Yes DM, all good well thought out comments. A question and a story.
We as Americans tend to be myopic and short sighted, focusing only on our country. How is Canada, UK, EU, Russia, China, etc doing financially? Are they experiencing similar shortages and inflation? I do not know; however, I suspect they are. An economic friend sent me an email asking the same thing when looking at the EU. She ended her email with this thought, "We are the prettiest horse in the glue factory!"
MrsMac and I were on our way home from buying chicken feed from the local Agway. As a side note, the feed was up $3.00 from March. Sorry, I digress...
Anyway, there was an older Kuboda tractor on one of our back roads in front of us. The driver pulled over to let us pass and it was a friend driving the tractor and hay rake, who lived about a mile away. I of course stopped to say hi.
After asking each other how we we're faring, MrsMac asked him if his new house he had built at the end of 2020 was doing.
He spat out a stream of tobacco juice and said, "It still isn't done. I can't find wood flooring at any price, and my kitchen is still cabinet-less." He went on to explain that his appliances took 3-months after he ordered them to show up.
I shared with him that $50,000 worth of lumber in 2019 would build 14-houses - Today, just over 2. He shook his head and told us that his builder told him the other day, that his new modest 1,300-sf house, would have cost $40K more today.
We said our good-byes and I continued down the dirt road in a cloud of dust. MrsMac commented that, it was a shame what was happening to our friend. I explained to her, "not only him hun, but many, many others.