Is this country really what our founding fathers dreamed of?

[rtwngAvngr]

A great country, yet totally unfair.

Why can't we all just have whatever we want?

 

[wonderwench]

Mommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! RWA took the bigger half of the popsicle!

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

Originally posted by wonderwench

For your own sake, I suggest not worrying about someone else being better off than you, even if you feel they don't deserve it. That is a very sad way to live.

It's not like that's all I care about, but we're here talking about it...

That's just the way I am. I'm a very outspoken person. I don't sit back and close my eyes to the world. When things bother me. I talk about them.


Has anyone seen the movie "John Q?" It demonstrates a good point about how the rich get what they want all the time, including health care, when people that can't afford it are shit out of luck. It's not just the fact that these people are rich, but the way they continue to strive for more money like what they have is not enough AND because of the way that many of them look down upon those who struggle financially rather than helping them out with all of their money.

 

[wonderwench]

CV - wanting or needing something doesn't make it a right.

The rights originally specified in the founding documents are "negative" rights - ie the right to be left alone. When you cite things such as health care, you are asserting a "positive" right (a right based on need / welfare). Positive rights can only be fulfilled at the expensive of someone else - by claiming the output of their labor for yourself.

The worst thing that ever happened to this country was the encroachment of positive rights.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Originally posted by Cousin Vinnie
Fraud against other citizens? You keep bringing this up. I never in this thread said that I wanted to take these people's money off of them or cheat them out of it. Lowering prices isn't fraud.

No. No. you're getting confused. That fraud part was just part of my definition of a good society, roughly that individuals are allowed to pusue their self interest as long as they don't deprive others of their life, liberty or property through force or fraud. I never said lowering prices was fraud. Fixing market prices will just kill the economy. That's all. It's not fraud. It's destructive and moronic.

As for destroying the economy for everyone. You mention this a lot also, but you haven't explained it one bit. All I suggested is lowering unnecessarily high prices on goods. Many things are fairly priced in proportion to the value of a dollar (in other words, it was once much cheaper years ago, but it's a fair price in proportion to the average salary of today). But, there are things that are priced high for the benefit of none other than the finacial state of that company. Tell me how lowering prices (which like I said--"SOME PRICES ARE ALREADY AS LOW AS THEY CAN GO") would make the tremendous impact on society like you say it will? I'm not trying to get cocky with you, but I seriously don't understand how that would happen. Some prices are as low as they can go. Why can't all prices be this way?

The profit motive disappears. Less investors want in on it. The market comes to be served by some segment of a huge, mobbed up, corrupt, multinational conglomerate that has decided it's willing to provide some basic shit level of product in exchange for the meager profit allowed. Life would start to turn grey and shitty, bit by bit, like the former soviet union.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Originally posted by Cousin Vinnie
Yea, good for only the rich. That's what your views say to me.

How does my view say that to you?

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Originally posted by wonderwench
Mommmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! RWA took the bigger half of the popsicle!

 

[kcmcdonald]

Cousin Vinni,
This make take a little while. I think i can answer your fundamental question...Why can't we lower prices on goods so they are cheaper?
!st. Let me start out by saying that when you buy something at a store there are amny charges in the price of that indivudaul item. First the manufacturing company(the company that made the product) makes a product. included into the price of the product is marketing, labor, cost, parts, insurance, wages, all these things go into setting the price. So the Maufacturer sets the price so he can make a profit. Next the shipping man takes the product and ships it to a retailer. The shipping men charge money to move the product from A to B. Included in this price is gas, labor, wages, distance, marketing, ect... So now when the product gets to the retailer it is now more expensive than it origianlly was. Now the retailer has to set a price on the item to make a profit. Into this cost goes labor, ect...so now when it goes to the shelves an dyou buy it the price you paid pays for all the services that got it from the maunfacturer to you. Every body allong the line needs to make a profit. So if you lower the cost at the retailer to you some one along the line losses money. The easiest way to lower the price on an item is by lower the cost of labor. Unfortuantlt this means having the product made over seas. So when a item is cheaper than another that's because it was made in a foriegn country. Prices are low because labor is cheap, however this will not always be the case.
The X factor in this whole thing is product "name". Product name is why a pair of "Tommy" jeans cost 60$ and a pair of "Target" jeans cost 30$. The extra 30$'s your paying is for the name. "Tommy" the extra costs go into marketing. If you want to bitch about high priced items bitch about the cost to market those items.
Now that we have expalined the whole opperation we can answer your question.
You can't enforce price fixing. It lowers compainies ability to make a product. To make a product it does no just take one man. It take shundereds of iundividuals to design, make, market, and ship a product. If you lower the profit margin of the company they have to Fire people to rais ethe profit margin. It's a system of supply and demand. The jobs are in demand to keep suplly high because the item is high demand. When demand goes up but price goes down the deamnd on the jobs goes down because the suplly is to expensive(kinda hard to understand when said like that) However, think of it like this.
person A makes product A it cost him .37$ to make sells for .50$
person B takes Item A to person C, it cost's him .13$ sells service for .25$
Person C buys this item now for .75$ it cost the personA only .37$ to make it but the price went up along the line. Now person C has to pay for labor so they charge .99$ for the item. If you lower the price you hurt person C. They have to reduce labor to make up for cost. Wich means you fire people.
Our system the way it is set up favors companies who make profits. It's that simpple if you set prices you hamper the ability to make profit, hurting the comapany hurting the economy, and finally hurting your self.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Cousin Vinny, you're out of order? The two yutes?

 

[rtwngAvngr]

KCM, good post. Great minds think at least similarly.

 

[kcmcdonald]

Thanks RTWA,
I'll take that any day

 

[MtnBiker]

Originally posted by Cousin Vinnie

Has anyone seen the movie "John Q"

I wonder how much money that movie made?

Why didn't they just let people see it for free?

Greedy bastards!!

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

Originally posted by rtwngAvngr
No. No. you're getting confused. That fraud part was just part of my definition of a good society, roughly that individuals are allowed to pusue their self interest as long as they don't deprive others of their life, liberty or property through force or fraud. I never said lowering prices was fraud. Fixing market prices will just kill the economy. That's all. It's not fraud. It's destructive and moronic.


The profit motive disappears. Less investors want in on it. The market comes to be served by some segment of a huge, mobbed up, corrupt, multinational conglomerate that has decided it's willing to provide some basic shit level of product in exchange for the meager profit allowed. Life would start to turn grey and shitty, bit by bit, like the former soviet union.

See, you are getting confused as well. I never said that "fixing" prices was the way to go. Of course that wouldn't work. I am also not talking about lowering prices to the point where there's hardly any profit as you seem to infer. To go back to the stadium example. Selling tickets for $5 or $10 or whatever would still allow for plenty profit to be made--the athletes just wouldn't be making as much money. The part about planning--their will be too much of a crowd... That's a poor excuse and has nothing to do with what is on the table here.

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

Originally posted by rtwngAvngr
Cousin Vinny, you're out of order? The two yutes?

LOL! I always did like that movie.

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

Originally posted by MtnBiker
I wonder how much money that movie made?

Why didn't they just let people see it for free?

Greedy bastards!!

See, you're putting words in my mouth once again. You all go and extreminize my views. When did I say in this thread that I wanted everything to be free? It would be nice; don't get me wrong, but civilization can't exist as it does today without some form of currency.

 

[MtnBiker]

Don't flatter youself. I did not put words into your mouth.

 

[Bern80]

Originally posted by Cousin Vinnie
Of course, my plan would call for the big-wigs only to make a million dollars a year rather than 30 million. Of course "you" wouldn't like that being a blood-sucking conservative and all. You don't give a sh*t about the people coming to see the game. You have proved that.

Why should an individual not be allowed to make as much money as they want? Again please, for the love of all that is good, take an economics class. None of what you propose would work in market economy (which is essentially based on human nature) Think things out a little bit man.

Just for example do you have any idea how astronmically high taxes would have to be to make up for the budget short fall that you propose?

 

[Bern80]

Originally posted by Cousin Vinnie
Fraud against other citizens? You keep bringing this up. I never in this thread said that I wanted to take these people's money off of them or cheat them out of it. Lowering prices isn't fraud.

Actually you did when you said you would cap earnings to under 1 million

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

Originally posted by kcmcdonald
Cousin Vinni,
This make take a little while. I think i can answer your fundamental question...Why can't we lower prices on goods so they are cheaper?
!st. Let me start out by saying that when you buy something at a store there are amny charges in the price of that indivudaul item. First the manufacturing company(the company that made the product) makes a product. included into the price of the product is marketing, labor, cost, parts, insurance, wages, all these things go into setting the price. So the Maufacturer sets the price so he can make a profit. Next the shipping man takes the product and ships it to a retailer. The shipping men charge money to move the product from A to B. Included in this price is gas, labor, wages, distance, marketing, ect... So now when the product gets to the retailer it is now more expensive than it origianlly was. Now the retailer has to set a price on the item to make a profit. Into this cost goes labor, ect...so now when it goes to the shelves an dyou buy it the price you paid pays for all the services that got it from the maunfacturer to you. Every body allong the line needs to make a profit. So if you lower the cost at the retailer to you some one along the line losses money. The easiest way to lower the price on an item is by lower the cost of labor. Unfortuantlt this means having the product made over seas. So when a item is cheaper than another that's because it was made in a foriegn country. Prices are low because labor is cheap, however this will not always be the case.
The X factor in this whole thing is product "name". Product name is why a pair of "Tommy" jeans cost 60$ and a pair of "Target" jeans cost 30$. The extra 30$'s your paying is for the name. "Tommy" the extra costs go into marketing. If you want to bitch about high priced items bitch about the cost to market those items.
Now that we have expalined the whole opperation we can answer your question.
You can't enforce price fixing. It lowers compainies ability to make a product. To make a product it does no just take one man. It take shundereds of iundividuals to design, make, market, and ship a product. If you lower the profit margin of the company they have to Fire people to rais ethe profit margin. It's a system of supply and demand. The jobs are in demand to keep suplly high because the item is high demand. When demand goes up but price goes down the deamnd on the jobs goes down because the suplly is to expensive(kinda hard to understand when said like that) However, think of it like this.
person A makes product A it cost him .37$ to make sells for .50$
person B takes Item A to person C, it cost's him .13$ sells service for .25$
Person C buys this item now for .75$ it cost the personA only .37$ to make it but the price went up along the line. Now person C has to pay for labor so they charge .99$ for the item. If you lower the price you hurt person C. They have to reduce labor to make up for cost. Wich means you fire people.
Our system the way it is set up favors companies who make profits. It's that simpple if you set prices you hamper the ability to make profit, hurting the comapany hurting the economy, and finally hurting your self.

Thank you. However, I think I should explain myself better on this issue. I only feel prices need to be reduced in companies that are obviously making tons and tons and tons of money.

For example, celebrities: A popular singer records a CD and sells it for $20. Now, in the end, a large portion of this money goes to the singer him/herself. If you lower the price to $10 for the CD, I still believe that the singer can be making a profit on that CD because I can't see that they already aren't making at least 100% profit on things like CD's that cost virtually nothing to make and can't possible cost "that" much (in proportion to the actual price) to market, transport, and sell.

High-speed or DSL Internet is another one. What makes that so much more expensive than regular dial up? How about Digital Cable? Why is the cost of that so high? My cable provider is an obvious scam to me because of their outrageous prices for these products.

I feel inclined to start my own business so that I can prove that I can sell it for less, just to show my cable company for example that they can't get away with their prices any longer.

Now, I realize that marketing and middlemen mark up prices even more. There's another opportunity to lower prices. Why is the cost of marketing so high? Why do 30-second commercials during the SuperBowl cost millions of dollars. Now, those kinds of things sure make it obvious why prices are so high! Then, as far as cable Internet for example: the provider works with other companies that actually deal with bringing the Internet through wires into your home. Well, they have a price too. There's can be too high? See, if only one of these people(the provider, the contractor, the marketing adgent, the second market) charge an unfair price, the whole thing is unfair. The thing is is that they are doing a good job getting away with it because people don't know how to spot when they are getting ripped off these days. They'll by name brands because they are popular even if they have to pay outrageous amounts of money. People don't realize that they are being played, and the ones that do feel they can't do anything so they join the crowd. It just seems obvious that a company that is so popular like Nike or Adidas would be able to have lower prices beacuse their brand is the most popular. Supple and Demand: if more products are bought yielding a significant profit, prices can be lowered. Now advertising keeps prices up. Do these companies really have to spend millions of dollars on advertising when they could lower their prices rather than advertise? That would make me feel that they would become more popular. Then definately no one would buy the knock-off brands.

 

[Cousin Vinnie]

Originally posted by Bern80
Actually you did when you said you would cap earnings to under 1 million

That may have been inferred, but that's not what I meant...