[ihaveabeardnow]

have consumers increased their exposure to rising costs by consuming fewer raw materials and more finished goods? instead of buying flour, eggs, butter, cocoa powder to make a chocolate cake - they just go buy the cake. and I recognize there's an entire spectrum of stages each raw material goes through to get to the final finished product. each of those stages though is an attack vector for cost increases (legit or malicious - doesn't matter)

having the skills/knowledge to consume fewer finished products is insurance. and the only real price for that insurance is time.

[pclmulqdq]

I think this is part of it. Anecdotally, I have heard from a few chefs that young people today know a lot less about how to cook than they used to, so it's harder to hire line cooks. The same goes for many other kinds of basic things, like repairing your house, sewing clothes, etc.

At the same time, a lot of these basics are getting more difficult in the name of efficiency: think about repairing a linen shirt with a loose weave and no stretch vs repairing a spandex-poly shirt with a very tight weave and a ton of stretch.