"This kind of transaction is exactly what modern capitalism is trying to stamp out." Since small businesses lack "economies of scale" they need fat gross margi

"This kind of transaction is exactly what modern capitalism is trying to stamp out." Since small businesses lack "economies of scale" they need fat gross margins to survive. In the USA, both the public and the political leadership was frightened of the slow buildup of inflation from 1960 to 1973, and then the explosion of inflation, into double digit territory, for much of the period from 1973 to 1982. After that experience we had a long era, a whole generation of leadership, where the public and the leadership felt the fight against inflation had to be one of the most important economic fights that the government engaged in. And the fight against inflation had to involve the fight against gross margins. So we, as a society, went to war against small businesses, because small businesses survive on the kind of margins that were seen as causing inflation. By contrast, allowing the spread of companies such as WalMart, which benefits from "economies of scale" and so can survive on razor-thin gross margins, was seen as helping to stop inflation. Likewise, opening up the economy to nations such as China was seen as an important step to limit inflation. The cost structure in China was such that a company in China could have fat gross margins and yet still underprice a company in the USA that had thin gross margins. Thus importing from China became an important part of the war against inflation. All of this worked for awhile. The era from 1982 to 2008 was known as The Great Moderation, an era when inflation fell and the business cycle moderated. And the era after 2008 also saw rock bottom inflation -- inflation remained under the Fed's 2% target for several years after 2008. Under President Trump, the USA began to adapt a new economic policy, and President Biden has continued forward with the Trump policies. The new era has seen increasing tariffs on China and a willingness to rethink some aspects of the open trade policies that we followed for most of 50 years. And since 2000, starting under Trump and then continuing under Biden, we have seen several trillion worth of stimulus spending. This has revived inflation, but it has also allowed many small businesses to raise prices and thus re-attain the kinds of gross margins they need to survive. In general, a society can have the lowest possible prices, or it can have prices that are high enough to support small businesses, but it cannot have both. Since America is a large, diverse nation we will never have agreement about what our priorities should be, but we should keep in mind, we did some real damage to ourselves during the decades that we eliminated inflation and we are gifting ourselves some real benefits during this current era of inflation.