Low interest rates combat the fact that there is a huge divergence in hourly compensation (salary) to productivity and how much things actually cost. If interest rates were not low, nobody could afford to buy things that cost exponentially more than they did back when interest rates didn't matter because you made enough money to not need a loan.
If wages were congruent with corporate profits throughout the years, I don't think we'd have these sorts of issues. Trickle down economics that stops trickling at the very top. But hey, as long as Zuck, Bezos, and Musk take home $500b a year, all is well, right?
I think you make some great points here and I'll expand on that. The main "issue" with businesses not paying the correct labor is due to the fact that they pay based on a market rate, rather than what their business actually achieves in gross profit. For example, you will hire a parts tech at the counter for $19 an hour regardless of how much your business makes in gross profit. It's just what the industry rate is. If they have more experience maybe bump them to 23. Unfortunately, that is just the way it is. Sorta how in some businesses you cannot even get hired if you don't have a degree regardless if you have clout and 3 patents to your name with 30 years in the industry, (my dad). Some businesses are stupid. Businesses also pay a payroll tax on every single employees labor. A payroll of 50k will cost the business another 5k more in payroll taxes a month, essentially about 60k a year. Payroll taxes also steal wages from workers. You arent making "80k" a year. You are making 65k a year after taxes. The company is paying you with money you aren't even getting. It's clear to me that businesses have not come to the idea that If they are doing better than their competitors, they should offer higher wages to people to get "the best worker" as you want the best coming to you to work for the better wage. It's getting there, but everyone understands eventually how hard it is to actually make payroll when you open a small business. A small store cannot afford to pay someone $30 an hour with too many employees at that rate. You have to take quality into consideration. For example, if you have a question in a store about where a product is and there is no one there, vs someone coming up to you asking if you need help. Not all businesses are smart businesses either. I've never been able to figure out why sales people get all of the credit with commission checks and no one else who processes all of their crap for them gets any of it.
Increasing prices is not always the best solution. Economy of scale and diminishing returns comes into play where you start increasing prices too high. Unfortunately, many businesses are forced to increase prices when hit with higher taxes because they need to keep their net profit inline along with paying the higher cost of their vendors increased prices. Once those expenses become so high they eventually cannot keep up with the market and have to close down because they cannot sell their products at too high of prices. This is when the recession hits and now no-one can afford anything. When they increase monetary printing, it is created without any productivity and therfore decreases the value of it. Thats my way of looking at it. It gets spent artificially and causes major supply shortage issues. Those supply issues are what forces companies to increase prices due to not having enough supply to maintain the rampant demand. That's when you go into a supply recession, which is I think what you are seeing now. It forces everyone to pay more until they no longer can sustain it.
Once rates increase, it costs businesses a lot more to borrow. That means their interest expense increases and forces them to raise prices to cover the cost of increased interest expense. This also slows down businesses growth in investment which doesn't create jobs.
