Skies Electric

Please read this and see if it gives you any face-slapping epiphanies, because I can't figure it out.

How is everything so cheap? When you think about everything it took for some product to get into your arms, everything seems way out of whack. Let's take a jar of peanut for instance.

At Publix, for premium peanut butter, you might pay 6 dollars for a large jar. Consider this:

+ Someone needs to pay the farmer and workers for planting, growing, and collecting the peanuts. This involves large, multimillion dollar machinery.
+ Someone needs to pay for the trucks and gas and drivers which transport the peanuts to a processing plant.
+ Someone needs to pay for a HUGE plant which processes the peanuts. This includes the worker's salaries, electricity to run everything, water, all the extra ingredients, and all the farmers and workers and trucks and gas that brought those extra ingredients to the factory.
+ Someone needs to pay for the semi trucks which distribute the peanut butter to stores across the country.
+ Someone needs to pay for all the grocery stores, all of their electricity, taxes, and all of the wages and benefits of the workers.

And on top of all that, everyone must profit substantially. None of this would happen if it wasn't making money for someone.

Almost every product, whether it be food or cars or staples, goes through a similar process. I can't wrap my head around how $6 would be enough to pay for everything that brought the peanut butter to my hands.