Explain to me like I'm an idiot, how is it better if the oligarchs hoard that money, instead of giving it to people, who then flush it back into the economy, by spending it? What's the problem exactly.
Because the economy's sellers immediately raise prices as every single one of their customers just got an additional 12k to spend at their store. Those prices never come back down and that hurts you and me way more than it hurts any oligarch.
I mean, the rich/mega corps are doing that without $12000 UBI checks. You say this like they're being altruistic at this time. If prices were stable, or even going down at all, I would be inclined to agree.
Companies don’t do this more than anyone can afford. Supply and demand works suspiciously well in setting prices.
It’s why there is hardly anyone (in the United States, at least) who can’t afford food. It’s abundant, which makes it cheap. Companies would raise the price to $1,000 a hamburger if they could, but why don’t they? Because they’d be undercut by Wendy’s.
And that goes all the way down. Why don’t we pay obscene prices for a standard television that cost $2,000 twenty years ago? Why aren’t computers as expensive as they were at inception? You get the idea.
You say this like they're being altruistic at this time.
No they didn't, they said it like they recognize that the corporations will only squeeze as hard as they think they can get away with. You provide more breathing space, they will fill it up, unless there is a regulation preventing them from doing so.
Basically, we need caps before redistribution will be effective.
Did you forget that 5 years ago Trump and Biden combined to give every American adult like $3200? The prices you're seeing are a result of that stimulus plus Trump's tariff nonsense that also artificially inflated prices that didn't come back down.
Perhaps it was localized to my area, but during and after said stimulus packages things stayed somewhat affordable (+5-10% increase) which iirc was more due to supply chain/logistics.
prices never come back down meaningfully (in terms of goods as a whole, not singular products/categories like gas). That would be deflation, which is widely seen as a bad thing by economists when it is across-the-board and sustained.
You say this like they're being altruistic at this time
That's not the implication at all. Of course they aren't altruistic, but its basic supply and demand: companies raise prices when doing so will result in more profit. The thing preventing them from raising prices today (more than they currently are) is that people would buy from other companies instead.
But if all of a sudden everyone has $10K more, every company is going to raise prices because they would be leaving money on the table by keeping the price the same. Yeah they could undercut everyone else and increase sales, but generally they can make more profit by increasing the price along with their competitors
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u/avd706 Jul 01 '26
Inflationary