My argument is that this bad due to the circular nature of this logic.

The whole point of modern economic theory is that it is GOOD due to the circular nature. Higher prices higher wages higher profit motive higher standard of living. It’s a beneficial cycle.

they want the “line go up” to get a return on investments but that has to come from somewhere.

Not really. There’s not a finite supply of money. Profits that are driven by efficiency improvements do actually come from “nowhere”.

and the executive leadership in our current organizational models means they answer neither to customers nor employees but only “line go up”, and that’s short term at best

That’s fair, and it’s the job of regulation and government policy to harness the short term greed into long term societal objectives. We haven’t been doing a great job of that. Short term greed by itself does do a lot of good, but it also drives harm in some areas (eg the environment) and ignores other areas (eg finding a cure for a rare disease). Ideally, the government should have a hand tweaking incentives in some areas (eg carbon tax) and taking direct action in others (eg funding medical research).

On the sense of policymakers looking at inflation being too bad, their control mechanism for reducing inflation puts the hardship primarily on the working class.

True, but policymakers have other levers they can pull which help the working class, to offset the above. Note I said “can pull” not necessarily “do pull” - Republicans are absolutely opposed to doing this.

it gets taken out on workers instead of having mechanisms to deal with corporate profits

Again, we absolutely have these mechanisms, but Republicans block them. The Fed is not beholden to Republicans (or Democrats) so they can unilaterally raise interest rates. But the tools to offset the harm done to working class people are subject to every roadblock Republicans can throw in the way of them.

Let’s say you save money for major auto repairs, but in one year the repair costs jump up 20%, how fair is that?

You’re conflating “a moderate level of inflation” (2%) with “way too much inflation” (20%). No one is saying that 20% inflation is a good thing. If repair costs jump up 2%, that’s fine.

Explain that to the hundreds of thousand of people finding their job redundant thanks to AI investments.

I’ll file them away with farriers and thatchers. Technological improvement is an objectively good thing.

And again, we could have better skills retraining programs, but…Republicans.

Look at Scandinavia and tell me the US healthcare approach is better. Look at Canada and tell me the US higher education system is better.

Neither of those are planned economies. They’re government taking a direct role in some areas, which is good and wholly supported by the capitalist model. Some things are best served by monopoly or direct government oversight. The majority are not.

Capitalism is fine, when its regulated and heavily so.

I wholeheartedly agree, and that’s very different than a planned economy.

Things like stock buybacks need to be illegal again, and socialism shouldn’t be an ugly word. Heavily regulating conflicts of interest (see Oxley Sarbanes), anti-trust (see Sherman Antitrust), and working against the concept of “winner take all” is how we avoid despots and tyrants who got lucky enough to be born rich and sociopathic.

100% agree with all of this.

In summary, I think all the good you want to see can be accomplished by a capitalist economy with strong socialist oversight (in the sense of Scandinavian socialism). There’s no need for a centrally planned economy or an attempt to remove all inflation.