Inflation here? gas/grocery prices just continue to climb

It's kind of the majority of the issues but you have to look beyond simply saying they are raising prices at the consumer level. It also has a ton to do with food markets being consumed by corporations creating vertical monopolies on top of horizontal monopolies.

So the first part of the problem is supply and demand. When Russia invaded Ukraine it almost instantly knocked out 6% of the grain in the world. That grain is used to feed livestock as well. So in rich countries this drives the prices up. In poor countries, food starts being diverted to richer countries where higher prices are obtained and food scarcity becomes an issue in poor nations. Then you have the trickle down effect, grain goes up, so does livestock because it costs more to raise the livestock. Then transportation costs go up due to attacks on shipping multiplying the impact. Then when a certain food becomes more expensive it puts pricing pressure on other foods because consumers will switch until pricing levels out higher among all food types.

At the same time all of this is ongoing, raw inflation jumped significantly. Everyone wishes for a money tree but if money grew on trees it would be worth the same thing as leaves. So the short term answer to the government's complete failing of the covid pandemic was to throw money at it. This money was created, it didn't exist. So once again, looking at supply and demand, when supply goes up and demand stays the same then the value of that item goes down. In this case it is money. Then when more people have money, more is spent. This creates a situation where supply stays same (or went down in Covid) and demand on consumer goods went up. When that happens prices go up. So when prices go up and money supply go up simultaneously inflation snowballs really fast.

Corporations have become extremely efficient. They would much rather have a shortage of goods than too much of anything. This allows them to drive prices up and with it, profits. They are taking this to the max. Corporations only have obligations to the stock holders. By this line of thinking, they all drive profits to the max and ignore the long term plans with consumers because they are all doing it. It's not like they will lose market share to competition because the competition is doing it as well. This is supposed to be regulated by price fixing laws but by changing the name to "dynamic pricing" and donating a ton of money to lobbyists and undermining trade laws, this has suddenly become acceptable. Even if they do get hit with a penalty, the penalty is far less than the profits earned so there is no risk to breaking trade laws.

Trying to pin inflation on Biden for Covid spending is pretty silly. Remember Trump wanted his name on the checks so he could get credit for it? Well, now they are wanting to blame Biden. The truth is, both parties have been spending to the max. Like corporations, politicians have accumulated so much data and they are using that data to maximize votes. They realize the holy grail to elections is the economy. Turns out, voters only really care about money right now. The best way to make the economy hum is by spending a sheet ton of government money consequences be damned.

So the solution is to put Russia in it's place. To stop running up the national debt, to rebuild the government agencies that are supposed to be protecting consumers with trade laws by preventing consolidation by industry to the point of monopolies.

Only then, will prices start to come down. Problem is, if we fix the problem and prices come down then corporations will instantly start mass layoffs triggering deflation and a recession.

The answer is we will never deal with short term pain in this country so until it is forced on us through major long term pain we just have to deal with it.
Well said. Solid points.