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You're describing the poverty trap. Its very real. I'm wealthy now as well, but I remember a time when I took the subway 90 mins round trip to my job, and the fare cost almost an hour's pay. So I'd put in 9.5 hours to work an 8 hour shift and my takehome pay was for 7 hours.

I don't have receipts to prove it but I don't think the price of milk has changed all that much. I just got a gallon for like $2.70. Earliest receipt I can find is from Feb of last year and I actually paid a bit more.

thats by design, its always on us.

capitalize the gains, socialize the losses.

I work for a manufacturing company, and during the demand boom our customers wanted way more product than our facilities are physically capable of producing. I suppose sales could have complexified and ratcheted up our existing rationing process (have to have one at some level when it takes months to produce an order), but raising prices made demand go down so it matched our actual ability to make stuff.

Given the wild increase in demand beyond the infrastructure capabilities, the only alternative to inflation was rationing, and I do not have enthusiasm for ration lines.

Apparently, at least for groceries, there's an estimated extra $700/year increase next year, with food costs slowing to 2.5-4.5% increases in general, but sticking at 5-7% for bread, vegetables, and meat. It's still going to cost an average 4-person family $16.3k a year for groceries, though (AKA just over half a full-time minimum-wage salary, prior to paying taxes).

Metro reported a 14% increase in profits for their last quarter compared to last year, and Loblaw's 11%. According to Google's earning statements of the last year, Metro has made 27.4% more profits in the last four quarters than they reported in 2020. Loblaws, on the other hand, is actually down 12%, though Google reports they had two really bad quarters this year, and posted a 40% increase in profits between FY 2022 and 2020. So yeah, nothing as egregious as the article, but they're still outpacing (year over year for the last quarter) both regular and grocery inflation.

I'm sure if I really wanted to, I could dig up the same financial information for Soebys, but I have no clue if Walmart and Costco would keep clean financials readily available for Canada.

Not to mention "gouge".

Or predicting 7 out of the last 4 recessions

Correct, this is literally how market economics works. The real question is why they weren't able to do it before, since they had the incentive already (and always do).

Always with worst possible take no matter the subject.