S/V Sundance: If corporations are trying to keep this hush-hush, they’re doing a lousy job

Sunday, February 25, 2024

If corporations are trying to keep this hush-hush, they’re doing a lousy job

Faith, take a look at one of the newest entries to Dictionary.com:

Greedflation [ greed-fley-shuhn ]

A rise in prices, rents, or the like, that is not due to market pressure or any other factor organic to the economy, but is caused by corporate executives or boards of directors, property owners, etc., solely to increase profits that are already healthy or excessive.

Let's talk about "greedflation." You know it and I know it, Faith: giant corporations will seize any opportunity to pad their profits on the backs of working families.

So it's no surprise that they've taken advantage of inflation and supply chain disruptions to jack up prices even higher than necessary to cover increased costs.

And if they're trying to keep their strategy hush-hush, they're doing a lousy job: executives have flat-out admitted — on public earnings calls — that they've raised prices faster than inflation for the sake of higher profits.

I'm fighting back by reintroducing my Price Gouging Prevention Act. Here are some big pieces of what my bill would do:

Prohibit price gouging at the federal level — anytime and anywhere.
Target dominant companies that have exploited the pandemic to boost profits — including companies that brag about increasing prices during periods of inflation.
Require public companies to clearly disclose costs and pricing strategies at certain times.
Provide additional funding to the FTC for enforcement.

Sound good? Add your name to sign on as a grassroots co-sponsor of my Price Gouging Prevention Act of 2024, and let's work together to get it passed — because working people shouldn't have to wince every time they look at their grocery store receipt.

ADD YOUR NAME

Price gouging certainly isn't a new trend. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, big corporations took advantage of the crisis to prey on consumers by price gouging, hiding behind inflation and supply chain disruptions to do it — and we're still paying the price.

Even though corporations' costs are coming down and profits are rising, prices remain high for hardworking Americans — rising by 3.4 percent over the past year while producers' input costs have only gone up by 1 percent.

Take diapers: prices for wood pulp, the main input for diapers, declined by 25 percent last year, yet parents are still paying higher and higher prices for diapers. For many commodities and services, the cost of production has actually decreased.

Meanwhile, unchecked consolidation across nearly all sectors of the economy has enabled dominant giants to boost prices with few consequences, disincentivizing new businesses and harming consumers.

I'm going to keep fighting back — and it's time to pass my bill to give the Biden-Harris administration, as well as state attorneys general, more tools to tackle corporate greed.

Faith, add your name if you agree that we need to crack down on corporate price gouging, and let me know you're ready to help make it happen.

Thanks for being a part of this,

Elizabeth