Comment by daze42

Things in general across the board getting more expensive is a symptom of inflation, true. But I don't see how just a subset of businesses raising prices necessarily causes long term inflation. Even if all the existing grocery stores collude to raise prices together, that would just create market pressure for other grocery stores to pop up that can undercut and obtain a large amount of market share from the colluding businesses. So sure, there may be a blip of "inflation" while the market corrects and the new businesses start up, but overall it shouldn't cause actual inflation.