Can blaming corporate greed save Democrats on inflation?

Democrats in Congress and the White House may not be going after two perfect villains hard enough: large corporations and billionaires, which progressive think tanks, economists, and activist groups say bear some of the responsibility for rising costs of living.

Starting with local demonstrations and continuing to organize throughout this year, an array of progressive groups are trying to shift the national conversation on inflation toward corporate giants — and some think that national Democrats should do more to cast “corporate greed” and price gouging by big businesses and Republican politicians as bigger culprits for still sky-high prices. They also argue that beyond turning the tide on Biden’s approval rating, focusing on a populist economic message can win back working-class voters in competitive House districts.

Price gouging is a pretty self-explanatory concept: when a seller (a large corporation or business) takes advantage of a crisis, emergency, or disaster (in this case, high inflation) as cover to raise the price of a product to an unreasonable level. Left-leaning economists and think tanks argue that this practice is happening now, with corporations taking advantage of bottlenecks in the supply chain (like not enough truckers or overwhelmed ports), the Russia-Ukraine war (which raised the price of oil and natural gas), and high demand, in order to raise prices — not just to cover higher production costs but to make bigger profits — and pin it all on inflation.

“Firms are passing along their rising costs, but then they’re going for more. And that’s leading to really historic high profit margins,” Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic nonprofit, and a former senior economic policy adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), told Vox. Owens listened in on earnings calls last year to understand how CEOs were thinking about supply chain disruptions and projected earnings, only to find positive outlooks for profits.

https://www.vox.com/23163167/democrats-biden-enemy-inflation-corporate-greed-price-gouging