system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
People are Blaming Inflation on a Corporate Drive for Profit, But What is the Problem with This?

Hello, many people are claiming that inflation is not being driven by supply chain disruptions nor an increase in the money supply, but because of corporations raising their prices to accumulate more profit. 

My question is: if inflation is the result of corporations wanting more profit, what is the problem with this? 

Isn't inflation the result of suppliers increasing the price to move the market closer to equilibrium because in the previous state demand exceeded supply? 

Also, if corporations increase prices and demand barely lowers, doesn't that mean that prices were previously too low? Put differently, if corporations increase prices and the demand barely changes, doesn't this mean the market has now moved closer to equilibrium?  

Lastly, if corporations increase prices and people are still (begrudgingly) happy to pay these prices, aren't corporations merely profiting off the excessive demand relative to the finite supply of their products? And isn't it the purpose of corporations to generate as much profit as they can? 

To me, I am not seeing what the problem is. Isn't this how markets are supposed to work?
gpt
From an economist's perspective, the basic problem with this is empirical. Inflation was low for decades between the 1980s and 2020. If today's inflation is due to a corporate drive for profit, that implies that corporations in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s *weren't* driving for profit. No one has produced any evidence of this. 

From a distributional basis, it's important to remember that workers frequently have pensions or retirement savings that are invested in the share market. Therefore lower profits for corporations affects many workers' retirement incomes. The ethics of firms taking lower profits aren't clear.