• adarza@lemmy.ca
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    25 days ago

    gas is a commodity, it’s price is based on opec oil production, whether we get oil from them or not, along with global demand, the seasons and severity of winters around the world, political bullshit on the other side of the world, and corporate greed.

    if you want to lay blame on high prices in the u.s., blame yourselves first for your addiction to large, gas-guzzling vehicles (among other things)… then blame the oil companies, who produce more now than ever before and choose to export at higher prices than they can sell domestically (the u.s. actually exports more than we import).

    egg prices have been affected by infected farms and loss of production, and compounded by corporate greed eyeballing opportunities to artificially inflate, and hold high, prices; and they’d rather write-off a culling than spend a dime on preventive measures such as lower density farms or vaccinations (you know how well that would play out with our far-right dominated media these days).

    neither can really be controlled by congress or the president. neither is the democrat’s fault. neither is biden or harris’ fault.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      25 days ago

      blame yourselves first for your addiction to large, gas-guzzling vehicles

      nah blame the lobbying and abuse of regulations that maintains the status quo of car-reliant infrastructure

      • adarza@lemmy.ca
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        25 days ago

        if you didn’t demand the giant trucks and weren’t willing to pay giant premium prices for them; manufacturers wouldn’t have the profit-driven motives to make them, focus almost exclusively on them, and cut production and selection of smaller and more affordable vehicles to ‘make room’ for them in the market.

        • Tinidril@midwest.social
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          25 days ago

          There are legit regulatory issues that strongly incentivize manufactures to sell giant vehicles. Fuel efficiency standards for larger vehicles are a lot easier to meet. A lot of the demand for larger vehicles is driven by advertising.

          Of course people could stop letting corporations drag them around by the nose, but it seems like most of the public still likes it that way.

          • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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            25 days ago

            Just to back you up, the regulations you are primarily speaking to are the CAFE standards. While the intent of CAFE standards is to reduce overall emissions and improve energy efficiency, the footprint-based model has led to a proliferation of less efficient, heavier vehicles that contribute to climate change and air pollution.

            This was predicted back in 2011, before the standards were even active and it kind of played out exactly as they guessed.

    • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works
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      25 days ago

      Doesn’t matter. You’re right, but being right doesn’t win elections.

      The GOP claims they can fix it and that’s all people hear and care about.

      It’s fucked up and sad, but true.

    • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      25 days ago

      neither can really be controlled by congress or the president. neither is the democrat’s fault. neither is biden or harris’ fault.

      False. just straight up false. you literally straight up mentioned things to address some of the problems in your post. But besides that congress absolutely can pass laws that penalize companies for profiteering and then enforce them.

      Pass a law making CEO/board members personally liable w/ jail time for a company’s profiteering on food prices and watch what happens at even the wiff of a federal investigation.

      Now tell me how many democrats supported bernie’s windfall bill?

      • Tinidril@midwest.social
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        25 days ago

        How exactly do you make raising profit margins illegal? You can do it for natural disasters and such, but companies raising prices when the market allows is just what all companies do all the time.

        The government is capable of addressing these issues, but not by making profiteering illegal. They need to break up monopolies, vertical integration, and certain trade associations. They also need to address short term performance pay for CEOs. Any performance pay should be tied to company performance over at least the next ten years, not this quarter.

    • clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Americans aren’t educated enough to know the difference, so without more clever messaging, all these facts are written off as “educated people trying to show they are more superior than us”.

      Politics is a show of messagimg and failed promises and Dem’s consultants and marketeers failed miserably at this.