The Bigs vs The Smalls
No Need To Guess Who’s Winning. People Much Smarter Than Me Writing At CommonDreams.org and CrooksAndLiars.com Produced Multiple Articles With The Details.
A few excerpts:
Price-Gouging Corporations Helping Drive Inflation Must Be Held Accountable
Big corporations are taking advantage of the expectation of higher prices to rack up huge profits.
By now, you’ve probably heard the good news. After more than a year of surging inflation, gas prices are down, pandemic supply chain snarls are starting to ease, and shipping costs for companies are coming down. But instead of passing on the savings to customers, companies are making a different choice.
Big corporations are choosing to keep prices high for consumers, even as their own expenses, for things like materials and transportation, go down. While the Biden administration and its economic response to the pandemic have become easy scapegoats for those who wish to assign blame for stubbornly high prices, especially as midterm elections draw closer, the facts tell a different story. And ignoring the ways in which corporate price hikes are contributing to higher prices will only prolong the crisis.
Make no mistake, Big Oil has launched an all-out war on American consumers this year, needlessly extracting every last dime out of working and middle-class people. Jordan Schreiber, director of energy and environment at Accountable.US.
ExxonMobil and Chevron, the largest oil companies in the United States, posted respective third-quarter profits of nearly $20 billion and $11.2 billion on Friday as American consumers continue to face high prices at the pump, intensifying outrage from advocates and lawmakers who say the corporations are actively fleecing the public.
“It’s no surprise that after months of extreme price gouging, Chevron and Exxon raked in a whopping $73 billion in profits so far this year.” “But, instead of providing badly needed relief to consumers, they spent over $32 billion to enrich their wealthy shareholders while forcing American families to foot the bill.”
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Autozone’s CEO said the company had increased prices owing to inflation, and “following periods of higher inflation, our industry has historically not reduced pricing to reflect lower ultimate cost.”
This strategy is especially evident in the food industry, where grocery prices jumped 13.6 percent in August. One example involves Hormel, the Fortune 500 food giant that makes all manner of processed meats, from pepperoni to Spam. Its CEO didn’t mince words, explaining, “Our grocery products pricing is very sticky, and so the pricing that we’ve taken and that we’re in the midst of executing the additional price increase, that pricing will by and large stay.”
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Utility CEOs See Soaring Pay as Families Struggle to Afford Energy Bills
The top executives of utility giants in the United States are enjoying rising annual compensation as their customers in households across the country struggle to afford their high energy bills, with costs continuing to rise ahead of the winter months.
An analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings by Utility Dive found that the CEO of California-based Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)—the largest utility firm in the U.S.—received $51.2 million in total compensation in 2021, an increase of 640% compared to her previous year’s pay.
“This goes beyond run-of-the-mill executive greed, and it’s a stark example of rewarding failure,” Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said of Patricia Poppe’s compensation in a statement Friday.
“It shows a complete disdain for the employees and the company’s 16 million ratepayers, including the ones who are having to forgo necessities to keep the heat and lights on,” Cook added.
Working For The Man / Roy Orbinson