I mean, we’re looking
Down on Wayne’s basement. Only
That’s not Wayne’s basement.

The Birbs of War!

Don’t post until you have your sources in order or you’re just posting bullshit. 3 hours now.

I think you forget what McConnell, Pence and Kemp did to protect the republic last time. They’re not the only ones who still believe in America.

NC governor is a Democrat (and was on Harris’s short list for VP)

While the legislature is Republican run our AG & Secretary of State are both Democrats and it will be quite difficult for Republicans to gum up the election I’m sure they will try though

Didn’t they also last time?

That’s what they tell us anyway. What actually breeds innovation is giving people the opportunity to explore their own talents and pursue their interests from a place of stability. Things that interfere with that include tying healthcare to employment, allowing receiving healthcare to bury someone in debt, tying public education to local income levels, allowing pursuing higher education to bury someone in debt, inadequate public mental health services, allowing the minimum income for a full time employee to be below the amount required to meet basic needs for the average family, allowing work time for a full time employee to exceed a reasonable limit that would allow the employee to spend time with children, take care of their own health, and pursue hobbies and other interests.

If that was the case then there would be European companies who innovate. I can think of very few in comparison to American companies, especially in tech and medicine. (BioNTech and Spotify come to mind, struggling to think of others)

Otherwise, what you’ve listed as things that interfere with innovation, I see more as evidence of things like modern indentured servitude and income driven inequality. All of those things are huge problems for our society and many of those things are lesser problems in a lot of European countries, but the rich people are still innovating here regardless.

Price controls could lead to shortages

Nope. That’s just the line the profiteers feed the most gullible of their victims so they’ll defend their corrupt practices.

which is reportedly common in Communist countries

You know what’s also common in nominally communist countries?

Government corruption, wealth and power being concentrated in the hands of a few privileged people, and that privileged class tricking their victims into being their advocates.

Exactly like capitalism in general, and especially US capitalism.

which I’ll concede to Trump

Well that’s just stupid and unnecessary. It’s not like he has a point or anything. he’s just throwing buzzwords at the board and seeing if any sticks

why do Trump supporters—presumably a vast majority being consumers—support tariffs, quotas, and seem indifferent to IP (“intellectual property”) trolls and their lobbies? Why do they oppose abortion (and perhaps contraceptives) when fewer children means less need to purchase stuff?

For the same reason that you think price controls lead to shortages and that any country calling itself communist is an accurate representative of what communism is: lots of internalized propaganda.

Disclaimer that shouldn’t be necessary: I’m not a communist or in favor of communism. It’s far too authoritarian, inflexible, and unprepared for when the real world doesn’t correspond with theory.

Perhaps price controls for basics are needed

No “perhaps” about it. The profiteers have demonstrated that they will always raise prices when not forced not to, far beyond their customers’ ability to survive in the long run. It’s long past time to make social murder illegal.

but this is not the ideal

No, the ideal is that all companies are worker owned co-ops so that the socially good and the fiscally good are inseparable so that there’s no systemic incentive to profiteering.

We’re not getting there within any of our lifetimes, if ever, though, so let’s focus on what is already possible and necessary: price controls.

if you support price controls because you favour socialism

Nah, I support price controls because they’re necessary to reduce a pandemic of standardized plundering of the poor. Call it socialism or don’t, just get that boot off my neck.

then again, Trump is kinda right here.

Nope. Not even kinda. He doesn’t know what communism is any more than he knows what asylum is, how to prevent forest fires, or how to deal with hurricanes.

The man is a colossal idiot who happens to be tragically effective at self-promoting. He’s also a fascist and the poster boy for malignant narcissism.

You do not, under any circumstances ever, have to concede ANYTHING to him as, even on the incredibly rare occasion that he’s right about literally anything, he got there by accident.

We were talking about price controls, I failed to see how any of that well known stuff is related. Spend more time focusing on your own country.

Subsidies are not to promote a free market, but to secure production.

And price controls are not to promote a free market but to reign in corporate greed. I could absolutely not spare a moment of concern for whether they are “anti free market.”

They have plenty of margin to work with, and the gig has been up about their “supply chain costs” excuse they started pulling during the pandemic for quite some time now.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan is pushing for an inquiry into the ongoing surge in grocery prices that started during the Covid-19 pandemic and that remains a hot topic in this year’s presidential election.

On Thursday, during a virtual public meeting hosted by the FTC and the Department of Justice, Khan said the probe would “shed light” on why prices and profits at grocery chains “remain so high even as costs appear to have come down.”

“We want to make sure that major businesses are not exploiting their power to inflate prices for American families at the grocery store,” she said.

Puh. They absolutely ARE and HAVE BEEN exploiting their power to inflate prices.

Between grocery prices, fast food shenanigans, and shrinkflation, anyone with little enough disposable income to be at all conscious of prices has known for a long while that these companies have picked the pandemic as their excuse to pull in as much money hand over fist as they possibly can, all while fighting tooth and nail against wage increases to even approach the overall rate of inflation across the same period of time.

From the first link in that para:

TheStreet reported that Medium French Fries went from $1.79 in 2019 to $4.19 in 2024, a 134.1 percent increase. A McChicken went from $1.29 to $3.89, a 201.6 percent hike.

The price of the beloved Big Mac increased 87.7 percent, from $3.99 to $7.49. An order of 10 McNuggets rose by 68.8 percent, from $4.49 to $7.58. Of the five popular products examined, cheeseburgers saw the largest price increase—going from $1 to $3.15, a 215 percent spike.

These increases exceed the general average for inflation calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows that prices went up by about 21.5 percent between the end of 2019 and March 2024.

From the second link in that para:

Few details were released about the change, but Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner said the new menus will let the fast food chain test “more enhanced features like dynamic pricing and day-part offerings along with AI-enabled menu changes and suggestive selling.”

“We expect our digital menu boards will drive immediate benefits to order accuracy, improve crew experience and sales growth from upselling and consistent merchandising execution,” Tanner said on the call.

Surge pricing could be a “turning point” in the industry, according to Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief of trade publication Restaurant Business. “If Wendy’s idea works, it could get others to do something similar, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see another chain or two test the idea themselves, given what Wendy’s is doing.”

Fuck you Wendy’s. You’ve been a favorite since I was 12, and I tried to ignore your decreasing quality in recent years. You are dead to me now. (Yes, I know they rolled the idea back after they heard what the announcement did to the pitchfork futures market.)

From the third link in that para:

Frito-Lay shrank bags of some of its Dorito’s from 9.75 ounces to 9.25 ounces. Bags in both of these sizes, as well as some 9.5-ounce bags, are currently for sale at Target for the same price. "We took just a little bit out of the bag so we can give you the same price and you can keep enjoying your chips," a Frito-Lay spokesperson told Quartz.

Fuck you Frito-Lay, what kind of Orwellian doublethink is this?

Anti-Free market indeed. Free market in this country no longer means anything other than unrestrained corporate greed.