Comment by danaris

I would say (3):

For many years, consolidation, deregulation, and other factors have led to a gradual but marked decrease in genuine competition in all sectors. As long as things were still trundling along as normal, the people at the top didn't really think about this too hard.

Then COVID came. Between supply shocks, lockdowns, and various other temporary effects, we were told to expect inflation. Indeed, for a time, there were genuine, honest-to-god price spikes rippling through the economy directly because of the pandemic.

But the causes of those spikes subsided.

And the prices didn't come back down all the way.

The people at the top realized that, because of how much we were all being told to beware of inflation, they could simply make the inflation happen and pocket the extra, and no one would notice.

And for...I forget exactly how long, but well over a year, at least, the public broadly didn't notice.

Now, we're noticing, and trying to make clear that this is what's happening.

But people like you are still trying to act like this is impossible, companies can't really cause inflation purely by raising prices, that would be ridiculous, this is purely the aforementioned price shocks (that ended years ago, while the inflation didn't).