Since a certain kind of economist keeps dunking on any use of the word "greed," a word about constraints on corporate pricing strategy and what normal people mean by "greed." Why is Stop and Shop posting this sign?

Firms with market power face inelastic demand curves. Economists think the "natural" and even "right" thing for executives to do is pick the profit-maximizing price on that curve--charge what the market will bear. That is NOT what they usually do!

Executives report taking into account fairness norms in price decisions: price-gouging looks greedy (because it is). Firms are constrained by customer fairness norms not to extract as much from customers as demand elasticity alone would dictate.

But when firms can blame seemingly external factors like inflation, or supply shocks, they (greedily) start using all that latent market power that was always there, raising prices in excess of cost increases. These postings in stores are designed to assist in this process.

Economists look at this process and see normal profit-maximing. Us normals look at the same facts and see a greedy flouting of social norms. But certain economists love dunking on simple common sense with clever contrarianism, so expect more of this...