Congress and the White House Can Provide Relief from High Oil and Drug Prices
Meanwhile, there's lots of evidence that
corporate greed and monopoly power are major contributors to the problem. Corporate profits are growing faster than inflation;
companies are acknowledging that they are raising prices because they can, not because costs are going up; and workers' wages are not keeping up with inflation. These are problems that can be addressed, in part, by tough
anti-monopoly policies and more worker unionization—but even if we get those things, they may take years to have full impact.
Big Oil is socking us every day at the gas pump, and as a direct result, they are reporting record profits. Not counting one-time charges related to losses in Russia, in the first quarter of 2022, BP reported $6.2 billion in profit; ExxonMobil chimed in with $8.8 billion; Shell set a record with $9.1 billion in profits; and Chevron clocked in with profits of $6.3 billion. Those astronomical sums are just from the first three months of 2022!
There's no secret as to why their profits are soaring: Big Oil has fixed costs of production while the market price of oil is skyrocketing, thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and other reasons. This is a classic situation of windfall profits.