Hey there,

The last year or so I keep hearing the term ‘Greedflation’ pop up more and more. The Idea here is that there are greedy capitalists that are raising the prices on goods and services faster than their own costs are increasing and this is causing prices to rise.

Now if I think about it inflation is always based on some price increasing, and sometimes because there is some shock that limits how mch of something is available. Oil is scarce because of some natural disasters or war, food is scarce because of drought, etc.

Most of the time there are other sources of the same resources (different crops), or the resource was horded before (‘strategic’ oil reserves), in both cases someone is able to charge more (eg Profit) from the situation.

So now it sound to me that normal inflation and greedflation are both simply based on one entity in the supply chain increasing the price to take advantage of the situation. Whether you call it greedflation or not depends on whether your personal “in” group is profiting from or or not.

Where is my thinking error here? Is greedflation a real thing?

  • fubo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A political rhetoric word like “greedflation” or “cancel culture” just means what the people using it intend in the specific cases they use it. A major part of that “meaning” is to express the speaker’s political affiliation. It doesn’t have to have an objectively comparable meaning at all.