The wicked bankers are redesiging their websites, it seems to me, to make them more confusing with a view to causing people to miscalculate their positions, and thus overdraft or otherwise incur fees. Certainly the rates they offer on CDs are a ripoff, when little old ladies should be in TBills or some other higher paying asset... (although I would say gold.) The net is banking costs all the more, when in a free market, prices should naturally fall.
As prices fall, more money is freed up to invest in an ever wider means of production in the selection of goods and services, that is to say, division of labor, in which eventually perhaps it is not true everyone gets rich. But it is true in a free market, the price of a cure for cancer would be about $87.50. We have neither a cure nor a low price because medicine is regulated. We have more computing power on our laptops than NASA internally had when they sent a man to the moon, but that is because we have had a relative free market in communications and computerization.
Here is Geo Bush on oil prices:
I once made the mistake of suggesting to Bush that he use the phrase cheap energy to describe the aims of his energy policy. He gave me a sharp, squinting look. Cheap energy, he answered, was how we got into this mess. Every year from the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, American cars burned less and less oil per mile traveled. Then in about 1995 that progress stopped. Why? He answered his own question: Because of the gas-guzzling SUV. And what had made the SUV craze possible? This time I answered, “Um, cheap energy?” He nodded at me. Dismissed.David Frum, The Right Man
Govts intervene to keep prices high or higher. The set policies to pick winners and losers. The entire point of the FED is to maintain a bit of inflation, which through the magic of compounding, becomes a huge tax, a boil the frog slowly tactic.
When the gold-based advocates say our currency has lost 95% of its value, that is not very compelling, because no one sees what we have lost. We only see what we have... innoculations, iPods, exotic travel, sushi. Life could not possibly get better, wethinks. But yes it could have, if that loss of buying power was not experienced. What we lost we do not see, as Bastiat noted 250 years ago... and it is not until you experience some kafkaesque malady that you experience the lack of the good of what could have been. Cancer cures, $87.50.
Phone prices have fallen through competition, but a neat trick is to load up taxes as prices fall. When I was a kid, phones were cheap, but long distance was expensive and only for death notices. Today, we spend far more of our household budget on phones. We get far more, but a big chunk of that costs is simply tax, normally running about 25%. Taxes on phones were temporary, to pay for the Vietnam war. That war ended 35 years ago. The taxes are still there. (Many of us simply deducted the tax, refused to pay it, with no deleterious effect in phone service, nor did the warmongering democrats send in the IRS agents.)
I went over my minutes with AT&T last month, and racked up a couple of hundred at .45 each... obviously I need to jack up my free minutes rate. I called and requested they back date my plan so I avoid the undesired .45 charges last month. They agreed. Prices are falling.
I don't have to make as much when prices are falling. Here is my bill for a car at SFO. Note the price the car company is charging is less than $12 a day. Then look at the taxes.
| (2) Time & Distance ($11.74/Day) | $23.48 |
| Inclusive Rate Items | |
| Guaranteed Base Rate | Included |
| Unlimited Miles | Included |
| For information on coverage products, ex:Collision Damage Waiver(CDW) click here | |
| Subtotal | $23.48 |
| Concession Recovery Fee 11.11 % | $2.66 |
| Tourism Fee 3.5 % | $0.82 |
| Airport Access Fee 20.00/rental | $20.00 |
| Vlf Recovery .22/day | $0.44 |
| Sales Tax (9.250%) | $2.42 |
| Subtotal | $26.34 |
| Estimated charges are confirmed based on the information you have provided; only taxes, fees, and surcharges are subject to change. | $49.82 | |
As you see the taxes are more than the rate. But the taxes, you say, pay for the airport. Well, they made too much airport at SFO, and charged to much to enlarge it. If airports were private it would not cost so much to do so much. Chicago is very bad in this regard, and their population is back at 1920 census.
You can tell when the govt is distorting any given market. Prices are rising, and the money going to bigger govt and the winners the govt has chosen, and taken away from the losers necssary wheneveer govt sets a policy. In a free market, prices fall. For us to get out of this economic problem, prices must fall in all categories, some more than others.
The cost of govt must fall, which means the number of people working in govt must be reduced. We need them to join the private economy. But wait you say, who will do their job. Govt work is a response to politics, not customers. Therefore we have no idea if a job in govt would exist in the market. Surely there would be police in a free market. Surely, but its costs and duties wold be based on markets, not politics. Surely there would be roads, and only govt can provide those... well, no, govt neither build nor pay for roads. Private companies build them and taxpayers pay for them. There are more private roads than govt roads in USA in mileage. Private companies would in fact do better for less money: better design, better materials, better routes, lower cost.
Let alone services govt has zero need to provide, such as cheese inspection, or securities inspection. The market is already optimal in these regards.
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