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Let me throw it at you in a much simpler, down-to-earth way:

The single underlying principle behind all pricing is: charge what the market will bear.

Any business, therefore, big or small, seeks to max out its profit margin simply by charging as much as consumers can and will pay, while producing the product as cheaply as possible.

Now, higher taxes - on large corporations and the very wealthy - don't affect the ability of the lower and middle class consumers who make up the majority of this country and are ultimately the engine for growth to buy products. Their spending power remains the same.

Highly profitable corporations, already charging as much as the market will bear, will have nothing to gain from increasing prices further. The market can't suddenly bear higher prices.

However - increasing taxes on the very top of the pyramid, to reduce the federal debt, will increase the money supply, which in turn will reduce interest rates and inflation, increasing the spending power of all Americans. In that sense, there is definitely a trickle down benefit from higher taxes on the very well-to-do.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Oh, I forgot nothing can change in 5 years and that everything I said 5 years ago applies exactly as it did then to present day situations.

Silly me.

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Many of these same republicans raised the debt ceiling 7 times when Bush was in office with no strings attached.



If the corporations had more money they wouldn't charge as much. Unfortunately a little problem called reality is getting in the way.

During the bush administration there was a tax-free monetary repatriation. Businesses were allowed to take back the money they kept oversees through shady book-keeping. With this infusions of billions and billions of dollars they lowered the prices we paid and hired more American workers. Oh wait no they increased ceo pay and socked away the rest of the cash.

But that was years ago, certainly things have changed right? Business profits are back to the pre-recession era right now. Hiring is up, prices are down. No? Businesses are holding on to every dollar they have while STILL increasing CEO pay AND trying to get another tax-free repatriation while claiming they'll totally help everyone out this time, not like that last time when they just took the money and told us to fuck off.

When costs go down products and service prices don't go down (unless they're commodities or tech). Businesses are out for themselves, as they have aptly demonstrated for decades. The savings don't get passes on to the consumer, they get passed onto the profit line. I honestly can't understand how people still buy that bullshit after all these years.

Dvergar /
Quisling

Bush and those republicans were wrong to raise the debt ceiling.

This is the equivalent of getting another credit card when you've maxed out several others.

What is your problem with reading comprehension? Where in any of that did I say I wanted to erase taxes for the "wealthy?" No. Where. Business is not the same thing as "rich people," regardless of you paranoia or any of the other problems you have that cloud your judgment. Taxes on business are more onerous for the middle and lower class than simply taxing the middle class, if for no other reason than those taxes aren't transparent. They also defeat the purpose of a progressive tax system designed to benefit the lower and middle class because they move those costs to all end users, regardless of economic circumstance, equally.

It has nothing to do with "profit margin," it's a simple matter of cost. If every company that makes widgets has a tax burden that translates into a cost of $X per widget, and you remove the tax burden, the cost of the widget is reduced by $X. If you share Dvergar and Aestu's unreasoning phobia and paranoia of anything bigger than a lemonade stand, you're going to say, as one or the other or both of them have, that they'll just pocket that money, or pay off company officers, or otherwise "waste" it. In the real world, where there is a competitive widget market, one or more companies is going to try for competitive advantage by (and here's what going to go right over the heads of a few people here) reducing the price of their widgets as much as the reduction in their tax burden will allow. That is when "what the market will bear" comes into play, Aestu. No consumer is going to pay widget cost+$X if they can pay less, and any widget maker that wants to remain competitive is going to lower their price as much as they can to either beat their competitor's price or stay otherwise competitive.

The biggest difference between what I'm proposing and thet "tax repatriation" Dvergar is complaining about is that what I'm proposing doesn't involve, as Dvergar puts it, "shady bookkeeping." If your argument is that "X" will never happen...you know, except for when it does...

...you're conceding that "X" does happen. Somehow, that's not surprising coming from someone who thinks some of us are uncivilized racist xenophobes who are guilty of murder because some guy who agrees with a few things we believe killed some people.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

They were included to preempt the argument based on those cases where costs do equate to lesser prices for consumers. However, those are both special cases and do not reflect the flawed messiah vision you have of business. Tech has always went down when things become cheaper, not because they're passing on the savings, but because if LCD tvs were still $9,000 for a 27 inch no one would buy them, and the companies know there is always another high priced tech they can slap a 9k price tag on and someone will buy. I shouldn't even have listed commodoties, because the consumer prices don't fall until long after market prices fall, if they fall at all. Pepsi isn't cheaper when corn prices fall, Gas can take weeks until the prices come down after the price of oil falls.



Some of you are uncivilized racist xenophobes, to suggest that none are is as foolish as to suggest you all are. I never equated that to being guilty of murder. I was the first one to post that a christian tea-party-loving gunman didn't convict the whole movement. I understand your confusion though, the previous sentence qualifies as a fact and I know how you do so have trouble with those little liberal things.

Dvergar /
Quisling

Who are racist uncivilized xenophobes here?

This is false because the lower/middle class have less disposable income as a percentage of total income, and corporate profits are realized more by the upper class than the lower/middle class, because they are the ones who take it home in the form of dividends and bonuses.

Taxes on extremely large disposable incomes and corporate profits therefore are highly progressive taxes.



It's not "waste". It's called a profit margin. That's how business works. There's nothing fundamentally "shady" about it except the dishonesty in right-wing claims to the contrary.

I had a lemonade stand when I was a kid. I picked lemons off our lemon trees and made lemonade. I sold the lemonade for a dollar a glass. Never mind that the lemonade cost nothing to make except my own time and whatever sugar and cups went for, since the lemons would remain ripe on the tree if I didn't pick them, and Sacramento has free water.

So I charged what I thought was appropriate for a glass of lemonade. Profit was like 95% of revenue. Now, hypothetically, if water wasn't free, or I had to buy lemons at the store, or the sales tax on cups and pitchers increased, I'd still be stuck charging whatever I thought would be appropriate for lemonade.

Could I still make a profit selling the lemonade for 25 cents a glass? Sure. Could I pass more of my reduced costs onto my consumers as lower prices? Sure.

But if I could charge more, I'd have been a fool not to.



Power exists to be feared. That's true whether it's business or government. You fear government but why not business?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

This situation forgets a factor present in free markets.

Competition.

Which is going to drive prices downward.

As soon as somebody realizes they can profit well at 50 cents a glass, they will.

But they are already. Higher taxes won't change what the market will bear.

And competition is pretty broken in many of the fields the most profitable mega-corporations manage. You can't just make your own OS or pump your own oil or make your own electricity or phone service if you think the status quo is too pricey.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Business is a man, and government is his weapon. Unfortunately we've equipped the man with a sword instead of a pebble like we should be. I mean, how does a business or a lobby or whatever get it's way? They do it through the government.

I'm just going to say removing capital from the private sector is bad economics. Obviously taxes are necessary, because government does needed to be funded for it's purposes. But what does the government do with the extra money laying around after their legitimate functions are paid for? They spend a great deal of it on nothing really that important or things that could be handled equally or better by the private sector.

I will never understand this trust in the private sector.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
Shuruppak Yuratuhl
Slaad Shrpk Breizh

Is not government also man?

And for what great higher purpose does the private sector spend its surplus?



The same reason the lotto is more popular than blackjack.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

...you're conceding that "X" does happen by stating that "X" happens. I'm not sure how you can preempt an argument by making it for me.



I don't have a "messiah vision" of business, but I'm not afflicted with paranoid antipathy for it, either. Businesses screw up, and when they do, they should suffer for it...not be bailed out, or given special tax breaks, or corporate welfare, or have it mandated that their products must be used. Where businesses are in the wrong, they should be fined, or their officers fined and jailed. You're blaming the fact that such things don't happen on business, when the reason that they don't is cronyism and a failure of government...in which both business and government are complicit. It's not a 'one-or-the-other' argument, because there are things wrong with both the public and private sectors that could be fixed...but won't be so long as it's made into an either-or argument.



I still like you better than Aestu because your "I'm not really wrong even though I'm wrong" paragraphs are much shorter, and the writing quality is better.

There is a lot more in Pepsi than just corn syrup, and those other products also influence the price...which is constantly in flux, take it from someone who drinks at least a 2-liter a day. Sometimes I can get a 2-liter for $1.25, a few weeks later it's $1.78, everyone once in a while it's 3 for $4. You talk as if the prices of these good don't fluxuate...they just go up and never back down. That's not the case, especially for something like soda, where are there are at least two major competitors striving to out-do each other, and a plethora of off-brand and generic products available.

In short, you're pointing at events that do exactly what I suggested and proving my point.



I'm going to assume when you say "some of you," you mean conservatives (or w/e) in general, and not anyone on the boards here (except Eternal, because he hates brown people)...and you're right. There are some nuts in every crowd...it's just that there seems to be a race to scream "RIGHT-WING NUTJOB" after any shooting...and hardly any examination of that reaction when it's revealed the shooter's views/motivations came from the left. Hell, in the case of the Norway tragedy, everyone was jumping the gun about it being a Muslim...and I wonder what the people making that leap in logic are thinking to themselves now that it turned out to be a white guy.


The following gives the impression that "we" on the side opposing your own are responsible because "we" (not people like Al Sharpton, oddly) are "race-baiters" and "we" (not people who say things like "Republicans will take away your social security") are "fear mongers":


However...

...if that's the case, I apologize, but I hope you'll believe me when I say that I didn't see that comment, and my assessment was entirely in light of the above sentence.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Ok, so what's your fix? Lasseiz-faire? Do nothing?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.