@mrman @geekysteven @freemo I had assumed so, if companies want to have the same margins as a percentage of costs, but I didn’t have all the facts to back up that theory

@realcaseyrollins

With inflation, if there are no other factors or economic issues, then wage/salary increases along with cost of things. The end resultis that companies make more in dollars and cents, and charge more, but people make more income by an equal portion.

If you make x2 the amount but everything costs x2 the amount are you really making record profits? We usually adjust for inflation for exactly this reason.

@geekysteven @mrman

@realcaseyrollins

Depends, are we talking inflation adjusted profits, or non-inflation adjusted?

@geekysteven

@freemo @geekysteven I think the claim is that adjusted for inflation, the big companies are at record profits

@realcaseyrollins

If they are at record profits after adjusting for inflation then that is an indication of a healthy economy despite inflation.

You have to remember inflation is **not** an indication of an unhealthy economy in the present, though if it is excessively high it will produce an unhealthy economy in the future of course.

You can have inflation and still have a thriving economy, making inflation adjusted profits is largely unrelated to any inflation.

@geekysteven

@realcaseyrollins

By the way here you can see a chart showing the relationship bertween corporate profits and inflation. You can see in the past there is very little relationship between them: https://randomterrabytes.net/2022/05/22/inflation-and-corporate-profits/

Now the real question is why did we have those huge corporate profits seemingly out of nowhere during a downturn in the economy... I answered this already, it was QE.

So again it is **not** the profits thats is to blame, it is something totally unrelated (QE) that happened to have the side effect of **artificially** increasing corporate profits. This injection of free money caused inflation, not the profits themselves.

@geekysteven

@realcaseyrollins

Now for comparison check out this article showing the relationship of QE and inflation. Not only does QE very closely match the inflation rate but youll notice this continued inflation spike was well predicted and expected before it even took off 3 years ago. No corporate profits needed nor matters:

https://www.cfr.org/blog/why-fed-bond-binge-will-boost-inflation-1

@geekysteven

You really have to look at profit margins, not profits. If the margins are similar but profits are up significantly that just means the company is selling more things.

Then the next step is to check expenses vs revenues. You can increase your margins by reducing costs just as easily as raising prices. Then you need to ensure that the revenue came from actual product sales and not, say, asset sales.

The term “record profits” doesn’t mean much without a lot of context. Most articles don’t go into the real depth. And even if they did, most people and media don’t look much past the headline.