Prices are going up. Way up!

[Kevin Hatton]

I just got a 100% price increase on my hardware over the last six months. Yes, 100%. Expect huge price increases.

[Doug Earnest]

My case supplier has raised their wholesale price nearly 50%
over the last four months. It adds up when you buy twenty or so at a time. He said that the hardware was through the roof and hard to get. My aluminum pedal racks nearly doubled in price recently.

[Carl Williams]

Yes and let’s not even talk about shipping fees…out of control!

[Chris Templeton]

That really s***s.
There are the shipping backlog/supply chain issues, and with it, the huge rate increases at the ports of entry and to ship a container across the ocean.
We've been lucky to have been able to have pluck the low hanging fruit of resources, and it's quickly becoming not cost effective to mine many them and those drastic increases are a reflection of this.

[Andrew Goulet]

Let's see all those homemade pedal steels! They're coming back into fashion soon, I hear...

[Larry Dering]

It doesn't surprise me with the lumber costs and building supplies sky rocketing. I don't see how anyone can sustain a business. Sorry to see things in such a mess.

[Chris Templeton]

Here in Vermont, since covid started, a lot of people from "downcountry" have bought properties sight unseen and to get a carpenter/contractor is six months out for most. Because of the rapid rise of the cost of materials, people who have existing contracts, will see see their costs go up people have mentioned here.

[Kevin Hatton]

The Chinese slave labor products are no longer cost effective to import into this country. These products need to now be made in the U.S.A.
like they used to be.

[Bob Carlucci]

Its not china, nor covid, not "supply chain issues", not "raw material scarcity"... These contribute of course, but INFLATION is the cause... A government, any government anywhere on earth, cannot hand out multiple trillions of dollars that it actually does not even own without massive inflation... When you print money, a LOT of money, money becomes less valuable... Then you need MORE money to purchase anything, and print even MORE money [quantitative easing], and what happens?- You need MORE money because it has all become less valuable.. Its a vicious cycle.

All that ""free"" money that all of us got?. Thousands of dollars?..
It was not free.. We WILL pay it back for a very long time in inflation, and what we are now starting to see-hyper inflation. Not getting political here, simply stating facts. It will not get better soon.. We are in this for a long time.....bob

[Craig Stock]

As a landscape contractor, its hard now to even give an estimate that you can guarantee for very long, since you don't know when prices will jump. And forget about finding reliable help

Bob is right and from what I hear, children that are born today already are in debt for 150K.

[Dave Zirbel]

Kevin Hatton, are you still building the ZB retro steels?

[Tom Gorr]

In one week - Canada is forcing a vax mandate for both Canadian and US truckers that cross the border.

If there was no mitigation through reassignment of routes about 20% of trade would be cut off.

Inflation and shortages are only going to get worse.

[Fred Treece]

Let's see all those homemade pedal steels! They're coming back into fashion soon, I hear...

Prices and availability aren’t any better for DIY’ers. For all intents and purposes, most pedal steel builders are very small shop type businesses, just a few steps up from running out of your garage.

Supply chain, shipping, labor market (no gigs!), fiscal policy - it all went to crap because of the pandemic. There are other underlying non-economic factors involved that bear down an economy, too. And it’s global. Inflation is a result, not a cause. It’s a pain, for sure, but it is not really a surprise, is it? The piper is here, tapping his foot.

[Doug Earnest]

It sure is a shame that it's hard to manufacture a lot of products in the US for a decent price.

As an example, try to manufacture a simple extendable chromed steel leg with a friction clutch and rubber foot here in the US and see what it costs. The last ones I had made here many years ago were costly and were absolute junk. The ones that the man was having made overseas were about a third the price and were absolutely perfect. That of course has probably come to a halt too.

Thanks COVID.

And yes the problem IS China, supply chain issues and scarcity of raw materials.

[Josh Moss]

Spot on, Bob.

[Andrew Goulet]

Let's see all those homemade pedal steels! They're coming back into fashion soon, I hear...

Prices and availability aren’t any better for DIY'ers

Let's start here! A couple coat hangers and you're in business.

[Bob Carlucci]

It sure is a shame that it's hard to manufacture a lot of products in the US for a decent price.

As an example, try to manufacture a simple extendable chromed steel leg with a friction clutch and rubber foot here in the US and see what it costs. The last ones I had made here many years ago were costly and were absolute junk. The ones that the man was having made overseas were about a third the price and were absolutely perfect. That of course has probably come to a halt too.

Thanks COVID.

And yes the problem IS China, supply chain issues and scarcity of raw materials.

I won't argue, however, gasoline is NOT producer in or exported from China.. Yet fuel prices have doubled in a year... Food?.. Most grown and processed here.. prices way up... Inflation hits everything and hits it hard, even stuff thats readily available... I used to buy ammo at $10 a box 2 years ago.. Its now $45, made here in the US with most USA raw material... Runaway inflation causes these huge price increases.. A government CAN NOT issue trillions upon trillions of dollars in fiat currency without massive inflation.. It has happened many times in the past, and will happen in the future... Read about Hyper Inflation in the Weimar Republic, a short article about what printing fiat currency does to a national economy.. It happens every single time its tried.

[Fred Treece]

Let's see all those homemade pedal steels! They're coming back into fashion soon, I hear...

Prices and availability aren’t any better for DIY'ers

Let's start here! A couple coat hangers and you're in business.

And just to clarify, here is a definition of inflation:
“Inflation is the rate of increase in prices over a given period of time. Inflation is typically a broad measure, such as the overall increase in prices or the increase in the cost of living in a country.”

It is a measure of price increase. NOT the cause of price increase.

[Dave Mudgett]

Focusing on the US - factually, the inflation is real and it looks to me like it will persist for some time. I think we're pretty close to double-digit inflation overall and I don't see anything stopping it from getting worse. Like all businesses, it has hit the music biz too. I think there are a bunch of causes to this. Problems with large systems are rarely caused by one thing.

On the supply side, of course there is the pandemic. In this country, it's hard to find people to work - that is factual. I think there are multiple causes. Of course, there's the pandemic itself. Some don't want to to be forced to get vaccinated. Some don't want to be around people that aren't vaccinated. I think some just don't want to do anything, for a variety of reasons. I think one thing that's been missed is that a lot of boomers, who were close to retiring anyway, opted to retire early. Then some people got so much free money they didn't feel like working so much. I know quite a few like that. So the supply chain issue is a real problem. There really are not enough truckers to get goods from ports to retail outlets. There really are not enough people to even stock shelves and wait on customers. It really is that bad. And there are also specialty problems, like the computer chip crisis caused by a burned-down plant in Taiwan, which has seriously hit the supply of new automobiles. All of this affects everything.

On the demand side, there are an awful lot of people with lots of discretionary money out there, and a lot of them have time on their hands to spend it. Labor supply down, so wages have to go up, often significantly, to attract anybody. And there really is a lot of freebie printed money over the last 18 months. Instead of targeting the people that really needed the money for basic needs, it was sent to every single taxpayer, including people that absolutely didn't need it. To them, this is purely discretionary money, and it's getting spent in a discretionary way. Just as an example in the music biz, guitar sales are way, way up and prices are skyrocketing. I saw this first-hand at the big Philly guitar show in November, and the price increases for 2022 are huge. How about a Reissue '65 Twin Reverb for $1949.99 MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) - no joke - https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... -combo-amp - and many outlets are out of stock!

But I think there's a bigger issue underlying all this. Yes, the pandemic was the straw that broke the camel's back. But over the course of the last 40 years, we changed from a serious producer economy to an almost completely consumer/service economy. We are dependent on goods from, mostly, places in Asia for our most basic consumer goods needs. Even for things like food - we do import a lot of food, and there are a lot of other costs - transportation, packaging, machinery, labor, you name it. Of course, fuel prices are not helped by the fact that we are again dependent on Middle-Eastern oil.

I think it's going to be hard to extricate ourselves from this mess. There are a lot of things that need to be dealt with. We used to be the world's biggest manufacturing nation, and now we can't even find enough people to work to ship goods made in other places or find people to stock shelves and wait on customers. To fix anything, we need to stop fighting with each other long enough to start looking for solutions. So please, no polemics about one thing or another thing. There are a lot of problems, and a lot of blame to go around. But assigning blame doesn't fix a single problem. Clear-headed, rational thought to isolate the real issues and coordinated action aimed squarely to deal with them are the only things that will help. I sincerely hope we have it in us to deal with this, but I haven't seen anything yet.

This is not really just about pedal steel - this type of inflation affects all music products. So I'm moving to Music. And please - stay away from partisan politics. I will shut it down if the discussion goes there.

[Doug Earnest]

Very good Dave, as always.

In my post when I stated that the problem was China, I would have stated my belief better had I said "goods being made in China, not in the US". The root of all of it is probably greed. Manufacturing moved from here largely due to greed.

[Craig Stock]

Well said Dave, very accurate analysis!

[Fred Treece]

Wow. Dave, do you do your own typing?

[Brooks Montgomery]

Very good Dave, as always.

In my post when I stated that the problem was China, I would have stated my belief better had I said "goods being made in China, not in the US". The root of all of it is probably greed. Manufacturing moved from here largely due to greed.

I agree. And it is also supply chain issues as stated. And consumer buying habits . I’m a sporting goods manufacturer’s rep. When consumers get used to buying a product at a certain price, competitors do what they can to offer products that are competitive. This now means sourcing in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka.

I rep both US made and “off-shore” produced products. Ironically, the US-made products are as jammed up as off-shore sourced. Things like fabrics from France, buckles from China, glues from Germany, jam up production.

We tend to get myopic about our country and its inflation, production, covid, and all.
Spend some time dialing in news from around the world on the Radio Garden app and listen to what is going on outside our bunker.

[John Booth]

Its not china, nor covid, not "supply chain issues", not "raw material scarcity"... These contribute of course, but INFLATION is the cause... A government, any government anywhere on earth, cannot hand out multiple trillions of dollars that it actually does not even own without massive inflation... When you print money, a LOT of money, money becomes less valuable... Then you need MORE money to purchase anything, and print even MORE money [quantitative easing], and what happens?- You need MORE money because it has all become less valuable.. Its a vicious cycle.

All that ""free"" money that all of us got?. Thousands of dollars?..
It was not free.. We WILL pay it back for a very long time in inflation, and what we are now starting to see-hyper inflation. Not getting political here, simply stating facts. It will not get better soon.. We are in this for a long time.....bob

Well said and true

[Fred Treece]

We tend to get myopic about our country and its inflation, production, covid, and all.
Spend some time dialing in news from around the world