RANT INCOMING WARNING!

I just saw a headline this morning that the nearly new MacBook Neo is now available in the Apple Refurb Store for - get this - the SAME price it was released at BEFORE the recent $100 (17%) price INCREASES. What a deal - it's like the good old days of retail groceries where the store either raised the price or decreased product (remember 5lb bags of sugar suddenly becaome 4lb bags) then "put it on sale" for the same old price?

And it is far from Apple though - M$ raised their prices an astronomical amount in June, but third party retailers a month to 6 weeks later have "sales" just above the previous prices.

I understand that data centers are devouring high end ram and vendors are switching production to that profitable market (data centers are announced weekly in Texas), but this has all the earmarks of gasoline pricing - the price at the pump JUIMPS when the first bomb is dropped despite the fact that the oil won't see our refineries for weeks/months. AND YES, I live and work in oil country so I not ony know that as a fact but that we are fully capable of producing all the oil and natural gas we need domestically anymore.

So that is why I call this an INSULT - insulting our intelligence AND our pocketbooks at the same time.

AKA - price gouging!