The701
1597
44
1
Chart source: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/07/food-shortage-corporate-profit
Hundreds of millions of people cannot get enough food, and it's worsening due to things like effects of climate change, and Putin's war.
An oligopoly of immense and excessively-wealthy food companies sob and whine that they have no choice but to raise prices again and again because raw material or labor costs just being so goshdarned high. They'll also keep pointing at "inflation." If any of that was the case, they wouldn't be seeing grotesque levels of profit.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/big-business-windfall-profits-rocket-obscene-1-trillion-year-amid-cost-living-crisis - "18 food and beverage corporations made on average about $14 billion a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022..."
"Windfall profit" here is considered to be profits "exceeding average profits in 2017-2020 by more than ten percent." So that is $14,000,000,000 ABOVE their expected profits, which were already billions a year.
Convenient link for the report: https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/tdr2023ch3_en.pdf
These companies can also operate in the commodities trading markets. So not only do they profit off of having a hand in production of food, they get to screw with the prices of goods in the world of finance and futures trading.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_contract
Companies listed in the chart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM_(company)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Dreyfus_Company
trippingthelightfantastic
SanshinDojo
trippingthelightfantastic
kindpanda
I'm case someone here wasn't aware, the louis-dreyfus in the chart is, in fact, Julia louis-dreyfus's father's company (which was founded by her great great grandfather in the 1850s)
Royoffinland
Rich fucks looking at full treasure chest:"Wow, look at these profits!" Society: "You have so much money, could you not raise prices all the time, specially food?" Rich fucks: *empties the chest to tax paradise* "what money? And also, we need this year 20% fuller chest, otherwise we feel bad!"
The701
"But you get billions of dollars in direct federal subsidies every year." | "All gone! Need more. Or don't you want to help a broke, struggling business?"
Bystandr
So, Cargill got particularily greedy
The701
In this chart, yeah they went nuts. The others bumped things up a good bit though. They're not alone though, this goes well beyond the food sector. "722 mega-corporations raked in $1 trillion a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022." Not just profits. Windfall profits. Profits above their 2017-2020 levels.
CrazyLikeEd
I recently found a purse in the back of my closet that had grocery receipts from 2018. EVERYTHING is two to three times more expensive now.
The701
But don't you get that warm, fuzzy, happy feeling knowing that you could be helping fund some executive board's plan to spend billions in excess profits on stock buybacks??