Canada

We should apply it the other way: Tax Surplus. There's a lot of valuation in companies in billionaires that could be taxed better.

(food companies all raise prices.)

"Well I'm not letting them get away with that, I'll starve to death, that will teach them!"

(Electric companies raise prices)

"Screw you too! I'll sit in the heat and darkness!"

(Gas companies raise prices)

"Ha! I'm already used to this from the last 2, I'll just walk 4 hours to work and live with no heat in the northeast us! No prob!"

Yeah... We "let" this happen.... Ffs...

This is just the neoliberal way, we're decades deep into the idea that all solutions to any problem must involve directing public funds into private hands, usually those of the wealthy.

At this point, the concept of allowing public-sector employees to use publicly-owned equipment to take publicly-owned materials and provide necessary services for the public who vote for and fund the government is tantamount to heresy. In their minds, money should only go one way, from the government, to a select few private hands. We have at least three generations of bureaucrats and politicians whose minds are so warped by this practice that they cannot conceive of any way to help people or really implement any policy without giving some private business a chance to run a profit off of it.

Think about it, try to come up with anything government has directly built since 1990. Not talking about subcontracted, or with "funding provided as a private/public partnership", that the government has directly built and run. Used to be that the government would actually employ people to do things like GO Transit, or Ontario Place, or the LCBO, but that era is long, long passed.

Now do the reverse, think about all the things that used to be publicly owned but have now been given away to some billionaire. Air Canada, Petro Canada, Potash Corp, Highway 407, Telus, Hydro One. The list is huge, and a lot of these are very profitable. Imagine if we still owned them? Imagine what we could do re: climate change if we still owned Petro Canada and Hydro One? Or what our internet services might look like if we owned Telus? We gave away billions of dollars of value and significant strategic assets, mortgaging our future.

In addition to the direct costs of all the money that could have been put back into the budget (or the cost savings provided to the average taxpayer by not requiring that these companies take massive profit margins), we are also losing government capabilities: think about all the people, all the equipment, all the buildings and services that used to be directly delivered but now are parasitized by rent-seeking private companies looking to extract as much value as they can from us before we die. Think about old-age homes, hospital services, corporate landlords that hold the lease on former government buildings, contractors paid instead of municipal works departments.

The government won't act because it would mean admitting that the neoliberal ideology that's made a small number of people very rich was wrong.

This video covers the UK, but it's all similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58t-YH7DURk

Governments aren’t doing nothing, they are facilitating it all. Because at the end of the day, corporations own them.

Here's a fun anecdote. Apple, Warner Bros (HBO), and Google built an enormous new mega office complex in Culver City LA, that combined has like 6,000 employees or something. It's absolutely massive and has destroyed the infrastructure of that area since basically none of the employees live in the area and they all drive in. It just opened last year.

All three raised the prices for their streaming services this year. But yeah, I'm sure it's just inflation.

Doesn't help when there's really no competition in many areas. They are oligopolies.

There's a solution: legally mandating price ceilings. Good luck getting through Congress but the solution to market coordination can't be market forces.

It’s up to us.

Locally, I've been seeing restaurants closing at a rate of 1-2 per week for the last several months.

Which I take as an early indicator that businesses are starting to feel the pinch.

Restaurants should be one of the first business types to feel the impacts of an economic slowdown since they are entirely discressionary spending for the vast majority of people.

Our local pro sports teams are also complaining about low attendance this season, which is happening for the same reason that people aren't eating out as much.

They're not doing nothing, they're actively making things worse by enacting policies which push towards the concentrating industry-power in a small number of players.

Consumers "aren't pushing back" because there's no fucking competition and nowhere to go to when the company you do business with starts acting shitty

Never vote for conservatives or neo liberal policies

Uh have you been paying attention over the last year? He's not just a shill, he's a tool.