I've been saying for a while now that Mac is not high end. It's not drugstore, but it's not up there with Chanel, Nars, YSL in terms of price(yet) or prestige. Maybe the folks at Mac feel like they are short changing themselves by making their items so cheap and they want to be on par with the brands previously mentioned. That hurts them, in the end, in my opinion. A make up snob like me, even before i knew what the hell I was doing, was excited to go to Mac, instead of a drugstore, to explore and learn before jumping into the real high end pool. Now, if they keep it up, you might as well jump to a Guerlain or a Mufe instead of Mac. Also, I don't see their quality going up so much to merit these increases. Give me new colors, new formulas, even new packaging. Don't get me wrong, I still adore Mac and I am all over the collections, but they need some tough love. I will pay more if you give me what I need and things I couldn't imagine. They're not doing that right now.