You mean just prescription drugs or everything? Because everything is kind of weird.

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Elections have consequences.

Leash and others believe that the market should dictate prices but want the government to step in for drugs. I don't think you can have it both ways. Drug dealers profits are just as important as the insurance company's if you don't agree with market controls.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

How much shit do you have that you don't need? Do you ever wonder why you have it? Why it's important to you?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Gotcha.

_________________
Elections have consequences.

That's the thing. At some point you cross a line where it's no longer a free market. Then you have what we have now- crony capitalism.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

The advertising is most obvious which kids. They see an add for donething and then need to have something they didn't know existed 45 seconds prior. Usually doesn't have the same impact as kids but it's there. Keeping up with Joneses theory.

The quality of life of every person has increased exponentially in the past 50-100 years though. Some do better than others but if you compare the life of your average poor person now compared to what my poor grandparents lived in it is completely different.

The biggest flaw in our current society is that we don't reward work done by the lowest parts of our economic spectrum and it is creeping into the middle class now too. But hey, it gets annoying that I keep mentioning how wrong it is that a person can work a full time job and not be able to afford to feed, shelter, and clothe themselves.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Rick is right. Your average poor person now lives way better than Andrew Carnegie could have dreamed of living. Most of that is due to the free market and allowing and encouraging innovation for profit.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

The better term would be profiteers of tragedy and misery

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Its a slippery slope especially when you flip from corporate gougers to a hilljack in southern GA loading his truck up with cases of water and driving to southern FL to sell them for 30-40 dollars a case.

He is making a killing, but would also have a very large overhead to bring that new supply into the afflicted area.

Is that still considered gouging?

oh, you think that sale price is based on cost

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

And how is that supposed to work in a global economy where slave labor is still available? Six weeks maternity leave for men and women and a twenty dollar minimum wage is nice, but when the guy controlling the means of production can use an eight year old Malaysian girl who makes no demands other than a bowl of rice each day, what do you think is going to happen? It will all be moot when automation makes the worker superfluous and then things will really get interesting.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

In the case of the Best Buy, they always sold water for that price because they sold it by the bottle next to the checkout. $1.79/bottle comes out to about $42/case. There was no storm-related gouging, just typical convenience-store gouging.

It's like walking into Speedway or Circle K and being pissed that the water, the Diet Pepsi, and the Doritos cost more there than at Costco.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

#Protectionism

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I'm no economist but it's my understanding that a disaster relief situation wouldn't be considered a free market either.

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I think it's already interesting. The labor in your example will almost certainly be a net positive for the laborer, the corporation, and the consumer, but most people would agree it's wrong and it's hard to blame them or disagree with them.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Yet you asked why we couldn't build a society based on generosity?

Workers already lose out to workers who just want a bowl of rice. They've already lost those jobs. Even at $7/hr they lose to that so it is useless to worry about.

Mark it down rpb! More liberal points for me!

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The facts do remain that price controls provide no incentive to increase supply, which in turn leads to shortages. This is Micro 101

If you don't believe me, look no further than the housing shortages in markets with rent controls.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Where does this "obligation" come from?

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Unless the machines start feeling a compulsion to have, they will not be employed for long if the consumer has not money.

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

BAD THREADS, YOU GOTTA READ 'EM EVERY DAY
LET THE HURRICANE DECIDE ON THE PRICE YOU GOTTA PAY

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It depends what we are talking about. Many shortages are more about supply chain than it is about incentive. It's not like grocery stores and gas stations don't have a profit motive currently to sell as much as they can at normal prices. The gas shortages in NY had more to do with ports being closed and therefore gas not being able to make it by water. They could have multiplied the price by 10 and it wouldn't have led to more gas being there.

The free market isn't really going to have an impact before a storm like this. There can only be so much product available for the unpredictable nature of these storms. Maybe OgieCorp would have a huge warehouse filled with bottled water in Florida to sell at $20 a bottle today but that is unlikely given the rarity of massive hurricanes hitting a specific area. If you were running that business in Miami it would have been many years since you did anything with that water.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Does paying $9 for a lukewarm 12 ozs of Miller Lite at Soldier Field count?

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That's why it will be interesting. Henry Ford understood his employee was also his customer. I'm not sure the modern executive who is taking heat from a board obsessing over stock price can see that far ahead.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Henry Ford, hated Jews.

The minimum guaranteed income is almost a certainty eventually. It's just a question of when it happens. I'm sure you'll complain about it though because it will hurt businesses but let people feed, clothe, and shelter themselves.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

You say that as if it made him some kind of oddity.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Hope this is real...

Definitely real:

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

http://www.ebay.com/itm/132319745117

The questions and answers are funny.

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