Monday, August 1, 2022

About that inflation...

After-tax corporate profits stood at 8.1 percent of the economy at the beginning of 2020 but have since shot up to as high as 11.8 percent of the GDP.  [...] These higher corporate profits have been the cause of over 50 percent of recent price increases.

[...]

[T]he key issue right now would be how to lower inflation while keeping employment and worker power high. Such a tack would include full-bore attempts to lessen supply chain issues and reduce the pricing power of big corporations.

  The Intercept
One reason to think the pandemic is the root cause of the recent inflationary surge is empirical. The inflationary shock has occurred in essentially all rich nations of the world—it’s very hard to find any country-specific policy that maps onto inflation.

Another reason is to look where this inflation started: the rapid run-up of prices in the goods sector (particularly durable goods). The pandemic directly shifted demand out of services and into goods (people quit their gym memberships and bought Pelotons, for example) just as it also caused a collapse of supply chains in durable goods (with rolling port shutdowns around the world).

[...]

In short, the rise in inflation has not been driven by anything that looks like an overheating labor market—instead it has been driven by higher corporate profit margins and supply-chain bottlenecks. Policy efforts meant to cool off labor markets—like very rapid and sharp interest rate increases—are likely not necessary to restrain inflationary pressures in the medium term.

Other tools that would be less damaging to typical families—like care investments to boost expected growth in labor supply or a temporary excess profits tax—could be effective in tamping down inflation over the next year and should be a bigger part of the policy mix.

[...]

The inflation spike of 2021 and 2022 has presented real policy challenges. In order to better understand this policy debate, it is imperative to look at prices and how they are being affected.

  Economic Policy Institute
Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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