Canada

Its not price gouging, its excess money supply, because the Covid stimulus was entirely funded by the Bank of Canada, who ignored their inflation mandate during Covid. Heres a graph from the Boc outlining the inflation in 2021, which hits us with a lag as the money flows through the economy.

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/indicators/key-variables/monetary-aggregates/

The phillips curve depicts the relationship between inflation and wage pressure, higher inflation means more wage power, and wage gains. But during the inflation Canada did mass immigration, to force down wage pressure. So everyone is now poorer on a per capita basis than they were prior to mass immigration, that is why families dont have any money. Canada has also had the second to last worst per capita GDP performance out of the 38 countries of the OECD, we beat only Luxembourg, so people are poorer.

What's talked about by out new PM at least is that wages are too low. That's the other side of the problem. We tend to increase wages instead of decreasing prices because we don't like deflation. That said for wages to go up we need the government to strengthen labour and I'm not sure that's happening. At least not yet. Also I think your conclusions are correct.

Companies can do whatever they please. What are you gonna do? Stop eating? And half our population supports it by voting for continued unchecked capitalism and privatization.

Yep, taking the poorest and restricting their disposable income is pretty much how you kill an economy.