From my POV it feels like every near-essential good has slow but steady inflationary effect and everyone just sort of accepts it: * health care * housing * c

From my POV it feels like every near-essential good has slow but steady inflationary effect and everyone just sort of accepts it: * health care * housing * cars * food It's hard not to feel like these markets each manifest a collective behavior of, "we know we're essential, so we are free to set prices as we wish because you have no real alternatives." It benefits all the players to play along, you don't even need to prove collusion. And there's no way to push back on it collectively. I realize some of them are due to limited supply (housing) or pure necessity (health care). But cars? I'm paying 10k more for the same thing I bought in 2016?