Absolutely, Dave. I'm still waiting to see someone around here charge $700.00 for a tow charge.
That's not really what I was getting at, but certainly related. I just think that the original statement is exactly what leads to overseas production, lower quality standards, etc. It's natural and it's a logical choice.
"Prices" will never drop unless it's a temporary liquidatin situation, but the product that's the "same" will be moved to a different production point, different materials, different lean manufacturing techniques, etc will be put in place and the result is that an 870 today isn't the same as an 870 from 25 years ago...neither are your sneakers. Companies in many markets, not just guns, etc, have been seeing increased manufacturing costs, increased raw materials costs, increased overhead, etc for a long time, and frankly I have not seen prices in general increase much at all over the past few years...my suspicion is that most companies DESPERATELY need to hold or even increase their prices in order to survive because they've been dealing with a market that does not value (or has forgotten or never knew it?) quality as much as it once did, and HAS choices at lower prices, so they have been struggling to keep their prices as low as possible in order to meet the market demand.
So, the answer is, I do not expect to see prices drop at all on guns currently on the market. I might expect to see new or subtlely modified guns that cut some (further) corners or new/old guns manufactured in new and cheaper areas, etc that address a demand for lower price-points.
