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Welcome to You’re Probably Getting Screwed, a weekly newsletter and video series from J.D. Scholten and Justin Stofferahn about the Second Gilded Age and the ways economic concentration is putting politics and profits over working people.
Trump is wrong on importing more Argentina Beef to the US.
Last year, the United States imported a record amount 4.64 billion pounds of beef [ [link removed] ].
Now, Trump wants to quadruple what has come from Argentina.
This is not good for consumers and it’s not good for farmers/ranchers because it doesn’t address the root problems.
There are two huge issues that remain.
You know what’s nuts. This t-shirt has to have a tag showing where it was made. Yet we don’t have that in beef. It’s called Country of Origin Labeling [ [link removed] ] (aka COOL). So meat from a cow born, raised and harvested in Brazil can come to the U.S., get repackaged and it then can get a “Product of the U.S.A.” label.
Why? Because we have a monopoly problem.
There are 4 multinational corporations that control 85% of the beef market [ [link removed] ]. Half of those companies are from South America.
Monopolies lead to abuse of power. The packers abuse their power so much that even McDonalds has sued the 4 big packers for Price fixing [ [link removed] ]
Oh, you remember at Trump’s inauguration seeing those four tech billionaires front row? JBS (one of the 4 big packers and one of the most corrupt companies in the world) donated more money to that inauguration than those tech billionaires combined [ [link removed] ]!
We should not be off-shoring our food production. Along with beef, we are importing a record amount of fruits and vegetables. [ [link removed] ] A secure nation is a food secure nation.
And we sure as hell should NOT trust a New York billionaire who probably has never been to a farm who eats high end steaks with ketchup, when it comes to our beef supply.
YOU’RE PROBABLY (ALSO) GETTING SCREWED BY:
Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs promise big savings — but often become a Trojan horse for invasive surveillance, hidden price hikes, and traps to keep us from leaving.
A new report shows how these programs are devolving into a testing ground for surveillance pricing.
The Loyalty Trap: How Loyalty Programs Hook Us with Deals, Hack our Brains, and Hike Our Prices [ [link removed] ] - Samuel A.A. Levine and Stephanie T. Nguyen
Trump’s FTC
The Federal Trade Commission removed several blog posts in recent months about open source and potential risks to consumers from the rapid spread of commercial AI tools [ [link removed] ].
The Haves
Income inequality is growing in this K-Shaped economy. [ [link removed] ]
AI Bubble
“We are absolutely in an AI bubble now. It is going to burst. I don’t know when, I don’t know the order of magnitude. A lot of people are going to lose money [ [link removed] ].” - Lauren Taylor Wolfe
Just this week, the Financial Times wrote that 10 AI startups — not a dollar in profit among them — have gained nearly $1 trillion in market value over the past 12 months [ [link removed] ]. (That is, to use a technical term, bananas.)
Billionaire Pretend Astronaut
Jim Gaffigan gives us some comic relief…
Amazon
I wonder how this will impact Jeff Bezos who is worth $240 billion [ [link removed] ]?
Data Centers
This frenzy of building means that datacenters could account for more than 14% of the US’s total power demand by 2030 [ [link removed] ], triple the amount it does now. Utilities predict that the same volume of electricity it would take to power six cities will be required just to keep data centers online by this time.
BEFORE YOU GO
Before you go, I need two things from you: 1) if you like something, please share it on social media or the next time you have coffee with a friend. 2) Ideas, if you have any ideas for future newsletter content please comment below. Thank you.
Standing Tall for All,
J.D. Scholten
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