Corporations Are Raising Prices And Raking In Profits While Blaming Inflation

Americans are feeling the painful squeeze of higher prices across the board, and there's no doubt that inflation is to blame. But at the same time, corporate profits are soaring towards record highs, which wouldn't be possible if the price increases were ONLY limited to inflation. The truth is that corporations are using inflation as an excuse to screw us over even more than usual, and Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

There's no question right now that inflation is absolutely happening and of course it is squeezing families across the country, even those making more than six figures per year, they are now starting to feel the squeeze. And as I talked about last week, 48% of those households say that they're now living paycheck to paycheck as well. But at the same time that we've hit this, you know, record inflation and it's actually expected to go even higher in March, at this same time corporate profits, magically it seems, have gone through the roof. Now that seems a little odd, right? Because inflation is supposed to happen because costs go up across the board, all through the supply chain, right? It costs more to get things. It costs more to make things. So therefore it costs more to buy things. So if the price increases we were paying right now were only due to inflation, corporate profits would in fact, remain steady across the board. You know, they would be paying more to get us the goods, but we'd be paying more.

So it would even out profits, which mat, would match year over year. But according to a new report from Accountable US, that's not what's happening. So let me read this from this report here. Let's start over here. As grocery prices increased 6.5%, the country's largest supermarket chains, Walmart, Kroger and Costco benefited from price increases while seeing their stock, their fiscal year net incomes increase by a total of 238 million and increasing stock buybacks and dividends by over 12 billion. As gasoline price has increased 49.6% in 2021, the three biggest US oil companies, ExxonMobil, Marathon, Chevron benefited from higher prices saying previously negative profits jumped nearly 87 and a half billion while booster, boosting shareholder handouts by over 4.5 billion in fiscal year 2021. As gas and electric utility prices climb 24.1 and 6.3% respectively, the three biggest US gas and electric companies, Exelon, Duke and Southern Company all benefited from higher rates with profits climbing by 1.64 billion while spending 7.3 billion on shareholder handouts in 2021.

Medical care prices increased 2.2%, the biggest drug makers, Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer and AbbVie saw profits jump by over 90% to 54 billion while boosting shareholder handouts by nearly 2.6 billion in 2021. We are paying more, not just because of inflation, we are paying more because they can make us pay more. That's the bottom line. That's the end of it. Like the, the, nothing else even needs to be said beyond that, other than we are getting screwed because they know they can screw us. That's it? That's, that's corporate America for you. We get screwed because they're allowed to keep screwing us. And that's the truth, unfortunately, they are allowed to do this. Now we do have some lawmakers, I know Elizabeth Warren's been leading the charge on it. Sheldon Whitehouse has been leading the charge. Bernie Sanders has been talking about it. But something has to be done to stop these price gougers because let me tell you how this works and they've admitted this, by the way.

People that have attended the big meetings, you know, where they talk about these things, they admit they raise prices during times of hyperinflation like this because they can because here's the kicker. Inflation will eventually go down or the entire economy crumbles and America ceases to exist.