What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices?

The biggest thing is to be aware of how much things should cost, and just refuse to buy them if they're gouging.

Can I afford $13 for a case of Coca-Cola? Sure, I absolutely can. I can afford $24 a case. I'm just not willing to pay that. That same case was $7 in 2019. You can't tell me their costs have doubled.

And even if I believed their costs doubled (and I don't), that doesn't mean their prices have to double. They're not entitled to growing percentage profit on a larger number. Just because they made 20% on that $7 case doesn't mean they deserve 20% on that $13 case. 20% of $7 is $1.40. They could absolutely take $2 profit on $10 and be happy with it. But they won't. Because people don't pay attention and they can get away with it.

There are enough barriers to entry and cooperation among would-be competitors that they can charge basically whatever the duck they choose.

cutting back spending is hard when it's one of the main ways to feel joy; you already have to spend on groceries and bills anyway, and it feels that much more stark and grim denying yourself the fun foods and nice convenience items to save like $10, then your rent goes up $50 because they said so, and so what's the point anyhow...

While I personally do appreciate the level of detail and amount of options provided in this reply, the more straightforward and longer-term solution is to eat the rich.

I'm fortunate enough to not be in a position where money is tight for food, but re: beans and rice, I absolutely love my instant pot!

Mexican-style beans are, IMHO, delicious, easy to make, and dirt cheap. I love them, our toddler loves them, and it's easy on the wallet. Dry beans are really affordable, and a 25lb bag of rice is great to have in the pantry (note: careful with bulk brown rice as I think it can go rancid). A stove and a pot can do both, but an instant pot and a rice cooker makes it so easy.

I also drink a fair amount of coffee, but again, bulk or even just "make coffee at home" is very affordable. A few cups at Starbucks costs the same as a pound of beans (which yields many cups).

This is good advice. And I think it helps to think of it as a protest. None of us wants to deprive ourselves, but if they’re charging stupid prices for beef then give them the middle finger and eat lentils for a time. It can be an empowering experience instead of a shameful one if it’s intentional and you can get your whole family bought into the concept.

dude, there is no evidence for supply side economics to have ever worked, the price has nothing to do with supply and demand

Learning to do repairs yourself has never been easier thanks to YouTube. There's also a ton of sources for replacement parts online these days, many of which provide repair videos for the more common parts. My dishwasher broke a few months ago; $60 for a new intake pump and a few hours of my time and it's working as if it's brand new. My TV died out a little over a year ago; $35 for a new power supply (probably could've repaired it for a few bucks if I had just replaced a capacitor or two) and less than an hour of my time and it's right as rain. Most repair jobs are a lot less daunting than people assume they are.

But big daddy government says guns are really bad and only they should have them!!! (jk)

Learning skills like sewing, planting/storing extra food, first aid and knowing how to use a gun isn't something for crazy bunker dwellers or the Amish. It's skills that my grandparents knew.

It makes you more resilient and capable, especially in an emergency when supply chains/govt are strained (that's why the preppers do it). You don't have to go all Stardew Valley but I think it's good stuff to know at a basic level.

the myth of supply based economics, and other fairytales.

Realistically there is no reason for produce or rent to be increasing in price, there is not any actual reason for the hikes in COL other than "record profits"

Not to promote violence, but I'm afraid nothing is likely to change until people are pushed far enough to do more than hope.

Unions are a very good answer to this. They aren't a complete solution, but they are a big step in the right direction. And they're something almost everyone can do.

Long answer: direct action

Unions wont do shit unless they also stop supporting capitalist owned politicians thats keeping them down

This is the answer. Its simple but not easy. Do you think the average person knows what they're spending money on each month? And how much? One chick I knew was spending almost $500 a month dining out!! A MONTH!

It is difficult to not have any "fun" purchases tho, nearly impossible imo. But you have to have spending discipline and next to no people have that.

But let's say everyone stops spending on non essentials, taken to its conclusion that would leave only grocery stores, dr offices, mechanics, and banks left to do business lol maybe a few others.

Protest about every single issue then vote for the most milquetoast president possible, with a side helping of fascist Russian-puppet as a runner up?

old family tradition

There's surely appetite building around the world for this. Who will throw the first stone that starts the landslide?

What a horrible take, encouraging violence against people. For shame.

Don't participate in wanton consumerism.

This is the answer. And it comes with other benefits also.

I do okay financially. I don't have problems affording necessities. But I have found there is also a lot of satisfaction in being more self-sufficient, in relying less on supply companies to deliver my every need. And it saves a ton of money.

Food is a big one. I used to spend a ton of money on takeout, delivery, junk food. But here's the thing, basic cooking really isn't that hard. It doesn't have to take up a lot of time, especially if you meal prep. And the resulting food is both better in quality and better for you.

On that same thread, the grocery store is not always your friend. Especially if it's one of the big national chains. You will find much better quality produce at your local farmer's market, and it's often cheaper too. Certainly way more flavorful, the vegetable that was in the dirt yesterday tastes way better than the one that's been in a warehouse for a month. Happier chickens lay tastier eggs. Etc.

And there's a lot of stuff you can do yourself. A vegetable garden is a great place to start, if you have even a tiny backyard. Think folding table size. Plant yourself some tomatoes and put up a net frame so animals don't eat them, they will be the best tomatoes you've ever had. But planting and growing stuff is one of the most efficient ways to get food- Stick it in the dirt and water it and you get food for free!

Then think about all the shit we buy. How much of it do we really need? How much of it ends up in the landfill in a year or two? When purchasing things, think about the product entire life cycle and how each step will affect you. IE, Don't just think about the dopamine rush you'll get from unboxing your shiny new toy, or the novelty of using it the first couple times, ask yourself is it going to enhance your life owning it over the long term, and is that amount of enhancement worth its purchase price and the space it consumes?

Don't participate

This, as much as possible and in as many areas as possible. Keep everything local as much as possible and minimize consumption. I've found that satisfaction arises much more readily from minimum consumption than maximum consumption, which might be why the advertising industry spends billions per year to convince us that backward is forward.

Totally agree with participation at grassroot level though. Run for office because you can count on the ghouls sending a candidate.

My wife and I tried to plant a vegetable garden last year, it was our second try after learning some things the previous year. We got a lot of veggies out of it and had a lot of fun. We weren't so interested in saving money, we were more worried about bare shelves at the grocery store. We also have a few chickens.

We are going to make it even better this year.

My new year's resolution this year is to figure out how to build a generator capable of putting out at least 200w. The trick is, I want something that doesn't require a manufactured fuel to run. Solar or wind are obvious options, but I have also considered a steam engine or wood gas engine.

One related thing to voting that anyone can do:

Start talking about politics again. If it's impolite to talk about politics, only the impolite will be the one's talking. Discuss, respectfully, what your thoughts an opinions are. Challenge ridiculous ideas. Don't just roll your eyes and walk away. Engage (as much as is reasonable, don't start fights)and be prepared with facts.

It's not easy. I don't follow this advice all the time. Pick your battles when it won't affect your career. But be prepared to have the conversation when it comes up.

I'm sorry, how exactly is the Supreme Court an obstacle to lower consumer prices?

America needs to nuke the entire structure, not just one party. Its two wings of the same bird. Dems are only "progtessive" and "trying to make meaningful change" because they have an excuse not to. Otherwise that stuff would have been implemented or secured years ago.

That's the correct long term answer. But you might also add that there are forces that actively fight against this kind of prpgress, so in addition to what you've written, I'll add educate yourself and others, and don't fall to the cultural war paradigm the're creating to distract us.

Getting a criminal record would definitely help me afford food

Johnny? That you?

"Fucking corpos choom, they are raising prices, flatlining the poor, and made us a mad murderer who's only satisfied with fake orgies on BDs. Fucking preem."

Funny enough I’ve seen a few Walmarts with mini police stations inside of them.

Member the time a guy stole underwater from Walmart and then ran into a random house to escape the police (I think in Colorado). The police destroyed the house to get him. Then the home owners tried to sue for the value of their house and the police found not liable.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_of_Robert_Seacat

Totes meant to say underwear not underwater

I like the concept of destroying them from the inside. Get a job with them and at the first possible instant do

rm -rf

on all their servers.

That's like saying "we all need to learn how to be spies and pick locks so we can steal the gold from Fort Knox".

Also, disrupting the supply chain can literally kill people. Look what happened when the Suez canal was blocked.

how to hack; compromise these company’s networks, take down their supply chain.

That will only result in hiring more network security and passing the costs onto consumers.

Cleric what is this “love” you speak of.

Have you been diverting?

Edit: is the muzzle flash from his gun real?

Project Mayhem.

This is the way

Honestly, learning how to make/grow things yourself and forming a community of others who do the same thing for different items is the most revolutionary act you could do in this world.

so just not eat at all then?

I'd like to add that not everything is inflating at the same rate, so you can certainly consume less of the crazy priced stuff. If you're forced to buy it, like auto insurance, then start getting quotes from competitors.

Voting with your wallet is literally plutocracy -- those with more dollars get more votes.

Not only is our theoretically bad, but it's practically bad: the impact of a boycott is negligible, but the impact on the people doing the boycott is huge: not having access to the conveniences everyone else has puts us at a significant disadvantage compared to our peers.

And finally, it's not just practically bad, it's actually contraindicated. The executives of a corporation are legally required to maximize immediate returns to their investors. It's literally illegal for a CEO to move a company in the direction of civic responsibility over profit. And it's not just "profit" -- it has to be increasing profit. Line has to go up; they can't just keep it flat, even if "flat" is hugely profitable. To withdraw our financial support will just cause them to squeeze harder on everyone else.

(There's an argument that there might be more profit in social responsibility, but unless you have numbers to back that up, and it demonstrates immediate returns in addition to long term benefits, then it's just a guess, and a guess is never going to be more convincing to shareholders than facts.)

The only way to change this is with regulation, and a cultural shift away from "line goes up" mentality. And you can't effect political change when you're spend 3x as long making dinner because you're boycotting processed food.

Suggesting that we just give up all the conveniences that our labor, our creativity, and our cultural contributions have enabled, for the sake of convincing a CEO to be nicer is just ineffectual.

Tbh, in the digital world Lemmy is actually a nice step imo. But more steps can always be taken (as long they're reasonable). Whether its physical or digital.

EssilorLuxottica is the current name of that company. Fuck those guys.

the "vote with your wallet" stuff is bullshit, and it always was. there are very real limitations on what some small company can do in a near monopoly, that's why we had antitrust in the first place.

I read this as "buying clubs". Like, buy clubs and hit stuff. My first take was "Ah, the violent revolutionary type." :)

How does one start a buying club?

I work for a huge bank that's investing a non-trivial amount of money (billions) in single family homes. They don't plan to rent them out. They just want to own them.

Now why would a huge, rich bank invest in something like that? Because they're pretty sure they're going beat inflation when they resell those properties later. It's a very safe (if spread across the entire US and Canada) place to park money.

It's not a big deal if one or two banks do this or even a handful of private equity firms. However, when all of them do it at once (like they are now) it can have a major impact on the prices of single family homes. It also creates something called a, "systemic risk" but that's a very large topic that I'm not going to cover here.

The point is that yes: The big banks and big private equity firms (and 401ks!) all own way too much non-commercial real estate in general right now and their expansion into single family homes is a great big societal problem.

...but why now‽ Why haven't they been investing in huge swaths of single family homes since forever? I mean, they've been appreciating faster than inflation since forever with only a few minor hiccups (e.g. 2008). The answer is: It used to be much more expensive to maintain homes that don't have anyone living in them.

Back in the day most homes were unique. In any given neighborhood some homes might have gas heat while others had electric and some others used oil or coal! There were also more fire and flood hazards with more flammable furnishings/building materials and things like washing machine hoses would often just break after a certain amount of time (the seals were only good for like ten years).

These days you have endless amounts of cookie cutter homes in enormous neighborhoods all over the damned place. They're also built to vastly superior building standards and come with appliances and AC that are orders of magnitude more efficient than in decades past.

This means a big bank or private equity firm can buy hundreds of houses in a region and (cheaply) hire a 3rd party to look after them. They just don't need as much maintenance as they used to. They're so much cheaper to maintain en mass.

So how do we fix this problem? There's all sorts of things you can do but some quick and perhaps unexpected things are:

• Raise minimum wage and crack down on businesses hiring illegal workers doing house maintenance work (let them do construction 👍).
• Raise property taxes in general. You could try to raise them for homes without people living in them but then you just end up creating other unintended consequences/problems (which I won't get into to stay brief)
• Force upgrades on unoccupied homes. Air conditioning system is 10 years old? You have to get a new one with improved efficiency. House has gas stoves? You have to replace those.
• Force inspections of unoccupied homes and come down hard in regards to code enforcement (every unoccupied home poses a nonzero fire risk to every neighborhood).

Basically, you have to turn unoccupied homes into expenses again. When that happens the banks and private equity will get the hell out.

There's lots of private equity that will just convert to being slumlords but the big banks do not want to be renting out anything. It's a huge risk for them and looks real bad on their balance sheets from a banking perspective. Also, if a bank is big enough they're straight up forbidden (by law) from renting out properties (though there's various loopholes which I won't get into).

On the housing thing - there's been a major intrusion of private equity firms into the regular house market. A report came out recently claiming as much as 40% of all single family homes sold in 2023 went to private equity firms to turn into rental properties (iirc). On mobile, otherwise would try to actually give you the source.

I can't speak to the food price increases. My only thought is that most people are creatures of habit and always have been, so I doubt that individual shoppers 'not putting pressure on the stores' would explain a historic rise in costs. That said, if we did find evidence that shoppers are less savvy or willing to change habits, my first guess as to why would be people overall being more overworked and stressed. But until the data comes in, who knows.

You will never get enough people to join in, for various reasons, but I think a big reason is the big money won with media propaganda and influence, and misinformation is just going to get worse.

Look how well occupy wall street went, BLM protests went, look at the current state of anti-Isreal genocide protests are going (people literally cheering for the genocide of kids, and they don't wanna hear anything about it).