The sudden announcement by Apple and Microsoft this week of huge price increases for computers, gaming devices, and (soon) phones—increases ranging up to 50%, or hundreds of dollars per device—came just when all of Wall Street’s media were greeting the 4.1% annual increase in “personal consumption expenses” (PCE) as “just what we expected, nothing to see here.” PCE is one of those strange inventions developed to camouflage inflation; it removes food and energy prices from consumer price inflation, and is “preferred” by the Federal Reserve!
But these tech prices were definitely not “expected.” Here are some of them, taken from a report June 27 by Axios, entitled, “The AI Price Shock Is Here.” Apple MacBook prices rose, depending on the model, by $100 (14%), $200 (18%), $300 (20%); and iPad prices rose $150 (25%) and $200 (20%).
“Prices for computer software and accessories jumped a record 14.5% in May from a year earlier, ending a quarter-century era in which those products almost always got cheaper,” Axios noted. The culprit is said to be memory devices such as semiconductors and the strategic metals which they demand, as “AI data centers” are constructed all over the advanced sector.
