exacerbated by the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, supported price inelasticity, i.e., they began lowering prices to match the price of oil when it fell much more slowly than they had increased their prices when costs rose. California's five largest gasoline companies, Chevron Corporation, Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, PBF Energy, and Phillips 66, responsible for 96% of transportation fuel sold in the state, all participated in this behavior, reaping first quarter profits much larger than any of their quarterly results in the previous several years. On May 19, 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to prevent such "price gouging" by addressing the resulting windfall profits, but it is unlikely to prevail against the minority filibuster challenge in the Senate. Similarly in the first quarter of 2022, meatpacking giant Tyson Foods relied on downward price inelasticity in packaged chicken and related products to increase their profits to about $500 million, responding to a $1.5 billion increase in their costs with almost $2 billion in price hikes. Tyson's three main competitors, having essentially no ability to compete on lower prices because supply chain constriction would not support an increase in volumes, followed suit. Tyson's quarter was one of their most profitable, expanding their operating margin 38%. UBS Global Wealth Management chief economist Paul Donovan said this has happened because post-pandemic household balance sheets have kept consumer spending demand strong enough to encourage producers to raise prices faster than costs, and because consumers have been gullible enough to find exaggerated narratives justifying such price hikes plausible. Effect of economic growth If economic growth matches the growth of the money supply, inflation should not occur when all else is equal. A large variety of factors can affect the rate of both. For example, investment in market production, infrastructure, education, and preventive health care can all grow an economy in greater amounts than the investment spending. Monetarist view Monetarists believe the most significant factor influencing inflation or deflation is how fast the money supply grows or shrinks. They consider fiscal policy, or government spending and taxation, as ineffective in controlling inflation. The monetarist economist Milton Friedman famously stated, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Monetarists assert that the empirical study of monetary history shows that inflation has always been a monetary phenomenon. The quantity theory of money, simply stated, says that any change in the amount of money in a system