From Forbes Apr 28, 2021,
When Textron Aviation announced production of a 75th anniversary edition of the Beechcraft Bonanza earlier this month, it reminded aviation enthusiasts that the piston-single classic is the longest continuously produced aircraft in history. But the 2022 75th anniversary Bonanza’s likely million-dollar price tag is also a reminder that, in the eyes of many pilots, general aviation aircraft manufacturers are pricing themselves out of the market".
Just my opinion and sort of off topic: the inflation of most things, housing, cars, GA planes, etc is really driven by administrative and executive bloat. One poster earlier complains about a McDonald's worker making 16-20 bucks and hour as an easy excuse without understanding the actual problems. The issue is that over the years, we have seen corporations posting better and better profits, better exec comp, more execs and more admin bloat. We see it in nearly any corporate level business from Textron, higher education, healthcare, banking, etc. I work in healthcare and it has never been more apparent in that industry. Think about all of the people with their hand in the pie and think about he compensation of those people. And I am not even talking about the doctors and nurses. The hospital has multiple executives and each executive has a team of administrators working for them. All making high salaries and most of them not providing a billable service. That is just the hospital. Now think of the pharma companies and all the sales people, the marketing execs, the heads of HR, the financial officers, the consultants, and we haven't even gotten to the c-suite yet. All making high salaries. Medical device is the same. Add in the insurance companies. So, the next time you see your doc for a minor infection and see a bill for $500 or more and the prescription costs $100, think about how much of those costs are going to pay all of the administrative folks with the insurance company, the clinic/hospital, the pharmacy, the PBM, the delivery company that got the med to the pharmacy. Back in the day, many, many days ago, you went to your doc and they had a small office. Their overhead was the office and their nurse who also answered the phones. You went to the pharmacy that was a local pharmacy with low costs to operate. You paid the people that provided you the service. Now we have to pay for all of the people that have squeezed on in behind the scenes also wanting you to pay for them too, and they want to be paid well, many paid better than the doc, the nurse and the pharmacist.
My point is, it is not the 16/hr worker whose min wage has not kept up with inflation over the past several decades that is killing us. It is the massive growth of administrative bloat in industries like healthcare, higher education, and corporate America that is killing us. Instead of having a lot of smaller companies that can work efficiently and compete keeping costs down, we have once again allowed for the growth of mega corporations that require more and more people to keep them running. The bigger they get, the less cost effective they become by needing to hire more people that do not directly contribute to production of the product and only work to serve the giant corporate beast. This is why a cessna today costs way more compared to average income than back in the day. The average wage growth has fallen well short of the growth in executive and administrative comp as well as corporate profits for decades. And this is before we consider frivolous lawsuits.
Again, just my onion.