"Inflation is not about the dude at Arby's who got a 50 cent raise 3 months ago or a $1400 check 3 years ago. It's about corporations making record profits by ripping-off Americans so CEOs can spend trillions on stock buybacks & dividends. It's about corporate greed, boss."
~ Warren Gunnels, re: Kathy Jones saying, "Corporate profits rose to a new all time high in Q4 of 2023"
"General Mills just paid a $300 million dividend to investors, bought back $150 million in stock to enrich execs and investors and pays its CEO $16 million. It makes 2.1 billion a year in profit.
It is raising prices on cereals 20% and blaming 'inflation.'"
"Why are we talking about whether paying fast food workers a better wage will drive up the cost of a Big Mac instead of asking how much
McDonald's CEO's $17.8M
salary is driving up the cost?"
Key takeaways from Judd Legum's latest on the corporate profit bonanza:
"In the last three months of 2023, after-tax corporate profits reached an all-time high of $2.8 trillion."
"Theoretically, this should not happen. Corporations should not be able to dramatically increase their profit margins by increasing prices because competitors should step in with lower prices and steal market share."
"Supply shocks related to the pandemic created widespread cost increases that consumers accepted. Although those supply shocks have dissipated, many businesses have maintained higher prices anyway."
"Economist Christian Weller notes that corporations are using their record profits 'mainly to pay dividends to their shareholders and building up their stockpiles of cash.'"