Is income inequality unjust, and if so, where is the injustice?

figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Inside Kroger-Albertsons would-be merger: ‘Do we have to say that we won’t close stores?’

According to internal company documents, Kroger “has recognized that areas with diminished competition are areas where it can pursue a ‘different price strategy’ and raise prices,” another passage contends.

The same holds for Albertsons, which “also recognizes that when its stores face less competition, it can take the opportunity to raise prices and ‘margin up’,” reads a related passage.
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Furthermore, the suit filed by the FTC contents that without competition from Albertsons, Kroger “would have an increased incentive to close stores to reduce union participation.”

According to an unredacted passage, “a 2021 labor strategy document prepared for Kroger recommends that Kroger pursue, over the long-term, a strategy to ‘reduc[e] the percentage of Kroger associates represented by organized labor.’”

“That strategy includes ‘deter[ing] union campaigns,’ ‘opening more nonunion operations,’ and ‘shutting … union represented locations,’” according to an unredacted passage.
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TL;DR Kroger and Albertsons want to merge so that they can raise prices and union-bust, and say exactly that in company documents. While lying to the public and saying the exact opposite.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

www.scottsantens.com

The Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban Basic Income Experiments

The Foundation for Government Accountability - a Florida-based lobbying group backed by the richest 1% - is working to get basic income experiments banned by state legislators across the U.S. (This article is also available as a YouTube video and as a podcast episode) As a well-known quote often
www.scottsantens.com www.scottsantens.com
Florida man: "Hey, Texas? If I give you some money, will you promise to stop handing out free, unrestricted money to your citizens? Can you do that for me? Also can you tell your friends over in WI, IA, SD, WV, AS, AZ, etc. the same thing? KTHX."

--Patrick
 
Frank

Frank

blotsfan said:
Kinda. John Kellogg started making cereal for health and abstinence and then him and his brother had a falling out and his brother made his own company, which is the one that exists today. The latter company was founded to just be a normal food company.
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I remember listening to a podcast about him and how the original corn flakes were basically inedibly hard and completely unpalatable.

The brother had to make them not taste like complete shit to actually sell them to human beings, ha ha ha.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
“If you’re making $20 an hour to work at a fast food restaurant, right? Is that six figures? Are you making six figures?".... “Okay, so 40k a year. And then if your husband or wife is also there, you’re making $100,000 as a family. Both working at McDonalds? That is—okay, that’s crazy. That is crazy, because that job doesn’t require much. So it’s inflating the entire, you know, labor sector and the Happy Meal, which I’m very unhappy about.”

Fox News host thinks that fast food workers make $100K a year

:mad: The deliberate misinformation is infuriating.
 
Frank

Frank

Full time hours at a fast food joint. lol.

That's not how you get away without paying any kind of benefits.
 
D

Dubyamn

figmentPez said:
“If you’re making $20 an hour to work at a fast food restaurant, right? Is that six figures? Are you making six figures?".... “Okay, so 40k a year. And then if your husband or wife is also there, you’re making $100,000 as a family. Both working at McDonalds? That is—okay, that’s crazy. That is crazy, because that job doesn’t require much. So it’s inflating the entire, you know, labor sector and the Happy Meal, which I’m very unhappy about.”

Fox News host thinks that fast food workers make $100K a year

:mad: The deliberate misinformation is infuriating.
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I love how he thinks that working full time in fast food doesn’t require much. Like talking bullshit on TV is so physically and mentally demanding.
 
Tress

Tress

Dubyamn said:
I love how he thinks that working full time in fast food doesn’t require much. Like talking bullshit on TV is so physically and mentally demanding.
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Look at Jesse Watters smug face. If that man has ever done a full days worth of honest work in his life, I would die of shock. He has no fucking clue.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

This seemed like the right place to put this. Jon Stewart with a scathing report on the blatant corruption among government officials on both sides. They're not "technically" bribes, so it's apparently okay. Cripes, that's sickening.

(I'm sure if they were investigated, Canadian officials among every party would be just as bad.)

 
PatrThom

PatrThom

I keep meaning to post this, because I drive by someone with a lawn sign out talking about it almost every day. Windy weather recently blew it into the street, so I guess I'd better do it before I forget about it now that the sign is gone. There is a movement in Michigan working to eliminate all property taxes, to "Axe My Tax" (axmitax.org). Their website says this will eliminate the terrible practice of losing your home/whatever to tax foreclosure-for-non-payment and such, and it also includes language requiring legislature to seek 2/3 approval before raising any other (non-federal) taxes to make up for it all. More money for Joe and Jill Citizen to keep, right? Except of course this is literally a tax cut, which is a thing that rarely benefits anyone who isn't already paying beaucoup in taxes (i.e., people who are already well-off).

What I find especially egregious about this is not merely that it is a tax cut, but that it is a tax cut on property, especially real estate. Because here we all are, in an age where three entire generations of people are complaining about how prices and loan rates and incomes are such that they will probably never be able to own a home of their own over their entire lifetimes. There are people who estimate that, by 2030, private equity will likely own as much as 40% of all single-family homes (in the USA). So then who benefits from this tax cut? Is it renters? HA HA of course not. No, it'll be corporations, landlords, and any family that was well-off enough that they didn't have to sell their home and move out when things got tight. And of course this will also hugely benefit owners of commercial real estate--office buildings, gas stations, factories, strip malls, etc.--properties that do not even contain any of these "renters" that the petition claims will be "helped" if it passes.

I can almost hear @Ravenpoe's "Aww HELL naw" from here.

--Patrick
 
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Bubble181

Bubble181

The two most important laws to target the rich are not super complicated laws on trading and stocks and "net worth" and whatever, but taxes on inheritance and on property ownership. First house, make it as tax free as you want. Second and over? Tax rental income, tax the fact that you own it, tax the ever living shit out of it. And estate taxes work against generational wealth accumulating.
However, it's so, so easy to spin both into "they're going to take all your hard earned money that you managed to gain through Hard Work and take it instead of letting it give you to your children" that they never get properly implemented.
And I say this ias someone who does own a second home (and, actually, not my first - still paying a hefty mortgage on that!) and stands to inherit quite a bit.

Any inheritance over, whatever, $5 million or so, can be taxed for 70% or more and it won't touch anyone who can't afford it. Any taxes on second/third/fourth homes that aren't excessive (and cannot legalyl be pased on to the tennant) will not hurt too much or just rebalance what is or isn't woerth keeping.
 
Frank

Frank

Bubble181 said:
The two most important laws to target the rich are not super complicated laws on trading and stocks and "net worth" and whatever, but taxes on inheritance and on property ownership. First house, make it as tax free as you want. Second and over? Tax rental income, tax the fact that you own it, tax the ever living shit out of it. And estate taxes work against generational wealth accumulating.
However, it's so, so easy to spin both into "they're going to take all your hard earned money that you managed to gain through Hard Work and take it instead of letting it give you to your children" that they never get properly implemented.
And I say this ias someone who does own a second home (and, actually, not my first - still paying a hefty mortgage on that!) and stands to inherit quite a bit.

Any inheritance over, whatever, $5 million or so, can be taxed for 70% or more and it won't touch anyone who can't afford it. Any taxes on second/third/fourth homes that aren't excessive (and cannot legalyl be pased on to the tennant) will not hurt too much or just rebalance what is or isn't woerth keeping.
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The Conservatives did that here. Liberals raised capitals gains taxes. Basically you needed to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit from investments for this to ever effect you. They managed to spin it so literally a 1/3rd of this country believed this tax hike was aimed at them. 1/3. The average income in Canada is 63k a year.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

Residents wondering how sale of 6 P.E.I. mobile-home parks will affect them


"Last month, the Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust — or CAPREIT — announced it was selling the six parks as part of a $740 million deal with TPG Real Estate, a private-equity company based in the U.S."

This doesn't affect me or anyone I know (that I'm aware), but the fact that a U.S. based private equity group bought these homes probably means these people are screwed.

Kinda wish private equity groups would just die in a fire.
 
blotsfan

blotsfan

I don’t see how a US private equity group owning some trailer parks is meaningfully different than the comically large publicly traded landlord megacorp that used to own them.
 
Frank

Frank

Yeah, at this point I trust US corporations to treat us more fairly than our own shitty ones.

(and you know, don't trust US corporations...but especially don't trust Canadian ones, ever)

You know it's fucking insane when Walmart is more fair to consumers AND to local producers than any of the big Canadian chains.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Three McDonald’s franchisees in Kentucky pay $212K in fines after federal investigations find 305 minors — including 10-year-olds — working illegally

"Investigators also determined two 10-year-old children were employed – but not paid – and sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m. Below the minimum age for employment, they prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register. The division also learned that one of the two children was allowed to operate a deep fryer"
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

figmentPez said:
Three McDonald’s franchisees in Kentucky pay $212K in fines after federal investigations find 305 minors — including 10-year-olds — working illegally

"Investigators also determined two 10-year-old children were employed – but not paid – and sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m. Below the minimum age for employment, they prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register. The division also learned that one of the two children was allowed to operate a deep fryer"
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It's like a republican dream.
 
mikerc

mikerc

figmentPez said:
Three McDonald’s franchisees in Kentucky pay $212K in fines after federal investigations find 305 minors — including 10-year-olds — working illegally

"Investigators also determined two 10-year-old children were employed – but not paid – and sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m. Below the minimum age for employment, they prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register. The division also learned that one of the two children was allowed to operate a deep fryer"
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So less than $700 fine per child. Your article doesn't say how long this had been going on for but - particularly for the unpaid 10-year-olds - the fine could well be less than the money saved by hiring minors instead of adults.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
My GF gets awkwardly quiet when I start saying things like "Landlords provide housing the same way ticket scalpers provide concerts" because I think her retirement plan had been to buy up houses and rent them out.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

To be fair, it is an effective source of passive income. But the same could be said of any enterprise whose business model is to concentrate supply into progressively fewer hands and then lease it back to the remainder at a premium.

--Patrick
 
@Li3n

@Li3n

They don't call it Rent-seeking for nothing.

That being said, there is legitimate use for renting, like for out of town students / short term labourers etc. But that limits the amount of money you can make from it, and we all know that's a cardinal sin in "real" capitalism...
 
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