I think that part of the effect is headline cost inflation. All sorts of businesses are incentivized to price discriminate (since people now have vastly differe

I think that part of the effect is headline cost inflation. All sorts of businesses are incentivized to price discriminate (since people now have vastly different purchasing power), and they usually do it by setting a high default price and then giving all sorts of discounts to groups that they want to incentivize. This happens in medicine (headline rate vs insurance negotiated rate), it happens in education (sticker price vs average price paid), it happens on Amazon (see the preponderance of coupon clipping / sales to get around price tracker sites like camelcamelcamel). For a few more examples: tinder discriminates directly (older people charged more), onlyfans runs promotions for new members (just like cable companies). Traveling escorts will change their rates depending on the cities that they're touring, based on what the market will bear... etc. In the 1940s and 50s you could get big problems for trying to generate big profits - and there was a 90% excess profits tax in the 40s to drain all of the excess fiscal stimulus back out of the economy. As the after-effects of those policies wore off, price discrimination came back. Price discrimination is the name of the game in today's world.