Monopoly, that is one way. Apple and Tesla are able to charge those kinds of prices because their brands are so good. Some drug makers are successful in that by collusion (like gasoline sellers in Duncan) or lack of competition due to barriers of entry.
Or what we have had is demand outrunning capacity when that last Covid relief bill over shot the mark, the supply chain bottlenecks faded, and the Fed was slow off the mark. That profit making will be competed away.
For two decades the enforcers of anti-trust have had an anything goes stance. The acquiring corporation—I am talking about the tech companies buying potential competitors while those were still small, in particular—has done as it pleased. Arguing successfully that no price increase would result, even price reductions by economy of scale would show up.
Just since the national administration changed the anti-trust enforcement policy has changed back toward the past—1960s. When firms were not allowed to similar firms. Competition was to govern market prices. So more, not less competitors were the ideal.
So the Biden administration over shot the mark in the last economic recovery and we got a year of inflation and a rapid recovery
In the Great Recession the Obama administration undershot the mark—Obama insisted on the rescue bill stay below one trillion dollars—so we got no inflation and a slow recovery. Even the $850,000 recovery bill brought out the Tea Party to bitch about it.
The the Tea Party stayed around to kill the bi-partisan immigration bill that has passed the Senate.
Now that same set of misguided souls is pushing CRT, woke, abortion, and that set of letters that describe odd gender and sexual preferences.
The trick in the economy is to get the right amount spent to utilize all who want to work and not more. In the capitalist system we like some on must start the wheels turning—an investor or entrepreneur or the government. When investor confidence is low the government stepping up has helped. Of course those times when investor confidence is low is also when tax collection fall so having the government step up adds to the national debt and we get Tea Party types.
When investor confidence is high, i.e., at the start of Bush II, the real-old-time Republicans cut taxes. Saving us from budget surplus.
The at the start of Trump they cut taxes again. But, as there was already near full employment, the only output was greater corporate profits, stock buy backs (instead of taxable at ordinary rates dividends) and CEO bonuses.
Why, I wonder, were not the extra profits from the Bush tax cuts not competed away? Corporate profiteering?
Jim Holland