Why is everything so expensive now?

We pay our people well, and we have very good work/life balance. I've had employees that worked for us, left us for another opportunity, then came back after a year or two because they missed working for us. We also let people grow into new roles and advance in their careers, rather than just hiring new people outside the organization. I started the company 12 years ago. I have employees that have been with me 11 years. I've had employees that started working for me when they were 16 years old, and grew into management positions. I have a good team that are all working towards forwarding our mission of advancing the lab testing and quality control standards of the industry. We are not the faceless cutthroat corporation you have in your head.

Because of all this, our overhead is much higher than other brands. Then people come in here and say we're expensive, or make shit up like we've raised prices. It seems like everyone wants the absolute cheapest prices they can get, but then expects those companies to pay their employees high salaries at the same time. News flash: the bottom barrel companies are all paying their people as low as possible, or just outsourcing everything. We have 90 American workers doing everything from start to finish; from entry level warehouse people to PhD research chemists in our lab. If people buy from the cheapest source, they're supporting low salaries or outsourcing to other countries. Or I guess like this thread, they say we're overpriced and still don't pay employees well. Everyone is just going to make up whatever narrative they want to believe in their heads. I guess we now live in a post-truth era.