TL;DR: economists are still stuck in the idea of the market as a perfect force for reaching optimal outcomes. They’re ignoring the simple fact that businesses are putting prices up purely to increase profits. And that they can do this because the economic ideal of perfect competition (where many small firms compete with near-identical products) does not exist. We have a small number of very powerful businesses—oligopolies—in nearly every market for consumer-facing goods.
Economists aren’t really in denial, they are just doing their job of giving a false sense of scientific legitimacy to the plan the ruling class will enact anyways: discipline labor, cut social spending, bail out finance when they inevitably crash.
Aye, there’s a reason economics is called “the dismal science.”
Because it is not a science.
A founding principle of economics is that people make rational economic decisions…