Corporations are raising their rates.
In lots of cases theyre raising rates greater than those cost boosts, using the cover of inflation to increase their earnings margins even more.
This concentration gives corporations the power to raise prices because it makes it simple for them to informally coordinate rate boosts with the handful of other companies in their same industry– without risking the possibility of losing customers, who have no other option.
Corporations are utilizing these near-record earnings to increase share prices by buying back a record quantity of their own shares of stock. Corporations have recently provided out wage increases in response to the post-pandemic rise in need, these wage boosts have been practically entirely eroded by rate boosts.
Memo to President Biden and the Democrats
From: Robert Reich
Re: Inflation and the economy
As America slumps over toward the midterm elections, you require an economic message that celebrates your accomplishments to date– job production and greater earnings– yet also takes objective at the major abuses of economic power that are fueling inflation and broadening inequality.
You ought to put these ten unassailable realities centerstage:
1. Business revenues are at a 70-year high. Yet corporations are raising their rates.
2. They are not raising prices because of the increasing expenses of materials and components and of labor– which are real however anticipated when an economy goes unexpectedly from a pandemically-induced deep freeze to satisfying the skyrocketing demands of consumers who are emerging from the pandemic. Corporations delighting in record revenues in a healthy competitive economy would absorb these costs.
3. Instead, theyre passing these costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices. In most cases theyre raising prices higher than those cost boosts, utilizing the cover of inflation to increase their profit margins even more.
4. Since they face little or no competitors, theyre doing so. Business would keep their rates down to avoid competitors from grabbing away customers if markets were competitive. As the White House National Economic Council put it in a December report: “Businesses that deal with meaningful competition cant [preserve high earnings margins and pass on greater costs to consumers], due to the fact that they would lose organization to a rival that did not trek its margins.”
5. Because the 1980s, two-thirds of all American industries have actually ended up being more concentrated. This concentration gives corporations the power to raise costs because it makes it simple for them to informally coordinate rate boosts with the handful of other business in their same industry– without running the risk of the possibility of losing consumers, who have no other option.
6. Corporations are utilizing these near-record earnings to boost share rates by buying back a record quantity of their own shares of stock. (Buybacks decrease a companys shares impressive, pushing its profit-per-share figure higher.) Stock buybacks hit a brand-new record last year. Far this year theyre on track to surpass that record. In the very first two months of 2022, S&P 500 companies have actually divulged authorizations to redeem $238 billion in stock– a record rate, according to Goldman Sachs, which anticipates $1 trillion of buybacks this year– an all-time high.
Chevron engaged in $1.4 billion in stock buybacks and spent $500 million more on shareholder dividends than it did in 2020. This year, the oil giants are preparing to buy back a minimum of $22 billion more.
7. A lot of American workers have actually barely had a wage increase in 40 years (changed for inflation). Although corporations have recently offered wage increases in response to the post-pandemic rise in need, these wage increases have been almost completely worn down by price boosts.
The labor market is not “unhealthily” tight, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell asserts; corporations are unhealthily fat. Employees do not have too much power; corporations do.
As a result of all this, earnings and wealth are being rearranged upward from average working individuals (numerous of whom live from income to paycheck) to Shareholders and ceos, consisting of the wealthiest people in America. CEO pay (based mainly on stock values) is now at a record 350 to 1 ratio relative to median pay.
9. Wealthy Americas are now paying a lower tax rate than the working class. Some are paying no taxes at all.
10. Huge corporations have actually accumulated a substantial quantity of political power, with which theyve repelled lower drug prices, avoided greater business taxes, and collected extraordinary business well-being.
In other words, although the American economy is rebounding perfectly from economic crisis, the growing imbalance of economic power is bad for the majority of Americans and for the economy as a whole.
This need to be attended to through (1) tougher antitrust enforcement, (2) a momentary windfall earnings tax, (3) higher taxes on the rich and on corporations, (4) a ban on business buybacks, (5) more powerful unions, and (6) project financing reform to get huge money out of politics.
You have an important opportunity to reframe the national discussion as it should be framed– around these getting worse abuses of financial power by large corporations and the super-rich. Because they have no reaction to this, republicans have left themselves vulnerable. They think their “culture wars” will distract the public from whats going on.
This is not and must not be a partisan problem. Typical working Americans– many of whom chose Trump in 2016 and 2020– are being shafted.
Seriously yours,
RR
