Notes From All Over -- The Early Morning Edition -- Part 6 -- August 24, 2020

Paper towel shortage: this is truly bizarre. This reminds me of the "egg shortage" story some months ago, also in The WSJ. Do these business journalists ever get out and actually go shopping? You will note in the article below the first reference is to "on-line" Target, not a physical store. There's no paper towel shortage here in north Texas. From The WSJ: 

Why Are There Still Not Enough Paper Towels? Blame lean manufacturing. 

A decades-long effort to eke out more profit by keeping inventory low left many manufacturers unprepared when Covid-19 struck. 

And production is unlikely to ramp up significantly any time soon. 

The United States of America, heralded as the land of plenty, still doesn’t have enough paper towels. Long after the coronavirus sparked a run on them, retailers can’t keep their shelves full. 

Target.com had no Bounty paper towels for delivery this week, though it had some at certain stores. 

At Amazon.com, a seller was charging $44.95 for a pack that normally goes for $15. An average of 21% of household paper products were out of stock at U.S. stores as of Aug. 9, according to research firm IRI. The situation isn’t likely to abate soon, because producers have no plans to build new manufacturing capacity. The central piece of the machinery needed to make paper towels takes years to assemble. 

Americans have faced many stresses in the pandemic, of which paper-towel scarcity is hardly among the worst. Yet the forces behind the shortage nearly six months into the crisis help explain the broad lack of U.S. preparedness that has made the pandemic worse than it might have been.

Paper towel shortage? Sounds like a first-world problem to me. 

By the way, I just checked Target.com: plenty of Bounty towels. I thought the story sounded bogus. And that "At Amazon.com, a seller was charging $44.95 for a pack that normally goes for $15" -- the writer is not looking at the number of rolls in the pack. Amazon is selling a pack of 12 "huge" rolls (= to 26 rolls) for less than $50 -- or about $4/roll -- that's about what Bounty has always sold for, and, oh by the way, store-brand paper towels are available and a lot less expensive. And, oh by the way, how much does this have to do with the price of lumber. Oh, give me a break. 

Egg shortage? Now it's paper towels. Next week, Bush's beans.