Supply chains, worker wages and the price of energy has been blamed for the current bout of high inflation. But central bankers around the world are starting to clue in to something consumers have been aware of for a while — corporations just aren’t afraid to raise their prices anymore.
And then some smaller company goes, “wait a sec, you’re telling me I can increase my market share a bunch if I don’t raise prices? Cool, let’s do that. I can make a bunch of money on volume.” And then some other company does the same thing, and so on until they all do. UNLESS an input into that industry has gone up in price and they all have to raise just to stay afloat. Then we’re back to talking about inflation, supply chains, and money supply instead of companies just choosing to raise prices due to greed or something.
UNLESS the smaller set of players and lack of enforcement of toothless regulation allows them or even incentivizes them to engage in collusion and price fixing.