A lot of the "inflation" is straight up corporate profiteering at this point. How else do you explain the record profits many companies experienced during and after the pandemic before the threat of rate hikes?

The answer to the why of all of this is super easy: greed.

I don't find that answer very satisfactory at all. Did they suddenly become greedy in 2020 where previously they were foregoing profit out of the goodness of their hearts?

Corporations are a tool, like a hammer. They're not good or evil. They exist and operate as they are permitted to. And human nature hasn't changed either, everyone is "greedy" to a first order approximation. So what has changed? What conditions have changed between now and then?

An inflation narrative gives cover for price hikes driven by greed.

It could do. And a greed narrative gives (poor) cover for price hikes driven by any number of other things. Just stating these things does not help us get an understanding though. I want to know what changed.

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.

I'm not saying none of those things are factors. I am saying that you can find quotes of executives talking about how great it is to raise prices right now. And plenty of evidence of profit increases substantially above inflation.

Sorry, "greed" simply doesn't explain anything. It's intellectually lazy. So is "you can find quotes...". Unless you actually have some evidence or reasoning that "greed" has increased somehow.

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.

We're talking economics, there is very little evidence in general. The entire field is essentially observations and storytelling.

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?

There is good evidence that it's not greed though, because people didn't suddenly start to become greedy, and nobody _needs_ any "cover" to raise prices, prices get raised all the time based on profit maximization.

Of course people are always greedy. The "cover" provided by an inflationary environment just boils down to people are less price elastic when the environment primes them to expect price hikes so those that want to raise prices for greed (profit maximization) can do so to a greater degree than they could in other market conditions. I don't know why you're being so dense, it's really straightforward psychology and there's a fair bit of data to support this.

For any company making things -- well, to be fair, I can only speak for one of them -- the costs of goods sold has gone to the stratosphere.

This is not a joke, or an excuse, or an apology, just a statement of indisputable fact. Inflation hasn't really gotten started yet. And it's not (just) greed. An FPGA that cost us $40 at DigiKey two years ago is now $700 at $SKETCHY_CHINESE_BROKER. Somebody^WEverybody is going to pay for this.

You realize that inflation hit corporate profits too?

If a company has a profit of $10M and inflation is 10%, then the following year a profit of $11M is a "real profit" of $0.

Inflation in America has more to do with the COVID lock downs in China. Ukraine is having more of an effect on Europe which is highly dependent on gas from Russia.

What's the data or reasoning behind your claim? Inflation in Europe also started an upward trajectory early last year and became unusually high well before the war in Ukraine.

There were also very few COVID lockdowns in China in 2021, most were in early 2020 and then some major ones occurred in 2022 but those, like Ukraine, were well after inflation started to rise in USA and Europe. Not to say the early 2020 China lockdowns could not have caused later inflation, but is that what you are claiming?

China didn't start it's Covid lockdown until after inflation started.