When the shortage is the strategy

> constrain supply, raise prices far beyond what the constraint justifies, and then refuse to lower them

In a healthy competitive market, this doesn't work. In a Ronald Reagan / Robert Bork / Consumer Welfare Standard market, where the idea that antitrust policy should promote competition is scoffed at and all M&A is allowed so long as a business can scribble with crayons on butcher paper a tall tale about how their merger will totally reduce prices (pinky promise!), an unhealthy low-competition market is the intentional and inevitable result.

> credit card debt hit an all-time high last year ($1.28 trillion, Q4 2025)

Let me inflation adjust that for you: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUpo. Even better, as a percentage of disposable income: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUpt

> real hourly wages, only 3%

Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUpE. Doesn't look so dire to me?

Whenever I see someone quoting economic statistics I look them up on FRED and zoom out a little. Usually I close the article at that point. The "Ongoing collusion" table in this article is interesting, though. Capitalism breaks down without competition.

This isn't going to get solved at the consumer level. Yes, one perhaps can & should attempt to vote w/ one's wallet, but the real fix is anti-trust law enforcement. TFA knows this,

> Every pattern above can be explained without conspiracy.

(… and in a section titled "Ongoing collusion", too!) but conspiracy also explains some of it: the egg price increases were industry collusion[1]; Americans lost something like $3B to $6B in egg prices due to it. The DOJ permitted them to settle for what effectively amounts to "don't do that again".

Did I try avoiding eggs while they were $6/dz? Absolutely, but meanwhile Tyson ate one of our local meat suppliers, and those prices immediately went up 50%.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Clearinghouse#Price_fixing

"NoOneIsHappy.com" appears to be some sort of low-effort demoralization psyop or something. Who'd have guessed with a name like that?

This is an interesting example of a pangram false negative. It's very obvious from the jump that substantial AI assistance was used, but feeding some samples in I got a 100% human rating. I wonder if it's a case of adversarial prompting?

I feel like I am living in a different universe to the author. My beef still costs around $5/lb, my milk is still roughly $3/gal, similar on a lot of staples I buy regularly. My shirts cost about $5 for a t-shirt, and my jeans cost $20 or so. I spend 80% at Costco and 20% at King Soopers (Kroger).

Ancedota I know, but the author is writing like Big Business has 100% coverage of the whole market.

> Corporate profits drove more than a third of inflation from the start of the pandemic

This seems like it’s getting causation backwards. Shortages directly result in corporate profits somewhere, because there are companies that can raise prices. Most recently, in the oil industry, and in memory chips, and so on. Also, housing.

If there’s enough competing supply then they can’t raise prices. If there isn’t, they can and usually will.

Strategy often means anticipating shortages and having something to sell when they happen, but not overdoing it. It might be temporary but it can take years to resolve.

Deciding not to build new factories in anticipation of a memory shortage is a strategy. Often it’s justified by saying the shortage won’t last.

The people saying that the AI bubble will collapse are justifying a wait-and-see strategy that makes it worse.

This is the wrong way to look at it.

In a K-shaped economy a business will not succeed by making quality goods at reasonable prices. Who are the customers for that? The middle class no longer exists.

Every successful business will do one of two things. Some will make ludicrous luxury goods at preposterous prices for customers that are not price conscious. Others will make mass produced garbage at insanely low margins in vast quantities.

The shortage is only the strategy in the sense that a large part of luxury goods is status. If you have a luxury product, you have to make it into a status symbol to get sales. Limited availability increases desirability. If something is too popular, wealthy people don’t want it anymore at any price.

The only solution is to end wealth inequality and restore the middle class. Tax the rich.

The US is cooked. China is the new economic and industrial super power. The US "free market" is actively blocking all the future tech that the US can't compete with, first cars, latest is robotic parts. The rich are just soaking the rest of us for everything they can get before they GTFO.

TLDR: the article describes stagflation in a novel way.

Yes, it’s happening, just as it did in the seventies. Invest appropriately.