>learned they can charge insane rates

It's called "what the market can bear" and it's what corporations with marketing and sales professionals have always tried their best to do; charge as much as you possibly can without losing business. Of course, it only actually works when there is competition, and so the rising prices are kept in check by undercutting competition.... and then, _that_ only works when the undercutting competition is working to the same quality (by a code, ideally) and is subject to the same economic pressures so that it can level out fairly. If the competition is all fresh immigrants with lower CoL, or if the competition is cutting corners, all bets are off. You end up with a race to the bottom, where each individual is trying to be part of a race to the top at the same time... everyone wants more than they're worth, but those who are actually doing the best work still aren't getting what they deserve, lol!

A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work, just like any other freedom. It's always been strange to me that Americanism seems to view freedom as the fundamental condition of man, hampered by law; ultimately most freedoms come from rule and order, because they can carve out space for one to enjoy freedoms with far fewer negative consequences.

It’s a supply and demand problem. There are just not enough people pursuing these jobs to replace the retiring generation. Some of these small family businesses are quite profitable, but most owners don’t have kids interested in continuing their legacy. Private equity noticed this and went on an acquisition spree. They buy your local HVAC and plumbing company, keep the family-owned branding “since 1976”, hire people with no experience to do the job and increase the hourly rate. They recover the investment, squeeze out every dollar they can and shut it down once bad Google reviews and lawsuits start to creep in.

>>> Blue collar skilled labor starts at 100$ an hour in West Virginia or Mississippi now

Why should they charge less? Would you want to pay 50$ for unskilled worker instead?

I know a lot of shops that hire good mechanics though if you want to get some work done on your car that requires difficult diagnostics often you have to wait days or weeks to get the attention of someone who can get it done.

After reading Chris Beasley's blog about trying to build a castle in Chattanooga (linked here on HN a while ago), I have unfortunately started to agree with this sentiment a bit.

There's too much of collective bargaining and scheming for increased prices going on in a lot of markets is what it looks like.

Hunting around for people and apparently they started texting each other stuff like "He said it was $100,000 higher than, you don't leave that money on the table."

Quotes started at $6/sq. ft, then became $6.5/sq. ft. Those people left. Became $15/sq. ft, and $23/sq. ft. It seemed like people saw a big money project, and started collectively trying to milk it for everything they could. [1]

Entire project was that way. Had thefts of a tractor, cement mixer, and small tools. Could not get people to give honest or correct bids on fencing. And 30 banks skipped on financing. Parts of the blog are depressing, yet the castle got finished, and its kind of a bleak laugh to read some of the stuff.

[1] http://www.buildingmycastle.com/stone-cold-problems/