That's my big question too with all this "greed driving inflation" discourse. I don't doubt it at all, in fact, from everything I see it seems like the likeliest story. But ... why now?
Because "oh, it's the pandemic" gave them cover for the increases.
Re: housekeeping, in that specific case (and this applies to many other service occupations too), my money is without hesitation on a much sadder cause, i.e. COVID killing people or giving them long-term disabilities, which strongly shrank the workforce.
Doesn't add up.
This question is answered by the title of the article.
https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-ferguson-s-pric...
> The Attorney General’s Office asserts Tyson Foods and 18 other chicken producers drove up the price of chicken since at least 2008, causing consumers to overpay by millions of dollars. The lawsuit asserts a widespread illegal conspiracy to inflate and manipulate prices, rig contract bids, illegally exchange information and coordinate industry supply reductions to maximize profits.
> The Attorney General’s Office investigation found a coordinated, industry-wide effort to cut production through the exchange of competitively sensitive information, signals during investor calls and direct coordination between players in the industry.
Until people start going to jail, these sorts of fines/settlements are just part of the cost of doing business. The profits from the scheme tend to outweigh the punishments, especially factoring in the probable times they don't get caught doing it.
The cartel explanation, by itself, still doesn't fit the timing.
They do care about attracting the ire of regulators, which can be triggered by consumers getting fed up with price increases.
If you start ratcheting up prices without an excuse, eventually people would notice, and at some point "people" would start to include state and federal legislators, who will start asking uncomfortable questions and whom you might not be able to buy off forever.
So instead what you do is set a comfortable minimum price industry wide and use your cartel power instead to aggressively cut costs, so that you have a credible threat of crushing any competition in a price war. This keeps potential competitors in check, thereby tacitly maintaining your preferred price floor.
When an external event does happen that actually raises supply costs, you are best equipped to eat those cost increases while your competitors struggle. Eventually, you sadly announce that you must raise your prices. This price becomes the new price floor for a while, until inflation catches up.
I'm not saying that's what they're doing, but to me that seems like a nice balance between maintaining industry dominance and not being portrayed in the media as Dr. Evil.
Does no one understand basic economics anymore?
In a working market there are a lot of sellers and buyers and I'd find the lowest ask price and buy it.
In a failed market, the price is locked.
You’re actually advocating for anti-competition and anti-capitalism.
They will say “what inflation?” and then tell us that it’s actually a good thing that eggs cost that much.
Citation needed. Anti-trust enforcement went out with Clinton.
It might work, but as far as I can tell it doesn't stick. Egg producers had the "it's bird flu excuse" about a decade ago[1]. Profits (as %) went up, but eventually fell back down a few years later[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avian_influenza#United_States_...
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CALM/cal-maine-foo...
See also: gas prices after hurricane Katrina.
* When you have a monopoly or cartel and you don't face pricing pressure from competitors. In a competitive market they would have to cut margins, not raise prices. Antitrust, now.
Except it didn't. That's like, the first thing in the article.