That the problem lately. Everybody is sky high on parts. Metal prices are through the roof and other items are following the same trend now. And groceries are getting ridiculous . Hamburger for $7 a pound recently just got left on the shelf. But it not hurting me as I am currently on a diet trying to lose 30-40 lbs anyway. For some reason I am thinking the scale is stuck at 260.
Here my MTD distributor has got me cut to a 5% profit margin just to keep from raising prices on the end user. By the time shipping is added I am losing money on parts sales. The only way to make any profit is to meet their free shipping level of $200.
As for JD it is nearly impossible to buy at a reasonable price lately. If it weren't for buying the Kawasaki and Tuff Torq via the distributors I would not be repairing any of JD equipment. A good example was the 737 head I need recently that at JD was $226.91 but my Kawasaki distributor had it for $173.74 which is still a big price for one without the valves and other hardware. Of course I had to have those items too.
As to this point, well for decades the West has been living in a fools paradise exploiting and keeping 3rd world countries in abject poverty so we can get stuff for well below the real price.
If you like to believe in conspiracies well this is a real one.
Managements of very large companies who still believe in slave labour and resent every cent paid to employees source as much as possible from 3rd world countries .
This has 2 benefits for them'
1) they can make astronomical mark ups while retaining the same selling price
2) because price inflation is low they can hold workers wages artifically low
If you check stats the USA is one of the few countries where living standards for the working class are going down along with the life expectency .
So along comes Covid , hot on the heels of a tit for tat trade war with China and suddenly the consumer gets hit with realistic prices and they go beserk.
BEcause we consider ourselves "civilized" we refuse to acknowledge that the $ 2000 ride on we just bought probably killed a person or two in a 3rd world country in order to get it to you so cheap.
As for food , your previous President demonised the Mexicans, in order to enhance his own status, a play strait out of Hitlers playbook and the good citizens of the USA fll for it hook line & sinker.
Thus the tens of thousands underpaid crop pickers & packers have not been coming across the border and their places have been taken by properly paid US citizens so either the price goes up to cover the extra cost ,( because ultimately the consumer always bears the cost ), or as is happening down here , for covid resrictions, the crop gets plowed back into the soil thus creating a shortage and pushing the prices up.
In the past 20 years company profits in the USA have gone up 5,000% , salaries have gone up 200% and wages have gone up 12 %
I always find it funny that companies like Addias &Rebock get called out for charging you $ 100 for a pair of shoes that they paid some on in the 3rd world $ 2.50 to make, yet we still keep on buying them.
Levis get found out to be contracting companies in India to make their jeans where the workers are actual slaves , but we still keep on buying them.
