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Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

How Outsized Corporate Profits Raised Prices (with Lindsay Owens)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.81.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Nick and Goldy are joined by Lindsay Owens, Executive Director of the Groundwork Collaborative, to discuss Groundwork’s recent reports on corporate profiteering and price gouging during and after the pandemic. Owens attributes the record increases in corporate profits in the last few years to growing corporate concentration and lack of competition. She argues that these two factors gave companies an unprecedented level of market power, and therefore pricing power, which allowed them to exploit the supply chain crisis caused by COVID to drastically raise prices. Owens stresses the need for policy interventions to promote competition, transparency, and fair pricing in the market to ensure a more competitive and consumer-friendly economy. Lindsay Owens is the Executive Director of the Groundwork Collaborative, known for her expertise in economic policymaking and her work on exposing corporate profiteering in price increases. She leads the organization's mission to create a more equitable economy, providing media commentary and advising policymakers such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal. Twitter: @owenslindsay1 Further reading: New Groundwork Report Finds Corporate Profits Driving More Than Half of Inflation Inflation Revelation: How Outsized Corporate Profits Drive Rising Costs Big Profits in Small Packages Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0

The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.

0:10.0

It's time to build our economy from the bottom up and from the middle out not the top down

0:15.5

Middle out economics is the answer because Wall Street didn't build this country

0:20.2

Great middle class built this country the more the middle class thrives, the build the economy from the middle out.

0:42.0

Welcome to the show. build the economy from the middle out.

0:43.6

Welcome to the show.

0:55.1

I'm curious, Nick, when you're as rich as you are do you actually look at prices

1:05.3

Sometimes depends on what it is you know like the price of a yacht or a private jet or something like that but I, I know even if you don't look at, care that much about what you're paying for groceries,

1:08.9

you do read the news and you know,

1:11.6

and we've had this conversation, you hate to call it inflation what we've had.

1:15.0

Yes, I hate, I hate the word inflation.

1:18.0

We have higher prices as a consequence of a global supply chain shock.

1:23.7

And the reason I hate the word,

1:25.3

using the word inflation is that inflation

1:27.7

is best understood as a wage price spiral.

1:31.6

And that's not what's driving higher prices. There's a whole bunch of things driving higher prices.

1:37.0

The legitimate imbalance between supply and

1:44.0

equally probably today and you know the purpose of this particular

1:49.0

podcast is the explanation of rising profit margins.

1:53.2

Right.

1:53.7

And let's be clear.

1:55.1

What we saw coming out of the pandemic

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