Quoted from bluespin:

Stern is raising their prices because the costs of raw materials, labor and transportation are all up. Someone makes a part for Stern, and their raw material, labor and transportation costs have all increased so they pass that along to Stern. Stern's labor costs go up, and they have to raise their prices due to all of their costs (labor and supplier) have increased.

Quoted from sawyerfamilyaz:

Wait I am confused. Are you saying that a pinball machine should cost $3,000? Or that the cost to manufacture is $3,000?

Quoted from sawyerfamilyaz:

I can’t even believe I am responding to such ignorance. First of all you have zero basis to determine Stern’s cost. Businesses don’t price things based on the strict cost to manufacture. Clearly neither of you is in business. What do you suppose crating and shipping costs? Overhead costs include things like facilities, design, technology, management, websites, inventory, leverage and lines of credit, advertising, sales, admin, warehouse staff, forklifts to move product around, internal production systems and software, and on and on.
I hate to break it to you but almost every product you purchase costs 50% (or less) of its actual price to manufacture. A huge number of business will yield 50% or better gross margin - that’s the money remaining after strict cost of sales (materials and actual build labor). Some manufacturing will not even include any labor cost in their cost of goods and will yield 70%+ margins for materials only. Most business also run an additional 30%+ for SG&A (or 50-60% if they don’t include labor in Cost of Goods). That’s all the cost of business that isn’t directly tied to the actual cost of the product (some listed above). This will yield for many companies 15 - 20% EBiTDA which doesn’t include taxes or depreciation of assets. Anything 10% or less and a company is just making it by and there is no money to invest in the business.
You’re angry about things you know nothing about and you’re completely wrong about.