Blaming inflation on price gouging seems way too facile and subjective. What is price gouging anyway? In the years that energy companies lost money were they doing the reverse of gouging?
I just don't see there being any more reasonable objective cause and effect to that claim than the claim made by the commenter you are replying to. On the other hand in my own industry, prices for materials like lumber and steel have shot up massively causing major follow-on effects, and nobody at the steel mills are blaming worker salary for it. They're blaming the costs of the raw materials. And the people on the job site aren't blaming the tradespeople wages for the project going over budget, they're blaming the high cost of the steel showing up on site, late.
When workers are an issue for project delivery or budget it's usually not what they're charging, it's just availability. There are simply not enough field workers out there who can drive steel rivets or manage a punchlist. In fact, I hear rising wages brought up as a potential way to attract more people to the those field roles, because right now there are not enough people entering those roles.
So you can’t distinguish it without sharing the same morals as the speaker, and you therefore should “know it when you see it”.
When price increases exceed the increases in costs/raw-goods... then it's "greedflation", not "price gouging". Increasing profit margins are also a good signal of it.
Inflation and Price Gouging - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/briefing/inflation-supply...
Are Large Corporate Profit Margins Causing Inflation? - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/22/opinion/inflation-corpora...
I Listened In on Big Business. It’s Profiting From Inflation, and You’re Paying for It. - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/opinion/us-companies-infl...
So pretty much doubling down on the point: it’s gouging when I say it is.