But the broad inflation that drove up prices across the economy won’t reverse, even though the rate of increase has eased greatly since peaking at 9.1 percent in mid-2022.

The most recent consumer price index showed annual inflation at 3 percent. Still, prices overall are 25 percent higher than they were at the start of the pandemic.

Ironically, falling prices can both signal a recession and trigger one.

“Think about what would happen if the price of all goods would drop to the pre-pandemic level,” said Francesco Bianchi, who chairs the economics department at Johns Hopkins University. The inflation of recent years also has driven up workers’ wages. If wages stay high but the price of goods fall, companies won’t make enough profit to pay their employees. “That would make the cost of hiring workers extremely high, and that might trigger a recession — and then the recession creates even more expectation for lower prices. This is why economists are very concerned about deflation.”

Laura Veldkamp, a professor at Columbia Business School, said even the expectation of lower prices can trigger a recession. “If I thought that was going to cost less tomorrow, why would I buy it today? … As soon as we believe the prices are going down, demand will plummet and we’re likely to immediately have a recession,” she said. “Price declines are typically associated with really severe negative outcomes.”

And while Americans might be clamoring for lower prices, surveys suggest they don’t actually expect it to happen. According to the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers, most respondents expect inflation to go higher in the next year.

Veldkamp likened the economy to a car speeding on the highway. “The solution is not to stop and throw the car in reverse,” she said. “Under no circumstances should somebody try to make that happen.”

Copied and pasted the actual reasoning from the article since it was paywalled. I was expecting the headline to be rage/click bait, but the article was just as bad.

The emphasis above is mine. The reasoning provided was because “companies won’t make enough profit to pay their employees.” Lol. Lmao even. That has never, and will never, be true. Basically just corporate gaslighting.

I also found the assertion that the expectation of lower prices later would cause people to stop spending absurd. Excuse me, what? People aren’t complaining about the cost of yachts going up. They’re complaining about the cost of essentials: groceries, gas, utilities, etc. Do they really think people are going to stop eating while they’re waiting for groceries to get cheaper?! This comes across as tone deaf and completely disconnected. Clearly that professor and the author of the article are so far removed from the experience of the working class that they can’t even understand why high prices are causing problems for working class people.

To answer the subtitle: it’s poor people having freedoms