Inflation fell to its lowest annual rate in more than two years during June, the product both of some deceleration in costs and easy comparisons against a time when price increases were running at a more than 40-year high.
Inflation fell to its lowest annual rate in more than two years during June, the product both of some deceleration in costs and easy comparisons against a time when price increases were running at a more than 40-year high.
It’s actually record profit margins, not just record profits. Even industries that were not affected by shortages raised their prices and there was an increase in profit margins almost across the board.
For sure, and I’m very much not saying that businesses are blameless or haven’t exploited the situation. I’d just vastly prefer reporting to talk about the metrics that actually matter, like profit margins, rather than essentially meaningless ones like net profit than do nothing more than push an obvious underlying agenda.
From data I could find, you see a very sharp dip in margins during 2020, a significant rise in 2021-2022, and in 2023, things have largely returned to pre-pandemic numbers. I won’t pretend to be an economist, but if we’re going to be claiming uniquely bad corporate malfeasance, I want strong evidence showing that, not essentially meaningless fluff like “numbers go up in a highly inflationary environment”.