When inflation took off in the 1960s, people didn’t just grumble about rising prices — they protested in front of local stores. It’s time this generation of consumers push back harder against unnecessary price increases. Doing so might help avoid more destructive interest rate hikes.
Happily, the anti-inflation movement seems to be gaining steam.
The chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, Paul Donovan, is an unlikely revolutionary. In a recent note on how corporate profits have stoked inflation, he proposed a radical-sounding solution: a consumer rebellion against unfair price hikes. "Convincing consumers not to passively accept price increases is a potentially faster and less destructive way of reversing profit-margin-led inflation,” he wrote.