At least once over the past 18 months, when you tried to order something online or visited a retail store, you have probably experienced something Americans are not supposed to feel: scarcity. Shortages of all kinds have lingered and even worsened over the past 18 months, in every product imaginable: Hot tubs, automobiles, books, fertilizer, plastic pipettes for labs, paint, semiconductor chips, place mats, french fries at Burger King, emergency supplies for disaster aid, aluminum cans, and yes, once again, toilet paper.
One might have assumed that, after the worst lockdowns of 2020 ended, these disruptions would subside, and supply chains would ramp back up to their usual pace. And one could further have assumed that supply would catch up to spikes in demand once mass vaccinations began. But it takes time to untangle something that becomes so tangled, time for a shortage on one side of the world to appear on the other. There are manufacturing plants and ships and ports and containers and airplanes and trucks and trains and warehouses and retail locations that all have to be managed just right, and just in time, under our current nothing-in-excess style of how we get only as many goods as we need in any one location.
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