Heather Cox Richardson, a professor of American History at Boston College who is now one of the most followed persons on Facebook, today tied together the consolidation of American and international industry into a few large combines that have an outsize effect on prices (i.e., inflation at the consumer level), against which President Biden now fights. Do corporations charge high prices to cover their high costs? Professor Richardson points out that in May Shell reported its largest quarterly profits ever, more than $9 billion. (Pro tip: instead of buying gasoline, buy the stock.)
Where, then, do the causes of inflation come from? Let's go back to August 20, 1907, and a speech that President Theodore Roosevelt gave in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the dedication of a monument to the Pilgrims. The speech itself wouldn't be much remembered today (even Isaac isn't old enough to have been there) but for President Roosevelt having unveiled a phrase that echoes to this day: "malefactors of great wealth." He meant the robber barons of the era and their successors such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. He talked about his administration's efforts to break up industrial combines, of the sorts that Professor Richardson wrote about today. Here's his descriptor, in context: "It may well be that the determination of the Government (in which, gentlemen, it will not waver), to punish certain malefactors of great wealth, has been responsible for something of the trouble; at least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stress as possible, in order to discredit the policy of the Government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy, so that they may enjoy unmolested the fruits of their own evil-doing."
A modern politician wouldn't speak in such complex sentences, but would nevertheless recognize the thought: the oligarchs of the United States seek to strain the public's finances as much as possible so that they can discredit the government and line their pockets, untroubled by subpoenas, surveillance, society, and surtax.