> US Gas prices are $3.68 a gallon, down from over $5 a few months ago. That's hardly inflation.

If gas prices drive inflation, why are we not seeing deflation from the gas price drop?

Gas isn't the only input into prices. Salaries are up 10% in a year for example.

Changes in costs also take time to filter through the economy, and indeed in the last 2 months prices have come down (CPI in June was 296.311, in August it was 296.171)

Have you factored in human greed?

Yes, I have. I greedily want to keep as much of my money as I can so I buy the cheapest goods available, sending money to the greedy corporation who offers goods at the lowest price.

This stubborn hand-wavy argument that prices stay high due to greed smacks of economic illiteracy and White House propaganda.

Charging prices the market will bear is considered "hand-wavy" or propaganda now?

If I raise the price of a gizmo I'm selling by 20% because my costs went up, why would I reduce the price when my costs go down but demand is still high? I like my increased profits, and so does my competition. The myth of perfect competition is a exactly that: established companies do not engage in races to the bottom, "cartel" behavior is emergent.

Why do gasoline prices go up and down all the time? same for airline ticket prices? I'm afraid your theory has a lot of 'splainin' to do.

You've cherry-picked 2 outlying low-margin, high-velocity products where there is a race to the bottom. I counter your gas with smartphones, where Apple and Samsung are ratcheting up the price year over year, while competitors like LG are bowed out. Why couldn't LG compete at lower prices, and chose to exit the smartphone market entirely?

How does your perfect competition theory explain why tuition prices have been going up over 5+ decades, vastly exceeding inflation?

> Why couldn't LG compete at lower prices, and chose to exit the smartphone market entirely?

Because Apple keeps making the phone better.

> How does your perfect competition theory explain why tuition prices have been going up over 5+ decades, vastly exceeding inflation?

I didn't espouse a "perfect competition" theory. That's your strawman. Anyhow, tuition prices have gone up because the government provides rivers of cash to prospective students. The pool of students thus has gone up drastically, and because of limited supply of colleges, and vast demand by students with fistfuls of cash (and little sense), the tuition went up. A lot.

The same tuition prices that has the full faith and credit of the federal government behind it driving it up?

Competition, velocity, fungibility