US shortages and supply chain problems were caused by cost-cutting and monopolization, COVID just made the damage obvious

**baseline bum** · 10-03-2021

"Stagflation" is very buzzy right now

https://www.theguardian.com/business...ransport-covid

Kind of disagree with the premise that Playstations are hard to get because of the supply chain. Sony has sold an enormous amount of them, more than Playstation 4 at a similar point in its lifetime. The problem in getting a Playstation 5 right now is mostly due to demand IMO. At $500 (or $400 for the all digital version) they are unbelievable value for the quality of hardware in them. To build a similar power gaming PC to play games at 4k would cost about $1500 right now, and that's building it yourself and cutting out the middlemen like Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc. Aside from that there has been enormous demand for any kind of gaming systems ever since the start of the pandemic. For at least half the pandemic it has been nearly impossible to find any of the main systems (Playstation, XBox, Nintendo Switch) in stores because of the sky high demand. Demand is so high once I got my PS5 I was able to sell my PS4 used for literally the same price I bought it brand new for back in 2016. That would be unthinkable normally.

**Winehole23** · 10-03-2021

Originally Posted by baseline bum

Kind of disagree with the premise that Playstations are hard to get because of the supply chain. Sony has sold an enormous amount of them, more than Playstation 4 at a similar point in its lifetime. The problem in getting a Playstation 5 right now is mostly due to demand IMO. At $500 (or $400 for the all digital version) they are unbelievable value for the quality of hardware in them. To build a similar power gaming PC to play games at 4k would cost about $1500 right now, and that's building it yourself and cutting out the middlemen like Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc. Aside from that there has been enormous demand for any kind of gaming systems ever since the start of the pandemic. For at least half the pandemic it has been nearly impossible to find any of the main systems (Playstation, XBox, Nintendo Switch) in stores because of the sky high demand. Demand is so high once I got my PS5 I was able to sell my PS4 used for literally the same price I bought it brand new for back in 2016. That would be unthinkable normally.

Fair.

It's hardly unthinkable that for certain things, overwhelming demand is the main problem.

**SnakeBoy** · 10-03-2021

**ChumpDumper** · 10-03-2021

det narrative

Snakeboi follows Newsmax

**Winehole23** · 10-12-2021

shortages hit US farmers at harvest time

Dale Hadden cannot find any spare tires for his combine harvester. So the Illinois farmer told his harvest crew to avoid driving on the sides of roads this autumn to avoid metal scraps that could shred tires.

New Ag Supply in Kansas is pleading with customers to order parts now for spring planting. And in Iowa, farmer Cordt Holub is locking up his machinery inside his barn each night, after thieves stole hard-to-find tractor parts from a local Deere & Co (DE.N) dealership.

"You try to baby your equipment, but we're all at the mercy of luck right now," said Holub, a fourth-generation corn and soybean farmer in Buckingham, Iowa.

Manufacturing meltdowns are hitting the U.S. heartland, as the semiconductor shortages that have plagued equipment makers for months expand into other components. Supply chain woes now pose a threat to the U.S. food supply and farmers' ability to get crops out of fields.

https://www.reuters.com/world/the-gr...st-2021-10-12/

**Winehole23** · 10-15-2021

the high price of beef?

blame consolidation and cartel like practices

To consumers, this crisis appears as high meat prices, with costs for beef up 12% this year alone. “I've never seen it like this in all the years I've been doing this," said Bob Strupeni, a butcher in San Francisco who has been working in the industry for 44 years. Higher meat prices are responsible for roughly half the annual increase in food prices, and food inflation is not only stretching household budgets, but has created a serious political problem for the White House. In September, the Biden administration attacked the industry over high prices, calling for an end to “pandemic profiteering.”

To cattle ranchers, who actually sell the cows to packers that are turned into beef, the crisis is not high prices, but low prices. They aren’t getting very much for their cattle. This is weird, because, normally, beef and cattle prices move in tandem - the current high beef prices should result in high cattle prices. But since 2015, the ‘meat margin’, or the spread between the prices ranchers get for their cows and the prices consumers pay at the supermarket, has widened dramatically. Despite high consumer prices, independent ranchers are losing money, and going out of business. “If we don’t get some of these problems fixed quickly, we won’t have any independent ranchers in this country,” explained Oklahoma Farmers Union president Scott Blubaugh.

**Winehole23** · 10-15-2021

One witness described a conversation with the head of fabrication of a JBS plant in Texas, in which he was told “that each Defendant expressly agreed to periodically reduce its purchase and slaughter volumes to reduce the prices they would pay for fed cattle.” Another noted that the packers “worked together to reduce their purchases of cash cattle” because they realized that taking cattle out of the cash market would lower prices. "This reduced cash price,” the witness noted, “together with an interlinked depression of the Live Cattle Futures prices, lowered the price Defendants paid for all the cattle they purchased, with cash or otherwise.”

These witnesses were sufficiently credible that the judge accepted the complaint and sought a quick move to trial, which is very difficult under today’s elevated an rust legal standards.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/e...-ranchers-stop

**DMC** · 10-15-2021

Same for lumber. The saw mills became the cartels. Neither the logging companies nor the retailers jacked up the costs, it was all saw mills like GA Pacific etc..