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When the Shortage is the Strategy — No One's Happy

nooneshappy.com · 2,841 words · saved by 1 readers

Companies discovered during the pandemic that they could raise prices far beyond costs and never lower them. Now the formula is being applied deliberately.

August 16, 2026 9 min read I commonly hear two different responses when people discuss whether the United States is in a recession. I hear “What recession?” and “Everything is expensive now!” All while credit card debt hit an all-time high last year ($1.28 trillion, Q4 2025). More “regular” people are living paycheck to paycheck, and closer to homelessness than ever before. 111 million Americans, ~40% of adults cannot pay their credit card balance in full each month. [1] Contributing to the issue is a single, simple business practice: constrain supply, raise prices far beyond what the…

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