LETTER: Blame the government for inflation

I’m tired of hearing politicians say inflation is caused by price gouging. The opposite is a far more likely scenario. The last thing a retailer wants to do is raise prices and drive away customers. Instead, retailers will make various cuts to their costs and raise prices only as a last resort.

Kamala Harris said she is going after greedy price-gougers, including grocery stores. Apparently, she either doesn’t know that food stores work on the smallest margins of any type of retailer or she thinks the electorate is too stupid to understand basic economics. When costs such as raw product, transportation, labor, insurance, occupancy and taxes go up, retailers have no choice but to raise prices. But ask yourself: What’s causing all these other costs to increase?

Here are three major reasons: Government overregulation adds costs at each turn, government energy policy has led to higher transportation costs and government spending that should go away during hard times has only increased. What’s the common element? The government.