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The last three years have disrupted everything about the way the economy works. This is at least partly why so many rich people live. I don’t look like I’m sweating Economists warn that Donald Trump’s policies will cause inflation finally come down to normal level – to rise again.

Whether you’re a Wall Street banker or a public school teacher, inflation takes its toll on all wallets. But it hurts in different ways.

High rent and food prices, areas where blue-collar workers tend to spend a larger share of their income, hurt middle- and low-income groups the most. And historically high inflation has also hurt rich people, as it eats away at corporate profits and puts pressure on the stock market.

But the period of inflation during the pandemic was unlike anything in history, and rich people acted like bandits.

“It’s been a good run for high-income people who have assets,” said Kent Smetters, professor of business economics and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “There’s no question that the stock market is up a little bit more than inflation… we’ve had 20% gains for almost two years in a row, and that’s pretty amazing.”

It’s also been an extremely good run for homeowners, as property values ​​have risen and inflation has eroded the nominal value of monthly mortgage payments.

While it is true that lower-income people have seen their wages rise in the last two years, outpacing inflation, these increases have not been evenly distributed and have made little impact on well-established income inequality. Before 2020.

My point is this: Many wealthy Americans, who once had nasty feelings about the possibility of rising inflation in the past, suddenly don’t seem so worried about it. This may be because the only real inflation we have seen for decades has been a cornucopia of profits for them over many years.

This provided a structure that allowed some wealthy Trump supporters to shrug their shoulders at his inflationary economic agenda.

Although Trump does not have a detailed policy plan, promised a massive tax cut for corporations, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and exorbitant tariffs on imports. He also casually floated the idea of ​​usurping the Federal Reserve’s authority over interest rates, the primary tool for managing inflation.

About 70 percent of economists Research by The Wall Street Journal He said prices would rise faster under Trump than under Harris, and 23 Nobel Prize winners endorsed Harris’ proposals regarding Trump’s “counterproductive” economic agenda.

“I think this is really going to feel like a return to 2021 inflation levels, given how quickly it came,” said Josh Bivens, the nonprofit’s chief economist. EPI Actionhe told me.

But this won’t be the same flavor of profit-driven inflation we’ve seen over the last three years.

Bivens said pandemic-era inflation, along with many supply chain bottlenecks, has given some companies monopoly-like power over parts of the economy when competitors can’t get more output out the door. “This will be a more broad-based, chaotic, supply-side price increase.”

The Trump campaign and its supporters continue to emphasize that the economy did not experience inflation during Trump’s first term. But from 2017 to 2019, things were different in the economy than they are today.

“We would have to do very different things to create inflation in 2018-2019,” Bivens said. “But the shocks of the last few years have really changed that. “Between the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine and – the good part – a really rapid recovery from the Covid shock, we are now an economy that can create inflation if you do the wrong things.”