What matters in the 21st century is the size of the economy. We should use a map of the world based on GDP.

This is the downside of regulating prices. It doesn't let prices drop if supply is too high or demand too low. Free markets are very good at finding the market clearing price.

Let's be polite, please. I didn't insult you.

Socialism + Democracy = Lemon socialism

Demand goes up, supply not so much, you'd expect prices to rise. This is a surprise to anyone?

Well, maybe. What Walmart is really good at is squeezing costs out of everything it sells and dropping their prices. Their gross margins are really thin. The net effect is their customers are the ones who benefit most from cutting costs, not their shareholders.

No, I don't buy that one.... not completely, anyway. Always gotta be an "anti Trump" theory for everything that happens, though, right?

I know where I live in the Midwest, electricity prices have just gone up, up, up, ever since the Biden administration pushed the "clean, Green" agenda and power companies took steps like dismantling a perfectly good, working coal-fired plant near us. Then they dumped money into a big solar field in the middle of the city, where approval seemed to be rammed through City Hall despite most residents feeling very negatively about it. (This was a perfectly good chunk of land for a local park or other such use, and now it just looks unsightly.) Our governor decided, back then, to enact a "clean air" rule that forced power companies to build out more solar farms (or wind farms, though those haven't really made a lot of sense in most of the geography around here), and to shut down plants burning fossil fuels. (In reality, this typically turns into more of a scheme where the power company gets to decide if keeping the fossil fuel burning plant is profitable enough for them or not. If it is, they just pay out penalties to keep the status-quo, and that in turn funds small kickbacks to people with solar panels; SRECs.) Of course,. he conveniently wrote said legislation so it would retroactively go into effect in stages - making bills increase incrementally at least a year after he signed it into law. Helps make it harder for people to directly associate what he did with what they have to pay.

Capitalism itself has very little to do with this. There's no reason a power company can't just charge the biggest energy consumers a far higher rate, so everyone else's rate stays the same. It's the nature of it being a "public utility" that people have little choice but to pay for what's being provided. I mean, if it's TOO high, then someone can opt to build their OWN power generation facility. But that's rarely cost-effective or sensible. (In fact, they do this now when they find it convenient. Fast DC chargers for electric vehicles have such high rates to use them mostly for this reason. Power companies charge a "demand" fee on top of normal electricity generation prices on these, because of their sudden and relatively large power draw off the grid.

The apps are software that process your data with your permission. For example: Quicken.

I'm pretty sure with Quicken the money goes the other way -- the banks pay to be able to participate in Quicken's direct connect service, which is why some banks don't offer that or charge extra for it.

This but unironically. Why should Klarna have some sort of legislated privilege to get the banks to do work for them for free?

Incidentally, Klarna sucks; they offered some sort of premium -- I think a case or something -- for buying Bose headphones through them, then they never provided it and didn't respond to inquiries. It wasn't expensive enough to make a big fight over but it definitely soured me on Klarna.

Unpaid payroll usually comes first. Whether pensions come before bond payments depends on the terms. If bonds are subordinated, they will have to pay higher interest, which means the company might have gone out of business years earlier, making pensioners even worse off.

Situations like this are why company-backed defined-benefit pension plans should be illegal. Way too often, they go up in smoke or require taxpayer bailouts.

Individually controlled accounts, like 401(k) plans, don't have that problem.

If you have an operating profit (you make money, but not enough to pay your debts), you can file Chapter 11, and the judge will likely let you stay in business, since you're still making some money to pay off your creditors. Everyone is better off if the business continues.

But TFA doesn't say that Kodak has an operating profit. It says a gross profit, which is an entirely different thing and means almost nothing.

Nitpick: Gross profit includes some bills, specifically COGS.

It does not include payroll, rent, utilities, the cost of unsold inventory, etc.

COGS = Cost Of Goods Sold

I'm not a vegetarian, but there's certainly space in the world for a new option. In theory, a meat substitute could be healthier and cheaper. But the Impossible burger quite simply missed the mark and didn't live up to the hype. In short: it doesn't taste very good. An old-fashioned black bean burger is way better if you want a vegetarian burger.

All the hype had led me to believe that the Impossible burger was almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Maybe if you put a ton of toppings and sauces to disguise the flavor it could get a pass, but the reality is that it tasted and smelled NOTHING like a beef burger. The smell (especially when being cooked) is awful compared to beef. Worse, it gave me horrible indigestion. I think a lot of what happened was that the hype overran the reality of what the company created.

I think the take-away is that science still can't turn something into something that it's not. If you want to eat vegetarian- great. But stick with foods that are supposed to be vegetarian rather than vegetarian foods pretending to be meat.

Would you prefer they choose your preferred sources for you?

The actual insidious part about this is tying those preferences to your profile which they will definitely use to commoditize their user base even more.

Won't make you whole if it leaves you stranded and having to buy a last-minute ticket on another airline.

One thing the budget airlines have encountered is that the big airlines these days make most of their money hawking credit cards. The budget airlines try this too, but their more limited destination roster makes it much harder to compete with the Big 3 airlines on credit card setups, and their relative lack of heft means they don't get as good of a deal with the financial institutions on the cards they do sell.