Increasing costs solely for the sake of increasing profits that is.

I think we're talking about cashing out a company by prioritizing short term returns over long term survival (including insulting your customers, degrading the brand, committing borderline fraud, etc) . that's pretty orthogonal to broad structural inflation.

Ask anyone in leadership and you'll find the goal is always "outpace" inflation with shareholder value.

It's very simple and so many fight tooth and nail to see what's right in front of them.