>>9660880Productions costs for the textile industry are, and always have been, basically nothing because companies use overseas labour in places like India, China, Vietnam, and Mexico, because they don't have to pay their workers all that much in comparison to other western countries like the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, or other parts of Europe. From start to finish over multiple industries, from picking the cotton in a field, processing, turning it into thread, making sheets of fabric, dyeing, manufacture into a garment, costs total about $2.50 US. The actual making of a t-shirt from your low quality Walmart crap to your "high end" Gucci shit, is between 20 to 50 cents US. Prices are going up for clothes because of multiple factors, first is inflation because the dollar doesn't buy what it used to. The second is licensing, a basic white T-shirt will cost less than something with Spider-Man printed on it, because the company that has the T-Shirt made have to pay a licensing fee. The third and most important factor is the customer, if you are willing to pay $25 for a T-Shirt then a store will sell it for $30 because they know you'll go a little further.
It's not about complaining about "everything's more expensive now" it's about keeping perspective on what the value of an item is, and having the ability to step away from something you want because you know it's not worth the price. Not everything is actually worth what the price tag says.
Also because you brought it up the cost of SHF (and toys in general) going up is different from clothing because toys rely on the petroleum industry to set cost of plastic, that and because China have become aware that they are essentially the world's factory have started charging more for production. They started charging Mattel more for the production of Hot Wheels so Mattel started using factories in Vietnam and Thailand.
