Student loan payments are on pause until August, but they will have to pay the piper soon enough unless Biden forgives them, which will be a bad policy move and really hurt the economy.
Recession
- Thread starter Ralph Cramden
- Start date
- Status
Student loan payments are on pause until August, but they will have to pay the piper soon enough unless Biden forgives them, which will be a bad policy move and really hurt the economy.
^^This times 1000. Why would I charge 2.99 for a McDonald’s #2 if you are willing to pay 7.99?
That's good. I'd like to see a graph covering the few months before and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine to see if there's been a noticeable increase.
Right now, it looks to be a very steady increase.
Right now, it looks to be a very steady increase.
Funny you mention this because a 2 cheeseburger meal was $2.99 so $3.26 total with tax back in '95-99. I just got one recently and it was $7.99 plus tax. That $3.26 price will be something I remember even after I cant remember the names of my kids.
It's likely a red wave in November no matter what, but if this admin makes barbers and truckers to pay off the loans of gender studies' majors, look out.
Is that really true? Specifically, gas prices go up and down throughout history. I'm guessing there is regulation there. But there is likely some regulation in most all businesses. If there's demand, prices will stay up. If people quit buying McDonald's, then prices would go down.
Would prices go down if fewer people bought McDonalds? Or would there be fewer McDonalds due to consolidation as a result of lower sales?
A restaurant can only cut their prices so much before they fall below the cost for goods, rent, insurance, labor, franchise fee, etc. .
More realistically, when deciding what should remain open, McDonalds would look at which locations in a region are doing well vs which are struggling. Furthermore, they would look at where competition is and isnt as well as what locations would probably increase in business due to other closures vs stay the same due to closures.
They cant just suddenly drop the price of a meal down to what it used to be if the pricing cant support their costs.
^ McDonalds is a franchise so who knows what rules there are with regard to closing stores. The above is just a hypothetical to counter what you say would happen.
So in other words, you’re a fiscally responsible person regardless of the state of the economy.
The catch-22 of the individual vs the collective economic well-being has always been humorous to me. From, say, 2012 to 2019, there would be new articles out every day talking up the great health of the economy as a whole. Stock market going up, unemployment going down, favorable interest rates for families and small businesses, etc. Then, at the exact same 17ing time, there would be a new article every day about how 60% of Americans had less than one month’s living expenses in savings, student and personal debt were getting to all time highs, and so forth.
The irony is that we’ve built a national (and pretty much global) economic system with a very large foundation built upon the majority of people being stupid and careless with their money. It’s not until a major recession or inflation scare that most people even start thinking about doing the **** they should have been doing all along in terms of cutting spending, reducing debt, and building savings.
A contradiction to that is the consistent deflation in Japan. They got to where, as a culture, they pretty much stopped keeping up with the Jones’, and any businesses or retailers that would even attempt to raise prices would run off customers immediately. Nobody cares about getting a new car / phone every 2-3 years. When the government actively tried to introduce inflation with stimulus packages, they just stuck that money in their savings accounts and didn’t do anything with it unless they truly needed it. Kind of fascinating to see what happens when everyone actively makes the best individual money management decisions for themselves and their families, and the overall economic result of that.
Last edited:
I wouldn't be surprised either.
It's always a safe bet that the party out of power will gain congressional seats in the midterms.
They will not do it. Cost too much money to set up to find the oil, set up rings and to run those ring. With Biden in office they worry that the rug would be pulled out from under them once they started spending the money. They will not take a chance. There is zero trust.
Oil production in the US is not the problem. We've been producing over 11MM barbells per month since late 2020, and drilling is increasing. We are not yet at 2019 levels, but 2022 will be the 2nd or 3rd highest oil production year in US history.
Oil prices are being driven by OPEC shortfalls and the boycott of Russian oil. OPEC+ has decided to slowly ramp up production, but some members are currently unable to meet their production quotas due to internal issues.
The recessions I remember during my lifetime were always tied to gas prices. High gas prices or shortages equals recession from what I remember and nothing got any better until gas prices came down again. Probably far too simplistic or guys who know a whole lot more about money than I do but as long as gas prices keep climbing and Biden just keeps releasing our emergency supplies of oil it's not gonna get any better.
TBH keeping production throttled and selling gas at $4/gal+ and diesel at $5/gal+ is great for oil companies (not to mention oil/hydraulic fluid etc which has similarly rocketed). See generally https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...7WFHNhkThMA_EjJea6mqPEcno#l31niqqhytevibyja9d
Why work harder just to make less money? Not to mention they are labor-constrained like everyone else, even when you consider the higher salaries the oilfield can offer. All the while they can sit back and let some of their less-than-bright customers blame the President.
Last edited:
I think it's also a growing lack of flexibility in our corporate driven economy. A family owned business in a small town would know who the best workers for them would be in town, and if it was say a mother they would be flexible with their scheduling to get them back to working for them. McDs or whoever on the other hand, won't bend scheduling at all, won't even commit to a known schedule at all, so that good worker isn't interested, so they keep job recs open and claim they can't find good workers. People forget it's not just the wage at these crap jobs, they also have crappy policies that makes it not worth it for a lot of potential workers. Unpaid time too has become increasingly common.
Kind of reminds me of when the Federal government was running budget surpluses for a few years in the late 90s / pre-9-11. Had that continued, there would have been a time in the early 2010s (I think) where US debt would have been eliminated, and thereby mostly drying up the bond market. Obviously, this did not happen.
Damn, that is 100% correct and exactly what happens anytime the political climate needs adjusting for the oil companies. I have never blamed a President for a single cent increase to the price of gasoline. Not W, not Obama, not Trump, and not Biden. The companies themselves 100% control their pricing, production, etc to control the price at the pump. The only time I can remember when they got their penis stuck in crazy was last year when the price of oil futures went negative. Because the shutdown happened faster than they could actually shut down production.
One or the other, I don't know, that's why I asked the question. My main point is that I don't think any business just 'keeps' prices high to screw people.
In all fairness there would be some number of numbnuts blaming a gop administration right now, if that were the case.
Bull ****! The guys making the decisions do not work harder. If they could make more they would make more money. I have heard them say on many different talk show they will not spend any more money on oil production because they do not trust the current administration. They fear that they would spend millions just to have it all shut down. So they do not spend it. Believe what you want.
GloryDawg has a point here. I can see oil and gas companies taking things slow because of the on-again off-again Iranian nuclear talks.
He's just delaying the inevitable, now if we increased production in the US, that would help long term. But Ole Joe isn't going to do that.
This is not really true long term. There's a price-point where they can't get away with that sort of thing. And again, gas prices have come down, time and time again. Why haven't they just stayed put and/or only gained? Obviously they gain with inflation like everything else, so we're talking in relation to supply/demand.
This will be our first summer out of 28 to not go to the beach this summer. Mainly because we are totally renovating our kitchen.
I'm guessing you're saying you're not doing both due to $ (which of course is reasonable) but I always like to get the hell out of town whenever there's home renovations, if at all possible.
It's going to vary depending on what business you're in. Energy has always been volatile so it's going to be up & down. Gas and grocery items have some of the most frequently changed prices. Every day gas is different. The price of bananas, beef, and milk changes every week or two.
But other things that were slower to increase won't come back down so quickly if at all. The price you pay for insurance, alcohol, your TV / internet bills, education (does tuition ever come down?), vacation rentals, sporting events (when's the last time MSU dropped ticket prices or BDC donation levels?), amusement parks. Once most of those go up, they don't come down. Has the cost of your trash collection ever decreased 10%? Your barber ever dropped their price for haircuts?
I know within my industry this has given us a chance to sort of reset our prices. In the past you'd piss off customers just trying to push through a 3% price increase. So gradually over time on some products your margins begin to erode. Now everyone has become so numb to it, they don't even flinch when you pass along a 9% increase. Even if raw material prices drop - we're not giving that back unless business drops off.
Hode up, you don't think businesses charge the absolute max possible, regardless of whether it's fair? That's kind of the whole point of capitalism.
I am 180 degrees opposite. I see no recovery at all as long as inflation, especially fossil fuel prices, remain increasing at light speed. And make NO mistake, this is Biden's economy and coming recession. He started it on Day 1 he killed the Keystone pipeline. We were totally energy independent under Trump. Now letting OPEC put the squeeze to us again in ridiculous. This is Jimmy Carter Part 2; that SOB is going to totally tank the country; believe me, it's coming.
I am as liberal as it gets, but student loan forgiveness is a LOSER of a policy to even consider. In the US, we pay taxes, we go to church, and we pay our own damn loans. Why should anyone, who didn't go to college, have to subsidize directly to people who choose to take on that liability.
The people who are crying for this the most, think that all the loans they have will go away. That is not the case. Federal loans only. Also, if you had federal loans and consolidated them,.... guess what, no longer federal loans. These same dumbasses that owe 200k for a ****** art degree or english degree don't even understand the basic principle of loans nor the limited method they could be forgiven.
Bunch of dumbasses.
- Status
Latest posts
-
-
Who the hell are the Cleveland GUARDIANS- Latest: Bulldog Bruce
-
Get unlimited access today.