Progressives Urge Biden to Push Harder on ‘Greedflation’

[Hume]

As high prices at grocery stores, gas pumps and pharmacies have soured many voters on his first term, President Biden has developed a populist riposte: Blame big corporations for inflation, not me.

The Biden campaign has not focused its television or online advertisements on messages berating companies for high prices, unlike Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who have made the issue a centerpiece of their campaigns — and who are outrunning Mr. Biden in polls.

Whose Fault Is Inflation? Liberals Want Biden to Blame Big Business.

“Greedflation” is a moniker about corporate price increases that has bolstered some Democratic senators, and now the president is being encouraged to lean in on the issue for his economic messaging.

www.nytimes.com

 

[cawacko]

I'll offer an explanation for why he might not:

1) like some on this board, his campaign will be 100% about Trump

2) inflation is a large reason he polls so poorly on the economy - on one hand it's understandable he would address it to try to place blame elsewhere but going back to #1, he'd rather speak about Trump than inflation - and he's stuck between trying to sell that the economy is good/great but also having to defend himself against inflation

it's possible if he does speak about inflation and tries to place the blame elsewhere it could work, but how does he answer that this 'greedflation' occurred on his watch? He could claim he would do something about it in a second term but not sure that would convince skeptical voters who might wonder 'why didn't you do something about it now?'

 

[Hume]

Trump is a convicted felon. If I was Biden I would talk about nothing but that.

 

[Althea]

As high prices at grocery stores, gas pumps and pharmacies have soured many voters on his first term, President Biden has developed a populist riposte: Blame big corporations for inflation, not me.

Name one thing Biden did that caused inflation.

Big corporations just realized that if they want low interest rates, they have to stop raping the consumer. So now many of them are lowering prices after 2 years of record profits and prices.

 

[Althea]

Trump is a convicted felon. If I was Biden I would talk about nothing but that.

Nobody cares about the trial that wasn't being blocked by Right Wing judges.

They are concerned about prices, but there isn't much Biden can do about that aside from telling the truth about record corporate profits.

 

[cawacko]

No one individual is entirely responsible for inflation. The world doesn't work that way. But Biden's role in inflation came from him pushing for, and signing, the 2021 stimulus act. (From a political perspective they talk about general's always fighting the last war, well that's what Biden was doing here. He felt Obama didn't pass a big enough stimulus post GFC and he wasn't going to be caught doing that this time. The problem for him, and by extension us, was this wasn't 2009 and the economy didn't need more stimulus.)

The economy was already on the road to recovery and there was plenty of gov't stimulus already out there. The 2021 act just threw fuel on the fire (and people said so at the time). Biden made a political decision, not an economic one, and the result was it contributed in a big way to high inflation.

 

[Lionfish]

As high prices at grocery stores, gas pumps and pharmacies have soured many voters on his first term, President Biden has developed a populist riposte: Blame big corporations for inflation, not me.

The Biden campaign has not focused its television or online advertisements on messages berating companies for high prices, unlike Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who have made the issue a centerpiece of their campaigns — and who are outrunning Mr. Biden in polls.

Whose Fault Is Inflation? Liberals Want Biden to Blame Big Business.

“Greedflation” is a moniker about corporate price increases that has bolstered some Democratic senators, and now the president is being encouraged to lean in on the issue for his economic messaging.

www.nytimes.com

Sounds like brandonomics is a failure

 

[Mr.Badguy]

I saw an interesting video the other day that explained how many industries are using algorithms or AI consulting firms to set prices, and it ultimately achieves the same result as a monopoly or oligopoly fixing prices. All these companies use the same few firms algorithms which says something like "this is where you should set your prices". It's effectively like all the CEOs going into the same room and choosing to raise their prices at the same time, which is illegal price fixing, but this isn't regulated the same way because the laws are outdated.