Quote:
Originally Posted by DETRoadster
So what happens to our consumer driven economy when people just say "F it" and dont want to tie their cash up for a year waiting for that sectional, bicycle, or computer. They decide instead to just live with what they have for another year while this mess sorts itself out. it's only a matter of time before the companies that have these insane lead times find their customer base drying up and sitting this out. Then we are in for the real economic crisis. This shit here, now, this is just act 2. First was plants all over the world shut down for COVID, leading to the shortages in raw materials and components. Now that global inventory of those raw materials and components are dried up, we see extended lead times in the consumer facing finished products. We are in some serious shit here. Not sure folks are seeing that yet.
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People have options. The TV market expects buyers to go up in price/features/size to get a new TV, some lateral movement across brands also is possible. Other substitutions, and deferring purchases, are options for most other products. If you have to have a M8 exactly as configured, well you were going to have to wait anyway.
The difficult areas will be necessities, from fuel to food. We’re not preppers but we’re keeping more staples, soups etc than normal because we keep reading about potential shortages and seeing hints they may be coming (fresh fruit is short now, for example, and meat comes and goes). We are hoping the supply chains get moving again before any of this gets critical, but so far there is very little obvious progress.