What's really behind inflation?

There are plenty of opinions, some conflicting.

This may not be the most judicious take on why food and gas prices are rising, but it is a certainly part of the story. Big businesses are raising prices because they know they can. Pandemic battered consumers find no alternative but to pay up.

Business leaders are admitting that corporations are using the narrative of hyperinflation as an excuse to raise prices on you and increase profits for themselves. ... The largest corporations in America have never made more money. ... Corporations are seizing the opportunity to engage in massive profiteering because they can.

The Republican Party is there for the one class it always coddles: plutocrats.

Christopher Ingraham of  The Why Axis thinks he knows what these high profits should mean:

What it says to me is that firms have plenty of wiggle room to create better conditions for their employees — they can clearly afford the higher pay, more generous benefits and more flexible arrangements that workers are increasingly demanding.

The Washington Post's super smart (really, pay attention to her), plain-speaking business columnist Catherine Rampell believes she knows how to describe the current inflation:

The main reason price growth is up has to do with constrained supply not keeping up with booming demand. That is, the pandemic has resulted in worker shortages, supply-chain disruptions and other bottlenecks in the United States and abroad. These problems are happening at the exact same time that cooped-up consumers are eager to buy even more stuff than they did pre-pandemic.

... Arguably, recent U.S. fiscal policy may have exacerbated this dynamic: Biden and the Democrats enacted stimulus payments and other government transfers earlier this year, which gave consumers more cash to spend. Now consumers are spending that cash.  

...Aside from some vague rhetoric about Democrats’ “big spending” habits, though, those checks are not really what Republican politicians are criticizing Biden for. Perhaps with good reason: The spring stimulus checks were extremely popular, including among Republican voters. ...  So they’re peddling “war on Halloween” hokum instead.

The chair of the Republican National Senatorial Committee (the fundraising arm of GOPer campaigns) Florida Senator Rick Scott announced to the Wall Street Journal: "This is a gold mine for us." 

You can always be sure -- the current Republican Party doesn't care who gets hurt, as long as they hold power.