Tag Archives: greedflation

Greedflation again as Shell posts £7.7bn profits for just THREE MONTHS

The astonishing level of oil giant Shell’s profits for the first three months of this year is appalling enough, when you consider the extortionate prices that corporation charges for its products.

Add in the fact that this money will be handed out to corporate executives and shareholders, and we see that the Tory talk about pay rises for nurses and doctors (for example) being inflationary is bunkum; the fatcats are raking it in and we see no inflationary pressure:

Some say that this profit is a good thing, because much of it goes into pension funds for (as an example) nurses.

But of course, nurses could contribute more to their own pension funds if they weren’t forced to pay huge energy bills. And the dividends do go to private shareholders as well.

Others have tried to be smart by asking how much of this profit has been generated in the UK. The answer, though, is simple: too much. UK prices are higher than elsewhere, remember – and with no real need for it any more.

So this is a nasty example of the bane of Britain in the 2020s: Greedflation.

The major corporations are charging whatever they like for their products – especially the privatised former public utilities, who know they operate monopolies in particular parts of the UK.

There is no relationship between what they are charging for their products and the cost of providing them.

But the price they charge puts up the cost of living. People have to pay, otherwise they lose the service.

The result? UK inflation has gone through the roof.

And what are the Tories doing about it? They are victim-blaming.

Working people who are struggling to cope are calling for pay rises to accommodate these huge, greed-driven increases in the prices they have to pay, simply to survive.

And ministers in the Tory government are saying they would be responsible for inflation if they receive those increases.

That claim is – well, it’s what Peter Stefanovic describes it as, in this clip:

If you haven’t voted yet, then please take this into account if/when you do. And remember that Labour wouldn’t increase wages either!


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Greedflation: companies are fuelling inflation by overcharging us to build profit

French protesters have stormed the Paris stock exchange: will greedflation prompt the British to do worse?

Whenever the Conservatives tell us wage increases are driving inflation, be aware that they are lying.

Inflation isn’t being driven by wage demands but by greedy companies that are using the cost-of-living crisis to drive up prices and boost their profits.

Take a look at the degree by which food prices have risen:

Claudia Webbe puts the situation – and the reason for it – in a nutshell:

Now read this:

That is what the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank seem to have discovered, according to The Guardian:

The IMF and the ECB wouldn’t put it in these terms, of course, but both support the idea that companies are gouging their customers when they can. The non-technical term for what is going on is greedflation.

Companies [are] doing rather better out of the cost of living crisis than workers… The flipside of steeply rising prices but only modestly higher wages [is] that profit margins [have] “surged”.

Unite, one of the UK’s biggest unions, published a report in March that blamed systematic profiteering across the economy for fuelling the cost of living crisis. Energy companies, supermarkets, shipping companies, car dealers and food manufacturers had all cashed in on drought, war, and strong demand after the pandemic to “push prices and profits through the roof”.

The eurozone’s central bank looked at the contribution of profits to inflation over nearly a quarter of century, and found that between 1999 and 2022, profits were responsible for one-third of the inflation rate on average. In 2022 alone, profits contributed to two-thirds of the rise.

But whereas the ECB – from its president, Christine Lagarde, downwards – is fully exercised by the threat posed by greedflation, policymakers in the UK seem far more relaxed. There have been plenty of calls for wage restraint, most notably from Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, but far fewer for price restraint… Price controls, of the sort used in the 1970s, are seen as to be avoided at all costs.

Instead, inflation is being controlled by increasing interest rates – which sucks demand from the economy and reduces pressure for wage rises by incurring job losses (meaning that, once again, too many jobseekers end up competing for too few jobs and the bosses can pay whatever they want).

But workers who have taken pay cut after pay cut for more than a decade are close to breaking point and something has to give way soon.

Will we see scenes like what has happened in France over pensions, with protesters storming bastions of capitalism like the stock exchange and trashing it? Will we see worse?

It’s a good question. The British have very long tempers and have put up with a lot – so much, in fact, that nobody knows what they might do if those tempers snap.

It seems likely that, if they do not moderate their own rhetoric and curb corporate greedflation soon, the Tories might find out.


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