To fight inflation, fight monopolies

Cartels raise prices using supply chain and “generous” benefits as cover for price-gouging.

The majority of the public blames inflation on price-gouging. That’s not surprising, because the CEOs of monopolistic companies keep boasting about their record profits even as they raise prices. If a company raises prices and margins, then we don’t have an “inflation” problem, we have a price-fixing problem.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/20/quiet-part-out-loud/#profiteering

And yet, the majority of economists insist that this is impossible. They hew to the Reagan-era doctrine that says that inflation is always the result of giving poor people too much money, which leads to the “wage-price spiral.” The answer is to hike interest rates, cut “generous” benefits and take away labor rights.

Writing for The American Prospect, Georgetown University economist Hal Singer identifies and dissects the brain-worms that infect neoliberal economists, and the way their dying orthodoxy punishes working people and lets monopolists off the hook.

https://prospect.org/economy/antitrust-should-be-used-to-fight-inflation/

In particular, he demolishes the argument that since market concentration hasn’t increased much over the…