Fair or not, corporations make a decision by valuing profit over people. Groceries, housing, transportation, and health care are necessities for people’s survival in modern life. Most people are customers whose incomes do not keep up with rising costs. The corporations’ shareholders do not care about these rough realities, as the lust for profit supersedes all else.
There is an opportunity for all of us to protest this inflation. The Feb. 28 boycott/ blackout is a national movement supporting people’s interests over corporations, geared toward big business monopolies, not small businesses. The goal is to not spend unnecessarily that day.
Lori Slater
Cambria
This article appears in Weddings 2025.
I have some windmills if you’d like to attack them.
When this writer blames the supposedly greedy “shareholders” for “valuing profits over people”, she may not realize that includes most of us. Almost everyone who has a 401, 403, IRA or other retirement plan or pension has at least some of it invested, directly or indirectly, in the stocks of companies which are charging the prices she find so objectionable. She also probably supports things like the increase in the minimum wage which contribute to the rise in prices. What she sees as a refusal to give her the prices she would prefer to pay, these companies see as “staying in business”.
John:
Yes, it’s well understood that 401k, social security, and a plethora of other retirement plans are all invested in the stock market. That’s precisely why defense contractors NEED war and dead people, they want all the associated defense contracts needed to supply another bogus “war.”
The solution would be to nationalize our means of production and make all workers civil servants. That way we can eliminate the profit motive and return all surplus value back to workers. The problem, for people like you, is that you will no longer be able to distinguish yourself as a separate, richer, class. Equality might actually break out.
For those that say it won’t work, just look at China. They have a hybrid economy. It is a mixture of state owned industries and a private sector. They have destroyed us. No, we don’t want filthy steel mills, they can keep them. But let’s build our own, culturally and societally, relevant means of production.
We need worker’s committees and not boards of directors. You see how these ideas don’t die, John? You may kill people, but you can’t kill ideas, ever. Despite mocking the idea of communitarianism, there is a better system and it doesn’t include the private ownership of life saving and life giving institutions. Your “free market” is a lie.
Yes, it’s well understood that 401k, social security, and a plethora of other retirement plans are all invested in the stock market. That’s precisely why defense contractors NEED war, they want all the associated defense contracts needed to supply another bogus “war.” The solution would be to nationalize our means of production and make all workers civil servants. That way we can eliminate the profit motive and return all surplus value back to workers. The problem, for people like you, is that you will no longer be able to distinguish yourself as a separate, richer, class. Equality might actually break out.
For those that say it won’t work, just look at China. They have a hybrid economy. It is a mixture of state owned industries and a private sector. They have beat us. No, we don’t want filthy steel mills, they can keep them. But let’s build our own, culturally and societally, relevant means of production.
Get rid of boards of directors and replace them with worker’s committees. Similar to China, we need a hybrid economy composed of state owned industries and a highly regulated and TAXED private sector. We should consider hiring cadre of the CCP as consultants to instruct our politicians on how to create a similar system.