Record profits drive inflation

An $11,000 wage increase is ~$5/hr for a full time employee.

Starting pay at Startbucks is around $15/hr. They're famously stingy with full-time though, so in reality it is quite a bit more than a 25% increase.

Honestly, I was expecting to find some glaring error in the logic on this but I don't really see it.

115

The glaring error is this screenshot is listing an income figure that is comparable to the 2022 total revenues in the 2022 fiscal report.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SBUX/starbucks/ebitda

It looks like Starbucks 2023 EBITDA was $7.3 Billion and the net income was $4.1 Billion.

The post makes a good point, but uses garbage data. Why do they do this? Although an $11,000 raise would elliminate the actual net earnings figure.

86
- There it is. I kept finding investor reports claiming the same 25 bil number as the net profit, but that's just goofy if their actual bottom-line was under 5.
  
  And that $11,000 figure is now about 6x too big. Meaning we're talking about a less than a dollar raise. Not to even mention ebida is STILL more than bottom-line profits.
  
  33
- Why do they do this?
  
  Incredibly frustrating.
  
  Should we form an eat the rich union, obviously.
  
  Is sharing garbage data on social media the way to get there, no! Real data (like on wealth concentration) is offensive enough!
  
  20
- EBITDA
  
  Alright this is sounding too much like a meeting, I better get back to my actual job
  
  5
- It appears they've done ~$670MM of stock buybacks this year as well (after a ton of press coverage last year saying they were stopping stock buybacks), which would have been net income.
  
  4
I did the math, too, and came to the same conclusion.

I'll just be over here eating cake, like a good sans-culottes

18

Yeah, this inflationary period shows that it has to do with profit-seeking and not monetary supply. We made the money printers go BRRRRR for a very long time with almost no inflation, then suddenly COVID and supply chain hiccups gave corporations an excuse to transfer more of society's wealth to themselves by raising prices and not lowering them again afterwards.

88

Can't expect change when all we elect are wealthy people who care more about their stock portfolios than their constituents.

29
- Yup. It’s pure insanity that most of Congress is made up of lawyers & businesspeople.
  
  8
Yeah, and the owner class is terrified that workers will figure this out en masse.

1
Inflation quadrupled from 2020 to 2021 and then almost doubled again from 2021 to 2022.

It's not (just) because they're greedy that they don't lower them back down, it's because they'd go out of business. One 2024 dollar was 83 cents in 2019, that's way more than the net profit margin for most retail.

Greed is a constant, they're not any more greedy now than they were before covid.

-1

B-b-but I was told that paying employees more would cause inflation!

48

I'm pretty sure the last couple of years has been mass rich fuck retaliation for pushing some fast food workers wages to $15/hr.

26
- The poor rich people
  
  4

This is garbage data. Learn the difference between revenue, gross profit, and net profit.

41

Ok. $36 biliion consolidated net revenue reported at a 16% profit margin for fiscal year 2023 still leaves $5.76 billion in money that went somewhere after everyone was paid, taxes were ~~avoided~~ paid and all approved expenses were handled.

Edit: adding source https://investor.starbucks.com/press-releases/financial-releases/press-release-details/2023/Starbucks-Reports-Q4-and-Full-Year-Fiscal-2023-Results/default.aspx

16
- WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS???? HOW CAN THEY SURVIVE WITHOUT THEIR (checks Starbucks earnings sheet) $4B IN NET EARNINGS!?!?
  
  13
- Yup.
  
  The point is, you don't have to use misleading data to tell compelling stories. Use the real data. The net profit of ~$5 billion is still enough for a healthy raise for their wage workers.
  
  2
Teach me papa

8

All together it's $528.773 billion! That's $66 for each and every single person on the planet!

What even the fuck.

36

Aka one family meal at Culver's.

15
- Obviously it's not going to go far if you're spending it at Culver's, but for some people out there it'd be a big deal.
  
  3

It's even worse: corporate profits are driving price inflation.

Proper Inflation sees both prices and salaries go up, so isn't all that bad for most people (unless it goes all the way to hyperinflation) because people aren't actually losing purchasing power as they do with just price inflation.

31

Came here to say this too, so I hope it's okay if I elaborate.

Politicians and corporations love to conflate cost of living increases with inflation. Not every price increase is due to inflation. Only price increases that are due to increased customer buying power are inflation. Taxes don't 'drive inflation' they slow it, because they reduce customer buying power. Taxes DO increase cost of living (if they aren't used to fund services that reduce cost of living).

Corporations love to point at price increases and just 'inflation'. Politicians love to say

we're getting tough on inflation, our policies limited it to just 5% (or whatever).

When sure maybe inflation is just 5% but total cost of living has gone up much more, which is the actual problem.

Inflation typically only hurts people on fixed incomes. Hyper inflation, where inflation is so severe that markets can't set prices and people lose faith in money altogether, is obviously a problem but it takes a lot more inflation than what we're seeing.

11

When do we start burning shit.

23

I keep asking people to join my radical and extremely poorly regulated militia but everyone thinks it's a joke for some reason.

18

To borrow some investor speak: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." However in this case, it absolutely does. The drive to squeeze even one more drop of blood is relentless and in many cases it's required. Boards must do what's best for the company or they risk lawsuits from shareholders. They cannot deviate from a maximum-extraction plan (either profits or market share) without very good reasons. Each one of those companies has to do better year over year, or explain to the board/shareholders/media/etc why they did not.

How they get those profits up can be cutting pay, "restructuring" (layoffs), optimization, price increases, cheaper supply, better methods, etc. Most of this list will be the same next year and the numbers will be higher. Hate the game.

21

It's perfectly evil system as nobody has to take moral accountability. The board has to make the best decisions for the shareholders and the shareholders don't run the company, just invest in it. It's what my mind goes to when oil companies claim that they are doing their part for climate change.

14
- Well, you almost see the issue. Its the government that was supposed to take moral accountability. It was supposed to set minimum wages, environmental standards and other rules under which corpos cude try to increase profits.
  
  But oil companies figured out they can distract people by pitting them against each other or by making them "protest the companies" and "vote with their wallets", which never had any chance of doing anything. And then most companies followed suit.
  
  4

Why is this list not sorted? Am I the only one confused by this?

19

It is sorted, it's a list of "gigantic asshole companies" they just all tied for first.

:P

13
And where does Starbucks come from? Why is it not in that list? Or is it part of one of these companies?

4

Ah yes, the famous Walmart, having 2 times the profits of Apple but costing 5 times less in stock.

The picture totally makes sense, no questions asked.

17

Stock price is not inherently tied to profit. That is why p/e ratio exists. Also different industries can have different p/e ratios. Not even this holds though. Tesla's p/e is OOM more than Toyota, but Toyota has higher profits and sells more cars.

15
The OP data is wrong, which you probably already know. Apple's net income (AKA Profit) for 2023 was ~$96B while Walmart's was ~$11B. Walmart is the largest corporation by revenue but retail is a low margin, high overhead business. Their operating costs are much higher than Apple's.

Also, as another commenter mentioned, share price is not linked that closely to profitability. There are other factors that influence the share price. Hell, share price isn't even tied that closely to it's actual value. See "Book Value" vs. "Market Value".

5

Revenue does not mean gross profit. Gross profit does not mean net earnings. The numbers this person posted is the money the conpany gets before any operation costs. This means this is how much the product sold regardless of how much it costs to produce, package, ship, r&d, worker cost, etc. This meme has to stop its poisoning your brains

17

These numbers are gross profit. A quick search would verify this for yourself.
You seem to misunderstand what gross profit is because you decided to make a weird word salad.
Gross profit is the profit a business makes after subtracting all the costs that are related to manufacturing and selling its products or services.
So the numbers are relevant. It's not worker wages that are the driving inflation. It's not government handouts driving inflation. It's corporate profits that are driving inflation

9
- Gross profit is NOT how much money a company makes after all costs. This is the basic misunderstanding. Here is an example
  
  Kraft Heinz Quarterly Revenue
  
  2023-09-30 $6,570
  
  2023-06-30 $6,721
  
  2023-03-31 $6,489
  
  2022-12-31$7,381
  
  TOTAL: 27.161B
  
  Kraft Heinz Quarterly Gross Profit
  
  2023-09-30 $2.235B
  
  2023-06-30 $2.261B
  
  2023-03-31 $2.113B
  
  2022-12-31 $2.364B
  
  Total: $8.973B
  
  Kraft Heinz Quarterly Net Profit
  
  2023-09-30 $262M
  
  2023-06-30 $1,000M
  
  2023-03-31 $836M
  
  2022-12-31 $890M
  
  Total: 2.988B
  
  https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KHC/kraft-heinz/revenue
  
  For clarification, I'm not saying I'm against increasing labor pay. I am just saying the numbers used are misleading.
  
  27
before any operation costs

paying employees a wealth generating compensation should be an operational cost, my friend.

4
- Different kind of cost metric
  
  2
What do you mean? It says they are profits right in the picture. Maybe read the thing properly before you condescendingly explain what revenue and profits mean?

-1
- They used the wrong profits to justify how to give more money to workers
  
  7
- The picture is using a mix of revenue and gross profits, as far as I see no net profits. Gross profit is revenue after cost of goods, but without accounting for the cost of running the business. In starbucks' case it likely means "this is how much we brought in revenue, minus the cost of the coffee, syrups, etc.". They still have to pay employees, leases, etc. before you actually get to surplus or net profit.
  
  According to this, their net profit for 2023 was ~$4 billion. Giving the same argument with that number is a little less profound.
  
  5

Surely Starbucks have more employees than that? Are they all franchised or something?

13

If it's 400,000 employees, that means at least one in every thousand Americans works for the company.

7
- There is a world outside the USA.
  
  20

The company that owns Huggies Diapers managed to reduce costs of production multiple years in a row while raising prices for consumers at the same time.

12

Dafuq Apple is doing

10

Convincing people they need to buy basically the exact same shit yearly.

35
- I find it kinda ironic that apple users upgrade every year, cause iPhones can last forever, that’s the very reason I use it, my cousins 11 pro is still going very strong, and I plan to use mine atleast until I break it or Apple ends support
  
  12
Making mountains of ewaste

4

These numbers are gross profit I believe. You can have $100B in gross profits and $100B in costs, netting $0. Better to show EBITDA and make your point that way.

8

To your point "Starbucks annual net income for 2023 was $4.125B, a 25.69%" https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SBUX/starbucks/net-income#:~:text=Starbucks net income for the,a 25.69%25 increase from 2022.

5

Kraft Dinner costs way too much.

1

Ok someone do the maths of Boeing getting 66.8 billion in 2022 and their cost of human life Vs what they pay their employees to start releasing broken max planes to fly.

0

Record amounts of lemmings have no clue about economics, lol.

-2

I mean most people don't, but please elaborate

5
https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-disproportionately-to-inflation-how-should-policymakers-respond/

2
Profits are unpaid wages. Where do the profits go if not to the workers creating the value?

1
- Ahaha! Oh my...
  
  0
What do you mean by this, by the way? Dead thread now so no stakes, but still interested in how your take is different, because I haven't heard this opposition from anyone before.

1
- Most companies have "record profits" while having the same profit margins as before. That doesn't mean they're greedy or whatever, that means people are buying more shit than ever.
  
  Many companies had a few tough years before yet no one was posting about record loses.
  
  These profits are going into YOUR pocket at the end of the day. Because one way or another YOU are the investor. You should be happy when companies are doing good.
  
  2

a Bonus, not a raise. If it was a Raise, it'd be per Month and you'd have to multiply it by 12 again, making it 53bn, more than double the Profit
these 400k ignore a lot of people working in franchises that would go empty-handed

Anyone trying to portray anything as a simple Issue is lying to you. Don't fall for it.

-3

A raise can be yearly as well (it's how I'd interpret it by default in Europe). The only thing it implies is that they'd have to be paid that next year as well, which also seems far from realistic considering the cost of it is ~20% of current profits. (Plus it'd be tax exempt as an expense, so probably even less of profits)

On point 2, the only source I've found is https://fourweekmba.com/starbucks-company-operated-employees/, implying the 400k includes franchised employees and 248k "company employees", so it seems like it's included.

2
Uh, no, they said raise. Nothing about this post mentions bonus, nor does it make any more sense to say "bonus" instead of "raise". Why would a raise mean monthly? Pretty sure every Starbucks is a franchise. How would that change a structured raise plan?

2
You can raise an annual salary and if that concept does not exist in your reality just divide by 12 instead of multiplying and painting it as failure

2
So we... shouldn't #TaxTheRich...?

1

This is news? Of course record profits drive inflation! That's why we pay exhorbitant rates for things like gas during summer travel months. They know they have us by the short hairs and can raise prices anytime they want and people will still pay them.

As a common proletariat it infuriates me to have to pay so much for stuff and get so little in return. As an aspiring member of the bourgeoisie, if I were in charge I'd keep raising prices as far as possible to make people pay through their teeth, assholes, and nards.

It's human nature. The whole point of George Orwell's story, "Animal Farm." Let's revolt and take over the means of production so everything can be more equal. Uh oh, a group of pigs has decided they are in charge and should have a larger slice of the pie than everyone else.

And so it goes.

-26

I'm not so convinced human history, especially with regard to collective societies, supports that idea as general statement - animal farm isn't a bible of truth that says "wealth redistribution always works this way" it's more a warning of authoritarian governments don't implement checks/balances and try to divide the population and garner support among the elite fee

This way our economy is organized is NOT how it has always been through history. It's foolish to believe it has to be this way and every single person would absolutely just keep charging more for everything given the chance. Too many orgs are out there protecting community (see nonprofits in Canada buying up city land for the express purpose stewardship and preventing price gouging or food banks with negotiating power to bulk buy groceries cheaper) to support that idea. What do i know tho right?

27
- Yep. Hierarchy is the real enemy in Animal Farm, not collectivism.
  
  11
- I've seen people try to buck the system and prove that wealth distribution doesn't always work that way, and yet in the end they discover it's back to the same system again and it actually almost always does work that way.
  
  Just sayin'. I enjoyed your comments and the feedback.
  
  -9
Yeah I went on a bit of a communist learning journey recently and ended up saying "well this all sounds awesome, but will never happen because people suck." History has proven that as well.

-1
- Tbf the main reason it doesn't work is that the US army will napalm the shit out of your kids if you try
  
  6

Never heard of profit margin? Just asking.

-33

If you think what's happening is normal profit margin then you're not paying enough attention.

26
You just told everyone that you don't know math.

21
Hurr durr juSt aSkInG

13
Market Capitalism is essentially a means of separating the workers from the machines and resources capitalists declare private property,

Market capitalism means people who do nothing but sit back and exploit people get most of the profit because they say so, which they then use to exploit more, despite providing no labor in making or provision of the products or services they get the vast majority of the net profit of, which leaves the laborers that actually keep the world running perpetually struggling and market capitalists wealthier and more detached from the plight of their fellow man day by day.

You literally defend the resource hostage taker's demands.

9