My money is made in the business world, so I understand it well.
We are all reading about inflation. Prices are going up. This is what ALWAYS happens, sooner or later, when money is stolen from the mass of people–either directly, or from our children–through money creation. Inflation is theft. I have said this often and justified it often.
Here is the thing: there is a strong, strong incentive, given all this, to profiteer. Even if the costs of a given business have not gone up, there is a strong temptation on the part of many if not most if not all business owners and managers to raise prices just because you CAN.
What I am going to suggest is that this temptation should be resisted, in the public interest. If your costs have genuinely gone up, by all means maintain the margin that allows your business to make sense and remain viable.
But in my view it is unethical to use this situation opportunistically. Now, I get that the best run businesses tend to profiteer anywhere and everything they can, every chance they get. That is not my model.
I would put it this way: greed is not bad, but greed unchecked by basic humanitarian and community-concerned impulses tends to be bad. Make a living. Don’t try to make a killing.