The sooner that people finally accept the basic reality that for the most part prices are what they are and stop thinking about what prices were several years ago, the less miserable they'll be.
When I was growing up -
An 8 ounce soda - 5 cents
A comic book - 12 cents
A McDonalds hamburger - 10 cents
A candy bar - 5 cents
I would love to return to those prices. But those days are long gone and they are never coming back. Prices go up and extremely rare that they come back down to what they used to be. This has happened over the decades and I cannot understand why people do no recognize this.
Pretty much, the need is for wages to rise again where the prices are more in line with earnings.
That takes time.
However, prices can come down, just takes a lot longer. I lived through carter and saw everything go up, but after 8 years of Reagon prices had come down a little, just took forever.
A lot of employers haven't got that message. The price of labor (i.e. wages) in many sectors is still at pre-pandemic levels or only modestly higher, and has not risen in correlation with the costs of consumer goods and services.
Not only do they want prices to go back to pre-COVID levels, they also want to keep all the raises they got since then.