Yep, a huge portion of this recent 'inflation' is not cost increases or actual inflation... just basically the wealthy class turning the screws on everyone else because they can.

I think corporations learned some very dangerous lessons from the pandemic.

1. The demand for essential goods is inelastic. They can charge whatever and people still have to but things, especially food, household products, and a place to live.

2. They can understaff and underpay employees, and people will choose to fault people for laziness rather than the deliberate corporate choices that lead to the situation.

3. Corporations have built such a large market share so as to have created giant barriers to entry that there is zero competition from new businesses.

4. Even larger competitor corporations are happy to wink and nod as you both raise prices, cut staff, and give paltry raises because it just means you both make more money, and so long as you don’t say it out loud, it isn’t collusion.

They literally lock up the baby formula in a cage at my local grocery stores now. You know, so criminal scum with starving babies don't pillage them.

If that doesn't signal imminent collapse I don't know what does.

Corporations. Do. Not. Care.

I'm sure all the pro-life politicians who want to save the poor babies will be very concerned about this and congressional investigations will be forthcoming.

Right?

The inflation we are experiencing is artificial

Don't worry the market will regulate itself. /s

So I propose a solution:

We start and fund a non-profit organization designed to produce basic living essentials and sell it at the cost to manufacture, regardless of market pressures. Then we all collectively buy from this non-profit and have a functional means of production legally owned and controlled by the people.

Set up strict rules to ban anyone who has ever worked in any upper management position in any for-profit basic essentials producing company from ever holding any position of power in the non-profit. No one from the corporate world at all. No one from any position in state or federal government. No lobbyists or consultants or members of their think tanks or any of their goons.

Use open source designs for the factories and everyone in the community works together to automate them as much as is possible.

Someone should have Robert Reich be their vice president. He could come out every second day and rip into some fucking companies for the shit they do to keep dragging the whole world down.

Shareholder primacy is upheld by the state putting every publicly owned company antagonistic to its workers and customers, id est, the public.

This means the companies are forced to charge what the market will bear, and it's the responsibility of the government to regulate prices to keep things affordable.

But this means lobbying by companies is an attack on the public. (It's highly profitable to bribe officials and should be illegal. It also means officials who take lobby money are traitors to the public, the nation and their office, whether or not doing so is legal.

So the justification for bullets is there, and has been for several decades. We're just not very good at seeing when we have nothing left to lose.

Remember this discrepancy every time you hear "they'll just pass the costs on to the consumer" with regards to regulation and taxes. It works the same way in both directions; the price is based on what you're willing to pay, not their operating costs.