Who to blame for the rising cost of living

WE.

It is the "WE" that are to be blamed for all these things. We are the "WE" to blame for we never study, we never reflect, we never change. We are the ones to be blamed for all these things.

The government is the reflection of the WE. For the WE is what makes it. Nevertheless, there are things that need some in-depth analysis regarding these things.

WE are the HUMANITY. We should be what we should ought to be. Yet, it is deeply embedded in us to strive only for ourselves, for our own pleasures, and for our own dreams. We are not human if we no longer know how to be one. WE are the HUMANITY. WE are the stewards of the you, the me, the we, the whole of humanity. It is the WE, not the you or the me, that should take the RESPONSIBILITY. WE are HUMANITY.

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

originally posted by: kittywrangler
quantitative easing as well as that printer going brrrr (M1)

There is that...

originally posted by: UpThenDown
Who to blame

Rich greedy corporations and the scumbag 1percenters who revel in wealth all while others suffer

Not possible.

As an example let say Apple, one of a handful of companies with enough value to briefly compete with government spending.

First off all their assets are already invested in their own products and the markets. They would have to sell everything, manufacturing, apple stores, contracts with retailers for shelf-space, etc. Dumping all that into the marking at once would crash the value of everything they are liquidating.

Then whatever they decide to buy up will rapidly increase in price as all investors will jump in wanting to take a cut. Creating a small isolated bubble with a depressing effect on everything outside that bubble.

When they run out of money the bubble pops costing them billions more in value.

And the worst part for what's left of Apple in this scenario: They are left with items that have less value than the iphone and Mac production they started with.

----------------------------------------

Now a real life example of government waste.

Remember Obama's cash for clunkers?

A trillion dollars printed out of then air, all in the pockets of car dealers who already made millions of dollars of sales a year.

Then when the government had a trillion dollars worth of used cars, they crushed them.

And since China is no longer buying our scrap metal they have no value. They are sitting out in the weather rusting away, with plastics leaching chemicals and breaking down into micro-particles in the sun and being absorbed into the earth and groundwater. We really saved the environment with that one. Have you priced a used car lately? No one would accuse them of being affordable.

It's the politicians, their corporate lobbyists and the MIC.

When the corporate or public debt load gets too high to service or crimps politician's ability to throw others money around then a round of high inflation via money printing (invented from thin air) effectively reduces the debt and increases tax revenue.

I believe it's on purpose and its criminal if not treasonous in regards oaths of office.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder


Well I blame everyone on the stinking planet for all of this, especially all the of election voters! I don't vote as it is a waste of my time and I gave it up a long time ago along with all that very wasteful paper trash that come in the mail during election time! Down with the human race! 👎

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder
a reply to: UpThenDown

I see you've cracked the case. The world would be a massively better place if 1% of the population owned most of the wealth. 1% is 1 in a 100 people, we walk past them or even talk to them every day, it's not that hard to reach the 1%. Back in 2012 I wrote a thread about how the richest 400 people in America own the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50% (155 million people). Those 400 people only represent 0.0001% of Americans yet they own as much wealth as half the population. And I'm sure the situation has worsened quite a bit throughout the pandemic due to the rampant inflation. All the money they printed had to end up somewhere but it doesn't seem to be in the bank account of the average Joe.

It is easy to blame the wealthy but also ignorant. The uber wealthy got that way because they created immense value through their companies and innovation that we all benefit from. Jeff Bezo is worth $200 billion because he created like $1 trillion in value through Amazon.

The cost of living has increased because government insist on printing money. In addition, regulations and other systematic issues make it harder for the average joe.

With that said, we also have to acknowledge that our standard of living has also increased dramatically as well.... especially in the US. In the US, our poor live like kings compared to much of the rest of the world. We are often detached from reality because we have it so good.

At the end of the day we can only blame ourselves.

The political sphere shilled short term prosperity and we took it. They were even honest in some of those cases (ie. interest rate drops) we’d have pain later and the populace always celebrated the easy quick fix.

Every political ideology has continued it whether it be traditional left, right, or progressive left and anti establishment right.

We supported the outsourcing of jobs by consuming the cheaper goods. All the publicly traded companies did what they were legally bound to do and make the best decisions based on their share holders.

With banks, we could have all picked local credit unions, with even lower rates and better benefits, yet the consolidation continues.

If there’s a single entity to blame, it’s only the populace.

At the end of the day we can only blame ourselves.

The political sphere shilled short term prosperity and we took it. They were even honest in some of those cases (ie. interest rate drops) we’d have pain later and the populace always celebrated the easy quick fix.

Every political ideology has continued it whether it be traditional left, right, or progressive left and anti establishment right.

We supported the outsourcing of jobs by consuming the cheaper goods. All the publicly traded companies did what they were legally bound to do and make the best decisions based on their share holders.

With banks, we could have all picked local credit unions, with even lower rates and better benefits, yet the consolidation continues.

If there’s a single entity to blame, it’s only the populace.

My view is that the seeds of misfortune can be put into a lot of folks baskets' of pretty much both mainstream political parties here in the US, at least as it pertains to our economy.

The 2008 financial crisis was the foundational moment leading to where we're at now, and that was pretty much chalked up to bipartisan feduciary irresponsibility. Arguably it can, I guess, be attributed in greater part to the R's for a lapse/loosening of regulations in financial markets. This led to explosive growth in trading of exotic securities like derivatives, and the "genius" idea of packaging toxic mortgages up as "financial instruments" that were sold by wholesale trading companies to their customers, while the trading companies placed short bets on the side that those "financial instruments" would tank. Watching/reading "The Big Short" is probably more informative (and entertaining) than what I'm describing but the fundamental facts are the same. Of note, this collapse started under Bush the 2nd, so that's another seed to put in one side's basket (basket that by 2008 was pretty much overflowing with seeds).

In the wake of 2008, Obama took over, in large part because he didn't make any psychotic/sociopathic, hair-brained campaign promises like allowing the entire American auto industry to collapse (unlike Mit Romney; another seed goes into a basket for Romney even being on a ballot). However, at that time, the Keynsian Disciples were swept into power along with our buddy Barack, and along came TARP and various other "gUbM't ReScUe pAcKaGez!" to shore up the tsunami of failing institutions from the mortgage crisis. This right here is where the monsoon of currency bloating began. A pretty big seed to heft up and dump in the basket.

Fast forward to 2020. At this point, the Greenback printing presses had been running day and night, through the tenures of administrations of POTUS from both parties (yet more seeds are put in baskets). ONE of the candidates in the 2020 election dangled candied treats, not so subtle hints at "gReEn eNvIrO-FRIENDLY!" policies on the menu should he win. Savvy voters/investors knew exactly what that meant: a shot fired across the bow of the fossil fuel providers and the American Petro-Dollar. I believe the markets actually fell substantially once or twice when Biden's puppeteers made those platform planks appear to emanate from his anti-deluvian maw. When enough Rubes or fake ballots (whichever narrative you prefer) led to the election of Biden as POTUS, we saw the realization of his campaign promises, a rarity in political circles. Biden stayed true to his word, and by Jan/Feb of this year, the value of a barrel of oil had shot up from a low of around $30/barrel during the plandemic to $93.95 in Jan 2022, nearly a tidy %200 increase in the space of a year (not half bad I'd say). Here's another seed for Biden's handlers. REMEMBER THAT DATE FOR REFERENCE, as it precedes the "uKrAnIaN iNvAsiOn"/"Putin's War", the Red Herring for recent skyrocketing oil prices intended for public consumption, by a few months.

I personally weigh the seed(s) put in the post-2020 baskets with particular heaviness/severity, because, hey we get it, some of us that are less in tune with the Earth sciences/geology have a tendency to fall prey to charlatans that overstate/over-emphasize the degree that anthropogenic climate change causes long-term, irreversible issues with the planet's biosphere. I mean only insane people don't have some modicum of thought towards cultivating renewable energy and EVENtually, gradually moving our economy off of the oil dependency. But I mean, to take the damaging and mind boggling energy policies that were put into place shortly after the 2020 elections, and put those into fast forward with such slapdash haste, with the most impeccably worst sense of timing imaginable, after one of the most severe economic problems in the history of the human race, can be describe in really only 2 ways:

Either the dealings of crazed, fanatical eco-terrorists that actually believe they are saving the planet from destruction...

or

Calculated machinations of charlatans looking to ca$h in the latest gold rush scheme....

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Thank you for the detailed post. Here's what really happened.

The fed printed trillions of dollars and handed it out to people that have no idea how to save or use money to make money. This resulted in demand for goods we've never seen before. From apples to washing machines.

That money is now gone. Inventories in manufacturing and retail is so high, they can't even take new inventory. We have a big problem right now.

What does it mean going forward?

I know a lot of people think a housing market crash is coming. I don't see it. Nobody is going to exit their 1k a month mortgage and enter a 1k a month rent on a house/apartment. It's not going to happen. They will let go of their 1k a month car payment. Or run up credit cards to pay their lifestyle.

What should I do now?
Tighten. Nobody is buying anything right now. This is the one time following the crowd is probably the right thing to do. The only outlier is used cars. If you need a car, your opportunity to get one cheap is coming in the next few months. Or the super car that you dreamed about as a child, there's going to be some sales.

It might be a time you talk to your wife or husband about spending. If you have more spending than income, now is the time to reel that in. Be respectful, buying things increases dopamine in the brain. It's a habit, like all drugs its an addiction.

When are we going to come out of this?

The fed said they will lower interest rates in 2024, if they don't keep rates high for a while all of this was a waste of time. I believe the first rate hikes will happen in Oct 2023. In the mean time, there will be crippling job losses. People so over extended on debt with mortgages, car payments and credit card debt will have to default. It's part of the plan.

What will the stock market do in Q1?

Drop. When earnings come out they are going to be dire. Double digit percent earnings drop. Be warned.

This all sounds so dire, what am I supposed to do?

I'm not a fan of gold and silver even tho I have some. I'm not a fan of crypto. I'm a fan of small banks and credit unions. If you have a lot of money, it would be a good idea to spread it around in different banks and assets.

If you had one piece of advice, what would it be?

Listen to youself. That gut feeling or that internal voice in your brainspace.... It's been right in the past. Listen to it. You are in charge of your reality, take a second to listen to it.

Simple supply/demand.

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

poor western policies post 2007/8 crash saw an increase in bureaucratic bloat and increase in high paying jobs for the boys.. its where they've been funnelling money into to keep the bureaucratic bloat floating on cheap laboour, watch closely which levels they start to let go this year as you'll see they are no longer letting the grunt workers go but rather the bureaucratic bloat just as we are seeing the about turns on flagship ESG type policies, you really can't survive on virtue alone..

in doing so it highlights how that strata of the west has enacted poor policy after poor policy none of which is thought through or even effective in making money (think the poor reforms of Gorby in the last days of the soviets).. its why the west has an $80trillion hole to fill but not the production lines to generate the new wealth needed to fill that hole.

our time is running out, look for the black swan pension event, we're sailing really close as central banks and governments are already trying to backfill the obvious pension holes to delay the inevitable but the coming collapse exceeds the scale of corruption seen in the 70s...

the one i'm watching as our potential Lehman's is BlackRock but we need this crash i we are to sort out the corruption just as we need the twitter files and others to pull us back to some form of plurality or it'll be worse than a soviet type fall..

a reply to: ChaoticOrder

Without reading anything or any replies, I'm pretty sure I have the most agreeable answer that others have probably already given you.

Democrats, the left, etc.

If I had found this thread first and made the first reply, I'd have a bunch of stars, damn. Early bird gets the worm.