If not, you have the option to vote with your feet and find other suppliers. I think the word I'm searching for is "capitalism."

Math scores are the lowest in decades.

U.S. reading and math scores drop to their lowest levels in decades : NPR

Not Norms
 

It’s what we pay in Norwalk Connecticut.

BINGO!!!!
:BigApplause::BigApplause::BigApplause:

WOW, 8 pages of posts and no mention of the tariffs imposed by the previous administration. Oh yea, China was going to pay. WRONG

Attached is an invoice i paid for fabric with a 17% tariff added. I

Expect lumber prices to go up due to Canadian fires but of course Biden will be blamed.

This does seem to support the fact that inflation is slowing down. Almost to 2021 levels.:clap2:
America's retailers have a new challenge: Cooling inflation

I don’t see good news. It’s down because no once can afford to buy anything. It’s smoke and mirrors. Prices are still high and not coming down, but not going up. Sorry, it was definitely caused by politics.

Agree
 

The current administration had everything to do with this. The damage is irreversible. I don’t think anyone believes workers will take pay cuts and prices will come back down. Prices are here to stay.

If you are looking for that silver lining, you may be disappointed. Read the last two paragraphs. They paint a different picture. It is also the reason the Fed is still planning on at least one more rate hike this year and perhaps two. Sorry.

It’s called stagflation. Prices that went sky high during the past 2-3 years never came down and wages never increased enough to offset the higher costs. I’m still shocked at the prices of basic necessities like food every time I go to the store.

Lobster roll hot or cold $18-$20 in Newport Ri.

So wrong!!! Prices are determined by supply and demand, quality over cheap stuff, and what it takes to build this widget over another widget. Why is a Gucci purse 100x more expensive than a Kohls purse? Is it greed? How about the price of a Porsche vs a Toyota Corolla, greed again? Rolex vs times?

If the WH puts far more restrictions on drilling oil, or opec decides to cut oil drilling by millions of barrels of oil (and since we are not a oil drilling powerhouse anymore) then gas will go up.
I have seen companies set their widgets at very high costs because of r&d costs or material costs and the companies went out of business because people didn’t want to buy that widget for that price. This is why the WH is putting all the restrictions ions on drilling oil so it becomes more expensive so it forces their agenda of purchasing more ev’s.
1 more thing, when you want to pay burger flippers $20 hr, the companies will have to raise their costs. So when 1 company raises costs, costs will rise on down the line. This has added greatly to the economic conditions here. What do people think when everybody gets a 50% raise, in the long run, that same burger flippers will only be able to purchase items just like he did when making $8 hr.
Capitalism works and eventually will even everything out. You have a superior product that people want/ need, then they will pay the price. If you are overpriced and you are not a monopoly, you will have to cut prices or go out of business.

Say an item three years ago cost $100. Due to 9% inflation it went up to $109. Then inflation "dropped" to 3%. It now costs $112.27. Where's the good news here? I think I must have missed it.

Please explain.......

It's not about the wages, it's about the corporations and their profit margins. We know that prices of goods went up because of inflation, caused in part by the War in Ukraine, recovery from the pandemic, etc. Supply chain issues and other disruptions drove higher prices.

However, I read an interesting article in Business Insider that says corporations' markups - the difference between the price that they charge vs the cost that they paid to produce the item, has also hit record highs. A number of economists are saying that when we had the supply chain issues, the companies that had items to sell had a temporary monopoly on the item, and less competition from other companies so they were able to raise their prices. And in some cases, given the market in any area, the competing companies reach an agreement that they will all raise their prices. Even after supply chain issues lessened, these companies kept up their high prices, despite the fact their profits were up more than they ever were. The name for this is price gouging. Politicians could do something to make corporations pay their fair share, but congress is so divided it will never happen, so that just leaves the Federal reserve to fight inflation with interest rate changes, which is hard on everyone.