Holy Smokes Stihl's prices.

[bertsmobile1]

We all like to blame the sector we do not like for the problems we suffer from .
Reds will blame the blues for everything and Blues will do the opposite as if politicians were actually in control
They are not and have not been for the past 40 years if not longer .
The problem is very weak company law and a legal decision made by a NY court that allowed shareholders to sue directors for lost profits because of a bad decision .
This changed the whole balance of power between share holders & management and conflated the risks that are inherit with share to the certaincy of a bank deposit .
So if steel plant A decided to retain steel mills in the USA while steel mill B closed their mill & imported steel from elsewhere and made a bigger profit than steel mill A did, then the directors of mill A are open to prosecution by their shareholders for loss of profits reducing the dividend.
And this happens on a daily basis forced along by litigation funders who sue for free taking a share of a successful outcome.
Thus now days the COURTS have changed the duty of directors from care & responsible use of shareholdrs money to the requiremant to absolutely maximize the share holders dividends regardless of the cost to the nation , the workers or the company and that gets decided on a quarter by quarter basis.
Now the COURTS decided that whatever generates the highest PROFIT to EQUITY is the only responsible use of shareholders money and that will always be importing from the cheapest supplier then selling at the highest possible price locally.

Since the Vietnam war when the USA bankrupted itself over an idiot idological war that both the French & British warned them was a hopeless case money printing has almost zero effect on inflation as the USA abandoned the GOLD STANDARD & floated the US $ .
Thus the actual value of a US $ is what a wealth funds speculates it will be on the exchange market .
If the treasury issues bonds that are bought by the Fed reserve bank then the actual "debt " is zero because the money is "owed" to themselves .
IF the bonds get sold to private enterprise ( or foreign Governments ) then the debt is in fact real & has to be repaid so fuels inflation .
Current inflation is all about the share traders & commodity traders PUSHING up prices by generating short supply hysteria ( which never actually happened apart from fertilizer in the USA ) and companies using this hysteria to hide the fact that they increased their selling price by 40% to cover a 5% increase in costs.

Perfect example I buy a cheese that last year was $ 3 / lb ( Aus)
Dairy farmers had a cut in their milk price but the cheese is now $ 6/ lb supposedly because of increased fuel & energy costs .

If you look at everything that has gone up carefully you will see nothng other than the same profiteering tha back in the WWII days would have had the factory management thrown into goal .

 

[StarTech]

We all like to blame the sector we do not like for the problems we suffer from .
Reds will blame the blues for everything and Blues will do the opposite as if politicians were actually in control

That what I have seen for years myself as independent voter. From the outside it looks like a bunch of spoiled brats frighting over a cookie to me.

Personal, business, and polities are all give and take things. Neither one gets everything thing they want. So they piss and moan to high heaven when they don't get exactly they want. It like the railway workers if they got exactly what they were asking for they just turn around and demand more. Oh I had a boss that provided 3 day a year paid sick leave. Then he was bitching because he had to pay for one day. I told to take the pay and stick it up his backside.

As for that so-called free stimulus money someone was complaining about causing prices to increase it not my fault as I never got a darn penny of it as the IRS has so refused to even get my account straighten out. But government still claims they spent it even though they haven't. I have been trying to get it straighten out for the last three years.

The product producers get very little for their wares, it is what we call men that get a lot of what the consumer pays for products. As my company procurement officer I can see a lot of the middle costs which why I buy in bulk a lot of the time a lot closer to producer source especially hardware items. I see no reason to pay a MTD distributor $3 for a screw when I order packs of 50 for 0.60 ea and sell to my customer at half of my distributor's price.

Personally I not just complaining about my costs, I actually am doing something about it locally. You just got buckled down and manage what you got and cut out some of the extras.

As I said in the past I am a very small company but I have made a profit every year small as it is. Here is the last five years. As you can see I took a pretty good hit in 2020 because of the turn down and but have through management and good customers I have recover fairly nicely. I can tell a lot the users here really couldn't even survive on what I make for a living as they just can't manage what they got to work with. I am posting my net income as there be those saying those are fake numbers and they are sorta as I have re-invested about of it into new inventory. Anyway this is not bad considering I nearly went out of business in 2014 due to my mother's health problems that required my full attention. I just had to temporarily close down and send all customers to other shops.


And below is the income/expense from the 2013/2014 years that showed how much my income had dropped due to my mother health problems. The above figures are also the result of me having to move my shop and reset my customer base.


Every year I have lower my over parts costs until this year as now I am at a level where I am at the distributor's pricing. But even at this level I am acquiring new sources that can lower my costs vs retail sale price. Stens at the beginning of the year increased my discount rate and I just brought online Rotary in October so I can buy their products direct now which will increase my profits on their products.