Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for August 14, 2022

Rat, corporate America has no use for the truth.

Are those two henchmen agents from the Matrix?

The rat of truth.

Gougers, just Gougers

Of course a chunk of that is also due to inflation. Say “Thanks Brandon”

Inflation isn’t the President’s. Sheesh! Study your economics.

Gas prices going up all Bidens fault, gas prices going down (crickets from the media!)

I spent the week trying to find some prescription medicine for an eye problem. None in the state, and everything is on back order. The second medication was the same way. Fortunately, my eye is improving on its on. Sigh. I pity people will more serious medical problems. Oopsie, does not help with cancer drugs, etc.

It is interesting that we have the highest inflation that we have had in 40 years, and big oil announced that they have had the highest profits that they have had in 40 years.

I agree with Garfield.

The biggest driver of inflation is the printing of currency. That fact was demonstrated by the Confederacy. It funded the war mainly by printing money. Inflation was rampant.

Got that right, Rat.

Is Odie sticking up his thumb or his finger?

Goes like this;

Crisis, central bank bails out large corporations with QE, economic governing power centralized by executive orders, inflation, hardship for citizens, now QT, yet more inflation, blatant crime, more poverty, food shortages, unrest, the very rich amass more resources, lower and middle class declining quality of life, destitute poverty class (homeless camps), an empire in decline.

I know it is not exactly the same but look how quickly Sri Lanka went from prosperity to collapse……by an executive ordered economy.

Congress just passed the law to increase corporate tax rates, guess who will end up paying the increase in the end? The consumer, duh!

Anybody else notice that about the time Russia finally cut off the gas supply, the prices actually started to fall . . .

. . . from the peak that was supposedly caused by Russia’s threat to cut off the gas supply.

Why do I have this sudden craving for lasagna?

It’s a good thing that the president (and his decisions/policies) didn’t have anything to do with the shortages and he prices. It’s too bad that the president can’t do anything.

Inflation is ruining everything.

Companies determine price increases by percentage instead of penny per penny. That exacerbates inflation.

If you seriously believe corporations are “gouging,” simply deregulate completely, including capital formation, and allow the market to cure the problem. No monopoly can exist longer than a generation without the care and feeding by the government. Big corporations like regulation, as it eliminates their smaller competition. Even the lingering (and real) “supply chain” problems are entirely attributable to government constraints on the market.

Not just the oil companies, all of them are showing record profits which is the reason no one can say we’re in a recession.

funny how that works…

But…but…but… Dopey Joe tells us via his handlers coughObamacough on his teleprompter that there is no such things as supply chain issues and labor shortages and it’s all because of Climate Change and Donald Trump and millions of drooling idiot proles believe it. BTW, will the FBI agent who “confiscated” four pair of Melina’s panties during the raid please return them when Hunter is finished with them? OK. Don’t. Ew.

It is interesting that we’ve had the largest price inflation we’ve had in 40 years after the largest inflation in the money supply in 40 years.

Probably just coincidence. Just like the decreases in price inflation following the decreases in money supply inflation. It’s always coincidence.

And if you believe that, have I got a political party for you.

Two, in fact.

worse than the comics censor

Gotta say, I LOVE THIS STRIP!

Yup. “Pay no attention to the greedheads behind the curtain.”

Pure coincidence, nothing to see here, move along citizen.

Rat, the greedheads that run major corporations HATE the truth…

Dang, Stephan had to dig deep for those Garfield panels. Those are from 2000, before this strip was even born. https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/2000/07/27

How much is your product?How much ya got?

Even RATs are affected…

I always bought Black oil bird seed to feed the birds…it was about 18.00 per 50 lbs! When the pandemic hit, it went up to $25.00 per bag…NOW its $33.00 per bag!

Poor birds! =~{

They will sell their souls and deal with Satan himself if it increases their bottom line….

let’s not forget shrinking the package size for the same price…

Garfink.

Hmmm…Garfield and oldie look different than usual…

Spot-on, Stephan!

The other day, I replenished my supply of a high-fluoride prescription toothpaste I need. The dentist sells it for $1 over his cost. It jumped from $14/tube to $20! There is no excuse for a 43% price increase.

This old boy adds dried cranberries to his cereal. The most recent cost increase was 70%. And they’re grown within my state, less than 150 miles away. Therefore, my usage went down by 75%.

If you live in a metro area, find out how your public transit works, and let your personal vehicle sit! Our vintage explorer (2002 STX) gets between four weeks and six weeks on a tank of gas. A local bus ride for seniors costs 75 cents!

Rat got that one right. Even after a massive corporate tax cut which most corporations pocketed and a govt bailout during COVID. Whining over a measly 15% minimum tax, yeah right.

Big companies price-gouging and profiteering when it hurts people the most. Sounds about right.

people are catching on…

“Liar’s Poker” took the world by storm, but it did have some unintended consequences. Lewis had thought, if anything, the book would discourage the money-minded college generation from working on Wall Street, but it did the opposite. It accidentally served as a career blueprint for business majors and a moral guide of the big money machine.

Lewis said “Liar’s Poker” is still being read more than 30 years later because it was one of the last books to capture an uncensored and unfiltered Wall Street before publicity became a thing.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/08/michael-lewis-three-decades-after-liars-poker-says-wall-street-is-worse-in-some-ways.html

The Rat Getting Covered by the Cat?!!

I left a job of over 25 years in the restaurant business (family owned) to start working for a major corporation, Perrigo. I work in a warehouse now. I get better pay and benefits. At one of our meetings, we’re told how much the company makes, and since they are publicly traded, anyone can look at our sales. But they are also trying hard to keep employees! Even with the great pay, we seem to be short staffed often. Should they decrease their profit margin to up the pay of the employees? They did! They gave everyone a raise this month trying to keep their current employees! Otherwise, they pay everyone overtime in order to get all the work done with fewer people. I do find it funny that I left a lower paying job for a bigger paying job, and then the price of everything went up too. Sigh.

Pricing is based mostly (not completely) on margin % above the cost of production. If cost doubles, you don’t leave the margin the same, because your margin % would drop in half. In an inflation environment, the dollar value in purchasing power drops in proportion to the inflation rate. So if the % stays the same, the margin doubles, but the buying power of that margin stays the same as it was before you raised it. The “profit” in numerical terms may double, but the profit in “purchasing power” terms stays the same, and that’s the number that goes into buying the next round of cost of goods, which have also doubled. Money isn’t real – it’s a representation of exchange that is volatile and anchored to nothing that keeps it from varying in purchasing power. See WWII Reischmark.

I too became an economics expert by reading bumper stickers and the comments to comic strips…

Another cartoon that is beyond the understanding of any Republican.

Republicans still believe that billionaires and patriotic multinational corporations should pay no taxes.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

that is amazing lol

Rat “speaks Truth to Power.” Rat gets axed.

See, kids? That’s how the world works….

Thank you Stephen Pastis, thank you so much!

shoulda replaced it with Doonesbury or Cathy

What a coincidence

Feel the love in panel six. Cool to see Garfield and Odie here in “Pearls”, too.

I like the text between G&O reading “Apologies to the great Jim Davis”.

Why didn’t they increase prices before covid while Trump was in office, or were corporations less greedy then?

Well, they have to make up for the losses… I guess…

But … uncle Joe said we had ZERO inflation in July!

TRUE