13 August—Eversource, the ever-expanding utility monopoly whose business model is simply screwing consumers with impunity, is sponsoring totally useless allegedly public-service commercials on left-wing radio (and probably elsewhere) with the disclaimer, “Paid for by shareholders.” Does anybody really believe that? It’s kind of like politicians raising taxes on corporations and telling the great unwashed the cost won’t be passed on to customers. It’s axiomatic that corporations don’t pay taxes, they merely collect taxes for governments.

Stop & Shop no longer puts its weekly flyer in the Republican-American. I don’t know how much it saves S&S corporate in Quincy, Massachusetts, but every penny counts. Why should Quincy care when customers may bitch but they keep coming? And, in fairness, Stop & Shop isn’t alone among retailers that are making life more inconvenient for captive customers who keep coming.

And what do customers keep coming to? Less product at higher cost, that’s what. We’re being assured incessantly by virtually everyone everywhere—politicians, commentators, economists, capitalists, business owners, public-sector employees, innocent black bears—that price inflation is the fault of manufacturing and shipping problems. Absolutely. Or not.

Control supply and you control demand. Control demand and you control price. My unscientific empirical survey, which is every bit as valid as any crap we’re being fed by the experts, indicates that the retailers are strategically controlling supply so that they can jack up prices. That’s why certain products are not on the shelves one week and others are missing the next week. And customers are so grateful to find the products, they’re willing to swallow the increased prices, usually without question.

Have you ever wondered what’s in the warehouses when shelves are empty?

How many businesses—especially big businesses—are doing less well, being less profitable than before the COVID panic? And how many really needed the government handouts and other favors like the ones Ned Lamont has once again unilaterally bestowed? 2022 would appear to be a boom-time for American business.

It’s the bottom-of-the-totem-pole consumers getting screwed once again. Or still. Capitalism in action . . .