I recall fondly the years of Daily Show with John Stewart, and tried to watch as much of that clip as I could but I just don't think he's qualified to ask useful questions here and the adversarial dialog isn't shedding much light per second.
The standard rebuttal seems to be "are corporations greedier today than five years ago" and the likely answer seems to be no. As best I can tell, the supply shock legitimately increased prices, and the pace at which prices are reverting is slowed by profit taking. In theory, high profits should lead to more competitors entering the market, but this is either a laggy response, or stymied by interest rate increases raising the cost of capital formation.
>> I just don't think he's qualified to ask useful questions here
I really think you don't give Stewart enough credit. Stewart is an intellectual that chooses comedy as his medium.
I think Jon Stewart wouldn't have gotten into that interview if he couldn't hold his own, intellectually. I was recently watching the Stewart/O'Reilly debates from about 10 years ago on Fox News and surprised how well both could lay out their arguments and not end up in a cacophony of noise. Stewart respected O'Reilly as much O'Reilly respected Stewart.
> The standard rebuttal seems to be "are corporations greedier today than five years ago" and the likely answer seems to be no.
Does a dog become more greedy for food on the table when you turn your back?
A "no" answer doesn't disprove the theory because the theory is only arguing (among other things) that companies are taking advantage of an opportunity that didn't exist 5 years ago, which is consumer expectations of rising prices.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that the solution is to attempt to cure greed.
Indeed, everything I've seen about this seems to be focusing more on acknowledging that these companies are greedy, and will use any opportunity to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense (and, often, at their future expense—short-term thinking is a big part of it too). Once we acknowledge that, we can work on ways to counteract its effects, and prevent the worst excesses that the greed would otherwise bring.
Well, the only policy I've seen on this front is windfall taxation, which is a kind of "heads the state wins, tails the company loses" dick move that only makes sense if your goal is to punish greed. Strategically it is a mistake, and will encourage profit hiding ala Amazon's preAWS days.
We're all better off ensuring there are so many companies bidding up wages and products competing on price that margins decline. The good news is that recent data shows that margins are already declining[1].
I agree with you, as do many of the experts who are using different terms to refer to the theory. The underlying theory isn't defined by the term and using some measure of greed as proof one way or the other would be a mistake.
Greed through normal means, ie, creating a product or creating new efficiencies in the market is great. Greed through fraud, market manipulation, etc is bad.
The standard rebuttal seems to be "are corporations greedier today than five years ago" and the likely answer seems to be no. As best I can tell, the supply shock legitimately increased prices, and the pace at which prices are reverting is slowed by profit taking. In theory, high profits should lead to more competitors entering the market, but this is either a laggy response, or stymied by interest rate increases raising the cost of capital formation.