James Swift: After Deadline: Inflation or opportunism?

Mar. 13—Nobody likes inflation. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.

But something seems a little ... peculiar.

Some of you economists out there may have to correct me here, but in school I was taught that "inflation" was what happened when the cost of making and doing stuff becomes more expensive (for whatever reason). So to make up for the costs on the front-end, manufacturers and service providers increase the consumer costs on the back-end until the arithmetic shakes out again.

Supply and demand, cause and effect, yadda, yadda, yadda. Seems like a pretty simple thing to figure out here.

That said, I can't help but wonder just how much of the inflation we're seeing nowadays is REAL inflation and how much of it is just greedy people seeing how much they can gouge customers under the aegis of "increased costs of production."

Lemme give you an example. Before COVID, there was this one big box store I used to buy distilled water from. One gallon jugs there cost 49 cents. Then the pandemic happened, and overnight, the cost of the jug increased to 99 cents.

Now, this part, I can kinda' sorta' understand. Right at the outbreak of COVID, there were a lot of logistics and supply chain and distribution snarls. So maybe the cost of transporting the product really was an understandable part of the price increase.

Then, sometime around 2022, the price of the gallon jug of distilled water increased to $1.49. And today, that same jug I was buying for 49 cents in 2019 now costs $1.99.

That's a 400% increase in the price over a mere five-year period. You really can't use the same "everything's shut down and we can't find truck drivers" excuse anymore. So shouldn't the price be going down instead of up?

This distilled water thing completely contradicts the classical definition of what creates inflation. The cost of manufacturing and acquiring plastic jugs hasn't gone up and I can't fathom it being more expensive to make distilled water in 2024 than it was in 2018. I'd venture to guess that the costs of actually making, shipping and selling distilled water are more or less the same as they were before COVID ... but for some reason, the price increases keep a'comin'.

It's easy to be cynical and distrustful, but the logic just isn't checking out here. Call me crazy, but isn't there at least a LITTLE chance that these companies keep cranking up prices, not because it actually costs them any more to make 'em, but just because they wanna' see just how much more people are willing to spend on the same old stuff?

Tomato, Toh-maht-oh. Inflation, opportunism. Different pronunciation, same effect.

Since we live in a capitalist system, people can charge whatever they want for whatever they want. But it would be nice for some of these dirtbag corporations to just come on out and be honest with us about why prices are REALLY climbing upward and upward. The same international conglomerates that were making billions of dollars before the pandemic are now making trillions of dollars — and that ain't no accident.

Here's the thing, though. Everybody and their mama likes to complain, whine and throw fits about how much the price of gas and groceries and basic hygiene products have become ... yet they still KEEP buying all those commodities despite the ridiculously inflated prices.

That's basically the unofficial secondary cause of pseudo-inflation: As long as people are willing to spend $5.99 for a six-pack of Coca-Cola, reason stands that they'll also be willing to spend $6.99, then $7.99, so on and so forth. Simply put, inflation is a permanent fixture just as long as consumers allow it.

I stopped buying those jugs of distilled water as soon as the price hit $1.49 — partly out of principle, mostly out of spite. I guarantee you if enough people did the same thing, it wouldn't be long before that price tag "mysteriously" dropped back down to 99 cents. Maybe even lower than that.

The mega-corporations may control the supply, but us regular old consumers control the demand. Stop buying their overpriced junk and the market will "correct" itself in short order.

Now, apply that same approach to cars, houses and health insurance and maybe — just maybe — we might be on to something.