In April, Société Générale economist Albert Edwards released a scathing note saying he hadn’t seen anything like the current levels of corporate greed in his four decades working in finance. He said companies were using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to hike prices in search of profits.
“The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism,” Edwards wrote. “This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”
The thing is, it’s an inevitability of capitalism. When you have a system who’s measurement of success is how much material wealth you can accumulate, people are going to do their best to accumulate as much wealth as possible. Which means putting basic needs on the back burner if they don’t make you enough money.
I think people wanting stuff is pretty much endemic to people, whatever economic system happens to be in place.