> If the wealthy (or everyone else) needs more money, and just raising prices will work, why don't they do that anyway? companies are constantly raising price

> If the wealthy (or everyone else) needs more money, and just raising prices will work, why don't they do that anyway? companies are constantly raising prices to hit the highest price point customers will tolerate. Normally, when prices get too high too quickly consumers eventually get sticker shock and start to feel ripped off so they stop buying the overpriced good (assuming they have the option), so companies lower prices by a very small amount and a new generation of consumers come into the world where the almost too high price is "normal" since it's all they've known and the whole process repeats and prices just climb and climb which is why everything when your great great grandmother was alive cost a nickle but today you pay using stacks of bills. Right now though things are pretty messed up because every company had an excuse that let them jack prices up without customers blaming them. Companies said "Supply issues! Don't be mad at us! We're all in this together!" and consumers begrudgingly accepted excessively priced goods because "that's just how it is, extraordinary circumstances" and a generation of consumers now sees those excessive prices are normal. Some companies continue to limit supply, dragging their feet ramping production back up, because they're making money hand over fist and pulling in record profits while consumers are forced to scale back and watch their standard of living decline. Now companies are saying "Don't blame us, it's this damn inflation!" and since consumers are expecting it, they can continue to jack up prices while continuing to make money hand over fist. They don't ever want to lower prices and accept a little less so prices must continue to go up and up just like before, but now it's happening at a rate they couldn't have gotten away with previously. Companies could accept making a little less profit and lower prices and inflation would drop. They don't want to though because for them greed is the whole of the law and anything less than higher profits and endless growth is failure. Consumers could help by refusing to buy the things they love and have spent their whole lives becoming accustomed to, but they're still traumatized from a global pandemic, they're desperate for normalcy and the goods they were forced to do without for 2+ years and in denial about the fact that their lifestyle is declining and things are only going to get worse.