The Real Culprit Driving Inflation? Corporate Greed.

OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

With the clock ticking on Democrats’ “Build Back Better” legislation, which passed the House last month and now awaits Senate action, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has cited yet another in a never ending string of “new” reasons for withholding his support for the bill. This time? Inflation.

On Tuesday, during a Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit, Mr. Manchin said of inflation to a roomful of corporate CEOs: “The unknown we’re facing today is much greater than the need that people believe in this aspirational bill that we’re looking at and we’ve got to make sure we get this right.” Sen. Manchin, of course, isn’t alone in singing that tune, with Republicans already testing out their attack ads for the 2022 midterms and conservative media outlets blanketing their airwaves for months with baseless claims that rising inflation is due to pandemic recovery spending.

So, to help separate fact from fiction in the inflation debate, Rebecca sat down with two of the leading progressive economic voices working to tell the story about what’s really going on with inflation—and the policies we need to bring down prices, address our failing supply chains, and more.

Rakeen Mabud is chief economist and managing director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, which is dedicated to advancing a coherent, persuasive progressive economic worldview and narrative. And Matt Stoller is the research director of the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), which fights to realize economic liberty for all, in support of a secure, inclusive democratic society. He’s also the author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly and Democracy, and writes the newsletter BIG, which focuses on the history and politics of monopoly power.

For more on all this:

• Here’s a fact sheet from Groundwork and AELP on how unchecked corporate power is driving rising prices—plus a handy roundup of recent press that’s gotten it right on inflation
• For lots more from Matt, check out his newsletter BIG—including his recent article on how the FTC is finally taking on big business by cracking down on shortage profiteering
• Check out this Bloomberg article breaking down how corporate CEOs have spun the narrative on inflation

And here’s a helpful explainer from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities unpacking why Build Back Better is “unlikely to have any noticeable effect on inflation”