An inflation narrative gives cover for price hikes driven by greed.
I'd be more inclined to believe the disruption from production to supply chains to storage and demand, migration, etc due to covid regulations (not just the Chinese lockdowns) to have had the major impact. But it could also be for example energy costs due to expensive green regulations, or cartel behavior from energy producers because energy prices have been a major leader in price increases and those affect virtually everything else. Just saying "greed" doesn't help understand anything. People are greedy, we already knew that. Aristotle knew that.
This has nothing to do with profit increasing faster than inflation which I'm not saying is false, mind you. Again, if you had a shred of evidence or logic to say prior to 2021 that corporations did not and would choose not to increase profit faster than inflation then that would be interesting.
The evidence is profits increasing faster than inflation and examples of C-suites saying straight up that this environment is letting them raise prices.
The story is that when inflation is low, consumers are more intolerant of price hikes. They'll shop around and try out your competitors. Evidence to support this sentiment analysis is the myriad ways companies sneakily "hike" prices. Shrinkflation for example. When prices seem like they are going up on everything, what's the point of shopping around?