President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) are blaming corporate America for "shrinkflation," where a company charges the same amount for a product while reducing the product's size or quantity. Recently, Senator Bob Casey (D–Pa.) introduced the Shrinkflation Prevention Act, which declares shrinkflation a deceptive business practice and would forbid companies to engage in it.
Casey, Biden, Warren, and other like-minded politicians maintain that the underlying cause of shrinkflation is "greed." But, as Andrew Heaton explains, greed is pretty much constant across industries and time periods. Shrinkflation is just a passive-aggressive form of inflation, which we are struggling with largely due to government fiscal policy.
Photo credit: captcreate, Flickr; Brett Jordan, Flickr.
- Andrew Heaton: Host, Writer
- Austin Bragg: Producer, Editor
- Meredith Bragg: Producer
- John Carter: Producer
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I was in the pool! The water was cold!
I suspect that the Trump defenders who are screaming about inflation will suddenly quiet down if he's re-elected, like the war protestors in Kennebunkport who went *poof* like a fart in the wind when Obama was elected.
TDS, bud. Never shrinks. Always inflates.
Damn you got it bad.
I double dog dare you to unmute me.
You’re not muted, as much as you wish you were. You’re just not immature enough. Close, but not quite.
Time will tell. I’ll bet ten bucks that inflation will cease to be a hot topic amongst Trump defenders if he’s re-elected.
Because it will go away?
I'll bet that you'll be blaming everything on Trump long after he's dead.
You're a fucking one-trick pony.
That would be a real gotcha if I blamed Trump for anything other than what he actually did.
In the future, long after the guy is little more than a bad memory to me, you’ll still be whining and crying and bitching and moaning about the stolen election, about the political prosecution of the peaceful J6 tourists, and blaming Democrats for bills that Trump signed into law including the CARES Act that kicked off the inflation we’re experiencing today.
Don’t worry too much about the future. Your liver will give out pretty soon.
We can only hope.
I think his brain will die first.
Too late.
This is a perfect example of what is known as the pot calling the kettle black.
Can you elaborate? sarc was the one who brought up Trump.
"You’re not muted"
Neither is anyone else.
He craves negative attention. I suspect even his bartender doesn’t like to talk to him. Sarc is probably a shitty tipper too.
You are LESS mature than those you accuse. You ALREADY LOST your hypothetical bet about inflation. It isn't inflation that is the issue now. It is the POLICIES the cause inflation.
Note: If you are muted, NO ONE can see your plea to be unmuted.
They sure as shit aren't talking about the higher stock market
Remember the Republican prohibition ramp-up and the stock market performance in 1929? Remember how Reagan, Bush and Jim Wright (R-TX) signed reams of "drug abuse" legislation before and during the 1987 Crash? Remember how Waffen Bush signed those faith-based asset-forfeiture EOs in 2007-2008, right before that awful Crash that elected Obama? Republican senile dementia elides those facts as if they'd never occurred.
Girl bullier republicans gonna git ya Hank! Run!
Do you mean the protestors who gathered outside of W's ranch in Texas?
What would the point of continuing to protest outside the home of a former president? Especially in the first two years of the Obama administration, when the Dem party controlled both houses of Congress as well?
Early on, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for outstanding achievement in the field of not being named George W Bush. A lot of the left held out some hope that he'd take the award as "aspirational" and not do a lot of the things that they're probably still avoiding admitting that he did (such as having White House Counsel issue something like the "torture memo" from the Bush years, except claiming the President has the authority to order extrajudicial assassination of US citizens, or having established the "kids in cages" immigration camps at some point which had them operating in 2014)
A chuckle a minute. I'm too greedy to have a full laugh.
The shrinkflation is that the value of the money used to buy their product is not worth as much. Oh wait, that’s inflation, and is a monetary phenomenon caused by government. Political compromise: call it that other thing, not inflation, and let’s all agree it’s the greedy company’s fault.
Shinkflation is inflation. The only difference is how it expresses itself.
Corporations are just trying to improve the nation’s health by providing less junk and processed food for the dollar, thus leading to reduced calories and lower artificial food intake.
How could anyone be against such lifesaving actions?
Yes. The greed of politicians and the people who want government to give them everything.
Greed is always used to describe people who want to keep their own stuff.
The word is never used to describe those who want to take stuff from others.
Like your democrat friends?
So, what you're saying Mr. Heaton, is that we can have 75% increases in profits every other year if we just shut down the economy in the off years?
Checkmate Bastiat.
If corporations are making record profits while prices are increasing, then there is something broken with the economy. High prices are a symptom.
Supply and demand is enforced by the Invisible Hand. It takes more worthless money to buy the same stuff. Ask a 1923 German, a 1992 Brazilian or any Venezuelan or Argentino.
Go back to Spanish class, Hank.
It actually stands to reason that if prices are increasing so will wages and profits in nominal terms. High prices are a symptom of excess money in the system, the legacy of intentional Covid policies. The extent to which those policies were justifiable is certainly debatable, but most mainstream economists opposed Biden's last round as unnecessary and inflationary.
What crock of shit. If profits are at record highs with increasing prices then greed is at work not inflation. Inflation is just the propaganda.
Maybe you want laws against greed. And maybe against profits. Maybe you should move to some People's Paradise. I hear Venezuela has vacancies.
Inflation isn’t propaganda. Given the Biden regime’s spending and regulatory priorities, large corporations have free rein while small companies can’t compete.
Democrats may claim to be for the common man, but they’re open for business and sell out the common man to far left activist groups and large corporate donors. Biden is the worst of of this evil group. Backed up by far left globalist nutcases from the Obama era.
Actually, the profits ARE NOT at records as a % of costs. 10% inflation and 5% "record profits" is not greed.
This.
The number of dollars brought in may be greater, but that money is worth less than what it was worth before.
It's important to point out the difference between “profits” and “profit margins.” Most companies’ margins don’t change. But profits go up when sales increase. If greed was the driving factor behind price increases, then we’d see profit margins getting bigger.
I'm glad to see Reason acknowledge the existence of greed. Most of the time, I get the impression that businesses are just pure misunderstood benefactors of mankind. You could not imagine that with word of inflation in the air, some of them would say, "Hey, let's raise prices now, while we can blame someone else for it."
Inflation is due to government fiscal policies? Not the expenditures during the pandemic? And how is it a worldwide phenomenon if it is US govt policy causing it? And why has the US inflation rate dropped faster than that of the Europeans? Inquiring minds want to know.
One might almost suspect Reason of partisanship.
I guess it's just coincidental that many other countries dramatically increased their money supply during the pandemic, primarily in order to hand out subsidies and benefits. Did the US order this? No. Did global increases in money supply cause inflation? Yes.
Now fuck off.
Every single company, both corporations and privately held businesses and also private individuals running solo gigs, decided to simultaneously raise prices all over the world at the same time. Any one of them could have gained market share by simply keeping prices low but they all conspired to do it at the same time. How did they all manage to do that in unison you ask? It was covered at the League of Economic Evil meeting which everyone who sells things for a living attended.
You could not imagine that with word of inflation in the air, some of them would say, “Hey, let’s raise prices now, while we can blame someone else for it.”
Maybe some did. However, all that it would take for their villainous scheme to collapse is one competitor saying "You go ahead and raise your prices, I'll keep mine the same and benefit from all the customers who notice the difference."
Imagine a libertarian magazine NOT selling out to please the bipolar looter Kleptocracy!
Imagine readers knowing Reason IS NOT libertarian.
The only enterprise that has limitless greed, in the form of a quest to always take in more money, is left wing government.
Look at Andrew's first graph, with the blue line. Funny how profits tanked right after the Anti-Drug-Abuse laws of 1986 and 87. They tanked again after WBush Faith-Based Asset Forfeiture became a prohibition weapon! What gives? Might laws making trade and production a crime actually harm the economy?
Asset forfeiture IS NOT even remotely "faith based".
Hank is a massive anti religious bigot. Like most leftists.
Greedy? Earning, Building and Creating aren't a symptom of greed.
The left makes a living out of self-projection.
What is greedy is running around with 'Gov-Guns' trying to steal absolutely everything anyone else creates?
The enemy of us all is corporate greed and the absolute freedom they have to take, use, expand and profit at all costs. Prove me wrong without using the words “Democrat, Republican, Left, Right, Liberal or Conservative" or a derivation of any of these.
"Prove me wrong" ... simpler than apple pie.
All those "enemy of [us]" people are VERY much more-so greedy (and lazier) than corporations because instead using their time to create selfless asset for other people they spend all their time building [WE] gangs to selfishly and greedily commit criminal acts of 'armed-theft' against corporations (i.e. a collection of people making asset for others).
Course if the [WE] mob of gun-force gangsters didn't spend so much time self-projecting there wouldn't be any question what their purpose was.
...and why does the [WE] mob of gov-gun gangster find it necessary to constantly de-stain the corporation (asset providers)?
To self-justify their Gov-Gun 'armed-theft' of the asset providers of course. As long as everyone is indoctrinated with BS to hate them then STEALING from them will be a-okay.
Same mentality that launched slavery. Same mentality that launched the holocaust. My hope is someday humanity will finally accept that 'Guns' don't make sh*t and in a just system you have to *EARN*.
The insistence on "corporations" (used in this context to mean only for-profit commercial ventures) providing no tangible benefit applies only to people who are able and willing to live without the use of any product that's sold for a profit. Eliminating the profit motive, would eliminate the reason for which most of the businesses which provide goods and services which are considered necessary for survival by most of the residents of the "western" world (and an increasing number of people in the communist or "eastern" world and a great many in the "third world" (a term which is completely misinterpreted since well before the end of the Cold War, and which technically should have mostly lost its meaning after the fall of the Berlin Wall).
How many people in the USA who want to criminalize being a "landlord" would know what to do if there were no such service as housing for rent? How many who see for-profit capitalism as fundamentally criminal (except for Apple products, which is truly ironic) would be capable of growing their own food, raising livestock, or fabricating their own clothing or shelter? Without profitability, the businesses which manufacture and produce such necessities and which make housing available for use by those who haven't (or can't or won't) construct their own shelters would cease to operate and their products would be made unavailable.
Is there anyone who buys into the notion that Kroger's 3% profit margin is a major driver of the general cost of living but who hasn't at some point in their life spent a fiscal quarter worth of their food budget on an iPhone upgrade which came at a 35% profit for Apple and probably a, 80% markup (for an item sold in a retail store also owned by Apple?
how does anyone near her resist the urge to slap her till her face spins around backward like Daffy Duck?
The same pols who wanted to impose an extra tax on snickers bars and limit the size of sugary soft drinks in order to reduce consumption of them by children are now ripshit that the package portion sizes of those products are being reduced by companies looking to defray the increases in their costs to produce/distribute those dangerously unhealthy items.