Consumers Are ‘Running Out of Money’ and Cutting Back, CEOs Warn
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-07/gas-prices-hit-record-high-hurting-consumer-spending-ceos-warn?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc3ODE3OTgzMCwiZXhwIjoxNzc4Nzg0NjMwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJURU80WDZLR0NUTEYwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIxMkE1QzVFRUNERDg0NUJEQjVFOTM1MUE0Mzk4QTAxNCJ9.FUc_iNxe-d_QvII5DHAHsKZdc3KfM0-zFO_b2JFDonEOpen linkView original on slrpnk.net450
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From my brief skim of the article it seems like they're worried that poor people not being able to afford anything will mean less profits for big businesses.
Do you think they'll ever realize that there are so many poor people that can't afford anything anymore because those same companies have spent 60+ years ensuring wages stay exactly where they were while prices increased?
I doubt it. It's clear that to be a CEO you need to have zero problem solving skills, just social connections and rich parents (usually). It's the rest of the management team below the C-Suite that has does the thinking. Then middle manglement fucks up implementing it to try and get noticed for a promotion from their dead-end position because they aren't a part of the rich club already.
If I'm correctly reading into the history and motivations of corporations, this is part of them donning their hot dog suit and saying that they're trying to figure out why everyone is mysteriously poor.
After that, they'll put on a ROCK/BAND shirt, a backwards hat, and carry a skateboard before explaining that this "poor" is hitting everyone the same. And they'll lay off thousands or millions more than they already have
Then...
money_please.gif
After proving once again that they're the "job makers," they'll get their emergency loans, buy out weaker competition, and everyone will accuse them of foul play.
Finally, they'll hire everyone back at fractions of their previous pay, even though the cost of living will have disproportionately risen as well. People will fight, there will be strikes, and then the bleed will be slowed, but not stopped, by the companies "giving in to demands" that are actually neutered facsimiles of the original bargaining proposals. But everyone will be too tired and poor to continue fighting. We'll all ask our politicians how this could have happened and why they still trust the corporations. Then we get to watch the old song and dance all over again:
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"prepare three envelopes"
prepare a very tight rope, and or a falling metal object.
or class favorite, playing dodgeball with metal projectiles.
Thats not what's going on.
Retailers have commissioned surveys to determine that people are already out of money.
They use this to create a narrative and promote the idea that additional interest rate rises are unnecessary because people are already broke to additional interest rate hikes will just create a recession.
CEOs are all psychopaths because they're good at that kind of work :(
besides tech, most other stem jobs are pretty stagnant and low to begin with. yea trades might good for some people, that arnt prone to physical ailements but it seems its much more geared towards white people instead, plus the conservative culture of the industry. in construction is quite uncommon to see an asian person working there.
This is not true.
Wages in the US adjusted for prices have generally been going up - but slowly - even since Reagan. This remains true - broadly - even if you look at the lowest income decile, but the growth is less:
So wages were stagnant for the bottom decile from 1980 to 2016, but rose since then. It is, however, not even correct to say that "wages stayed the same but prices went up" between 1980 and 2016, because those are inflation-adjusted figures: the price increases are already factored in.
The graphic shows rising inequality, which is what trickle down delivers. Don't downvote just because I don't entirely agree with every mad claim that has an anti-capitalist vibe.
You are adding nothing to my life; goodbye.
Same buddy. Same.
Just like Regan.
I mean it will that’s why having no middle class is bad for business
Someone get this person a Pulitzer.
The parasites are killing their hosts.
Demanding infinite growth in a finite system is the definition of cancer.
CEOs Are 'Hoarding All The Profits' and Not Raising Wages, Workers Warn
That's not a story the Bloomberg would tell you
From my point of view the capitalists are evil.
CEOs warn, sitting on their third yacht, planning their fourth.
“I might have to delay the purchase of my 5th yacht by 2 months!”
No. I'll do layoffs and slowly hire them back at lower wages. "Can we add a helipad to this fifth yacht?"
they will flee the country once the people realize too late they shouledve came for thier heads a long time ago.
they're so close to figuring out that a rising tide lifts all ships and why a min wage increase/paying livable wages in general would actually be a good thing for their bottom line. So close.
They'll just never . . . quite. . . get there.
Most people don't have ships, they just drown. (I just don't like that quote being applied to economics)
None of these fuckers think long term. it's all quarter by quarter. I see it in my job even with startups. Build something now, use AI, it works now? great. it won't scale a year or two down the line? that's a problem for future me.
Are we making money now? great. what do you mean a year or two down the line there will be no one left that makes enough money to buy our shit? that's a problem for future me.
The last corporate job I had before going into business myself, was as a sales manager for a Fortune 100 company.
It was very common at the end of a quarter to have to call around to wholesale customers, and beg them to take a pallette of some poorly selling sku, telling them "Don't even unwrap it. Just stick it in a corner of the warehouse, and when the quarter turns, I'll authorize a return of the inventory, and give you a discount on something else to make up for the trouble."
Did it all the time.
I made a ton of money building reporting systems which made it simple to identify this form of gaming sales numbers to fit targets.
Thank you.
So the bosses would know I was doing that? Who do you think told me to do it? LOL.
Generally, I was working for the boss's boss's boss.
Yeah, it went all the way to the top. Those guys wanted it done. It wasn't the top brass we were fooling, it was the stock holders, who were reacting to quarterly numbers that were essentially faked.
But business and something about being more efficient or something like that.
Yeah, my company is chasing an IPO and so is slashing wages. People are leaving in droves, but since it makes number go up…
No care whatsoever about post IPO. It’s going to be awful.
name? i love trading a good shitco IPO
I have an interview next week, I can’t risk it just yet. Plus it’s mostly internal speculation as nothing but the salary reductions have been announced.
God, how I love people who throw acronyms around expecting everyone to know them
IPO: initial public offering. Means when a private business goes public (and is therefore able to be traded on the stock market). The CEO loses a lot of their stock during the process, so it's in the CEO's best interest to rugpull as hard as possible during an IPO so that they can cash out.
thats what spez did with REDDIT, he made hundreds of millions as soon IPO happened, now he needs to keep afloat long enough to be an entrenched propaganda machine, while still earning from advertisements, or funding by propaganda groups.
https://acronymfinder.com/
"I'll just make a well timed bet on my company declaring bankruptcy right before we release a dumpster fire earnings report and ride off into the sunset. I'm a good person who makes the world a better place, my child's little league coach told me so when I took my turn buying pizza for the team."
"gotta move fast and break things like Elon!"
they are all pretty much run like a PE firm.
Steve Jobs actually mentioned this happens when leadership comes from a sales focused, rather then product focused, background. Everything becomes short term thinking, and then they dip when they see/reach the inflection point of their profit growth, and blame the inevitable company failure on the next guy
Lol they aren't concerned with people "running out of money" they're concerned nobody will buy their products. Which could be solved by giving people more money but that's not an option for them.
Klarna and 8 year car loans are just the beginning. Trump was serious when he said we should do 100 year mortgages, THAT is the solution they are looking for. Not, "how can we get people more money to buy things". But more "how can we get people with no money to continue buying things".
"We're not selling enough shit - better put prices up and make our products half the size!"
Unironically. I've watched so many businesses fall into this trap.
Places used to make money on volume. That was the entire point of early McDonald's. Extremely small menu served instantly. Low profit per customer, but constantly busy.
Now one of the biggest corpo metrics is "ARPU", average revenue per user. And when they do raise prices the immediate effect is more profit, nearly every time.
People rarely look at the price and walk out. What's more likely is that they just never come back again. Clearly management made a great change with the price increases; it must be something else driving customers away six months later. It takes time for high prices to hurt your business.
In the 90s you could get a bucket of chicken for about $10 and feed your family of five. Inflation calculator says that should be $21 now.
No wonder most of them are mostly empty.
I used to go out for the day, and hit someplace for lunch. Now I eat lunch at home, and then go out. It's not even that fast food is so expensive, it's not even close to good any more.
Also local restaurants are far superior for the same price or lower than chains.
100% its the expense that drove me away. Part of it though is the expense went to the cost of an actual restaurant.
Thank Sysco.
And Cheney Bros, and a lot more. Cheap, profitable corporate food product.
Couple of tagents.
I miss the Popeyes of my youth.
"Louisiana fast" because it was a jab at "black people time". Plus the food was made by black people now in Toronto every fast food joint is run by South Asians.
Also they took away my Po boys and shrimp.
Biscuits still slap though.
It's not a trap, it's an intentional choice, and a very profitable one. Imagine you sell a lot of a product but costs make up 90% of revenue. Then you double the price and as a result sell half as much. Your costs stayed roughly the same, maybe went up a little. So now instead of making 10% profit, you are making 40-45% profit per item. Now imagine your sales declined by less than 50% and how much extra profit that would be.
Prior to the pandemic companies would be careful about raising prices. If they raised prices by 5% and lost 10% of sales, that was less profitable than not increasing the price. But the legit supply chain shortages during the pandemic made them realize that a larger subset of customers were willing to pay significantly higher prices than they thought, and they also realized they had less competition than they thought, and now everything costs double and we all just call it inflation, because that's what inflation is. When the price of everything goes up at the same time.
It will continue until either there is nothing left of the upper middle class, or the upper middle class stops paying. The poor and lower middle class are already priced out, and companies do not care.
Corpo looks at this stat 2-4 weeks after they change prices. They don't care to realize that the sales did decline more than that, it just takes longer.
It would behoove most of us to study the stock market crash of 1929.
Executives across retail, restaurants and packaged goods are increasingly worried about US shoppers with tighter budgets amid surging gas prices caused by the conflict in the Middle East.
“They’re literally running out of money at the end of the month,” Kraft Heinz Co. Chief Executive Officer Steve Cahillane said in an interview this week. “We’re seeing negative cash flows in the lower-income brackets where they’re dipping into savings.”
DIPPING INTO SAVINGS???! WTF are they smoking?! I don't know many people with a cushion of savings let alone a comfortable one; especially lately since our pay has stagnated, job market's trash, and EVERYTHING has risen in price! Who's got the ability to even attempt to save?!
Yeah, it's the surging gas prices. Sure, CEO man.
These idiots are so out of touch. $40 more a month in gas compared to 3 years ago isn't what's breaking me. It's the $800/mo more in rent. It's the $300/month more in groceries. It's my electrical bill doubling because of a new AI slopcenter in my backyard. It's being told by my boss that this quarter's record profits weren't record enough to fund a measly 2% raise for me.
But sure, my dude Mr. Kraft CEO. Blame the gas boogeyman.
I wonder how marbled Mr. Cahillaine's sirloin is? Maybe it would be good with some Heinz 57 sauce.
insurance for some, if you are using ACA soley(assuming your AGI is much higher than what your state will subsidize(pre-covid)) and not from a employer funded health insurance, your cost is also very high.
USA health "care" is so profoundly fucked up.
the stone is no longer bleeding! hit it harder!
NGL, I’ve been training for the hunts of the upcoming, “bunker era”.
CEOs should stop warning and start giving living wages. Fucking parasites.
I have yet to read or hear of one CEO who ever deserved a godawfully huge bonus, but they do stick together those cunning rats. While it is true that most citizens have been "capitalized" out of even the spare nickels and dimes they had kicking around, the best the CEO can do is say "Our customers don't have any money", not why they don't have any money. Fuck those big bonuses. The market is wild and out of control and has been forever so what exactly are those bonuses for...fluke profit?
even Soros says alot of things that are pretty pro-billionaire and just rubs people the wrong way. hes what you would get if GATES isnt associated with EPSTEIN or his ruthlessness in MS.
Remember, if it’s not from the Dépression region, it’s just sparking recession
Oh great! Another 'CEO says something' article. :-/
Foraging ftw
Oh, do the CEOs finally realize that underpaid workers, AI agents and robots don't go on shopping sprees?
They should raise their pay for that nobel prize worthy brilliance.
Oh man, a shopping spree... Unless it's food, I don't make a purchase without considering it for at least 6 months before hand.
I'm really sorry about the hardships you face that are representative of an ongoing development over the last decades.
Moving more and ever more wealth into the pockets of the Epstein class is making that wealth missing elsewhere - the people who create that wealth by working are devoid of it.
I must have made it sound harder than it is, but my household income is well above the poverty line, and I don't have any kids. Even with that financial flexibility though, I still can't afford to spend recklessly.
Let's put it this way, my last big "non-necessary" purchase was a firearm, and I literally reviewed it and considered it for 3 years. For a less than 1000 dollar purchase.
I think it's hard enough and harder than it had to be.
There's plenty of wealth, food, housing, etc. but it's not fairly distributed and the distribution just gets more and more skewed due to tax rules and other regulations in favor of the richᵀᴹ.
Unless it's an immediate, justifiable need, say washing machine breaks down and using a laundromat for six months would eat up money better spent for the washing machine, this is just a good idea, anyway. Marketing companies are evil and sell based on implanting false and mutable emotional whims, the time spent considering gives those projected mutable emotions time to clear.
No, but for recognizing it he'll give himself a bonus
AI funny enough is expensive asf for companies, if not sooner than later. that cost for maintaining a datacenter has to come from somewhere.
And they aren't even paying the real price yet. AI companies hope to capture the market and make it big.
I'm afraid the AI bros have a plan to integrate AI everywhere and once it becomes clear that it's not economically viable to operate their AI nonsense, they'll whine about it being a systemic risk to have them go down.
Let's have the public bail out another sector that miscaculated financially and interweaved itself in ways with the world that letting the AI corpos go bankrupt will look like the worse of two scenarios...
Nah, just replace them with AI.
Oh waaa 🎻
The nerve of these companies and CEOs complaining… They were warned about this a long time ago.
Well, try replacing more people with AI and see what happens, you fucking peanuts. It doesn’t matter how good it is, it removes another salary that would have bought your enshitified, disposable, polluting product or unnecessary subscription. Even a basic dickhead could figure that out.
Starve the plankton, the whales eventually die. Or better yet, when the poor have nothing more to eat, they will then eat the rich.
The obvious solution is to tighten the wages to claw back profits despite the declining sales volume!
Oh my god. These dumb asses forget that people need money in the first place in order to give it to them.
and then have to spend it in countries that are "tax-billionaire friendly' which is going to slowly diminishing if they all become authoritarian in nature, eventually authotarians will be the only one that is the billionaire.
“Oh no! Time to monetize their ever increasing poorness even more somehow!” -some rich prick somewhere
And yet they'll never take a pay cut and will support trump and his ilk all the way to bankruptcy
Seems like the headline is framing this problem in a very alien way.
Why are these damn poors not spending their money, don't they know I have a family to ignore!
Maybe we need a Luigi to remind corporate execs why it’s important to pay living wages…
Thanks for volunteering! We are rooting for you!
There are two kind of wages they can pay us. Living wages, and killing wages.
I will happily donate to your defense fund.
I remember just last week Kevin Hassett was proudly exclaiming how the economy was doing so well, citing Americans spending more on their credit cards. He even says something along the lines of 'they're spending more of it on gas, but spending is up'.
God really needs to deus ex us right about now.
You'd think they'd listen to themselves jibber jabber.
How about less stockholder and more customer.
slow clap and the last horse finally crosses the finish line.
Too bad the rest of us have already been gluesticked.
I hope it all fuckin burns at this point
I don't know... I don't mind if some systems break down, but I'd prefer communities where people have the will and means to help each other than mass destruction.
Feel like that is why universal basic income is not even that left than you might expect. If people do not have money they cant pay shit, its as simple as that.
The government can give ubi and take it away once dependence is established. Maybe it's better if the workers just own the means of production.
What a revelation! Give that CEO a raise! :|
I tend to not go to any chain restaurants at all anymore. I have one exception for the local bar that has super cheap prices and good food. otherwise, I go to privately owned restaurants and bars
who the fuck wants to pay $9 for a beer at Kelsey's where you can get ignored by your server for 20 minutes when trying to get the bill that shows you paid $25 for bland food, then be expected to tip the person already making a bit more than minimum wage $10 for the literally 2.5 minutes of service they gave you. no thanks
Why don't these consumers just get a job already?
I work at the guillotine factory.
I have a small amount of savings in my ABLE account. I am figuring on either doomspending or mattressing them as Euros. As is, they will inflate on the vine and become worthless.
This sucks. I was hoping to just let my savings collect interest and only use them for emergencies or major things, but now...well, I don't see the point. 😕
Time to lay off some of those consumers and cut wages so we can claim to be positioned better for profits from the very people we’re cutting.
They just realized this??? hahahaha
So they can cut profit or get none from the biggest spending block, right?!
Consumers