Profits are driving inflation. When will politicians and the BoE admit it?
taxresearch.org.uk
taxresearch.org.uk
Wait a second, tech stocks are down like crazy for most of us. Fat good that did for us all as employees. Clearly raising interest rates isn't the kind of silver bullet that economists hoped it'd be.
People very quickly adopt a “if you can’t beat them join them” attitude when facing resistance or throw their hands up and say “I’m just trying to live” or “that’s not my problem” when encountering a moral dilemma.
So no wonder that when faced with a moral dilemma most people put themselves in the position to say “I can see myself doing that and wouldn’t want to feel judged for it, so I’ll defend the practice because maybe I’ll need to do that later.”
I’m trying to figure out how to build the structure of society to promote the opposite of that - to make it trivially easy to say no to unethical behavior instead of just going along with the crowd. I’m coming up short with how to do that.
So then we have a problem don’t we? Either the expectation is that some plurality of humans have the ability to coherently manage this kind of epistemological chain reasoning. Or it is untenable for that level of coherency to be able to drive functional assumptions that are generalizable across all human communities.
And us, we’re back to where all moral philosophers have always gotten stuck, which is to say, we have no objective epistemological grounding for any particular type of moral reasoning chain - making every single, moral debate impossible to agree on generalized first principles.
So how do you structure society in a way such that the default behaviors diffuse power and increase pro social responsibility, given the fact that the current social structures demonstrate infinite examples of anti-social behaviors leading to power and wealth.
That is to say, how do you create a society where nobody even wants to be a millionaire because that level of relative over-consumption relative to others would just feel too bad.
It seems kind of unfathomable to me how people do not understand that privatized tyranny is still tyranny by a system that is socially reinforced - it doesn't have to be a government that does it whatsoever and the general rules of power kind of matters more for first principles than some arbitrary definition of "capitalism" or "socialism" or whatnot that may be irrelevant in another thousand years. It's always been about how to organize collective actions compatible with the context of human social development.
It sucks. It feels bad. But in the end it may be the only option you have.
Living with integrity brings about the most robust and beautiful experiences I've ever had. Significantly more happiness in this state than with a lot of money and all the things most people lie and cheat to have, and while I have never lied and cheated (much), my priorities were different.
Try living for a year where you don't care about money, you volunteer your time for people, and you operate in service -- where everything you build is purely for others, every encounter is a genuine exploration and interest in others, and service is rooted in a desire to uplift people. This is the opposite of most conventional action rooted in trying to take as much money from everyone as possible, or "what can you do for ME?"
This pattern makes dreams come true.
No amount of wealth and fame can counterbalance the depression you’ll live with by playing the game all the way to the top.
Unless you have a narcissistic personality in which case you’re not even able to read this without contempt for the whole concept.
When you are on your deathbed someday, I wonder if you'll have a wish like "I wish I worked even harder and made even more money." You might be the only one ever in mankind's history if so!
Of course you don't get to do this without some amount of risk of retaliation and collateral damage. But there is no conflict averse solution. The problem with the "structure" of society is that it has become too conflict averse.
This is why nobody called the effects of QE I and II correctly - if you recall it was supposed to cause widespread hyperinflation overnight when it was unwound.
Welp that was totally wrong because the financial system isn’t some deterministic mathematical function. It’s a political and human organization that will twist itself into doing whatever it needs to do to maintain the current power structure - up to and including breaking any rule that Mises, Rothbard or Jefferson could think of that would restrain the use of signoriage as political power.
According to which economists? Did you ignore the economists who vouched for them and said they wouldn't lead to hyperinflation? Regardless, inflation did happen because of QE I and II but it wasn't hyperinflation as many economists predicted beforehand.
https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/8797#t...
Here is FT using examples from places that specifically policy makers read, which is where it makes a difference:
https://financialpost.com/news/economy/stubborn-inflation-ha...
1) stock market 2) company valuations 3) startup funding 4) housing
Basically the fact that Google, Facebook, Twitter blew up in user growth during the start of QE lead to all the QE money going into startup/tech investments rather than inflating commodities.
It's an issue of our system of controls: likely we should implement price control during times of high inflation.
Imagine if the following happened during covid:
- used car prices were locked/limited
- housing prices were locked/limited
- certain foods were locked/limited
Inflation would have not been an issue.
- hardcore monetarists who think that inflation is always and only a monetary phenomenon
- hardcore Efficient Market Hypothesis believers who think that all markets are always perfectly efficient, so therefore all companies are always already charging profit-maximising prices
(These come up every single time and are immune to evidence. Also a bunch of people are going to ignore the UK and Euro qualifiers of the OP article and talk about US inflation)
Personally I'd like to offer a couple of extra lines of inquiry: labour market tightening due to COVID losses, and the impact of huge natural gas price spikes in Europe due to the war. See the IMF quote in OP:
> "Rising corporate profits account for almost half the increase in Europe's inflation over the past two years as companies increased prices by more than spiking costs of imported energy. Now that workers are pushing for pay rises to recoup lost purchasing power"
That presents a proposed mechanism for actual price changes ("menu reprinting" in economics jargon). Energy spike forces price rises -> once you're changing the prices, makes sense to change them by more than you need -> wages less elastic than consumer spending -> increased profits because prices have gone up faster than wage bills AND energy prices have now come down again.
What's a good example where a company is bragging about raising prices?
Regardless of tone, increasing profits is what is demanded by shareholders and given that 61% of Americans own stocks, I don't see how you break out of that loop.
What is a tractable solution?
In addition to private equity, there are also conflicts of interest from index funds. Institutional investors own over 80% of the S&P 500. Vanguard and BlackRock are the two largest shareholders of a majority of S&P 500 companies. This means BlackRock and Vanguard are the largest shareholder of American and United airlines. Some question whether or not this is also leading to higher prices [2].
0: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/06/...
1: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/high-air-ambulance-charge...
2: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/business/dealbook/rise-of...
Those industries you named are far from consolidated. The largest veterinarian (VCA) owns 20% market share. The largest air ambulance one owns 30% (Air Methods). The largest general ambulance service (Envision) owns just 10%.
> In 2010, Bain Capital bought Air Medical Group Holdings for $1 billion, only to sell it five years later for double that amount to KKR, which, in turn, merged the company with yet another air-ambulance provider, American Medical Response, under the name Global Medical Response. (Tracking this shell game can be dizzying. In the three years between Hoechlin’s air-ambulance flight and mine, Guardian Flight merged with REACH Air Medical Services; both are owned by Global Medical Response.) In 2017, American Securities drastically accelerated private equity’s takeover of the air-ambulance industry with its $2.5 billion purchase of Air Methods, the largest domestic provider of air ambulances. (In 2016, during its final year as a publicly traded company, Air Methods posted a $97.9 million profit on $1.17 billion in revenue, and the year before had paid its CEO $2.5 million in direct compensation, including stock options.) That purchase established the industry’s current landscape, in which two private-equity firms, American Securities and KKR, control almost two-thirds of the national market for air ambulances, according to Medicare data.
0: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/04/how-private-equity-t...
Also, regarding the vets, JAB bought emergency vet services in specifically target geographic locations to control the market for emergency vet services in those areas. They control a tiny portion of the overall market, but their consolidation still allows for higher prices in the regions they operate in.
Meanwhile drive by a mall or go to a store. They are packed. Lines are ling and people are falling over them selfs to buy stuff.
Cars. While recovering, are still hard to find. When dealerships have shortages they do massive markups. Lets are sold but huge profits per car. This price action is due to demand, bulls have to be paid.
Yet you totally ignore the masses of money injected into the economy. Hell we still have areas in CA where eviction is still banned and people are just living rent free.
There is just too much day to day evidence to consider your statement that gave zero examples as good faith arguments.
Next up. Replies replies showing a one off case of profit as status quo.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS
Do not assume that because someone has expensive things that they also have a lot of cash and no debt.
> When dealerships have shortages they do massive markups. Lets are sold but huge profits per car.
If price increases are due to supply constraints profits should equalize, not increase (This is called price elasticity). People need cars and manufactures are taking advantage of that fact. The demand (actually absolute need) for a car make the price extremely inelastic.
took advantage of...the political narrative...to raise prices for more profit
I genuinely don't understand why so many people think this matters. What do you think would have happened if companies had decided to raise prices without having an "excuse" like this?
Prices aren't kept under control by consumer outrage; we all may be mad about food prices, but we all still have to eat anyway. Yes companies are bragging about being able to raise prices, but it's not "because they can", it's because there's a supply/demand mismatch.
The cause of that mismatch is complicated and varies by market sector, but this isn't some case of like, they couldn't raise prices in the past because people would get too mad at them, but now they've finally figured out how to fool everyone into not getting mad. It's clearly a much more nuanced situation we're in, no?
No, it's because demand for food is inelastic.
Free market theory is useful for getting general ideas for how doing X or Y might affect the economy, but once you're talking about the actual economy made up of actual people, you need to forget it, because "free markets" that actually follow those simple rules directly are effectively nonexistent.
In this case, you don't even have to go so far as to say the theory is wrong, because it lays out certain conditions for what can be considered a "free market", and elastic demand is one of those.
> they couldn't raise prices in the past because people would get too mad at them
They didn't raise prices before because they believed people would get too mad and they'd lose money.
Due to a fairly complex combination of factors, that's no longer true.
Some of those factors are the increased consolidation of nearly every part of our economy, meaning that there are vastly fewer players in a given sector that would have to defect in order for this to stick; the (relatively speaking) massive levels of political and economic turmoil the US (and the Western world more generally) has suffered over the past several years, leaving people much more numb to stuff like this, at least in the short term; and the number of people willing to sit there and justify their actions for any of a wide variety of reasons. (And yes; the supply shocks of the pandemic that actually justified raising prices are a major factor, and were clearly the trigger for this—the thing that either gave them the idea, or showed them that it might work.)
You are simplifying too much by saying demand for food is inelastic. It's true that people consume roughly the same amount of calories every day. However, Grocery stores are a low-margin business. Your grocery store is in constant negotiations with suppliers that vary from local produce farmers to General Mills to Anhauser-Busch. Some suppliers may be making high margins.
The idea that increased consolidation has caused this inflation has to compete with other ideas- such as:
The productive output of all sorts of businesses decreased during the pandemic at a time when the money supply increased. There were more dollars chasing fewer goods. As the pandemic eased off, the productive output was able to climb back to capacity, but money supply increases (and lagging effects of reduced inventory of goods) remained in effect.
In a time where there is less production, the production that remains is more valued. Margins would tend to increase in this environment.
How do you prove that the consolidation effect is more relevant than the macroeconomic picture?
This would be a good argument but I feel it’s undermined by the heavy consolidation in the food market, no? If the same company is selling each product, then it doesn’t matter as much if a consumer switches between them
I agree with the rest of what you said. I certainly don’t know how to prove which is more relevant but I believe the supply shock and excess money played the largest role, however I think it’s wrong to dismiss either as both seem to be at play.
Just because the cost of dry beans has gone up 10% doesn't mean that you can't save money by eating them instead of beef.
If customers don't switch to beans despite high prices for steak, it tells you something about the demand for beef relative to the cost sensitivity of customers.
Rather than people with limited disposable income already buying cheaper foods, and when those get more expensive, just having to buy less.
And, once again, for many, many things, the company that sells the steaks is owned by the same conglomerate as the company that sells the beans, and they're raising the prices in lockstep.
I could go on. I agree consolidation is a problem, but it's certainly not the only one.
I would add on class warfare. There's not really any such thing as corporation vs corporation anymore, it's class warfare with capital vs not, and capital knows it. All the X companies just raise prices uniformly because why would anyone not do it and ruin the party?
But that didn't happen. Eggs became more scarce, and therefore more valuable, and thus prices universally went up. People who still wanted eggs badly enough and could afford the high prices paid a premium for them. Other people bought and ate something else instead.
And then when the supply came back up, egg prices came back down. This is how the system is supposed to work, and it's exactly what I would expect to happen in a situation like this.
You're saying you really think that whole story had nothing to do with supply constraints, and it's all a big corporate class warfare price fixing conspiracy?
Tech vendors are increasing prices "to keep up with inflation" :eye_roll: [0]. Nothing at all to do with supply and demand here.
[0]: https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/16/tech_vendor_price_hik...
> But that didn't happen. Eggs became more scarce, and therefore more valuable, and thus prices universally went up. People who still wanted eggs badly enough and could afford the high prices paid a premium for them. Other people bought and ate something else instead.
So the egg supply went down. Yes, you'd expect to see empty shelves, because there were fewer eggs to buy, and they're useful. Instead what we saw were shelves as full as before, because of prices went up. What that means is, people were already buying fewer eggs, because the supply was so much lower, but because of prices going up, people bought even fewer than that. There were a shortage of eggs, and yet because of prices being raised, they couldn't even sell through on the eggs they had.
How much of the reduction in egg consumption was due to reduced supply, and how much was due to raised prices? No idea.
What would I expect to see? If the egg supply dropped precipitously, I'd expect a company which makes their money selling eggs to make less money. Or raise prices so that they make the same amount of money. Instead, they raised prices so they made way, way more money.
* https://www.businessinsider.com/kingsford-hiked-prices-too-m...
Yes it is "because they can" but they can because there's a supply/demand mismatch and demand is inelastic to price increases.
People aren't buying beans instead of steak because they really want the steak and can still afford it. The price of steak will only go down if people are no longer willing to buy it.
In this case, how do you separate inflation due to increased demand from inflation due to corporate profits? The two seem inextricably tied to me.
It could be when all the brands are owned by a couple of corporations, which are chaired by a couple of large investment firms.
You know for a fact that big tech was doing a no poaching agreement in 2005, but can't wrap your head around the fact that corporations can collude on a price hikes in 2023?
> https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/05/18/the-cost...
Um, that article is from over a year ago. In no way is it relevant to the what food prices have done in the last year.
Items that were £2 not so long ago are now rounded up to £3 in some cases.
It doesn't help that supermarkets are constantly playing games with pricing, trying to get people into the store with seemingly good deals that never last long, then experimenting with just how far they can push the greedflation on other items.
We need a measure of inflation that's based on the cost of essentials, primarily housing, energy, transport, and food - rather than stacking the 'basket of goods' with infrequent purchases that we expect to fall in price.
If over a long period of time there has been consolidation (aka acquisitions) in an industry and there are only a few conglomerates around, they essentially have a market to themselves and can do what they want without actually legally being considered a monopoly.
If people are willing to pay more, you expect profits to climb.
If people would pay more they'd already have set the prices higher...these quangos commenting on it have clearly lowered the quality of their academic hires if they're willing to publish garbage like the article above and the imf's recent piece.
If the headline read consumers now willing to pay twice the price it wouldn't have the same clickbait value
that's not how it works though. Inflation affects a lot of goods where you have no choice, you just need it (e.g. food, utilities, housing, transportation).
What's weird is that the author uses EU data, not UK data, but the headline refers to the Bank of England.
So the body of the article only talks about EU data but then he "suspects" it applies similarly to the UK by putting it in the headline, without drawing any actual connection with data.
I recommend reading that instead, as the original submission provides no additional value over what is written in the primary source.
Mods / dang perhaps there is value in changing the submission to link to the original content?
Maybe the unprecedented, recent regime of low interest and money printing have something to do with this? Hmmmmm...
BTW, the government LOVES the narrative that evil corporations are creating problems and the government itself is innocent of any wrongdoing. So we will keep hearing this (not the first time on HN).
But synchronization alone can't account for everything. The pricing variability that the public has grown accustomed to, starting with the pandemic, has opened people's minds to be less reliant on price stickiness. TP is up this month, bread the next, eggs the next, is great cover and pretext to everything is now pricier.
This is sarcasm, right?
You might be able to fill out some forms online to "start a company", but the actual process to get a physical product into the hands of a customer is wildly difficult these days - and that doesn't even consider the fact that you're often fighting a losing battle against Amazon and Chinese counterfeiters right from the get-go.
I'm actually thinking it's not a twisted plot. Companies went ahead of the curve. Instead of waiting for the inflation-induced by printing, and gradually raising prices, they went avant-garde and raised prices accordingly.
You are (were) an idiot if you didn't raise prices.
The question, previously and now, is who will suffer to reduce it?
The answer is working people.
Because they are the ones least able to protect themselves. We could stop it by inflicting pain on non-working people or billionaires or corporations or a few other groups. But working people have the least political clout, the least sympathy, the least political clout and the least ability to just opt out (go abroad etc).
I've looked at quite a few quarterly reports by large corporations and I see the same pattern everywhere:
Nominal sales up by ~10%, cost of goods sold up by ~20%, profit up by low single digit percent. In other words they are driving towards a cliff and the last 2 quarters of this year we will probably see losses.
But yes, it has to be those damn greedy corporations, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with shutting down global supply chains while increasing and radically shifting consumer demand.
[1] https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2023/Engli...
It is still puzzling to me, since they have "Trade, Travel, Accom. and Food" with the highest profit contribution in figure 2. However if you look at the quarterlies of Nestel, P&G and others their profits are increasing by low single-digit % if at all.
addition: Fortunately it seems even central bankers are coming to terms with this: "Agustin Carstens, head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), said that governments and central banks went too far in dishing out cash during Covid." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/26/britain-infl...
And if you are going to knock a post about sources, providing some of your own while refuting the claim would make your argument stronger.
A strange remark. I understand that the ECB interest rate is a little behind the curve but I don't see how that renders "interest rates...a peculiarly UK phenomenon". They're rising everywhere, and are higher than they have been since the financial crisis, and the BoE's 5% is less than the USA and many other countries.
Answering where the money went doesn't explain where it came from
The calculation I described is basically just computing the components of GDP through the income approach, GDP = wages + rent + interest + net imports + taxes + profits. Then you do this for both nominal and real GDP. The ratio between them is inflation within each factor of production. A weighted sum of these individual inflation rates should give back the overall GDP deflator; comparing the contribution of an individual factor of production's term vs. the overall inflation number gives the percentage of inflation due to a particular factor of production.
In a free market companies that are making large profits quickly find themselves with competitors. People that do a better job cheaper are the winners. Eventually a balance happens when several companies are making minimal profit.
Breakdowns occur when government interfere and let certain companies get an unfair advantage. Usually high regulation requirements that only certain companies can met.
Inflation is happening because the government is printing money like crazy. Same reason it happens all counties where money isn’t worth paper it’s printed on.
Let us know when that Amazon competitor comes along.
Also that if any obscene profits are happening, it’s because the government is choosing winners, and losers.
Like massive contracts for big Pharmacy, while banning , criticizing or bad mouthing, any alternatives to expensive drugs.
Or shutting down all of the all mom and Pop stores during the pandemic, and only allowing big box realtors open up.
Or having such high regulations In markets that no new competitors can enter.
If you want less inflation, the government needs to spend less.
Inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods. If the ECB/US Federal Reserve/Bank of Japan would turn their printers off the inflation cycle would naturally work itself out.
MMT is a joke.
I have my own issues with MMT, but I feel like most people that share your position seem to believe that MMT means “you can print as much money as possible without ramifications” which is not correct. One of the core ideas of MMT is that inflation is the limiting factor of how much money can be printed, or rather that inflation should be the gauge of when to stop. The idea is to spend new money wisely, in ways that increase productivity rather than contribute to inflation. I think that part of MMT is quite reasonable.
Anecdotally - one of the primary reasons of why I left academia (economics specifically) is that the theory never matched the practice. I should have stayed in engineering.
Large Bank Consumer Credit Card Balances: Total Balances https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RCCCBBALTOT
Delinquency Rate on Credit Card Loans, All Commercial Banks https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS
Nominal profits are higher when inflation is higher. You have to take into account inflation when measuring profits. Sure, some companies have an increased profit margin when adjusted for inflation, others don't. And there's the cantillion effect, those upstream on the debasement pipeline do profit from inflation.
About the only exception to this is that when prices do go up, if production costs come back down companies very rarely bring prices back down, they acknowledge that people see a new normal and then pocket the difference.
But as for corporate profits-- no troubles. We all have the opportunity to be corporate owners. As profits rise, stock returns rise. It's a vital part of a diversified portfolio.
I mean both (profits/water vapor) are indeed powerful but only mere amplifiers of underlying causes in both phenomena.
BTW it's a shame MMT-ers rebranded themselves into greedflation folk and stopped promoting their painful but effective solution to inflation: raising taxes.
The issue with inflation is one of expectation (trust me, I'm an experienced Argentinian) and usually government triggered a long time before any of its effects are noticed.
There is some lag on the cause-effect chain and most people are rational about making their pricing decisions. Price fixing doesn't work and hasn't worked in ~1700 years so far (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices ), I'm preemptive about this, because it's the next logical suggestion. It doesn't work.
Back to inflation.
It usually starts with a monetary phenomenon (e.g. stimulus checks, increased public spending, etc. or extra savings due to lockdown), that causes demand driven inflation once that extra money starts to circulate (there's supply driven inflation too, like the GPU card shortages, but that is easier to revert).
Essentially there is more money available than the economy really needs. So the money to goods+services balance is wrong, so money is worth less.
Remember, inflation is about the value of money, not the value of goods. Goods' "worth" are relatively stable (with some notable exceptions such as commodities).
This devaluation of money causes protective behaviors on a production chain, you start pricing your stuff based on the expected value of money (you typically think about the replacement cost of your raw materials and labor, etc. rather than money itself).
Since you're playing with the future, it's uncertain, so you play it safe, and add some extra margin to the prices just in case inflation gets worse.
See where this goes? This composes and tends to accelerate inflation. On pathological cases it ends up in an inflationary spiral that ends in full economic collapse (see https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiperinflaci%C3%B3n_argentina_... - Spanish only - )
Usually the best way to stop it is to just cause a recession by drying up all that extra money. Once crap stops selling and the margins start to dry up, competition (on a healthy market) will drive prices down, but, again it will be slow.
The inflationary loop has lag, it takes a while to accelerate and it also takes a while to slow down.
It's scary to lower your prices when you expect high inflation, so once you turn the spiral on, slowing it down is painful for everyone, much more so for those of limited means.
I like the phrase: "Inflation is a tax on the poor" and is mostly monetary. The rich know how to protect themselves from it.
It doesn't. They're not the same. There's more real profit. Which is the whole point.
Your whole comment is about a bad assumption on your end.
To many (myself included) this has been entirely obvious for a year or more. The interesting part is how many apologists come out of the woodwork to defend capitalism when they are not part of this and they're just as much a victim as anyone else.
I think the biggest problem is that people confuse markets with capitalism. Markets are commerce. They happen in every economic system. It is not a unique trait to capitalism. Capitalism describes how value is created (labor) and how the surplus value of labor is concentrated into the hands of the very few (the capital-owning class) where once that wealth was concentrated into the hands of an artistocratic class that derived from the divine right of kings (ie feudalism). That's literally all it is.
We desperately need to increase corporate taxation.
[1]: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/06/26/europes-inf...
Corporations will continue to exist as long as there's a profit to be made. If they have to pay 10% of those profits in taxes or 80% they're still making money and there's still a profit incentive.
The idea that a tax on profits will drive a company out of business belies a fundamental misunderstanding at best or deliberate deception at worst.
Why would anyone invest money in that venture?
In the 19th century the welfare of common people (in the industrializing countries) started to increase exponentially. Education, property ownership, economic activity, nutrition, energy availability and productivity absolutely exploded within a single generation. Many of the capitalists during that era were aristocrats of some sort, because they already had capital.
The rest of the old aristocracy felt threatened however, they could see that all these newly enfranchised and confident people would soon kick them out of their comfortable positions. So they started movements like the Labour movement (which protested city living/working conditions that were leagues better than peasants') and Socialism (which puts an aristocracy of party officials in charge).
Worst of all, they managed to somehow implant the idea that markets only work when severely constrained by suffocating regulations and dictates, which was extremely effective in killing small businesses. Really what we have now has very little to do with capitalism, how else would you explain the surge in things like stock buybacks which are essentially capital destruction (converting capital to paper valuation increases) or the insane growth of states towards 100% of GDP (which is decidedly not the most productive use of that capital).
Might you be assuming that capitalism and free markets reach some optimal state with respect to how broader society functions? This is not the case - free markets theoretically price some good or service at it's fair value to whoever would buy it. But it says nothing about optimising value across society (not to mention other measures of how well society is doing) because (a) things don't actually work out optimally (b) people don't really act rationally
On the other hand, companies suddenly became far more greedy. Look at all my charts!
Which seems more likely the cause of inflation?
2) The money printing is the cover for them raising prices. "We can't help it, look at all the money flying around!"
3) They did not have to raise prices to maintain a certain profit.
4) People paid down debt with the stimulus - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CDSP
5) Debt forgiveness? What debt forgiveness?
6) payment pauses, eviction moratoriums - now that they are over, why aren't prices coming down?
5)