The smoke and mirrors of "record high profits"

 "Record high profits" is a deceptive term - particularly when you are in inflationary times.

Say your store makes a 1% profit on sales, and normally has $100 million in sales.

You make $1 million in profit, a very small return (1%) for the amount of money that you had to risk to get there.

Now inflation raises all prices by 100%.

If you sold the same amount of stuff, you would sell $200 million, and your 1% profit would net you $2 million.

But people aren't able to buy as much as prices rise, so they only spend $150 million at your store. This gives you a "record breaking" profit of $1.5 million.

But that $1.5 million only has the same buying power as $750 thousand used to, so you are not able to buy as much either.

This is how your standard of living and buying power went down 25% while your store paid you "record breaking profits" that were 50% higher than they used to be.