I think a lot of Americans are fed up with corporate greed and the price gouging of our citizens. Whether it be groceries or homes we should be fed up, and we are.
I seem to recall reading that there is a tipping point where the percentage of one’s income is going to housing and food becomes unacceptable results in a populace taking to the streets demanding change. I’ve a feeling that governments and corporations try to walk the line just below said point.
The gini coefficient is a measure of economic inequality.. The US has a similar Gini coefficient to South Africa(last I checked)... a nation pretty fresh out of apartheid.
Yes. The link I posted gives an abstract overview to a piece published by the university of Chicago press twenty years ago exploring the connection between this tenuous line and revolutionary impulses.
Our current Gini coefficient is likely in the mid .40s. The value stated in the piece I linked as “the line” is .38.
In July 2024, the Wall Street Journal concluded that UnitedHealth was the worst offender among private insurers who made dubious diagnoses in their clients in order to trigger large payments from the government's Medicare Advantage program. The patients often did not receive any treatment for those insurer-added diagnoses. The report, based on Medicare data obtained from the federal government under a research agreement, calculated that diagnoses added by United Health for diseases patients had never been treated for had yielded $8.7 billion in payments to the company in 2021 over half of its net income of - $17 billion for that year. [142]
I think the idea that the masters of the universe have all started living in a disconnected fantasy world and therefore have no idea what's really happening on the street isn't improbable.
I don’t think so. They’ve happily accepted those paychecks without thinking of how others might perceive that. Perhaps that’s better expressed as willful ignorance, but that’s what I meant with unwittingly.
Have you been in the street yet? Our incoming president just admitted he has no plans to lower the cost of groceries, still wants to gut the ACA with no plan to replace it, wants to privatize Medicare, and just today his lackeys in DOGE said that the insurance companies approve too many claims.
But I guess posting on Reddit about the incoming revolution is soy based.
Oh yes I’ve heard him walk back the grocery campaign promise. But I’d enjoy seeing him try. I have read all those things you mentioned and they are equally horrendous. To target corporate America doesn’t mean we ignore the actions of our government.
Reddit has a big audience and it’s a way to share information. It’s can be a starting point, but you’re right, it’s only a point of giving information and perspective to Reddit users. It may count for nothing to some or food for thought to others.
Oh they know it, but they know if they keep everyone arguing about gender/abortion and all the other social topics that most of the public won't notice how bad everything else has gotten.
They seem to forget that social safety nets were put in place for their protection… not ours. Because there was a time when we used to drag them out of their houses and beat them to death in the town square. Looks like we have come full circle.
We're already seeing the media apparatus in full swing trying to portray Mangioni as a scowling individual through selective use of imagery.
CEOs and the rich will do whatever they have to in order to stay that way. If things like this keep happening their wealth would start to be distributed the other way.
The problem is that it’s aggregate. If it were one company or a cabal of some kind they’d be rigging the system like a casino. But it’s not like that. It’s like when every teacher gives you homework - each of them think what they’ve given you is manageable. But added together it becomes too much.
Trump was elected because he successfully managed to represent himself as a maverick challenger towards the status quo. You can find the fact that he managed to do so as ridiculous as you want, but that was the reason.
Once the people have to actually live with the consequences - the continued decline of their living conditions - we might actually edge closer to the appearance of a real revolutionary - and not a feigned one like Trump.
It’s at that point that things might become interesting.
Trump is selecting the wealthiest cabinet in US history, basically putting the American oligarchy on public display for the world to critique every choice they make. Shit is going to get interesting, and interesting is never good.
He also duped dumb people into thinking he's relatable because he has his steak well done with ketchup and eats at McDonald's. There's definitely a trick to being part of the exploitative elite while tricking people into believing you aren't.
Trump was elected because Biden and his useless Party refused to enforce the 14th Amendment against him, which directly bars Trump and his fellow insurrectionists from all federal offices.
We had a VP candidate, Walz, who was not a millionaire and lived pretty much as middle-class worker most of his life. Yet, we voted in the Billionaire.
While true, Republicans are vastly more pro-business at any expense to workers and the poor, and they won by a pretty hefty margin. Those facts go against the thesis of the parent commenter.
If it was just about corporate greed and price gouging, a supermajority of Americans would’ve voted for Kamala Harris instead of billionaire that stiffed contractors and cities alike.
I see this more tied to the state of healthcare in this country.
Health insurance is the only thing I’ve ever experienced that 1. Does not tell you how much it costs in advance 2. Does not provide you with an itemized receipt of costs 3. Charges you an enormous amount on a month-by-month basis and then also charges you an enormous amount for utilizing the service 4. Has no transparency in explaining its pricing and 5. Requires you, the customer, to navigate a system you don’t understand when something goes wrong. I’m currently fighting about an X-ray I was charged for that never happened. The only reason I know it didn’t happen is because I have healthcare experience. It’s required 6 hours of my time so far with no resolution as of yet. Every person I know has been harmed by the health insurance and by extension, healthcare industry.
I also think this is touching on our frustration with school shootings, as well. People are viewing it as an either/or rather than a yes/no.
Healthcare is somewhere near the top of the list along with homes( shelter), food and clean water. The basics of our ability to survive. All of these are tied to corporations who care more about their shareholders than their consumers.
It’s not really “greedy CEOs” as individuals that are the core of the problem, but rather the system that fiducially forces health insurance companies to increase profits by denying care and in turn incentivizes hospitals to price-gouge at every corner.
I feel like single-payer healthcare should be THE biggest and most obvious bipartisan issue we should all be fighting for. But it seems this policy conversation is just not really being taken seriously.
It’s part of the problem. The United Healthcare CEO made $10MM last year. No one adds that much value to a corporation so it’s part but not all of the problem.
Our healthcare is broken and single-payer is an obvious solution. But the same people opposing this policy are in the same group that is pricing housing out of the range of many Americans.
The United Healthcare CEO made $10MM last year. No one adds that much value to a corporation so it’s part but not all of the problem.
If the CEO ran the company to maximize efficiency from a standpoint of subscribers getting the best possible care from their premiums paid, I would have no problem with him making $10 million per year.
Instead, he runs the company in a way that hamstrings subscribers from getting care and stealing premiums for “profit.” In that way, he is no different from a nazi bureaucrat killing people via pen-stroke. The banality of evil.
How can you say no one adds $10MM value to a corporation? Even just directing or writing the Barbie move very likely added well over $10MM of value to WB.
"In July 2024, the Wall Street Journal concluded that UnitedHealth was the worst offender among private insurers who made dubious diagnoses in their clients in order to trigger large payments from the government's Medicare Advantage program. The patients often did not receive any treatment for those insurer-added diagnoses. The report, based on Medicare data obtained from the federal government under a research agreement, calculated that diagnoses added by United Health for diseases patients had never been treated for had yielded $8.7 billion in payments to the company in 2021 over half of its net income of - $17 billion for that year. "
The health insurance are themselves practicing fraudulent claims. They're pure evil.
The deeper issue goes beyond healthcare. Everything you've said basically boils down to the way corporations must steadily increase their profits. No matter what the industry, they do this by lowering their costs and maximizing their earnings, things like fair play and ethics mean nothing. They only care about such things as legal boundaries, things imposed on them by regulators. In the absence of proper regulation, the most rapacious corporations are the ones rewarded with more investment and more dominance. Nestle wanting to own the rain makes sense to a corporation, it's up to the rest of us to make the rules that say they can't. You're right in the sense that it's exactly what you described with healthcare, but it's a little disingenuous to say there aren't individuals who are responsible for the decisions made by their company. It's like saying there's really no difference between a company that denies every claim and one that operates more fairly, they're both corporations playing in the same arena, but the players don't all behave the same despite their equal incentives. Anyway, I think the flipside of the "individuals" argument, is that those same people sure seem to take credit for running the company when they're discussing how much they're worth.
You can solve this problem with any universal healthcare model.
Single-payer itself is not necessary. Problem is that universal healthcare is apparently a controversial thing in America. Look at what happened with Obama and his initial plan for ACA.
It's almost as if indulging people's greed to the exclusion of literally everything else is harmful to society. This goes far beyond the health insurance industry.
Government is the root issue for sure and the only way to get systemic change is through them. And while they aren't the root problem executives have a role in making things worse (I mean United denies far more claims than the rest of the industry) and as recent events have proven people have little sympathy for people who chose to profiteer from an unjust system. Corporate corruption is also huge in the US and I don't doubt that the health insurance industry spends huge amounts (United has spent nearly $6m this year alone) on lobbying to not just maintain the status quo but so they can make more profits.
Honestly, I’ve never seen such longterm, widespread support for vigilante murder. I’ve also never seen so much excitement and anticipation for a copycat, either. Between Trump’s election and Mangione doing a John Wick, I think something has snapped in America’s collective psyche. Or, if it hasn’t totally given way, it’s at least thoroughly cracked down the middle. The Nation feels ready to bubble over like a veritable witches cauldron. All it will take is people feeling they have “permission” to start acting out. People are gonna get their catharsis one way or the other, imo…
So much so that they elected the richest administration of billionaires in history who have promised to make prices even worse in order to line their own pockets!
A lot are, but the media is wholly owned by the oligarchs at this point and are desperately trying to do damage control. Get ready for the smear campaign against Luigi. The ghouls are going to get nasty protecting their masters.
And there are so many people who work at corporations with CEO’s that make a 100 times what they make. This number came from the United Healthcare CEO vs an employee that makes $100,00/yr. Obviously not destitute but still making so much less, probably knowing the guy is not doing enough to earn that paycheck
GAO ( Government Accountability Office) reported that there were 450,000 single-family rental homes owned by institutional investors as of 2022. It also reported that large institutional investors owned 574,000 single-family homes as of June 2022
The largest players are Invitation Homes, Pretium Partners and Amherst Holdings. According to GSU professor Taylor Shelton and Rutgers professor Eric Seymour, all three of these companies used an “extensive network of more than 190 corporate aliases registered to 74 different addresses across ten states and one territory.” So it’s now a complicated problem to tackle, which is probably why we haven’t seen anything done about it.
But people should not be competing with corporations for shelter.
Yes but inflation cannot be blamed on corporations alone. They raise their prices because their employees demand more money because the cost of living has gone up.
I think they raised their prices during the pandemic due to supply chain issues. But once that was more or less resolved prices still rose because of inflation, which has been stabilizing but still it’s on top of a permanent increase set during the pandemic.
To an extent wages has been a part of inflation, and a big part of the national discussion, and that’s about the minimum wage which hasn’t been increased since 1990. However there have been wage increases in sectors where there is a tight labor market.
Yup. Just like when people fight back against their oppressors in war. Once you start playing with the lives of innocent people, your own life becomes a part of that game.
Killing is not okay, whether it is done by exploting people's lives for profit or by shooting people with a gun. Unfortunately, the former leads to the latter and if I were forced to pick a side, I know which one I would choose.
If I had to choose, I would kill a single scumbag CEO before making the decision to exploit people's lives for profit, yes. What kind of question is that?
Brian Thompson had the metaphorical button on his desk that killed a random person and gave him thousands of dollars everytime he pushed it. He pushed it a lot. He's not a murderer by law, but he was 100x worse a human than his killer.
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u/floofnstuff 15d ago
I think a lot of Americans are fed up with corporate greed and the price gouging of our citizens. Whether it be groceries or homes we should be fed up, and we are.