> It's a small subset. The poorest of the poor is never the problem.

You're right that we've never seen the effects of raising everyone's wages at once.

> This just proves the point further - consumers continued spending despite the rising costs. But now you'll say they're only now started to feel ripped off?

For the first two years of the pandemic, people weren't happy about the price increases at any point, but they were both desperate for the familiar comforts they'd been denied (due to lock downs, businesses being shutdown, or supply shortages) and also they understood that there was a unprecedented global crisis going on, so they expected that prices were higher due to issues outside of anyone's control. American households went heavily into debt to get the things they wanted and felt that they deserved after all they'd been through and sacrificed.

As soon as the supply started to return to normal consumers were flooded with messages about how inflation was driving up prices and companies said to consumers "We know our prices are higher, but it's not our fault! It's this damn inflation that's to blame! We're all in this together!" and so consumers felt they were being ripped off, but not by the companies. Instead they were told to blame the pathetic amount of disaster relief people got in the first years of the pandemic so that they could keep their rent paid and feed their families, and we see that even after all the evidence we have of companies making record profits there are still people in this very thread who blame "money printing" for the rising prices.

Companies were able to deflect blame very well, even as one by one, examples were coming out about how certain companies and industries making money hand over fist. Over the last year or so more and more people are starting to catch on and feel like they have been being taken advantage of, which they have been, but it's not a binary switch where every consumer suddenly stops paying for things that are clearly over priced. Many consumers have been buying less.

I know people who no longer buy goods they used to, or don't buy them as often because of the unfair prices. I myself have a list of companies I don't buy eggs from anymore because they were caught raising prices while blaming "bird flu" when they were not impacted by it. People do respond negatively to unfair price hikes, but in the last few years they were lied to and fooled into thinking that "We're all in this together" and are now in the process of learning that they were being cheated. That's what this article is. It's teaching people that they were cheated. Not everyone one will read it though. It'll probably take a while before most everyone understands that they have been being ripped off and start acting accordingly, assuming that they don't just feel defeated.

It's also harder for consumers to counter giant unnecessary price hikes when every company is doing it at once. If my kids want PB&J for school lunches, and every single company selling peanut butter raises their prices by $3, I'm kind of screwed! If the meat industry raises their prices again and again after pulling in record profits for the least two years I'm still stuck paying the price if I really want a cheeseburger. Lack of competition means that it's harder for consumers to get alternatives at reasonable prices, and for some products no alternative will be equal.

What I can say is that driving worker's pay down isn't going to cause a single company to lower their prices. It's just going to cause large parts of the US population to be priced out of things they could once afford. Companies won't care though. They'll charge everyone else more to make up for it. That means eggs still cost more, only now most people don't get to have them.

The source of the problem isn't wages, it's greed and until the source of the problem is addressed and dealt with every consumer, rich or poor, is going to suffer for it one way or another.