Most repair folks are small businesses. Heck, most businesses in the United States are small businesses. Balancing costs of parts and labor are a challenge. That also applies to larger corporations. Not just trying to create a profit for stockholders (your retirement also needs those stock values high before you completely trash the system).

Remember when everyone kept calling for increased wages (teachers included). Well when you increase wages you also have to increase costs and therefore have to increase income. A business, large or small, can't increase the pay to their employee without that income. Teachers can't get paid more without property taxes going up and when property taxes go up homeowners start asking for raises..... It's all a circle. I mean, I'm sure you want to tell your AC repairman to just eat the cost of those parts they need to keep your house cool because you needed a raise but they don't get to increase their costs even though the price of raw materials went up and thus the manufacturing costs (because those employees also got raises)...

And Just-in-time product management has been around 50 plus years and wasn't even an American idea...