I'm not sure what you think inflation is, but it is just the prices of certain key items going up: food, housing, transportation are the main ones.
Corporations decide to set their prices higher, and you have a price inflation. We know that this is not merely a function of their inputs going up because many companies have been pulling in record profits during this time period. Nobody needs to meet in a smoke filled room for this to happen.
> And yet STEM graduates were getting $200K+ for their first jobs. How is that collusion working out?
You're being distracted with a nickel while your pockets are being emptied. It's all relative. Look at the cash big tech firms have in the bank. Google used 60B dollars to inflate their stock price this year with stock buybacks at the same time they laid of 6% of their workforce.
2021 was the most profitable year for big corporations since 1950, with pre-tax profits rising to $2.5 trillion and after-tax profits surging 35%, enabling the 1% to finally overtake the middle class in share of overall wealth.
How do you explain price decreases?
> Years of not enforcing anti-trust have left us in a pretty bad spot.
And yet STEM graduates were getting $200K+ for their first jobs. How is that collusion working out?