kalm wrote: ↑Wed Jul 20, 2022 7:57 am
GannonFan wrote: ↑Wed Jul 20, 2022 7:46 am
And policies such as that are why the UK is even worse off than the US and what caused the sitting PM to be forced to resign. So sure, let's decide that some industries have too much money and let's just write policy to take whatever money we think seems good to take. How could that ever go wrong?
That's the problem with "windfall profits" - there's no clear definition. How much profit is too much profit? In some industries, 1%-3% gross margin is good. In other industries, you don't do anything under 50% gross margin. Is one bad and the other good? How do we make that determination, as elected government legislators, on how much profit any one company should make in any one particular industry? We flubbed the whole "essential business" thing at the start of the pandemic and that was just which businesses should be open or not. I don't have faith that central planning would be able to not screw up a windfall profit thing from industry to industry. IMO, anyone who even suggests windfall profits as good legislative action is someone I automatically realize knows pretty little about the economy and how businesses function.
When your net profits make it difficult for your working class to afford your essential product.
Oh, so now we're going to make it a government thing to label products we consider "essential"? I'm sure that won't go poorly. And besides, inflation has been pretty much broad across the economy at this point. Food is up, energy is up, gas is up, housing is up, the price of cell phones and computers are up (they're essential, no?). Heck, streaming services have raised their costs too. Does the working class not get to watch Netflix anymore? Again, you suggest going down a path that would be impossible to setup, impossible to peg what's essential and impossible where the cost triggers should go, and would basically be akin to nationalizing multiple industries and hundreds of businesses with no real good way to go about it or to reverse it. I get that you like to be a provocateur on these boards, but sometimes I don't think you put a lot of thought into your more flippant ideas.
Oh, and in this case (gas and oil), you seem to make the argument that they have raised their costs too far. First of all, what is too far (I know, you don't know, but just throwing it out again) and second, that completely ignores the fact that excessive government spending, coupled with federal banks being incredibly slow to reverse their easy money approach, have been the two leading factors, by far, in the runaway inflation that we've been suffering under that has resulted in the working class having a hard time affording what they need. And it didn't help that the current administration decided to cut the cord on the fossil fuel industry, on day one mind you, without having plan B up and ready to go. But hey, you don't get to the historically low approval ratings we're at now without some real Buchanan/Carter-like effort.
