Stimulus keeps prices artificially high at cost of consumers

The New York Times, yes that New York Times, recently has a piece about how the retailers are doing the governments job of bailing out the citizens. Huffington Post's headline was private sector goes public, with a link to this article. (You need a free subscription to see the whole thing.) The Huffpo subtitle is: Government stimulus not enough, so retailers create their own. I say this is great and shows how the government interference in the market right after the stock/housing crash was terrible for consumers. Once the government has stopped (albeit temporarily) artificially increasing people's paychecks the stores started to decrease their costs.

A lot of the government programs have come to an end,” said David Bassuk, a managing director in the global retail practice at AlixPartners, a financial consultancy. “So retailers are taking it upon themselves to do everything they can to get the consumer to spend, even opening up their own wallets to give money back to the consumer.”

If a retailer does not believe there is enough demand for his product, either because the product is inferior, the consumer lost his job or any myriad of other reasons, they have the option to lower their prices to increase demand. The government has been so busy trying to redistribute wealth so we all somehow magically get richer they have made it unnecessary for companies to correct their prices during times of economic downturn. Now that they have stopped a small fraction of the programs, the stores are altering their prices downward where the demand is due to unemployment rate and general uneasiness about the economy.

The government's boosting of peoples income, largely through borrowing from China that our grandkids will have to repay, have kept prices artificially high. This means that citizens have spent a larger percentage of their money in buying goods that were overpriced because of the government policy. This means that the government has redistributed money from the consumers (the citizens like me and you) to the producers (stores like Walmart, Target, etc.). This has happened even in a government that claims to be looking our for the "little guy". Give me a break. The government has been and always will be looking out for the big guy, which is why we need less government.

Happy Fourth.

Government Overreaching... Names

Can you say government overreaching? The naming laws in some parts of the world allow the government to approve or not approve of the name you want to give your little bundle of joy. No one should be surprised by this. The governments in some foreign countries, and ours is getting closer to this, believe that it is their job to make sure no one is ever offended. This is how they justify not letting curse words air at certain parts of the day, it has been one of the justifications for the "war on drugs" and many believe that the hate crimes law was partially intended to scare people with ideas society does not approve of.

When you give people and inch, they take a mile. The government is no different.

Anyway, the article was just meant to be fun. Happy Fourth of July. Go Out. Have a BBQ. Thank the Vets and Troops and remember that the founders wanted America to be free. Try to make their dream a reality.

Thank Goodness we have government to tell us how much everyone should be paid

A chicago alderman is calling out a walmart executive for getting paid too much. He certainly should. This terrible CEO is making more than an hour than his employees do in a year, that is if you argue he makes nearly double what he actually makes. The alderman's math was wrong by more than 50%, but that is not even the point. The CEO and the worker are getting paid the same wage. What can I possibly mean by that. One is paid in the millions, and one will make between 8-10 dollars per hour. I simply mean they are paid exactly what the market would bear. The CEO of Walmart would not be the CEO of Walmart if someone else offered him a better package. The same is true of the Walmart bagger, cashier, manager, etc. They are paid exactly what the market thinks they are worth, no more no less.

In the more hilarious/upsetting news of the article, the alderman who is upset that Walmart pays their workers so little is paid in the six figures for his work. The CEO gets his salary from the sales and profits of the company he helps run. He is not taking a single penny out of his worker's pockets to line his own. The alderman who is disparaging that CEO is the exact opposite. His salary exclusively is lined with the money of others. He never has to prove that he has acted efficiently, or that he has increased profits. All he has to do is sit back and collect his paycheck paid from people like you, me and the workers he feels oh so bad for.