22 ms·

It feels like America is running out of everything

164 points by ajay-b 5y ago

greenail 5y ago
I'm disappointed this is front page HN as it seems a purely political piece of little value. The author supplies an anecdotal example and claims we should make more stuff here. Where are the details? What should we make and why?
politicalop993 5y ago
These shortages are clearly caused by Brexit! The British left told me! No, ah, wait...
- celsoazevedo 5y ago
  Not having enough natural gas or computer chips is a global problem. Not having people to transport petrol to service stations or food to supermarkets is a local problem. Independently of what the "left" or the "right" is telling you, It's not hard to understand that if you rely on foreign workers to do certain jobs and they leave, you'll have a (temporary?) problem. From my point of view, anyone saying that brexit isn't to blame for any of the shortages is just as wrong as those who blame brexit for everything.
  - noir_lord 5y ago
    Yeah but what you are talking about is a nuanced viewpoint and those are out of vogue.
- noir_lord 5y ago
  I mean this comment is just silly. A problem can have more than one cause. The rest of Europe is dealing with the pandemic, we are dealing with the pandemic and brexit.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  Newly created accounts should have a few hours waiting period before they can interact, to avoid impulsive shitposts like this one.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Are Americans issuing visas with crappy conditions hoping that the people they kicked out are coming back?
post_break 5y ago
This has lead to some lifestyle changes for me. Much less meat due to the rising cost. Installed a Bidet on a whim the moment the TP situation started last year, best investment of my life. I traded in my truck last month for almost as much as I paid brand new for a brand new car. Some things are harder to find, or the prices have gone up and so I've just either switched to cheaper options or just stopped buying them at all.
- mike_red5hift 5y ago
  I have an oddly personal question with a bit of oversharing thrown in for good measure :-) What make/model of Bidet? Been looking to install one. I've been thinking of one that heats the water, like I used in Japan. But maybe that's not needed.
  - vrc 5y ago
    The most precise one I’ve ever used was the “butt gun” style, but there was a learning curve and it’s not suited to every toilet. Toto makes a nice integrated-seat one, but IMO it changes the geometry of the commode and makes doing the job less comfy. Ymmv
  - donclark 5y ago
    $38 and I highly recommend it. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0RHSJO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0RHSJO/ref=ppx_yo_dt...
    - mikestew 5y ago
      I bought one of those years back when I was "bidet curious". I'm still using it, as it does the job well enough. I don't need my butt blow-dried nor do I require warmed water, so I just keep using this one instead of upgrading to something ten times the cost. My wife still refuses to use it, even when we were still scrambling to find TP.
    - pnutjam 5y ago
      You can even "save with used" on that page. $27.76
zwieback 5y ago
I liked this comment from the article: Focusing on the redistribution of income and goods is natural for today’s progressives, who tend to emphasize the virtue of equality. One lesson of the Everything Shortage is: You cannot redistribute what isn’t created in the first place. The best equality agenda begins with an abundance agenda.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  This is the kind of backward thinking that the wealthy hypocritically espouse. There is no shortage if you have too much money. The wealthy dont need a covid test from a (poor to middle class as Dave Chapelle mentions in Closer) mediocre everything store when they have a personal physician.
  - joshsyn 5y ago
    Without the wealthy (who run the company), we wouldn't have great products, and jobs, and pursuing our careers and self interests.
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      Why?
    - breadbreadbread 5y ago
      The wealthy dont create products. Working class people do. It is a brain worm that has convinced you that the managerial class deserve to be rich but the working class dont
      - joshsyn 5y ago
        This kind of division you put is exactly what I am talking about. Most of the employees of successful companies don't share your views or think of themselves as us vs them and fall into your classification of the working class. They are pretty happy there working with a great CEO hence making great products/providing services.
ars 5y ago
The current gridlock in Congress is a blessing. If they actually manage to pass either stimulus things are going to get really bad. There's not enough supply or labor for the bipartisan "bridges and roads" bill. There's not anywhere near enough labor for the partisan social bill. If they actually pass it, given the way government runs, they'll overpay for everything to get supply, which costs extra, but worse it's going to take supply (both material and labor) away from regular businesses and people.
- fosshogg 5y ago
  Is that the main reasoning for the republicans sitting out on it?
- callmeal 5y ago
  >There's not enough supply or labor for the bipartisan "bridges and roads" bill. There's not anywhere near enough labor for the partisan social bill. Actually there is enough labor. What there isn't is a fair (inflation and productivity adjusted) wage for that labor. >but worse it's going to take supply (both material and labor) away from regular businesses and people. Isn't that a desirable trait? Shouldn't people pay more for things if they really want them? Why can't we let the "market" handle this?
  - m_eiman 5y ago
    Prices are only allowed to go down, it’s what the gods of consumerism have promised.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      If consumerism is considered bad why aren't people working less instead of buying meaningless gadgets?
  - ars 5y ago
    > Actually there is enough labor. What there isn't is a fair (inflation and productivity adjusted) wage for that labor. That would imply there are people sitting around doing nothing waiting for higher wages. But that's not the case, there simply are not enough employees right now. > Shouldn't people pay more for things if they really want them? You just need to give the economy some time to catch up, and let supply catch up to demand. > Why can't we let the "market" handle this? Because the government is not the regular market. They are able to outbid others, and cause shortages that don't help anyone. I should have made this clearer: I'm not saying never pass this funding, rather, just wait a little for the supply chain to catch up.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
It's like real-life Factorio: one conveyor jams and every downstream machine on the pipeline needs to be manually un-fucked! Seriously though, I'm glad I don't need a car, computer, or home repair. Friends in tech are telling me 50-100 week lead times on parts. (Like the Intel NIC article on HN last week.) Anecdotally, since the early 2000's I have had trouble finding contractors to do small home improvement jobs (under 50k). For at least two decades, only big jobs get bid, the rest require handymen. Not that I have a problem with handymen, just that they often shouldn't handle jobs that really require a team. So it feels like the comment about construction has never really been alleviated in my experience. It's like airlines and baggage fees: they told it is was due to 9/11 and fuel costs, and were only temporary, yet they persist.
- dx034 5y ago
  I like the Factorio comparison. It's great to show the complexity of manufacturing simple products and how transport delays in one area can affect the whole economy.
- RyJones 5y ago
  Wes of Watch Wes Work[0] constantly complains about multi-month lead times on previously common car parts. I've noticed plenty of products that I used to order on-demand now having multi-month lead times - like my contacts. My doctor gave me ten lenses, but said I might not see my annual order of lenses arrive for six to eight weeks. I guess I'll get used to readers :) 0: https://www.youtube.com/c/WatchWesWork https://www.youtube.com/c/WatchWesWork
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rhacker 5y ago
Here's an upside. I've been waiting for 2 3/8 inch x 8 foot structural pipe for 3 months from a ranch store I shop at. Before prices went crazy I paid $26. They FINALLY got some in yesterday and the price was $22 per pipe!!!! I have no idea why and I didn't question it. They said they ordered 200 and they got 14 of them. I only needed 6.
- yellottyellott 5y ago
  what a pipe dream!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dylan604 5y ago
  For clarification, are you saying you needed two pipes measuring 3/8" by 8' or a single pipe that is 2.375" wide by 8' long? Edit: What's wrong with asking a simple question?
  - rhacker 5y ago
    2.375" Outside dimension. Plumbers use inside dimension, this would probably be a 2" pipe for them. This is an outdoor fencing application and this place refers to it's outside dimension because there are other vendors that make attachments that work on the outside of the pipe. Galv. steel pipe.
    - dylan604 5y ago
      I actually understand the difference between tube and pipe measurments. I've just never been a fan of fractions in written sentences as it can lead to confusion. Really, just never been a fan of fractions. Not blaming you for US standards of measurment. In plumbing, you find a 2" pipe and a 2" elbow. I would have assumed it translated the same in fencing so that a 2" post has a matching 2" fitting. It doesn't matter if 2" represents ID or OD, but within the same industry I would assume all measurements were applied the same.
joshsyn 5y ago
This isn't really surprising to me, as this is what happens when you have lockdowns worldwide travel bans in place. The supply chain gets affected. It throws the market out of whack, imbalance in the prices, and most importantly people lives out of order. Years of work thrown down the tube by bunch of central planners. The economy consists of everyone working to support themselves and their families, not just the rich.
emodendroket 5y ago
Welcome to issues large swathes of the world have been obliged to deal with all along. We’ll live. > One possibility is that Americans adopt a sustainable, ascetic, and homespun lifestyle that reduces our dependency on goods that activate the global supply chain. If you can seriously envision such a world, I envy your gift of imagination. > The best solution to the Everything Shortage is to have a policy to make more of just about everything. Well, is it? The pandemic will pass but the various environmental crises created by the “more of everything” policy probably will oblige reduced consumption in some form.
sharikous 5y ago
Europe and the UK have the same problem. I wish they looked at this situation (inflation, stalled supply chains, energy price raises) from a global perspective instead of focusing on the US only I have the impression a long awaited crisis is finally coming. Remember the stock market going up and up and the busloads of many invested in tech and ML? At some point the bubble had to explode. The COVID-19 crisis was an unexpected black swan which is acting, belatedly, both as a retardant and as a trigger for the global, systemic, financial and economical crash that usually happens once a decade.
- goalieca 5y ago
  May I suggest that tech companies are so heavily valued because it seems reasonably possible for a single company to win the market on a global scale. We all know the absurd amount of money required to put out a mature service. Losing tons of money but getting there first is a winning strategy and practically delivers a monopoly.
- javajosh 5y ago
  Hopefully the market will correct by funneling money into distributed manufacturing. This will happen because money loves buying things, dislikes making things, but actively hates it when there's nothing to buy, nowhere to go, nothing to do. I actually think repair and remanufacture is a great place for growth in this area. It's a lot easier to enter than full-blown factory production, AND it will help a stuff-rich society get some real utility out of all that crap sitting around in storage units, closets, and landfills. Maybe I'm just in a good mood but I'm actually kind of excited for this.
irrational 5y ago
>This is the economy now. One-hour errands are now multi-hour odysseys. Yes. I needed some simple parts for a home repair job I'm doing. In the before times I would have been able to find them all at one Home Depot, in abundance. I had to go to three Home Depots, two Lowes, and one Ace Hardware to find everything I was looking for.
- freetinker 5y ago
  I really hope this reduces our reliance (American here) on outsourcing everything and revives manufacturing in America. I believe manufacturing know-how and national security are correlated.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I agree, but I don't see how to unwind the tangle we have created. Sometimes, things can be too cheap. We have been sucked into the race to the bottom on prices for goods so that everything is made somewhere else. We did it to ourselves in the end really.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    The problem is that it's more than price that drove some of the manufacturing overseas. For example, from my life, I was looking at getting an 'American made' large piece of woodworking equipment. All manufacturers, regardless of label, get their cast-iron parts from the same place in China. This isn't for price; we're talking about different brands that range in price, for this tool, from $500-$2800. The top of the top end is what I purchased, because I had extra money due to no travel during covid. It is built in America with American parts, except the cast-iron; it still has Chinese cast-iron. The reason was because of environmental regulations. So, if we do shift manufacturing back, we need to either be cool with shit-tons of pollution, or be searching desperately, now, for solutions to that pollution. To be clear, I desperately want more made in America goods. The quality is just better. From woodworking - Pony clamps were made in Chicago, Il, and are still the best clamps your money can buy. Now they're made in the clamp factory in China and the quality shows that shift.
baggy_trough 5y ago
This is essentially another manifestation of inflation, except that instead of prices being fully adjusted upwards to balance supply and demand, we have shortages instead.
lsiunsuex 5y ago
Get a 3D printer? So far as I can tell, printer prices haven’t changed; filament prices haven’t gone up. Can’t print toilet paper or paper towels but random I need a hook to hang something, or a fitting for a pipe that’s not under load, tons of stuff on thingiverse.
- Loughla 5y ago
  I'm almost certain that delivery of filament requires some kind of supply chain. Also, last year, I wasn't able to get filament for about 3 months due to the pandemic.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - belval 5y ago
    I don't think the parent's point was that filament didn't have a supply chain, more that filament's supply chain was mostly undisturbed during the pandemic. At no point was it hard to buy a 1KG spool of PLA as far as I know.
- nullwarp 5y ago
  I did that haha, picked up a 3d printer so i could increase my manufacturing abilities. It's been really good for printing brackets and things and simple replacement parts
- coryrc 5y ago
  Yes, how could I ever make a hook without three failed print attempts thrown in the trash first which will last millennia. If only there was some endlessly-recyclable material like steel or biodegradable material like wood which could be used.
  - poisonborz 5y ago
    But there is! You can easily buy degradable filaments, made of corn, wood powder and other materials.
awinter-py 5y ago
I mean the home covid tests in the first paragraph are potentially made in maine https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/us/abbott-covid-tests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/us/abbott-covid-tests.htm... not really a global supply chain issue is it
- toss1 5y ago
  Serious question: What about the parts and materials needed to make and package the tests (in Maine) - where do those come from, and can they easily get supply of those materials in the needed quantities and quality? What is in them? Guessing, specialty paper, plastic, reagents, probably plastic &/or cardboard packaging... machines to make them if the production line didn't previously exist? If theyr'e all local/regional, it'd be great, but if there's just that one missing component...
iammisc 5y ago
More importantly than this, we need to discuss why major news outlets were parroting government propaganda that shortages and inflation were transitory, when they were obviously not. Major news outlets claimed that 'new economics' would mean that the expected inflation and shortages would not come to pass. Instead of critically questioning government official's proclamations of a new economics, outlets gladly parroted this position. This is a far cry from the critical reporting of the 2016-2020 years.
- creato 5y ago
  I don't remember anyone talking about "new economics", I remember people speculating inflation was due to supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic, and that would be short lived. I still disagree with that theory, clearly giving everyone more money is going to raise prices, but it's not quite as ridiculous as you make it sound.
  - nickff 5y ago
    >"I don't remember anyone talking about "new economics"" Lots of people have been talking about how modern monetary theory (MMT) means that the USA can 'print money' (increase the money supply) without fear of inflation.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      That's just a strawman. MMT just means that the government runs its own bank and will never run out of money. Regarding inflation, with MMT you can buy anything that the economy can produce, that's it.
      - zsmi 5y ago
        > that's it. That can't possible be it. There must be some consequence to increasing the supply of money. I don't admit to knowing what that consequence is but there is no way the story is, "we make more money. the end"
YeBanKo 5y ago
“That’s why Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan includes billions of dollars to reshore manufacturing, invest in basic research, and beef up domestic supply chains.” – everything has to be a political propaganda.
- Loughla 5y ago
  What's more a problem for me is that, I assume, any money to bring back manufacturing, outside of spooky market action at a distance, will just be pork and line pockets with no meaningful movement. I hate that I've grown so cynical, and I don't know what to do with this hate, to be honest. It's not healthy, I'm certain of that.
usrusr 5y ago
Lots of liquidity has been created, worldwide, in attempts to keep people and businesses (big and small) afloat in lockdowns and/or "natural" consequences of the pandemic (e.g. reduced travel and so on, lots of industries would have seen trouble lockdown or not). Production surely did not grow in lockstep. What else would anyone expect other than prices catching up with money supply?
tunesmith 5y ago
It's way too complex to make any blanket statements, but it stands to reason that at least some of these snarls and delays will resolve very quickly as capacity picks up again. It's a variation of the bank teller question discussed in another thread - if your bank teller can process 6 customers per hour, and 5.8 customers arrive per hour, the average wait time will be 5 hours. If you add a 2nd bank teller, the average wait time will be three minutes. So if some of these problems are similar to missing that second bank teller, those parts of the supply chain will speed up quickly when that's resolved.
- pirate787 5y ago
  Indeed we've already seen a remarkable supply recovery/price collapse in lumber.
boringg 5y ago
The supply chain shock is compounded by the bullwhip effect and our just in time economy.
cbdumas 5y ago
There has been endless coverage of the supply side of current economic weirdness affecting the world, but scant coverage of the demand side. Yet if this blog post[0] that was discussed here a couple of weeks ago is to be believed spending on goods in the US shot up by 20% this year. It seems to me that even if global supply chains were working flat out and in perfect order we would still see huge disruptions given a shock to demand of that magnitude. I would love to see more detailed reporting from a knowledgeable source on this. [0] https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional/insights/market-insights/eye-on-the-market/dude-where-is-my-stuff/ https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional...
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Spending could go up, absent an increased demand, if lower supply raised prices
  - cbdumas 5y ago
    That's absolutely true, but is that what's happening? That seems like a really important question for this article (and the legion of others like it) to tackle. The linked article even mentions demand in the subhead, and then basically ignores it in the actual body. Thus my frustration.
- volkl48 5y ago
  Not exactly the detailed reporting you are looking for, but: People normally spend a lot of their disposable income on travel/bars/dining/concerts/experiences/other similar categories that don't involve a lot of imported goods per dollar spent. Last year they shifted a lot of that spending to stuff, and when much of the population does that.....that buys a lot of stuff. Anecdotally, among most people I know, that balance of how they spend their disposable income still hasn't returned to it's pre-pandemic state.
conjecTech 5y ago
This is an issue with latency, not throughput. Our supply chain is actually running at considerably higher throughput than we ever have before. The ports provide numbers for activity on their websites - Long Beach and Oakland are both operating at 30% higher capacity than they were pre-pandemic. What has changed is the queues and the pricing. The shortages we are feeling are the gaps that have surfaced between when retailers trigger reorders and when they are replenished. They grew accustomed to being able to do that just-in-time as forecasted inventory went to 0, but the added delays have made this much harder. Additionally, the shipping prices have made many things simply uneconomic to ship. I saw an analysis on the difference in cost recently for a grill: prior to the pandemic, shipping from China to LA contributed $5 to its price, with shipping costs up 8x, that's now $40. Rather than fulfill orders at negative margins, many people are simply waiting for lower prices after the holidays. It's not that they're being held up in transit, these things aren't being shipped to begin with.
- sorokod 5y ago
  An interesting take. During the just in time days, were the goods accumulated somewhere ready to satisfy orders or were they all in transit?
  - conjecTech 5y ago
    I'm sure it varies somewhat from company to company, but the general ethos was to reduce warehousing to an absolute minimum. From a corporate finance perspective, this has a bunch of benefits. Excess inventory is effectively unproductive capital. Additionally, it's costly to store and is subject to theft and damage as well. A lot of the focus on JIT came out of post-war Japan where capital was scarce and this was done out of necessity. In some cases, an incredibly aggressive supply chain and payment schedule can actually create financing for a company. Aswath Damodaran's corporate finance class mentions one of the major alkaline battery producers as an example. At any point, they only have 2 days worth of production in inventory, and they require payment within ~7 days from clients, while their own suppliers are paid after 30 days. That means at any point, they are holding about 20 days of revenue worth of cash without paying any interest.
xyst 5y ago
Besides a few manufacturers (Toyota for example) changing their ways, as long as it's cheap to produce products and ship them half way across the world. The status quo will never change. Most US industries will be given significant bail outs from Main Street, while Main Street itself is left to fend for themselves on meager public support pillars (if they even manage to get through to a person that is able to help them). I think COVID-19 was a test of our global supply chain and we have failed. If a virus mutates and is even slightly worse than COVID-19, then we are truly fucked.
spoonjim 5y ago
I saw this article and went and ordered a ton of nonperishable food, toilet paper, paper towels, soap, etc. from Costco. Likely making the problem worse.
vfclists 5y ago
The first question I want to ask is why is HN filled with globalist agenda apologists? There is no shortage of anything. True shortages are determined by nature, not by the economic manipulations of financiers and globalists, which means that most of the shortages are the consequences of policy decisions not natural events. Take something such as the shipping shortage. During their Covid crisis a lot of shipping capacity was taken of the markets. Some companies actually destroyed some of their ships. 18 months later there is a shortage of shipping capacity, alleged. I don't think I am that bright, but if whole loads of shipping capacity are taken of the market in what is bound to be a temporary downturn, is it surprising that there will be shortages? Lets take the truck driver shortage in the UK. The UK benefited from cheap labour from Eastern Europe as a result of Brexit, which led many qualified British drivers to give up the job because the pay was shit. To be honest even the cheaper labour from Eastern Europe considered it to be shit. Then you have Brexit followed by Covid, and many of the drivers from Eastern Europe have seen that the grass is not so green on the British side and don't see themselves coming back. As for the truck drivers there about tens of thousands of fully qualified HGV drivers who simply not interested in the job. There is no shortage of HGV drivers, there is a shortage of employers who are willing to pay decent money not just in the short term, but in the long term to get the qualified drivers to commit. Funny how the media never mentions that. Truck drivers need to take a medical to get on the road, and even the NHS doctors who are supposed to be doing them are not doing them anymore. Funny how that never gets mentioned by the media. In effect industry should stop blaming the govt for their own questionable pay policies. The country of zero hour contracts is feeling a labour shortage. Surprise!! Then you have gas shortages. Remember Nordstream and Nordstream II, which the US government did its best to sabotage? Well Germany needs more gas and it isn't fully up yet. Are US gas companies ready to fill the gap? Then of course you have this manufactured pandemic. Just because there is a new illness around doesn't make it a pandemic, a definition which was changed by WHO in order to serve a global agenda. The "developed" world adapted a "treatment" policy which involved taken painkillers and hoping that the disease would not develop enugh to warrant hospital admission. Even then they cooked the definitions to allow every positive test to labelled as actual disease even if there are no clinical symptoms, and use it as an excuse to warrant economic lockdowns. Announcement of shortages isn't about real shortages. It is simply a way of priming consumers to expect higher prices in the future, as though demand has risen when it hasn't. It is time the general public stopped being hoodwinked by mainstream media who are simply the mouthpieces of Big Finance which has not taken over Govt in the Western world.
darsoli 5y ago
Although I read about the supply chain bottlenecks, I don't feel like it's impacted me yet. In fact it feels like there are more "Same Day" options than ever before (Amazon specific, but ditto for in-person shopping elsewhere). I live in NYC so not sure if that makes a difference or not.
- 83 5y ago
  I think it heavily depends on what type of goods you are buying. I've not seen issues for basic consumer goods, but in my professional role laptops and other goods that require chips are experiencing some significant delays. Steel roofing for the gazebo I'm building doubled in price, steel tubing for welding has gone way up and orders are delayed. My argon tanks for welding cost 25% more to fill today than pre-covid. Hard to say how much of this is shortage vs price gouging though.

164 points by ajay-b 5y ago

I'm disappointed this is front page HN as it seems a purely political piece of little value. The author supplies an anecdotal example and claims we should make more stuff here. Where are the details? What should we make and why?

politicalop993 5y ago

These shortages are clearly caused by Brexit! The British left told me! No, ah, wait...

celsoazevedo 5y ago
Not having enough natural gas or computer chips is a global problem. Not having people to transport petrol to service stations or food to supermarkets is a local problem. Independently of what the "left" or the "right" is telling you, It's not hard to understand that if you rely on foreign workers to do certain jobs and they leave, you'll have a (temporary?) problem. From my point of view, anyone saying that brexit isn't to blame for any of the shortages is just as wrong as those who blame brexit for everything.
- noir_lord 5y ago
  Yeah but what you are talking about is a nuanced viewpoint and those are out of vogue.
noir_lord 5y ago
I mean this comment is just silly. A problem can have more than one cause. The rest of Europe is dealing with the pandemic, we are dealing with the pandemic and brexit.
ASalazarMX 5y ago
Newly created accounts should have a few hours waiting period before they can interact, to avoid impulsive shitposts like this one.
imtringued 5y ago
Are Americans issuing visas with crappy conditions hoping that the people they kicked out are coming back?

post_break 5y ago

This has lead to some lifestyle changes for me. Much less meat due to the rising cost. Installed a Bidet on a whim the moment the TP situation started last year, best investment of my life. I traded in my truck last month for almost as much as I paid brand new for a brand new car. Some things are harder to find, or the prices have gone up and so I've just either switched to cheaper options or just stopped buying them at all.

mike_red5hift 5y ago
I have an oddly personal question with a bit of oversharing thrown in for good measure :-) What make/model of Bidet? Been looking to install one. I've been thinking of one that heats the water, like I used in Japan. But maybe that's not needed.
- vrc 5y ago
  The most precise one I’ve ever used was the “butt gun” style, but there was a learning curve and it’s not suited to every toilet. Toto makes a nice integrated-seat one, but IMO it changes the geometry of the commode and makes doing the job less comfy. Ymmv
- donclark 5y ago
  $38 and I highly recommend it. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0RHSJO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0RHSJO/ref=ppx_yo_dt...
  - mikestew 5y ago
    I bought one of those years back when I was "bidet curious". I'm still using it, as it does the job well enough. I don't need my butt blow-dried nor do I require warmed water, so I just keep using this one instead of upgrading to something ten times the cost. My wife still refuses to use it, even when we were still scrambling to find TP.
  - pnutjam 5y ago
    You can even "save with used" on that page. $27.76

zwieback 5y ago

I liked this comment from the article: Focusing on the redistribution of income and goods is natural for today’s progressives, who tend to emphasize the virtue of equality. One lesson of the Everything Shortage is: You cannot redistribute what isn’t created in the first place. The best equality agenda begins with an abundance agenda.

Supermancho 5y ago
This is the kind of backward thinking that the wealthy hypocritically espouse. There is no shortage if you have too much money. The wealthy dont need a covid test from a (poor to middle class as Dave Chapelle mentions in Closer) mediocre everything store when they have a personal physician.
- joshsyn 5y ago
  Without the wealthy (who run the company), we wouldn't have great products, and jobs, and pursuing our careers and self interests.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Why?
  - breadbreadbread 5y ago
    The wealthy dont create products. Working class people do. It is a brain worm that has convinced you that the managerial class deserve to be rich but the working class dont
    - joshsyn 5y ago
      This kind of division you put is exactly what I am talking about. Most of the employees of successful companies don't share your views or think of themselves as us vs them and fall into your classification of the working class. They are pretty happy there working with a great CEO hence making great products/providing services.

ars 5y ago

The current gridlock in Congress is a blessing. If they actually manage to pass either stimulus things are going to get really bad. There's not enough supply or labor for the bipartisan "bridges and roads" bill. There's not anywhere near enough labor for the partisan social bill. If they actually pass it, given the way government runs, they'll overpay for everything to get supply, which costs extra, but worse it's going to take supply (both material and labor) away from regular businesses and people.

fosshogg 5y ago
Is that the main reasoning for the republicans sitting out on it?
callmeal 5y ago
>There's not enough supply or labor for the bipartisan "bridges and roads" bill. There's not anywhere near enough labor for the partisan social bill. Actually there is enough labor. What there isn't is a fair (inflation and productivity adjusted) wage for that labor. >but worse it's going to take supply (both material and labor) away from regular businesses and people. Isn't that a desirable trait? Shouldn't people pay more for things if they really want them? Why can't we let the "market" handle this?
- m_eiman 5y ago
  Prices are only allowed to go down, it’s what the gods of consumerism have promised.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    If consumerism is considered bad why aren't people working less instead of buying meaningless gadgets?
- ars 5y ago
  > Actually there is enough labor. What there isn't is a fair (inflation and productivity adjusted) wage for that labor. That would imply there are people sitting around doing nothing waiting for higher wages. But that's not the case, there simply are not enough employees right now. > Shouldn't people pay more for things if they really want them? You just need to give the economy some time to catch up, and let supply catch up to demand. > Why can't we let the "market" handle this? Because the government is not the regular market. They are able to outbid others, and cause shortages that don't help anyone. I should have made this clearer: I'm not saying never pass this funding, rather, just wait a little for the supply chain to catch up.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

It's like real-life Factorio: one conveyor jams and every downstream machine on the pipeline needs to be manually un-fucked! Seriously though, I'm glad I don't need a car, computer, or home repair. Friends in tech are telling me 50-100 week lead times on parts. (Like the Intel NIC article on HN last week.) Anecdotally, since the early 2000's I have had trouble finding contractors to do small home improvement jobs (under 50k). For at least two decades, only big jobs get bid, the rest require handymen. Not that I have a problem with handymen, just that they often shouldn't handle jobs that really require a team. So it feels like the comment about construction has never really been alleviated in my experience. It's like airlines and baggage fees: they told it is was due to 9/11 and fuel costs, and were only temporary, yet they persist.

dx034 5y ago
I like the Factorio comparison. It's great to show the complexity of manufacturing simple products and how transport delays in one area can affect the whole economy.
RyJones 5y ago
Wes of Watch Wes Work[0] constantly complains about multi-month lead times on previously common car parts. I've noticed plenty of products that I used to order on-demand now having multi-month lead times - like my contacts. My doctor gave me ten lenses, but said I might not see my annual order of lenses arrive for six to eight weeks. I guess I'll get used to readers :) 0: https://www.youtube.com/c/WatchWesWork https://www.youtube.com/c/WatchWesWork
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rhacker 5y ago

Here's an upside. I've been waiting for 2 3/8 inch x 8 foot structural pipe for 3 months from a ranch store I shop at. Before prices went crazy I paid $26. They FINALLY got some in yesterday and the price was $22 per pipe!!!! I have no idea why and I didn't question it. They said they ordered 200 and they got 14 of them. I only needed 6.

yellottyellott 5y ago
what a pipe dream!
- deleted 5y ago
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dylan604 5y ago
For clarification, are you saying you needed two pipes measuring 3/8" by 8' or a single pipe that is 2.375" wide by 8' long? Edit: What's wrong with asking a simple question?
- rhacker 5y ago
  2.375" Outside dimension. Plumbers use inside dimension, this would probably be a 2" pipe for them. This is an outdoor fencing application and this place refers to it's outside dimension because there are other vendors that make attachments that work on the outside of the pipe. Galv. steel pipe.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I actually understand the difference between tube and pipe measurments. I've just never been a fan of fractions in written sentences as it can lead to confusion. Really, just never been a fan of fractions. Not blaming you for US standards of measurment. In plumbing, you find a 2" pipe and a 2" elbow. I would have assumed it translated the same in fencing so that a 2" post has a matching 2" fitting. It doesn't matter if 2" represents ID or OD, but within the same industry I would assume all measurements were applied the same.

joshsyn 5y ago

This isn't really surprising to me, as this is what happens when you have lockdowns worldwide travel bans in place. The supply chain gets affected. It throws the market out of whack, imbalance in the prices, and most importantly people lives out of order. Years of work thrown down the tube by bunch of central planners. The economy consists of everyone working to support themselves and their families, not just the rich.

emodendroket 5y ago

Welcome to issues large swathes of the world have been obliged to deal with all along. We’ll live. > One possibility is that Americans adopt a sustainable, ascetic, and homespun lifestyle that reduces our dependency on goods that activate the global supply chain. If you can seriously envision such a world, I envy your gift of imagination. > The best solution to the Everything Shortage is to have a policy to make more of just about everything. Well, is it? The pandemic will pass but the various environmental crises created by the “more of everything” policy probably will oblige reduced consumption in some form.

sharikous 5y ago

Europe and the UK have the same problem. I wish they looked at this situation (inflation, stalled supply chains, energy price raises) from a global perspective instead of focusing on the US only I have the impression a long awaited crisis is finally coming. Remember the stock market going up and up and the busloads of many invested in tech and ML? At some point the bubble had to explode. The COVID-19 crisis was an unexpected black swan which is acting, belatedly, both as a retardant and as a trigger for the global, systemic, financial and economical crash that usually happens once a decade.

goalieca 5y ago
May I suggest that tech companies are so heavily valued because it seems reasonably possible for a single company to win the market on a global scale. We all know the absurd amount of money required to put out a mature service. Losing tons of money but getting there first is a winning strategy and practically delivers a monopoly.
javajosh 5y ago
Hopefully the market will correct by funneling money into distributed manufacturing. This will happen because money loves buying things, dislikes making things, but actively hates it when there's nothing to buy, nowhere to go, nothing to do. I actually think repair and remanufacture is a great place for growth in this area. It's a lot easier to enter than full-blown factory production, AND it will help a stuff-rich society get some real utility out of all that crap sitting around in storage units, closets, and landfills. Maybe I'm just in a good mood but I'm actually kind of excited for this.

irrational 5y ago

>This is the economy now. One-hour errands are now multi-hour odysseys. Yes. I needed some simple parts for a home repair job I'm doing. In the before times I would have been able to find them all at one Home Depot, in abundance. I had to go to three Home Depots, two Lowes, and one Ace Hardware to find everything I was looking for.

freetinker 5y ago
I really hope this reduces our reliance (American here) on outsourcing everything and revives manufacturing in America. I believe manufacturing know-how and national security are correlated.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I agree, but I don't see how to unwind the tangle we have created. Sometimes, things can be too cheap. We have been sucked into the race to the bottom on prices for goods so that everything is made somewhere else. We did it to ourselves in the end really.
- Loughla 5y ago
  The problem is that it's more than price that drove some of the manufacturing overseas. For example, from my life, I was looking at getting an 'American made' large piece of woodworking equipment. All manufacturers, regardless of label, get their cast-iron parts from the same place in China. This isn't for price; we're talking about different brands that range in price, for this tool, from $500-$2800. The top of the top end is what I purchased, because I had extra money due to no travel during covid. It is built in America with American parts, except the cast-iron; it still has Chinese cast-iron. The reason was because of environmental regulations. So, if we do shift manufacturing back, we need to either be cool with shit-tons of pollution, or be searching desperately, now, for solutions to that pollution. To be clear, I desperately want more made in America goods. The quality is just better. From woodworking - Pony clamps were made in Chicago, Il, and are still the best clamps your money can buy. Now they're made in the clamp factory in China and the quality shows that shift.

baggy_trough 5y ago

This is essentially another manifestation of inflation, except that instead of prices being fully adjusted upwards to balance supply and demand, we have shortages instead.

lsiunsuex 5y ago

Get a 3D printer? So far as I can tell, printer prices haven’t changed; filament prices haven’t gone up. Can’t print toilet paper or paper towels but random I need a hook to hang something, or a fitting for a pipe that’s not under load, tons of stuff on thingiverse.

Loughla 5y ago
I'm almost certain that delivery of filament requires some kind of supply chain. Also, last year, I wasn't able to get filament for about 3 months due to the pandemic.
- deleted 5y ago
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- belval 5y ago
  I don't think the parent's point was that filament didn't have a supply chain, more that filament's supply chain was mostly undisturbed during the pandemic. At no point was it hard to buy a 1KG spool of PLA as far as I know.
nullwarp 5y ago
I did that haha, picked up a 3d printer so i could increase my manufacturing abilities. It's been really good for printing brackets and things and simple replacement parts
coryrc 5y ago
Yes, how could I ever make a hook without three failed print attempts thrown in the trash first which will last millennia. If only there was some endlessly-recyclable material like steel or biodegradable material like wood which could be used.
- poisonborz 5y ago
  But there is! You can easily buy degradable filaments, made of corn, wood powder and other materials.

awinter-py 5y ago

I mean the home covid tests in the first paragraph are potentially made in maine https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/us/abbott-covid-tests.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/20/us/abbott-covid-tests.htm... not really a global supply chain issue is it

toss1 5y ago
Serious question: What about the parts and materials needed to make and package the tests (in Maine) - where do those come from, and can they easily get supply of those materials in the needed quantities and quality? What is in them? Guessing, specialty paper, plastic, reagents, probably plastic &/or cardboard packaging... machines to make them if the production line didn't previously exist? If theyr'e all local/regional, it'd be great, but if there's just that one missing component...

iammisc 5y ago

More importantly than this, we need to discuss why major news outlets were parroting government propaganda that shortages and inflation were transitory, when they were obviously not. Major news outlets claimed that 'new economics' would mean that the expected inflation and shortages would not come to pass. Instead of critically questioning government official's proclamations of a new economics, outlets gladly parroted this position. This is a far cry from the critical reporting of the 2016-2020 years.

creato 5y ago
I don't remember anyone talking about "new economics", I remember people speculating inflation was due to supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic, and that would be short lived. I still disagree with that theory, clearly giving everyone more money is going to raise prices, but it's not quite as ridiculous as you make it sound.
- nickff 5y ago
  >"I don't remember anyone talking about "new economics"" Lots of people have been talking about how modern monetary theory (MMT) means that the USA can 'print money' (increase the money supply) without fear of inflation.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    That's just a strawman. MMT just means that the government runs its own bank and will never run out of money. Regarding inflation, with MMT you can buy anything that the economy can produce, that's it.
    - zsmi 5y ago
      > that's it. That can't possible be it. There must be some consequence to increasing the supply of money. I don't admit to knowing what that consequence is but there is no way the story is, "we make more money. the end"

YeBanKo 5y ago

“That’s why Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan includes billions of dollars to reshore manufacturing, invest in basic research, and beef up domestic supply chains.” – everything has to be a political propaganda.

Loughla 5y ago
What's more a problem for me is that, I assume, any money to bring back manufacturing, outside of spooky market action at a distance, will just be pork and line pockets with no meaningful movement. I hate that I've grown so cynical, and I don't know what to do with this hate, to be honest. It's not healthy, I'm certain of that.

usrusr 5y ago

Lots of liquidity has been created, worldwide, in attempts to keep people and businesses (big and small) afloat in lockdowns and/or "natural" consequences of the pandemic (e.g. reduced travel and so on, lots of industries would have seen trouble lockdown or not). Production surely did not grow in lockstep. What else would anyone expect other than prices catching up with money supply?

tunesmith 5y ago

It's way too complex to make any blanket statements, but it stands to reason that at least some of these snarls and delays will resolve very quickly as capacity picks up again. It's a variation of the bank teller question discussed in another thread - if your bank teller can process 6 customers per hour, and 5.8 customers arrive per hour, the average wait time will be 5 hours. If you add a 2nd bank teller, the average wait time will be three minutes. So if some of these problems are similar to missing that second bank teller, those parts of the supply chain will speed up quickly when that's resolved.

pirate787 5y ago
Indeed we've already seen a remarkable supply recovery/price collapse in lumber.

boringg 5y ago

The supply chain shock is compounded by the bullwhip effect and our just in time economy.

cbdumas 5y ago

There has been endless coverage of the supply side of current economic weirdness affecting the world, but scant coverage of the demand side. Yet if this blog post[0] that was discussed here a couple of weeks ago is to be believed spending on goods in the US shot up by 20% this year. It seems to me that even if global supply chains were working flat out and in perfect order we would still see huge disruptions given a shock to demand of that magnitude. I would love to see more detailed reporting from a knowledgeable source on this. [0] https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional/insights/market-insights/eye-on-the-market/dude-where-is-my-stuff/ https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional...

spywaregorilla 5y ago
Spending could go up, absent an increased demand, if lower supply raised prices
- cbdumas 5y ago
  That's absolutely true, but is that what's happening? That seems like a really important question for this article (and the legion of others like it) to tackle. The linked article even mentions demand in the subhead, and then basically ignores it in the actual body. Thus my frustration.
volkl48 5y ago
Not exactly the detailed reporting you are looking for, but: People normally spend a lot of their disposable income on travel/bars/dining/concerts/experiences/other similar categories that don't involve a lot of imported goods per dollar spent. Last year they shifted a lot of that spending to stuff, and when much of the population does that.....that buys a lot of stuff. Anecdotally, among most people I know, that balance of how they spend their disposable income still hasn't returned to it's pre-pandemic state.

conjecTech 5y ago

This is an issue with latency, not throughput. Our supply chain is actually running at considerably higher throughput than we ever have before. The ports provide numbers for activity on their websites - Long Beach and Oakland are both operating at 30% higher capacity than they were pre-pandemic. What has changed is the queues and the pricing. The shortages we are feeling are the gaps that have surfaced between when retailers trigger reorders and when they are replenished. They grew accustomed to being able to do that just-in-time as forecasted inventory went to 0, but the added delays have made this much harder. Additionally, the shipping prices have made many things simply uneconomic to ship. I saw an analysis on the difference in cost recently for a grill: prior to the pandemic, shipping from China to LA contributed $5 to its price, with shipping costs up 8x, that's now $40. Rather than fulfill orders at negative margins, many people are simply waiting for lower prices after the holidays. It's not that they're being held up in transit, these things aren't being shipped to begin with.

sorokod 5y ago
An interesting take. During the just in time days, were the goods accumulated somewhere ready to satisfy orders or were they all in transit?
- conjecTech 5y ago
  I'm sure it varies somewhat from company to company, but the general ethos was to reduce warehousing to an absolute minimum. From a corporate finance perspective, this has a bunch of benefits. Excess inventory is effectively unproductive capital. Additionally, it's costly to store and is subject to theft and damage as well. A lot of the focus on JIT came out of post-war Japan where capital was scarce and this was done out of necessity. In some cases, an incredibly aggressive supply chain and payment schedule can actually create financing for a company. Aswath Damodaran's corporate finance class mentions one of the major alkaline battery producers as an example. At any point, they only have 2 days worth of production in inventory, and they require payment within ~7 days from clients, while their own suppliers are paid after 30 days. That means at any point, they are holding about 20 days of revenue worth of cash without paying any interest.

xyst 5y ago

Besides a few manufacturers (Toyota for example) changing their ways, as long as it's cheap to produce products and ship them half way across the world. The status quo will never change. Most US industries will be given significant bail outs from Main Street, while Main Street itself is left to fend for themselves on meager public support pillars (if they even manage to get through to a person that is able to help them). I think COVID-19 was a test of our global supply chain and we have failed. If a virus mutates and is even slightly worse than COVID-19, then we are truly fucked.

spoonjim 5y ago

I saw this article and went and ordered a ton of nonperishable food, toilet paper, paper towels, soap, etc. from Costco. Likely making the problem worse.

vfclists 5y ago

The first question I want to ask is why is HN filled with globalist agenda apologists? There is no shortage of anything. True shortages are determined by nature, not by the economic manipulations of financiers and globalists, which means that most of the shortages are the consequences of policy decisions not natural events. Take something such as the shipping shortage. During their Covid crisis a lot of shipping capacity was taken of the markets. Some companies actually destroyed some of their ships. 18 months later there is a shortage of shipping capacity, alleged. I don't think I am that bright, but if whole loads of shipping capacity are taken of the market in what is bound to be a temporary downturn, is it surprising that there will be shortages? Lets take the truck driver shortage in the UK. The UK benefited from cheap labour from Eastern Europe as a result of Brexit, which led many qualified British drivers to give up the job because the pay was shit. To be honest even the cheaper labour from Eastern Europe considered it to be shit. Then you have Brexit followed by Covid, and many of the drivers from Eastern Europe have seen that the grass is not so green on the British side and don't see themselves coming back. As for the truck drivers there about tens of thousands of fully qualified HGV drivers who simply not interested in the job. There is no shortage of HGV drivers, there is a shortage of employers who are willing to pay decent money not just in the short term, but in the long term to get the qualified drivers to commit. Funny how the media never mentions that. Truck drivers need to take a medical to get on the road, and even the NHS doctors who are supposed to be doing them are not doing them anymore. Funny how that never gets mentioned by the media. In effect industry should stop blaming the govt for their own questionable pay policies. The country of zero hour contracts is feeling a labour shortage. Surprise!! Then you have gas shortages. Remember Nordstream and Nordstream II, which the US government did its best to sabotage? Well Germany needs more gas and it isn't fully up yet. Are US gas companies ready to fill the gap? Then of course you have this manufactured pandemic. Just because there is a new illness around doesn't make it a pandemic, a definition which was changed by WHO in order to serve a global agenda. The "developed" world adapted a "treatment" policy which involved taken painkillers and hoping that the disease would not develop enugh to warrant hospital admission. Even then they cooked the definitions to allow every positive test to labelled as actual disease even if there are no clinical symptoms, and use it as an excuse to warrant economic lockdowns. Announcement of shortages isn't about real shortages. It is simply a way of priming consumers to expect higher prices in the future, as though demand has risen when it hasn't. It is time the general public stopped being hoodwinked by mainstream media who are simply the mouthpieces of Big Finance which has not taken over Govt in the Western world.

darsoli 5y ago

Although I read about the supply chain bottlenecks, I don't feel like it's impacted me yet. In fact it feels like there are more "Same Day" options than ever before (Amazon specific, but ditto for in-person shopping elsewhere). I live in NYC so not sure if that makes a difference or not.

83 5y ago
I think it heavily depends on what type of goods you are buying. I've not seen issues for basic consumer goods, but in my professional role laptops and other goods that require chips are experiencing some significant delays. Steel roofing for the gazebo I'm building doubled in price, steel tubing for welding has gone way up and orders are delayed. My argon tanks for welding cost 25% more to fill today than pre-covid. Hard to say how much of this is shortage vs price gouging though.