People may have noticed that we are at the end of the financial year and that the prices of EVERYTHING have gone up. This is not a coincidence. These "OMG pricezzz hav gon teh upzzz' really bug me because they seem to ignore a basic property of how the world operates.
Inflation pushes prices up each year. At a certain level this is desirable. Why? It indicates a healthy economy in which wealth is being created; DE-flation, were prices go down, is undesirable because wealth is being lost. If you have a job and a decent employer, your wages also go up by the same amount as all of the prices. This means that you will be paying the same proportion ogf your wages for your toys. Note: the price will be higher, but, as your wages are higher it makes no difference; at the end of the day you will still have the same purchasing power. Now, if you have a crappy (or no job), then your wages will actually go down as your wage increase, or freeze, doesn't match the rise in prices because of inflation and will in effect mean you have less purchasing power. So, for those who work with good employers, any price increase because of inflation won't really matter.
The issue at the moment is the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), exacerbated by fluctuations in oil markets; but by far the GFC is the key issue. All public companies (IE those traded on Stock Markets) operate through credit. The Sub-Prime issue in the US (no matter what it actually was) has caused the cost of credit to go up a hell of a lot. Why does this matter? Well, when you borrow from a bank you have to pay extra when you pay it back, that's how banks make money. Now, with the GFC, lots of people who borrowed money from banks were unable to pay it back. This caused the banks to lose money. How to get over that? Increase the amount that all of the other customers have to pay to use the credit, that and charge new customers high interest (the amount extra you have to pay back, on top of what you borrowed). The knock-on effect? All public companies, such as GW, have to put up prices ABOVE inflation to meet the cost of borrowing from the bank. This is why prices GO UP durring a recession, and not down, as all of the companies that still operate have to pay for all of the companies that have gone broke, whilst still making enough money to run their own business.
So, please stop compaining about price rises each year. It has happened before and will happen again. And GW isn't some faceless corp. that has a huge money-pool people can swim in. It is made up of people like you, me, your parents and the people who work in the GW stores. If GW suffers, they are the ones who will feel it. Whilst I understand people don't like high prices (who does?), this constant whining seems to block out reality.
For those who understand all of this, I'm sorry to be teaching you to suck eggs. To those who don't know, well, the world is a complex place.
Oh, and a company can't gouge us for money if it doesn't have a monopoly on the product.
GFP