By shirking the taxes they owe, exploiting loopholes, and lobbying for rock-bottom rates, corporations and the wealthy hoard money to wield power over our gov'tt and our society.
Congress must reform the tax code and shift power back to everyday taxpayers and working families.
According to @linakhanFTC, a "shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen ... could be exploiting [a] vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices."
Learn more about @FTC's investigation into surveillance pricing:
NEW: Today, the @CFPB released a new report that dives into the junk fees payment-processing companies impose on school lunches, costing American families $100 million per year collectively.
Groundwork's @Bilalgwork reacted with the following statement: http://groundworkcollaborative.org/news/groundworks-bilal-baydoun-on-school-lunch-junk-fees-an-egregious-example-of-corporate-profiteering/
Nightmarish stuff. Transaction fees. Annual Fees. Simply to use a lunch card at school. We may as well hand every kid a Capital One card.
Luckily @CFPB is working to stop predatory tech firms from asking kids "What's in Your Backpack?™️"
Companies are literally stealing kids’ lunch money. This is exactly why we need agencies that fight for consumers, especially the littlest ones. Thank god the @CFPB is standing up to these schoolroom bullies.
"America’s billionaires are now collectively worth a record $6 trillion. Their wealth has more than doubled since the passage of the landmark [tax law in 2017]."
It's time to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Indicators show that inflation is cooling, so why are prices on grocery items like coconuts or coconut water still too high? 🥥🌴
Corporate price gouging. And consumers have had enough.
For our June print issue, @ddayen wrote about surveillance pricing and how companies use our data to engage in price gouging. Now, the FTC is taking action.
An important step in cracking down on the methods big corporations use to spy on consumers 👏👏👏
"Data collection and smarter algorithms are turbocharging [surveillance pricing] and costing Americans a small fortune."
—@owenslindsay1 on the urgency behind the @FTC's recently announced investigation into corporate surveillance pricing
.@owenslindsay1 on the @FTC's investigation into surveillance pricing: "This study is such a critical first step in a really important conversation about what we think the rules should be around pricing — what we think the norm should be."
Read more:
In the wake of the pandemic, a gutted tax code — worsened by the 2017 tax law — paved the way for corporate profiteering that kept prices too high for too many, despite cooling inflation.
Corporations have raked in record profits by ripping off working people.
You exist in the context of all the corporate consolidation and market power that came before you.
Corporations collect data on everything from our finances, browser history, and heart rate.
Now some are selling tools that let businesses set different product prices based on that data.
The FTC just announced it's investigating how this works👇
🚨NEW: @FTC is investigating major companies’ use of surveillance pricing: using personal data to set individualized pricing for the same goods or services.
The agency is demanding information from 8 companies, including Mastercard, JPMorgan Chase, and McKinsey.👇🧵