Inflation is the measure of the cost of goods. You have cause and effect backwards here.
Inflation is the devaluation of currency due to increased supply of it. And you’re ignoring that price increases outpaced inflation and resulted in record profits. Companies used rising inflation as a cover to simply increase profits.
Wages are up across the board. Do you resent suppliers, warehouse staff, truck drivers, grocery employees, and distributors for making more money?
You may be forgetting all the unionization and strikes that helped with those increases. And you can’t refute that there are still people making federal minimum wage, or that it is a poverty wage.
The only significant life changes that happened during the post-covid inflation was wages increasing.
If you’re asserting that companies have not been raising prices beyond inflationary rate I can only conclude you’re willfully ignorant on this topic or commenting in bad faith.
(paywall on this one) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-25/us-corporate-profits-soar-taking-margins-to-widest-since-1950
Inflation happens because people have the money to support higher prices. It’s no more greed to raise prices there than it is for you to want to make more money.
Inflation happens because the government puts more money into circulation. Raising prices at a rate consistent with inflation is not wealth-hoarding greed. Raising prices well beyond inflation just because you can blame it on inflation and raking in the profits is.
Inflation is the devaluation of currency due to increased supply of it
This is simply not correct. Increased supply of currency relative to the actual amount of goods and services in an economy is probably the most prominent cause of inflation, but it’s not the only cause. Inflation itself is the actual generalized rise in prices, which can be caused by a variety of factors. Find a basic econ textbook, or just read the Wikipedia article on inflation.
Inflation happens because the government puts more money into circulation.
No. The government is constantly putting more.money into circulation without inflationary effects. We literally had suboptimal inflation for almost a decade.
Inflation is a measurement of price increases over time. Inflation happened this time due to COVID causing pent up demand, a glut of credit and cash on hand, and supply chain issues across the board.
Companies making more profits is hardly surprising given that people wanted to go buy a ton of shit because they finally could.
If you’re asserting that companies have not been raising prices beyond inflationary rate
Again this is literally impossible because whatever they raise prices to is where we derive the inflation rate from
Nobody is surprised about it companies wanting more money. We’re just angry about it (the whole dark cloud thing the article is about). Nobody is out here complaining that a Lamborghini costs $20k more. It’s about housing and groceries. The record profits aren’t from introducing a new kind of egg or lowering the cost of production and distribution. The profits are from raising the prices on the same goods because people got stimulus money
Yes, you have the technical economist definition of inflation correct. But, my dude, people are out here saying “our basic necessities like staple groceries are still more expensive even though inflation has gone down and we see that the companies producing those goods have reported their highest profits in 70 years” and you’re telling them “no, no, they’re not being greedy, it’s your fault for being willing to spend so much money on basic survival goods and that’s causing inflation”. There was no negotiating the cost of eggs and milk at the grocery store. The price was just set higher and consumers had to either pay it or starve.
Housing costs arent even companies being greedy, but homeowners.
I honestly think people don’t even know what they’re mad at they’re just mad. This is why the real problems struggle to get fixed.
I’m not being pedantic here - if you don’t understand the problem, you’re part of the problem, by definition. Fixing housing requires changing local zoning laws and depowering current homeowners from the ability to pull the ladder up after them to protect their investment. They will never back that en masse on their own, because they benefit.
