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There was a post on here about plywood's price going up 2.5x over the course of about a year, .

The question is why hasn't this happened with McDonnald's ice cream cones, or two litter soda. I'm not spending four bucks on a two litter of soda. I'm spending closer to a buck.

Inflation is happening. But it is important to understand what low interest rates do to specific things.

Low interest rates = increase in home values. Increase in home values equals an increase in margin between a home and the cost of building. And increase in the margin equals more home construction. More home construction with a temporary huge margin equals a run on building supplies.

The scary part. More home construction equals more immigration. Somebody has to live in those homes. In 2006 was the housing spike (before the housing crash in 2008). It was also the peak of immigration under the Bush era. Low interest rates caused that spike in available housing. Whites moved into the new houses. Hispanics moved into the then abandoned neighborhoods.

End the Fed. You will not win anything until you take that tool away from them.

There was a post on here about plywood's price going up 2.5x over the course of about a year, [here](https://poal.co/s/MildlyAlarming/340907). The question is why hasn't this happened with McDonnald's ice cream cones, or two litter soda. I'm not spending four bucks on a two litter of soda. I'm spending closer to a buck. Inflation is happening. But it is important to understand what low interest rates do to specific things. Low interest rates = increase in home values. Increase in home values equals an increase in margin between a home and the cost of building. And increase in the margin equals more home construction. More home construction with a temporary huge margin equals a run on building supplies. The scary part. More home construction equals more immigration. Somebody has to live in those homes. In 2006 was the housing spike (before the housing crash in 2008). It was also the peak of immigration under the Bush era. Low interest rates caused that spike in available housing. Whites moved into the new houses. Hispanics moved into the then abandoned neighborhoods. End the Fed. You will not win anything until you take that tool away from them.

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[–] • 1 pt

I guess I'm arguing against it being inflation. The post I linked to said it was inflation. I'm saying that there is more to it.

Something to consider with fasteners is that they are metal. Home construction is not the largest user of metal, and so a multi-fold increase in the amount of metal used in home construction isn't going to have a large impact on its price because it's only a 10% increase, maybe. But plywood.. it's main market is homes, not just as a finished product but also for its source material.

Relevant absurd thing I heard today. Some dude was arguing that it was smart to invest in semiconductors because of electric vehicles. A standard car uses about 100 semiconductors. An electric car 300. Wow. A 3 fold increase. Except that most semi-conductors don't go into cars anyway, and 300 is still tiny in semiconductor terms. Point is that home construction can't raise the price of metal as easily as it can for wood.

[–] • 0 pt

I get what you're saying and it's a great point that plywood and dimensional lumber are basically only used for housing.

What I'm saying is that while metal isn't any more expensive (maybe 10% or so but that's inflation) there are only a few manufactures who turn metal into nails, screws, bolts, etc. I don't have any boxes handy but tomorrow I'll check and I suspect with the exception of specialty screws like Spax and StrongTie the rest are probably made in China. This would mean they're even more limited in supply right now than things like plywood which I believe is mainly created in the U.S. Power tools, especially the new brushless variety, all have ICs in them and I haven't seen any price spike or lack of availability. Other materials like fiberglass insulation, roofing shingles, tile, and cement all seem to be at about the same price as a few years ago. In short, I'm not seeing any other construction related price spike in build material or construction related products.

Last time I noticed, a lot of my plywood had Georgia-Pacific stamped on it. This is the same conglomerate that makes tons of paper products like toilet paper, paper towels, and printer paper. I haven't noticed big price spike in any of their other wood products. In my mind, that implies the price of wood or saw mill operation hasn't changed.

The price for housing in my area has spiked dramatically. Especially considering no one want to be a land lord right now with the eviction moratoriums and the absolute devastation of small business means plenty of property will be up for foreclosure in the near future. I can only assume this is funny money from wall street skewing the market. I think the same thing is happening with plywood and dimensional lumber. I don't know if you remember when wall street was doing it's with aluminium, but this make more sense than to me than a building boom.