Critics say corporate greed is making inflation worse, citing record profits despite rising costs

Skyrocketing inflation has been pinned on supply chain bottlenecks, worker pay increases and surging consumer demand —all symptoms of an economy still emerging from the pandemic-induced downturn.

But left-leaning think tanks and lawmakers are increasingly pointing to what they say is an even bigger culprit: corporate greed.

Companies, they say, are jacking up prices by more than is required to offset their rising wholesale costs, padding their profits while using supply snags as cover.

“They see (inflation) as an opportunity,” says Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic policy research group. “It’s a convenient pretext.”

Conservative economists say such arguments cast an unfair shadow over basic laws of supply and demand. Americans, they argue, have lots of money and are willing to pay the higher prices triggered by product shortages.

There is no federal law barring a company from charging consumers whatever it likes as long it doesn’t collude with its competitors to boost prices by an agreed-upon amount. Thirty-eight states do prohibit raising prices excessively during disasters or emergencies.

That could change. Citing “unprecedented corporate greed,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, introduced a bill last month that would impose a 95% tax on large corporations’ “excess profits.” It would be the first such windfall profits tax since World War II.

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