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Hi, everyone! I’m Lora Kelley, and I am a new writer for the Daily. I’m thrilled to be working with Tom Nichols and the team to bring you the newsletter. I joined The Atlantic in an interesting week for the economy—after two years of runaway inflation, which led the Federal Reserve to crank up interest rates, the government announced on Wednesday that it would be pressing pause on its hikes for now. Today I explore a question that’s dividing economists: Whose fault is inflation, anyway—and why does it matter?

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

The fake poor bride

Car-rental companies are ruining EVs.

The choice the Philippines didn’t want to make

America can take a breath: Inflation is finally cooling off. It’s now hovering at about 4 percent, according to Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released earlier this week, down from the 9.1 percent peak in June of last year. But the Fed is saying that it would like inflation to be closer to 2 percent, and that it may raise interest rates again in the future to try to get the country there. Now that inflation has abated (for the moment), discussions have turned to how we got here.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell recently said that rising wages were not the principal driver of inflation. As economists, the media, and laypeople alike try to figure out whom to blame instead, fingers are pointing at the consumers who started spending large amounts of saved dollars and stimulus checks in 2020; at the corporations that have seen juicy profit margins after raising their prices; and, in Sweden, even at … Beyoncé?

Trying to understand the factors that fueled inflation is important, because whom we blame for inflation also shapes what we do about it. If inflation is caused primarily by overheated consumer demand, then it makes sense for the Fed to quell spending by hiking interest rates. But if corporations, rather than consumers, are driving inflation by raising their prices, then other tools may make more sense.

One conventional explanation is that widespread consumer spending started in 2020 and persisted in the years that followed, causing demand to explode and prices to spike. Some economists have called the influx of post-lockdown spending on goods and travel “revenge spending,” and recent data show that it is receding after two years.

The Fed has consistently raised interest rates in its past 10 meetings in part to get consumers to stop spending money—and so far, the hikes seem to be working. “The Fed has done the thing you would expect the Fed to do,” Chris Conlon, an economist at NYU, told me. “Right now, it looks like raising rates is starting to cool demand and temper expectations.” (Pulling this lever is imprecise, however, and can cause pain: High interest rates have triggered layoffs, especially in tech, and made it harder for a lot of people to afford big-ticket purchases such as houses and cars.)

Although CPI data show clear patterns in consumer spending and demand, another explanation, that corporations are fueling inflation by raising prices in order to increase profits, has been gaining steam in recent months. Some economists are taking a closer look at the idea that corporations’ profit margins could be playing a role in keeping inflation high—especially after recent earnings calls in which corporations reported that profits are up even as they are selling fewer goods.

Isabella Weber, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, argues that a host of geopolitical factors have provided “cover” for firms to raise prices. Weber refers to the phenomenon as “sellers’ inflation,” but others call this “greedflation,” “excuseflation,” and “profit-led inflation.” Companies wrestled back pricing power earlier in the pandemic—and consumers, seeing high prices at the gas station and everywhere else, came to expect higher prices. Now, some ask, are companies doing more than simply responding to costs, and instead just ramping up prices to pad their margins—and in the process, feeding inflation like a pandemic baker feeding sourdough starter?

“If you believe that big corporations are the ones who are pushing up prices,” Rakeen Mabud, the chief economist at the progressive nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative, told me, “then there are a lot more tools in our toolbox” to address the issue. “We can go way beyond the Fed,” she added. Those tools, she told me, include tax policies that target excess profits or incentivize productive investment in firms. “We’re really seeing a big rethink of some orthodox understandings of inflation and its causes,” she said.

Conlon, however, is interested in possible factors beyond greed that may be pushing companies to raise prices. “Strong demand will also generate rising prices, rising profits, higher output,” he told me. He and his colleagues recently published a paper that found that, from 2018 to 2022, there was no correlation between the companies whose markups have risen the most and the industries in which prices have risen the quickest.

The exact causes and dynamics of our current inflationary moment may take time to unravel—Conlon predicted that in a few years, we may have more information about how companies behaved these past few years. These data will be worth a close look, especially if shocks to the economy continue apace in years to come. It’s become a bit of a cliché to say that we are living in unprecedented times. But a rash of recent, intersecting crises—supply-chain snarls, the war in Ukraine, elevated gas prices, bird flu—did scramble consumer spending, leading companies to raise prices over the past few years. Things may stay strange. Understanding what happened could inform how we respond to future shocks.

I will leave you with some good news, after all this talk of disaster: Global inflation is not all Beyoncé’s fault, though Swedish economists said this week that her Renaissance tour in Stockholm caused a surge in local prices—“It’s quite astonishing for a single event,” one economist told the Financial Times. One person, even an amazing one, can’t single-handedly cause inflation. But her music can probably alleviate some of the pain of thinking through all of this.

Today’s News

After a multiyear investigation into George Floyd’s murder, the Justice Department released a report finding frequent instances of excessive force by Minneapolis police officers, and unlawful discrimination against Black and Native American people.

The gunman who killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 was convicted by a federal jury.

Several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy, were affected by a global hacking campaign, according to officials.

Dispatches

The Books Briefing: Gal Beckerman reflects on the powerful weirdness of Cormac McCarthy.

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More From The Atlantic

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Netflix

Watch. The final season of the sparkly teen comedy Never Have I Ever, on Netflix, cleverly solves TV’s college problem.

Listen. New albums by Janelle Monáe, Jake Shears, and Jessie Ware usher in the age of pleasure.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

I know I cannot compete with Tom Nichols when it comes to 1980s movie references. For everyone’s sake, I will not try. But I did happen to watch a film from 1987 during my time off between jobs that I liked very much. The Éric Rohmer movie, whose title translates from French to Boyfriends and Girlfriends, is a New Wave romantic comedy about, yes, boyfriends and girlfriends. But to my pleasant surprise, it was also about jobs, and how a new class of suburban young people was fitting work into their lives. Against a backdrop of pools and excellent outfits, the characters discuss bureaucracy, commuting into Paris, and having or not having a boss. I think a lot about “the future of work,” so it was fun to dip into the past of work too.

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

For the past year or so, artists have marketed delirious new music by talking about the doldrums of lockdown. The signature example is Beyoncé’s Renaissance, a whirligig tour through gay, Black dance history that features the type-A superstar performing her wackiest vocals ever. Renaissance, Beyoncé wrote on Instagram, was born from dreaming of freedom at “a time when little else was moving.” In the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to albums by Janelle Monáe, Jake Shears, and Jessie Ware that offer similarly uninhibited takes on life after stir-craziness. Joy, extremity, and cheesiness—not to mention queerness—are the mood.

Pop has, of course, always embraced a good time. But to understand the vibe shift I’m detecting, think back to the circa-2020 “disco revival,” whose origin predated the pandemic. Artists such as Dua Lipa and Sam Smith peddled musical products whose nostalgic, easy cheer served streaming services’ endless demand for inoffensive grooves. The nightlife of the 1970s was an obvious touch point, but the wildness of, say, Donna Summer’s orgasmic squeals on “Love to Love You Baby” was hardly being conjured. Yet when the coronavirus arrived, this rewarmed disco suddenly sounded more urgent. Figures such as Lipa came to feel like saviors of the nation’s mental health for helping us dance while doing the dishes.

The standout artist of that disco wave was Ware, a U.K. crooner once known for stately ballads. Her 2020 album, What’s Your Pleasure?, ventured into club music, and in doing so extracted glamor from seemingly antiquated ideals of “tastefulness.” The vocals were sexy in a coy way. Reverb swathed the pulsing beats like so much chiffon. Analog instruments were employed with the panache of a French chef using full-fat cream. Queer listeners particularly swooned for the album, in part because Ware—like many straight, white divas before her—was adeptly channeling gay, Black influences.

On Ware’s new album, That! Feels Good!, she returns to the same well—except it’s not the same. The success of What’s Your Pleasure? gave her “huge confidence and ambition,” she has said, and her new music sounds like someone acting on a dare. Elegance has given way to excess, and hauteur has been cut by humor. The album opens with a swarm of gasping voices, like a lewd Muppets skit. Boogying bass lines, campy spoken-words segments, and onomatopoeic innuendos ensue. The music is still tightly composed, but this time it forces a confrontation, asking the listener to either buy into the fantasy or walk away. I don’t foresee this album quite dominating my day-to-day life as her previous one did—it’s better enjoyed like laughing gas, in doses.

A more experienced party jester, Jake Shears has been making gay anthems for more than 20 years now. He started as the front man of Scissor Sisters, a band that whimsically channeled Elton John and the Bee Gees. But he also has a serious side: His first solo album, the 2018 release Jake Shears, was a post-breakup memoir told through orchestral rock. The pandemic made him miss the dance floor, and once people could gather again, he began throwing open-invite parties at his New Orleans home. His new album, Last Man Dancing, was inspired by such celebrations—and forgoes personal fare, mellowness, or any sense of decorum, to excellent effect.

The sonic references on Last Man Dancing are brazen, and inspired by some of the most self-consciously corny artifacts of all time: ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” Europe’s “The Final Countdown,” workout videos by Jane Fonda, who makes a cameo on the album. But Shears has edited this preposterous collage carefully. Bold ingredients are arranged to complement rather than clash, such as when Big Freedia’s glorious, redolent lisp duels an electro-funk bass line on “Doses.” Shears, a strong songwriter, injects lighthearted lyrical concepts with a sense of emotional dynamism, like on “Do the Television,” a fake—but oddly poignant—dance instructional. Yet during the second half of the album, the tracks feel less like discrete songs than ingredients in a flowing, body-pummeling DJ set.

[Read: Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer is for (almost) everyone]

Monáe also sequences her new album as a continual, danceable experience. She has given it a name apt for roaring-2020s vibes: The Age of Pleasure. Fusing R&B, musical theater, and hip-hop for more than a decade and a half now, Monáe has never been a stranger to playfulness. But she is also a brainiac and social symbol who parties with Barack Obama and acts in Oscar-contending movies. Her last album, Dirty Computer (2018), was a sci-fi concept album about Black and queer survival in the face of oppression. It exemplified a strain of pop music, prominent throughout the 2010s, that took itself rather seriously.

Age of Pleasure strips off Monáe’s pretenses, and also, with its body-baring marketing campaign, her clothes. Much like Shears, she was inspired by a series of dance parties that she used to attend before the pandemic—and that she then began hosting, once she was able, in her own Los Angeles home. The music blends reggae, dance hall, and Afrobeats to summon a dreamy, humid haze. The lyrics are like raunchy nursery rhymes, expressing polyamorous and pansexual lust with hilarious frankness. (Typical line: “Phenomenal puss / phenomenal kush.”) Catchy elements such as the sloshing groove of “Water Slide,” or the combo of smooth sax and prickling percussion on “Know Better,” ensure that this album will be soundtracking outdoor revelry all summer. But I must note that even now, something about Monáe’s songwriting still feels reserved. She describes liberation, but her relationship with backbeats can feel tight.

Perhaps that palpable tension between control and release helps explain why albums like this matter: The title Age of Pleasure offers a plea for how things might be, not how they are. The broader social landscape of 2023 makes clear that the loosening-up that’s happening in much of pop is hard-won. After a nightclub-closing plague came a political campaign against self-expression, sexual openness, and queer people’s very existence, driven by right-wing demagogues. Cloisters of frivolity, such as drag shows, have become objects of public scrutiny. Play a song about same-sex desire too loudly, and you might be called a groomer.

I don’t want to suggest that Monáe’s gender-agnostic raunch, Shears’s Castro District aesthetics, and Ware’s fan service for Pride parties are all that radical. In actuality, they reflect scenes and sounds that have long thrived. What’s telling is that they defy attempts to quiet those scenes with a laugh. Now, more than ever, it’s clear how hard it is to squash a good party.

* Source Images: Santiago Felipe / Getty; Sarah Morris / Getty; Robin Little / Redferns / Getty; Chelsea Guglielmino / Getty; Joseph Okpako / Getty