What's new
What's new

OT? Uber inflation ramping up?

Prices may come down in the future when production ramps up. If so, what happens at gas stations may be an indication the suppliers will milk the decreases to make up for the lower profits when prices rise. Retail gas stations make more money when prices fall than when they go up.
 
Just ordered some TrimSol. Price has increased by over 15% since a couple weeks ago. Anyone else seeing this?:scratchchin:

Lots of chemicals use the byproducts of fuel production. Because of decreased global oil and gas demand and the resultant price drop for a barrel of oil production has slowed for a long time and this has now led to a shortage of the byproducts. Just ask for a price on composites that aren't in stock anymore. You'll probably find they've gone up around 60-300%
 
Look I may be one of the naysayers but I truly doubt prices are just going to fall like everyone keeps telling themselves.

It's like, dude WAKE UP. EVERYTHING is more expensive, not just OSB wood and gas. everything.

Jerome Powell of the FED even said that inflation may not be as "transitory" as they originally expected. Everyone thought this was just price spikes due to increased demand from Post-COVID buying power. Well that may be true in the end, but I just don't see it.

When a company can start charging 50% more for a product do you really think any of them are going to want to lower the prices?

I went to a local restaurant the other day, been in my town forever and they are always crowded. You know, that hippy all natural burger type place. People eat that s*** up in my parts. Well anyway they increased their prices across the board by 15%. Do you think that that company is going to come out in 6 months with a big announcement and say "Hey guys we know our prices have been A LOT higher than usual but we are going to lower them back down" The answer is HELL NO they aren't. Why would they? Are their suppliers and local ranches lowering their prices too? NO because the cost of production has gone UP.

If you want to go ahead and get some hard data points for my thesis, go and look at some charts. Specifically, a chart comparing the actual government released inflation stats (5%) in May vs. the CPI or Consumer Price Index, which reflects prices of actual goods. The two charts are not congruent.

Why else would the FED raise rates in 2023? Inflation. Of course that does nothing to solve the immediate problem and rates need to rise like, yesterday.

This is a good article Red-Hot U.S. Economy Drives Global Inflation, Forcing Foreign Banks to Act - WSJ

Per the article: "Powell did note that some of the dynamics associated with the reopening are 'raising the possibility that inflation could turn out to be higher and more persistent than we anticipate.'” This to me just reads as "yea we are pretending like this is transitory but in reality, we are f***ed.

Here's another take : Recent inflation figures should not be ignored | TheHill


Anyone who believes this is temporary inflation has been smoking something i'd like to get my hands on.

Or on the other hand I am completely wrong and everything will return back to 'normal'.
 
How much of this increase in pricing, not just in this industry, but market wide is due to the fact that the Dems feel everyone should start out with a minimum wage of $15is/hour?

When the person dropping fries at the fast food place makes $30k per year, how does anyone expect to see low prices for anything? All these politicians think they are doing the lower class a huge favor by boosting their wage and bringing them out of poverty. All they are doing is causing business across the board to raise their prices to offset the higher starting wage which, in turn, causes everyone to pay more for the basic need items. When this happens, do the lower class wage earners really get ahead? NO.

The poor will still be poor and the middle and upper class workers, who didn't see any wage increase, will fall behind.

And don't even get me started on stimulus $. Enough is enough, There is a help wanted sign on just about every store window you look at. There are jobs to be had. Now we need to give people a reason to get off the couch and work.

My rant is over.
 
If things are more expensive just work harder. Can't deny a good profit, eh? People in the 60s went to college on a part time job and came out with no debt, a house, and a car. Find your bootstraps and pull. You want the gov to make prices lower? Commie much?
 
I noticed this recently: I used to charge $110 to machine a flywheel and be damned if it didn't go up to $115! Whatdya gonna do? ;)

(And this would definitely not have anything to do with getting charged $400 freight for 800 pounds of steel bars to get hauled 450 miles).
 
How much of this increase in pricing, not just in this industry, but market wide is due to the fact that the Dems feel everyone should start out with a minimum wage of $15is/hour?
Well, it didnt take long to blame a political party......

On to an actual question and observation.

28 years ago I worked at a grocery store. they paid me $8 an hour. At the time a new f150 was .... $12K? Hamburg was $1lb. My health insurance with low deductible was $100 month. Rent was $450? Fast forward..... That store still pays $8 an hour. That truck is $50k? Hamburg is $5lb, insurance with high deductible for same age is $600? Same apartment is $1350. My friend with 200 head of cattle says he isnt getting much more for them now then he was then. WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING? What is the cost of a bushel of wheat vs box of cereal?

Are the poor working $8 an hour jobs getting food stamps, medicaid, WIC etc? We are subsidizing the $8 an hour worker with our taxes while large companies are keeping the gains and forming ever larger monopolies. At $10 an hour its makes economic sense to stay home and watch your own kids and go broke slowly even if you dont get enhanced unemployment (you may still get WIC, food stamps, medicaid), rather then go to work and spend more then you make on transportation and child care. Now some of you are saying cut it all off and make them work (very christian of you, starving children!) but how about we kick up and not down. How about we victimize the CEO (and hedge funds, stock holders, etc)raking in millions while paying pennies to workers and even less % of taxes then we do, while sending jobs oversees and buying congressmen with his spare change.

I feel bad for the small business. They cant absorb the price increase in goods or labor. They have to pass it on.
 
How much of this increase in pricing, not just in this industry, but market wide is due to the fact that the Dems feel everyone should start out with a minimum wage of $15is/hour?

When the person dropping fries at the fast food place makes $30k per year, how does anyone expect to see low prices for anything? All these politicians think they are doing the lower class a huge favor by boosting their wage and bringing them out of poverty. All they are doing is causing business across the board to raise their prices to offset the higher starting wage which, in turn, causes everyone to pay more for the basic need items. When this happens, do the lower class wage earners really get ahead? NO.

The poor will still be poor and the middle and upper class workers, who didn't see any wage increase, will fall behind.

And don't even get me started on stimulus $. Enough is enough, There is a help wanted sign on just about every store window you look at. There are jobs to be had. Now we need to give people a reason to get off the couch and work.

My rant is over.

I mean I don't disagree with you on salary situation. But the flip side to your argument is that real wage growth has been stagnant from the 1980s onward. Manual machinists in my first shop back in 2008 were making $35/hr....I am making that now in 2021.... Real wages especially at the lower end of the spectrum have been artificially compressed my market forces and policy choices here in the US. Student staff members in my job are now at 50% of my wage...students with no degree, arguably no training, and no experience are making 50% of what an experienced CNC programmer is making with over 10 years of experience in the field. Something is OFF with that equation. What is off?

It isn't that their wages are too high....its that MY wages are too LOW. I am not saying I demand $50/hr right this second but if wages had actually kept up with inflation and productivity, my wage probably would be $50-60/hour.

I agree with you on the fact that the Treasury injecting $5-6 TRILLION into the consumer's hands probably hasn't helped things. However, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have been subsidizing large banks and financial institutions for over a decade since the Great Recession with infinite liquidity and easy money. You think $6 trillion is a lot for the US population with stimulus? Just look at how much the banks have been getting stimulated with Quantitative Easing policy. We are talking $20-30 TRILLION over a 10 year period. How much of that money has made it into your or my hands? Zero.

Don't hate on the poor people, the poor people aren't to blame here. The government's financial policy for the greater part of half a century has gotten us to this point. Where is the real wage growth? Machinists making $40-60K a year TOPS? That is messed up brah. Skilled labor should be retailing between $80K-120K easily.
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating the poor or looking for the Govt to keep prices artificially low. The way I see it is that the min wage deal will bring a certain % of the population out of poverty but what happens when the basic necessities they need to buy increase in price due to those businesses having to raise prices to absorb the increased wages they are paying out? Won't we just be back to the same place we started with this group of people still having the same amount of $ at the end of the day? Sure I now make $15/hour but everything I buy also cost's more so where's the net gain?

Yes, the current employed worker is falling behind with their yearly review increases compared to what a new hire comes in to the business earning. I'm sure we have all been there. I was the new hire that started making just about the same amount of $ as the person who had worked there 20 years already. I was also the guy that left a job and my replacement came in earning just shy of what I was making and he didn't know $hit. Cost of living increases don't allow the currently employed worker to keep pace with the inflation of salary increases of new hires.

I don't know what the answer is so I just keep prices where they have to be to absorb my expenses. But the customer will only tolerate a certain amount of price increases. Competition is king and if I have to absorb too much added expense, whether it be wages or supply costs, some of those customers will find cheaper pastures. I see it now, why a customer will wait twice as long to have a tool built in China just to save a few thousand is beyond me. Then when they finally get the tool it comes into my shop to get fixed/repaired because it isn't correct. There goes their initial savings and a bunch of lost time.
 
Yea you know China is an interesting part of the equation. I've been telling everyone I know to listen to the Modern Machine Shop podcast "Made in the USA" because it was really enlightening to understand the role that China actually played in the offshoring of jobs. The situation from the early 2000s was that something along the lines of 15,000+ manufacturing jobs each month were disappearing over a period of a decade or more. That is insane. They devoted a whole episode to supply chain economics and I think as a society we are understanding that our supply chains are way too delicate to rely on Just In Time delivery from China and the cheap labor countries.


Ive been reading stories about engineers who simply cannot purchase the goods they need. Things like PCBs, sheet steel, transistors, replacement parts, circuits etc etc. The lead times are astounding - 52 weeks and beyond lol it is hilarious.

Id never think to order a product from China if the lead time is twice as long and only saving 5-10% on cost. Not only is the shipping expensive but it is horrible for the environment.
 
If things are more expensive just work harder. Can't deny a good profit, eh? People in the 60s went to college on a part time job and came out with no debt, a house, and a car. Find your bootstraps and pull. You want the gov to make prices lower? Commie much?

Hah. Minimum wage in the 60's paid in coins is equivalent to ~$25 an hour today.
 
Yea you know China is an interesting part of the equation. I've been telling everyone I know to listen to the Modern Machine Shop podcast "Made in the USA" because it was really enlightening to understand the role that China actually played in the offshoring of jobs.
Sorry, you are making me laugh :) If you go back a little farther, Modern Machine Shop was peddling that very same JIT stuff as everybody else in the 70's. That was even before Mark My Word was a young kid .... now he's an old kid :) The only one really sounding the gong back when it might have made a difference was Ron Khol at Machine Design. He was a cranky old reactionary but no fool - still giggle when I see a BMW Z, he described it perfectly as "Donald Duck's car." :D

It was the mid-seventies when all this shit started, and obviously had nothing to do with China. They were still hammering scissors together with rocks back then. Most of the magazines, the NMTBA, all the economists, most of society was all gungho for what is now a disaster.

Disaster for us, anyhow. Most kids would much prefer to stand behind a bar selling lattes. Most of society doesn't know or care about manufacturing. If they do have an idea about it, it's "We don't want them stinking factories here ! Let the little brown/yellow guys do that, we'll do the smart part of the work ! "Pareto Principle", pah. Buncha stupid shit.

In the end, it doesn't work that way. It was foreseeable, but nobody wanted to foresee it. Everybody wants to be a chief, nobody wants to be an Indian. Even the dipshit Obama, when he was peddling training, did he talk about teaching people to be plumbers or welders ? Hell no, it was "web designers".

Make your bed, then you lie in it.

The situation from the early 2000s was that something along the lines of 15,000+ manufacturing jobs each month were disappearing over a period of a decade or more. That is insane.
"For every good job that goes overseas, four or five better ones will be created at home." Came out of Clinton's Own Mouth. I will never understand why the Republicans hated him, because he passed more Republican legislation than they'd ever been able to. Summers, Rubin, Friedman, Greenspan .... all those ignorant pricks. China had nothing to do with this, except to recognize what a stupid big mistake the US was making and offer to take up the slack.

China didn't come to the US with guns to force the US Congress to sell out to Goldman-Sachs. You did it to yourselves. They just held up a nickel and corporate America trampled each other in their frenzy to grab it.

They devoted a whole episode to supply chain economics and I think as a society we are understanding that our supply chains are way too delicate to rely on Just In Time delivery from China and the cheap labor countries.
Probably should have figured that out forty-five years ago when there was something you could do about it. The only way you can change this now is to entirely change the tax code, and who benefits from the economy.

Normally it takes guillotines and blood to achieve this. Those with money and power are not eager to give it up.

Id never think to order a product from China if the lead time is twice as long and only saving 5-10% on cost. Not only is the shipping expensive but it is horrible for the environment.
It isn't 5 or 10% and shipping is not expensive. Roughly $2500 for a 50,000 lb container. Could do 80 but then trucks can't haul it. Dream on with your prospective corrections :)

btw, most of you guys are just as guilty. Most of you are running Jap machines with Jap controls and buying Mitutoyo. People who live in grass shacks shouldn't stow thrones.
 
tenor.gif
 
Japan and China had similar rises to manufacturing prominence, largely due to the American market.

However, Japan couldn’t be more different than China. Japan has limited resources, limited population, limited land...and will forever be hand-stringed by their limitations.

China has no limitations of resources, people, or land. And thus the ability to keep moving up the economic ladder higher than Japan ever could.

China will overpower the world with their manufacturing size, just like an army of ants moving an elephant.

IMO though, China will never match the Japanese intelligence and capability, because of cultural differences between the two nations.

And don’t forget, the Japanese have established themselves as world-leaders in high technology and advanced manufacturing.

Just like with the Internet powerhouse companies, he who gets there first and establishes dominance in the market becomes almost impossible to dethrone.

There will always be only one Mazak, Okuma, Fanuc, Honda, Toyota, Mitutoyo, Canon, Nikon, Sony...
 
Japan and China had similar rises to manufacturing prominence, largely due to the American market.

However, Japan couldn’t be more different than China. Japan has limited resources, limited population, limited land...and will forever be hand-stringed by their limitations.

China has no limitations of resources, people, or land. And thus the ability to keep moving up the economic ladder higher than Japan ever could.

China will overpower the world with their manufacturing size, just like an army of ants moving an elephant.

IMO though, China will never match the Japanese intelligence and capability, because of cultural differences between the two nations.

And don’t forget, the Japanese have established themselves as world-leaders in high technology and advanced manufacturing.

Just like with the Internet powerhouse companies, he who gets there first and establishes dominance in the market becomes almost impossible to dethrone.

There will always be only one Mazak, Okuma, Fanuc, Honda, Toyota, Mitutoyo, Canon, Nikon, Sony...

Good post....I think China has reached the point where "playing catch up" is a waste of time. What China lacks intellectually or in resources, or influence they simply buy it.

I don't even hear much from our leadership anymore about manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
 
Sorry, you are making me laugh :) If you go back a little farther, Modern Machine Shop was peddling that very same JIT stuff as everybody else in the 70's. That was even before Mark My Word was a young kid .... now he's an old kid :) The only one really sounding the gong back when it might have made a difference was Ron Khol at Machine Design. He was a cranky old reactionary but no fool - still giggle when I see a BMW Z, he described it perfectly as "Donald Duck's car." :D

It was the mid-seventies when all this shit started, and obviously had nothing to do with China. They were still hammering scissors together with rocks back then. Most of the magazines, the NMTBA, all the economists, most of society was all gungho for what is now a disaster.

Disaster for us, anyhow. Most kids would much prefer to stand behind a bar selling lattes. Most of society doesn't know or care about manufacturing. If they do have an idea about it, it's "We don't want them stinking factories here ! Let the little brown/yellow guys do that, we'll do the smart part of the work ! "Pareto Principle", pah. Buncha stupid shit.

In the end, it doesn't work that way. It was foreseeable, but nobody wanted to foresee it. Everybody wants to be a chief, nobody wants to be an Indian. Even the dipshit Obama, when he was peddling training, did he talk about teaching people to be plumbers or welders ? Hell no, it was "web designers".

Make your bed, then you lie in it.


"For every good job that goes overseas, four or five better ones will be created at home." Came out of Clinton's Own Mouth. I will never understand why the Republicans hated him, because he passed more Republican legislation than they'd ever been able to. Summers, Rubin, Friedman, Greenspan .... all those ignorant pricks. China had nothing to do with this, except to recognize what a stupid big mistake the US was making and offer to take up the slack.

China didn't come to the US with guns to force the US Congress to sell out to Goldman-Sachs. You did it to yourselves. They just held up a nickel and corporate America trampled each other in their frenzy to grab it.


Probably should have figured that out forty-five years ago when there was something you could do about it. The only way you can change this now is to entirely change the tax code, and who benefits from the economy.

Normally it takes guillotines and blood to achieve this. Those with money and power are not eager to give it up.


It isn't 5 or 10% and shipping is not expensive. Roughly $2500 for a 50,000 lb container. Could do 80 but then trucks can't haul it. Dream on with your prospective corrections :)

btw, most of you guys are just as guilty. Most of you are running Jap machines with Jap controls and buying Mitutoyo. People who live in grass shacks shouldn't stow thrones.

TO be fair in my post I never said that China was playing a hugely active role in the offshoring of jobs....China (like you said) was/is an opportunist. "Youre giving us your manufacturing??? SURE WE WILL TAKE IT!" Any country would do the same thing.

Also all of your blather about the 1970s may be correct but that is a somewhat difficult topic. Your entire post is the very reason why people thing the "old timer" machinists are assholes. Your tone couldn't be more condescending. But oh well, you can just keep blaming the computer programmers and baristas like it is their fault....

Clinton's economic policy was like shooting yourself in BOTH feet. Fucking stupid and incredibly short sighted.

Very similar to the She Clinton idea of "for every 1 moderate democrat we lose to the republicans, we will gain 3-4 moderate republicans from the suburbs" THAT sure didn't work out well for her in 2016 now did it. Once again, short sighted and absolutely asinine.

Anyways the point of the thread is to discuss inflation.

Gas prices are now $3.40 in my town, up from $3.05 exactly 7 days ago. NICE!
 








 
Back
Top