preexisting inflation + 2% from government spending/supply shocks = 6.8% total inflation rate

[JJ Husker]

28 minutes ago, Born N Bled Red said:

 

A long ways from 5%

On an earnings call with Wall Street analysts this morning, the meat giant Tyson reported earnings per share up by 50 percent over last year, driven by price increases of 32 percent in beef, 20 percent in chicken, and 13 percent in pork. These price hikes to consumers go neither to farmers nor to supermarkets but to giant monopoly middlemen like Tyson.

 

The 5% I used as an example was very much not the thing to focus on. It doesn’t matter if its 1% or 300% for the point I was making.

[JJ Husker]

25 minutes ago, Born N Bled Red said:

 

 

60% of the increase in inflation is going to corporate profits. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/corporate-profits-drive-60-of-inflation?utm_source=url

 

Just before the pandemic, in 2019, American non-financial corporations made about a trillion dollars a year in profit, give or take. This amount had remained constant since 2012. Today, these same firms are making about $1.73 trillion a year. That means that for every American man, woman and child in the U.S., corporate America used to make about $3,081, and today corporate America makes about $5,207. That’s an increase of $2,126 per person.

Still, in order to know just how significant that amount is relative to inflation, we have to figure out how much inflation is costing the average American. A rough way to get that would be to take the total amount America produces annually, which is the Gross Domestic Product, and multiply that by the inflation rate. That’s $23 trillion of GDP times the 6.8% inflation rate, which comes out to $1.577 trillion, or $4,752 per American.

Taking all of this together, it means that increased profits from corporate America comprise 44.7% of the inflationary increase in costs. That means corporate profits alone are absorbing a 3% inflation rate on all goods and services in America (44.7% of 6.8% annual inflation), with all other factors causing the remaining 3.8%, for a total inflation rate of 6.8%. In other words, had corporate America kept the same average annual level of profits in 2021 as it did from 2012-2019 and passed on today’s excess to consumers, the inflation rate would be 3.8%, not 6.8%. And that’s a big difference, indeed it is the difference between Americans getting a raise, and seeing real wages decline. (It also could explain why inflation is lower in Europe - corporate profits there were very good in 2021, but not as good as in the U.S. And in Japan both inflation and corporate profits were low.)

It gets worse, because this calculation assumes that all 6.8% of the inflationary increase in prices is new. But of course, inflation isn’t zero in normal years, the Fed has an inflation target of 2%. In 2019, inflation hit 1.8%. So if you take the pre-existing inflation rate in 2019 of 1.8% and back that out of the numbers, then it turns out that 60% of the increase in inflation is going to corporate profits.

3% to corporate profits + 1.8% preexisting inflation + 2% from government spending/supply shocks = 6.8% total inflation rate

This is a good example of something to complain about that is wrong.

 

What can the average consumer do about it?

[ZRod]

On 2/22/2022 at 7:53 AM, BigRedBuster said:

It’s a strange thought process some people have. 

Eh, it's not that strange. Yes prices would go up temporarily or you would have a short period of inflation, but if all other things remained equal you just put more buying power into the hands of a greater number of people so demand on consumer goods would conceivably go on up. That being said, we're all aware that there are serious supply chain issues right now so you have increased (maybe actually similar) levels of demand, but with much less supply. That's a recipe for horrible inflation no matter what the compensation structure looks like.

 

The simplest thing is look at what happens to the price of oil when a natural disasters strikes, or a refinery goes down. Prices skyrocket because the supply is strangled. That's essentially what's going on now. I think most of these companies could have easily absorbed wage increases, but there's no way they could handle wages and supply issue over a 2 year+ period.

[knapplc]

Some people are suspecting that Ketanji Brown Jackson will be Biden's Supreme Court nominee based on past precedent with Kavanaugh.

 

 

 

 

[admo]

Ahem.  

We've seen how your Joe Biden famously mishandled Afghanistan.  We've seen inflation skyrocket in record numbers, fuel prices rising astronomically, and how Biden ignored and mishandled the mass border crisis, then flew illegal immigrants across the country during the middle of the night...  We also know - without a doubt - that Joe Biden deserves absolutely zero credit towards vaccinations - when Trump said they were coming by the new year during the debates.  Biden, as you recall, scoffed at that and said "you need masks and the wherewithal, for science.... to see it, touch it, feel it".

So what will Joe Biden do now, along with his Democratic Utopia, with regards to this Russia and Ukraine nightmare?  Will he help Ukraine? Choose not to help them? 

 

The country is barely more than a year into his appointed presidency.  

 

What's he going to do as a leader of the most powerful nation in the world?

This is the president you voted for, so you should have great knowledge, CNN, MSNBC, (don't forget NPR's viewpoint, or LP), plus random twitter stuff to provide answers.

 

Biden's America...

Discuss.