[fritzo]

Labor has never been more expensive than now. Raw resources have never been under more competition than now. We as a species are more numerous and consume more scissors than ever before. Supply chains have never farther separated end user from producer, as now.

[grues-dinner]

Scissors have never required less labour to make and steel is maybe not quite as cheap as 5 years ago but still mind meltingly cheap in historical terms. The metal in the handles of an all-metal pair of scissors is maybe a dollar. Bulk steel is 50 cents a pound.

Scissors also don't have to be "consumed", or at least not substantially over the course of a human life. I'd expect them to be durable goods. It's more than possible to make a pair of scissors, for not even that much more that a shit pair, that outlasts the first owner. We just generally choose not to.

[mech9879876]

It's a lot cheaper to cut the blades out of flat sheet metal and affix the injection molded plastic handles to give a nice 3d sculpted ergonomic handle than it is to cast/forge/machine the ergonomic handle out of steel. For 90 percent of users it will be just fine to use plastic, and the plastic will last for decades without issue.

[yellowapple]

I don't buy the "but good scissors cost too much to make today" argument.

> Labor has never been more expensive than now.

Each hour of wages is amortized across dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of scissors. You could double the wages of everyone involved from manufacturing to fulfillment to logistics to sales and it'd translate to maybe multiple pennies' worth of a per-scissor cost increase.

> Raw resources have never been under more competition than now.

As the other commenter pointed out, steel's still plenty cheap and abundant.

> We as a species are more numerous and consume more scissors than ever before.

That's more than offset by our increased ability to make scissors at scale.

> Supply chains have never farther separated end user from producer, as now.

The whole point of that separation is to drive down costs.

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All in all, the available information points rather squarely to manufacturers being greedy rather than costs somehow forcing their hand.