Perhaps, but it just seems like a weird argument. It's not like companies were not greedy before and have suddenly become greedy in the last few years...
Yeah, it's puzzling why it would be happening _now_ in particular. My thought is, maybe when there are real 'external' reasons for price rises, e.g. the war in Ukraine, the aftershock of the pandemic, etc, they act like a co-ordinating force, giving every business the idea of rising prices at the same time?
Normally businesses can't, in the absence of a real organised cartel, organise themselves so as to all raise prices in lockstep. But perhaps the impact of those external factors serves to put the same idea in the heads of every business boss simultaneously.
And maybe there are other longer-term factors, such as the long-term decline of trade unions, meaning this is stage Two of neo-liberalism? It certainly feels that way. First destroy the unions, privatise everything, then, when the time is right, start to tighten the ratchet and put the squeeze on everyone with a mass increase in prices, while making sure wages lag behind. It's a way to fully cash-in on the decades of anti-union efforts and fully redistribute wealth upwards.
I mean it's certainly not just the US. Here we are seeing the largest drop in real incomes since records began. A Bank of England economist helpfully pointed out that British workers just need to shut up and accept they are poorer now (the system's had a hiccup and obviously it's the working class who need to pay the price for that, as he and his kind certainly aren't going to take the hit, that would be unthinkable).
Chief economist Huw Pill says workers and firms should stop trying to pass on rising costs by hiking prices or demanding better wages
www.theguardian.com