I am no big city economist, but it’s really annoying how deeply inflated everything is. We see regular inflation at the market, the mall (do people even go to those anymore?), and sadly in our rents. We even shrink-flation which I heard on NPR about how a beverage for example is smaller but higher price. It a really fuckin’ lame.
Whenever I say “ :improve-society: man I wish didn’t have to pay so much for XYZ” I often hear the classics like “supply and demand” , or “global supply chain”, or “you be happy you can afford XYZ” which got me thinking how would leftists solve this.
Off the top of my head I would imagine things like CEOs would have some pay cap, stopping C-levels from siphoning their profits up, stronger labor unions, and some other stuff but I really don’t know. Professor Wolff always talks about worker co-ops and I would imagine workers owning stuff is better (which it is of course) but how ideally would it look? :wolff-shining:
What do leftist thinkers say would curb inflation? How would even lightweight leftist economic policies help keep prices for stuff reasonable? I just curious as I would like to think about how leftist theory would address this real problem we all experience.
What have smarter leftist people than I said would fight inflation.
It depends on the source of inflation. In this case there a two big ones, though interrelated. There are still supply disruptions because of the pandemics, both because of lockdowns as well as dead workers, and exacerbating that is massive price gouging by suppliers who are using the "natural" inflation to get one over on workers.
Reducing ceo pay won't really fix either problem. Even if they are paid less you aren't magicing new workers or factories in existence and cutting their pay wouldn't stop the price gouging. In the a similar way boosting workers wages wouldn't solve the inflation because you have a supply problem. All giving workers more money would do is drive prices up as people fought over the same insufficient number if goods. The only thing to really do is improve production and distribution. Why capitalists ARENT doing this I don't know, I suppose they don't see profit in increasing the availability of goods for consumption, or the rop is too low if there is profit to be had.
The solution would be to take the decisions out of the hands of capitalists and democratically plan for what we need and then produce it regardless of profitability. At the end if the day inflation is the financial manifestation of the struggle for control of the economy between workers and capitalists and between different capitals.