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So I'm in the weird position or really, really liking the content of a post, but feeling compelled to downvote it because sir, this is a Wendy's.
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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It's 2023. If we start burning motherfuckers and taking their businesses there are going to be memes.
You're not wrong, but this still isn't one.
IIRC, the price cap on labor was to reduce workers from getting drawn to other companies that were paying higher wages. The idea was to make production predictable by keeping the limited labor force in place rather than having them be mobile. It led to the rise of benefits, like health insurance, being offered as part of total compensation packages since the extras weren't capped. Effectively this was the start of insurance being tied to employment.
Law of unintended consequences hit us in a big way with this one.
And all of those policies were in the middle of a global war so I’m assuming wartime and peacetime economics is a little bit different.
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They also capped the price of labor and banned strikes. All prices were controlled. Plus there was rationing. I believe you needed stamps to buy sugar, flour, and other things. Not food stamps, you still paid but you had a limit on the amount you could buy.
Which was reasonable?
With no control, a few could buy huge volumes to resell in the black market, just like what happened in the CoViD start with masks.
The consequences of "total war"
Specifically the fourth feature:
- Total control: Multisectoral centralisation of the powers and orchestration of the activities of the countries in a small circle of dictators or oligarchs, with cross-functional control over education and culture, media/propaganda, economic, and political activities.
Wiki
Not a meme.
Wrong community?
I felt like I was losing my mind screaming about all the things the government could of been doing during the insane covid era inflation. What Biden could of done instead of cranking up interest rates... but hey gotta turn the screws on all the poverty stricken folks with credit card debt so they can barely afford to live.
What should they have done instead?
Price controls as mentioned in the post, likely one of the most effective things. Aggressively prosecuting companies for price gauging would also send a clear message. When there's a huge surge of unemployment and companies are making record profits for no reason other than greed there's a lot of things that can be done but they aren't "capitalism" so they're bad.
If we're staying closer to neolibralism than OPs post you seemingly refused to read; winfall tax, uae said tax revenue to provide inflation relief.
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Remember when the place for Memes had Memes instead of angry political rants? Pepperidge farm remembers.
Now that’s some “By the people, For the people” government I can agree with.
It was mostly to keep us from eating the rich, but there are ways to deal with uprisings now that didn’t exist then.
To be fair, we weren't importing as many finished goods then, therefore we weren't competing in a global marketplace. If prices stayed the same temporarily, it wasn't a big deal.
Price controls cause shortages and rationing.
Edit: It's a pretty well-known concept that price controls cause shortages. Look what happened to communism. They said there was no inflation and prices were fixed forever. If a liter of milk is set at 1 rubble, and farmers can't make money at that price, milk selection reduces, or could even disappear.
Everybody in the supply chain has to make money, otherwise the chain breaks.
Price controls cause shortages and rationing.
Because toilet paper was price controlled during COVID, right?
No. Price controls don't cause shortages. Price controls redistribute the burden of an existing shortage. Without price controls, shortages mean only poor people go without; with price controls, everyone shares in the burden.
Imagine there's a shortage of toilet paper. In a capitalist market, if there's a shortage, the price of the good goes up. This means rich people still have all the toilet paper they want, middle class people have to budget and go without other things to avoid toilet paper, and poor people can't afford toilet paper at all.
There's no rationing in capitalist markets, either, so people with enough capital can buy extra toilet paper to sell at a higher price, making it even harder for the middle class and the poor to afford toilet paper.
In other words, without price control, the burden of the shortage falls on the poor and middle class and gives wealthy capitalists an opportunity to expand their wealth at the expense of the poor.
And if you doubt that this happens look at how many small businesses Amazon pushed out of business during the lockdowns.
That's what capitalism is. It's not magic, it doesn't create resources where none exist, it is a method of distributing scarce resources by prioritizing people who have the most resources already. Capitalism "solves" shortages by raising prices until enough poor people can't afford the item that everyone else has enough. Capitalism is hateful, elitist, and contemptuous of basic human rights.
So we impose price controls and rationing. Everybody has less toilet paper. But everybody has some toilet paper. Instead of one part of society being immune from the shortage and one part of society having nothing, everyone shares in the burden.
And this is why our political and capitalist classes hate price controls. They think they should be above economic hardship. If they can't get anything they want anytime they want, it means they're just like poor people. And they'll do anything to avoid that injury to their pride.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
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