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Most economists will agree that people give too much credit or blame for presidents about what’s right or what’s wrong with the economy.
For example, when we were blaming the president for inflation, several independent studies showed that 30 to 50% of inflation was due to excessive profits by large corporations. For example, Major oil companies reported six or $700 billion in profit while the rest of us were paying a lot more for gasoline. The higher gasoline prices were also due to the war in Ukraine, and other factors which were causing increase in gasoline prices. Again we chose to blame the current president.
You also may have noticed that a number of products are now being sold in slightly smaller containers for the same price.
In the early 80s when Ronald Reagan was president his administration figured out how to get around the laws that were in place to prevent a few companies from controlling the market. As a result today four companies control about 80% of the meat market, putting the squeeze on farmers and ranchers as well as consumers.
Large corporations also gave us big box stores while convenient, squeezed out the local stores.
Large businesses, as well as others have often opposed increasing the minimum wage, which has kept many people from having a comfortable life style . Oddly enough increasing the minimum wage has almost always been good for business.
The sad part is a few years ago we give a $1 trillion tax break to the wealthy and large businesses. Possibly that had something to do with which legislators were receiving donations from large businesses. Well probably they all do.
These are the same legislators who tried to cut back on legislation that would help reduce food insecurity for children and tax credits that were shown to reduce child poverty.
There is a theory that putting money into the hands of poor will result in them spending that money in the local economy, therefore benefiting local businesses.
There have been advantages to having some big businesses but there has to be a balance that is often missing.
Bob Norris, Longmont
