Merged Economics, politics and the election

[JoeMorgue]

What magic? I never implied the Constitution was remotely magical. Still, it is the supreme law of the land.

You talk as if that is something tangible, something, for lack of a better term, "real" instead of just "What a bunch of people decide it is."

 

[Delvo]

It is totally justified because it signals what the gas is actually worth

No it doesn't.

First, the theory of supply & demand is, like biological evolution, a description of how things naturally tend to happen (under certain conditions), not a divine decree of how they should. People who actually do understand what supply & demand really is & does don't worship it as a divine source of ultimate economic guidance & morality any more than people who actually do understand what evolution is worship evolution. (The difference is that, for supply & demand, as anybody claiming that it shows what things are "worth" demonstrates, the worshipers actually exist instead of just being figments of their opponents' imagination.) Even with all of the conditions of the theory perfectly met, the result would be "the point at which the quantity supplied equals the quantity demanded" regardless of the results of making that match happen, not an infallible cosmic "worth" for people to be sacrificed to.

Second, as anybody who ever actually had taken and learned from an actual economics class instead of just a right-wing talk show's blather about it would've learned on the first day, one of the required conditions for supply & demand to even function as described anyway is "perfect competition", which has its own Wikipedia article of roughly the same length as the one on supply & demand. And one of the first, easiest, most obvious examples of competitive imperfection, which breaks the whole supply & demand thing so it doesn't even work as described anymore anyway, is when suppliers have inordinate market power, depriving demanders of the freedom to chose (1) not to demand or (2) which supplier to go for their supply. It essentially makes demanders' "choices" the kind of "choice" you make under threat of death, and that's no actual choice at all, so the conditions of supply & demand are not met. It simply was never meant to describe how much you can extract from people under threat of death. The theory then works about as well as evolution would after the Earth or sun is completely destroyed. (And that's how well it would work at even generating its actual output, "the point at which the quantity supplied equals the quantity demanded", not some imaginary decree of what something is "worth" and thus what the people sacrificed to it are "worth".)

What you've been spouting is not the actual theory of supply & demand. It's dishonest right-wing propaganda about supply & demand which suppliers propagate to keep demanders subservient.

 

[3point14]

It sucks but which do you prefer, driving to and from work while paying a lot or not being able to drive at all?

I think you miss my point.

If the price is controlled, then the poor person can drive to work, allbeit having to wait for ages to fill up.

If the price is gouged they literally cannot afford to drive to work, don't get paid, lose their job, cannot buy food and stop paying taxes.

 

[acbytesla]

You talk as if that is something tangible, something, for lack of a better term, "real" instead of just "What a bunch of people decide it is."

The document is tangible. What they decide however.. ..

 

[rdwight]

Food is unaffordable. But the trend towards eating out and eating processed food started in the 1950s. So let's not pretend it is some kind of new phenomenon. And I don't do much of either. I taught myself how to cook and garden. (Thank you internet) Both of which make a pretty good dent into how much I spend on groceries. I trade tomatoes etc with my neighbor for eggs and jam they make from my fruit trees. But it's not just the processed junk that has gone up in price, fresh produce can be ridiculously expensive. especially when it's off season. Then it's a choice between grotesquely overpriced produce that is so so or overpriced process crap.

I've asked you this before on other topics but what are you basing this on?

Look at which categories had the largest rises. And the smallest. Your view just doesnt match the data.

Groceries are not unaffordable. And not any more so than recent years.

One of the first things they teach in Economics is that it is the study of the allocation of resources. It is the study of choices. Where we invest our resources. And the effects of those choices have on the future.

Shouldn't we apply this to individuals too? We encourage a lot of these things in policy to help low income earners that are not taken advantage of by those they target. Only a small percentage take advantage to the savers credit for example. People want UBI but every study I've seen has shown it to not help, even when ignoring that exorbitant cost.

More and more companies are chasing the wealthy's dollars. High dollar, high profit sales are more attractive than high volume lower profit sales.
I would love to buy a new truck. But the prices for them are insane. I don't need a luxury truck. I would be thrilled to buy a stripped down new truck. But they don't make those any more. I know, because I have looked high and low for one.

My neighbor bought a new truck a couple of years ago. No kidding, it was 6 figures.

Are you blaming companies for producing what consumers buy? I would give this more credence if there were no affordable options but that isnt the case. People want the luxury without the cost. Right now you can get a Ford Maverick truck for $22,595 starting. You mention the Pinto which would be $15,300 inflation adjusted. Nissan Sentra 5 speed starting at 16,680. Is there any comparison of which is more a value buy? If more people buy those types of models, there will be more options.

Letting the rich keep more of their income when we view the results holistically is the definition of insanity. IMV, there is only one reasonable choice. Either corporations sigificantly increase the incomes of their employees or government supplements incomes by taxing the rich significantly more. Neither of which are acceptable to most of the wealthy and the GOP

I don't think tax increases would have the same pushback if there was government spending restraint. There isn't. From either side. And the doom and gloom pushed just doesnt match the reality. There has never been a better time to live and few in any places better to do so than here. Acknowledging that shouldn't be controversial.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

There is no spending restraint on defense or cooperate bailout.

 

[acbytesla]

Are you blaming companies for producing what consumers buy? I would give this more credence if there were no affordable options but that isnt the case. People want the luxury without the cost. Right now you can get a Ford Maverick truck for $22,595 starting. You mention the Pinto which would be $15,300 inflation adjusted. Nissan Sentra 5 speed starting at 16,680. Is there any comparison of which is more a value buy? If more people buy those types of models, there will be more options.

Not one bit. This is the natural evolution to economic conditions. Automobile manufacturers cannot profitably sell high volume vehicles with smaller margins to the masses because fewer and fewer people can afford them. So instead they sell overpriced vehicles loaded with options to high end customers. And as a footnote, the Ford Maverick isn't a pickup. It's a car with a tiny bed in the back. I need a 3/4 ton base pickup that I can tow a trailer or take to the dump, the construction site or to the nursery. What I don't need is a truck with leather interior and every gadget known to mankind.

I'd argue that even the vehicles on the cheaper end of the spectrum are unaffordable to anyone buying them. This is why they push 5, 6, even 7 year financing so people purchasing them. Back in the 70s it was 2 and 3 year loans.

 

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

I mentioned the exorbitant cost of a new car today. What difference does it make if sales have cratered if they're not selling affordable cars to the masses? Where is today's Model A or T that was sold to the masses or the cheap Ford Pinto or Mustang? They made crappy cars back then. But at least they were affordable.

More and more companies are chasing the wealthy's dollars. High dollar, high profit sales are more attractive than high volume lower profit sales.
I would love to buy a new truck. But the prices for them are insane. I don't need a luxury truck. I would be thrilled to buy a stripped down new truck. But they don't make those any more. I know, because I have looked high and low for one.

My neighbor bought a new truck a couple of years ago. No kidding, it was 6 figures.

.

They are out there, you just have to look or build your own. I don't know what you consider a reasonable price though. As posted earlier a base Maverick is around 25K after destination charge. Colorado is $34K. (When I bought mine in 2020 it was $28.2K)

Dealers don't typically keep many (if any) base models on the lot of course, so you either have to look around or build to order.

EDIT: You had already replied, and I see these aren't options for you. Yeah, a 2500 is starting out at $46K these days.

 

[acbytesla]

I don't think tax increases would have the same pushback if there was government spending restraint. There isn't. From either side. And the doom and gloom pushed just doesnt match the reality. There has never been a better time to live and few in any places better to do so than here. Acknowledging that shouldn't be controversial.

Nonsense. And what exactly is government restraint? Cutting the social safety net?

How long do we turn a blind eye to desperately needed infrastructure? We've needed a new I-5 bridge across the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington for 50 years. It was built in 1917. But the reality is we need to replace at least FIVE bridges across this river. The Astoria bridge, the Longview bridge, the I-5 bridge, The Bridge of the Gods, and the Dalles Bridge are all well past their useful lives. And those are just the bridges that should be replaced across that river. Biden's infrastructure bill was barely a bandaid attempting to stem the bleeding of a huge gaping wound.

 

[Darat]

What magic? I never implied the Constitution was remotely magical. Still, it is the supreme law of the land. The only magic I see is how SCOTUS employs slight of hand and misdirection when they interpret it.

Sorry it wasn't aimed at you in that way. It's just we often hear claims "that's unconstitutional" invoked as almost like a prayer - get it in criticism of other countries that don't have the same kind of constitutional system that somehow you have this impregnable magic spell called the constitution. Your SC in the last couple of years has shown that no matter how "settled" folks think things are, no matter what they think their rights are in the end it is up to what half a dozen or so of unaccountable, unelected people say on any given day.

 

[ahhell]

And those who needed it and wouldn't have been able to afford the increased pricing?

Again, it sucks but shortages don't help. They can afford the liter of gas they have wait in line for or don't have access at all vs it costs more for a shorter period of time.

No it doesn't.

First, the theory of supply & demand is, like biological evolution, a description of how things naturally tend to happen (under certain conditions), not a divine decree of how they should. People who actually do understand what supply & demand really is & does don't worship it as a divine source of ultimate economic guidance & morality any more than people who actually do understand what evolution is worship evolution. (The difference is that, for supply & demand, as anybody claiming that it shows what things are "worth" demonstrates, the worshipers actually exist instead of just being figments of their opponents' imagination.) Even with all of the conditions of the theory perfectly met, the result would be "the point at which the quantity supplied equals the quantity demanded" regardless of the results of making that match happen, not an infallible cosmic "worth" for people to be sacrificed to.

Second, as anybody who ever actually had taken and learned from an actual economics class instead of just a right-wing talk show's blather about it would've learned on the first day, one of the required conditions for supply & demand to even function as described anyway is "perfect competition", which has its own Wikipedia article of roughly the same length as the one on supply & demand. And one of the first, easiest, most obvious examples of competitive imperfection, which breaks the whole supply & demand thing so it doesn't even work as described anymore anyway, is when suppliers have inordinate market power, depriving demanders of the freedom to chose (1) not to demand or (2) which supplier to go for their supply. It essentially makes demanders' "choices" the kind of "choice" you make under threat of death, and that's no actual choice at all, so the conditions of supply & demand are not met. It simply was never meant to describe how much you can extract from people under threat of death. The theory then works about as well as evolution would after the Earth or sun is completely destroyed. (And that's how well it would work at even generating its actual output, "the point at which the quantity supplied equals the quantity demanded", not some imaginary decree of what something is "worth" and thus what the people sacrificed to it are "worth".)

What you've been spouting is not the actual theory of supply & demand. It's dishonest right-wing propaganda about supply & demand which suppliers propagate to keep demanders subservient.

I don't actually believe that the majority of economists believe you need a perfect market for supply demand curves to be in effect, a functioning market yes. I'll do some reading as a result of your post though.

I'll also point out that aside from the hypothesis, there is a lot of real world examples of price controls and generally they are associated with either shortages or oversupply.

 

[acbytesla]

Dealers don't typically keep many (if any) base models on the lot of course, so you either have to look around or build to order.
EDIT: You had already replied, and I see these aren't options for you. Yeah, a 2500 is starting out at $46K these days.

This is true on the 2500 and F250 as well. They say you can buy a base model, but nobody has them. They say you can order one and wait. But even that can be close to impossible. And there is no business ever invented that seems to operate more dishonestly than car dealers. If you don't count your fingers every 30 seconds, they will have stolen it. I get too livid dealing with their shenanigans.

 

[Brainster]

I've asked you this before on other topics but what are you basing this on?

On what is needed to support price controls on groceries. Note that he's also implying that we need price controls on trucks, as well. So much for Harris' plan only applying in natural disasters.

 

[acbytesla]

Note that he's also implying that we need price controls on trucks, as well.

I never implied that at all. I was merely pointing to the reality that automobile manufacturers follow the economic realities of an ever increasingly smaller number of people that can afford a mass production vehicle. It's a vicious cycle. Fewer people can afford basic transportation so car companies focus their attention on buyers who have the means to purchase higher profit vehicles. They also limit production of the cheaper vehickes which results in even higher prices.

None of this would be true if there was a wider dispersion of wealth and income.

 

[Brainster]

I never implied that at all. I was merely pointing to the reality that automobile manufacturers follow the economic realities of an ever increasingly smaller number of people that can afford a mass production vehicle.

Not quite sure I follow that; are you suggesting the auto manufacturers are intentionally creating an increasingly smaller market for their products? That is not the way to maximize profits in the short-term and is suicidal in the long term.

 

[acbytesla]

Not quite sure I follow that; are you suggesting the auto manufacturers are intentionally creating an increasingly smaller market for their products? That is not the way to maximize profits in the short-term and is suicidal in the long term.

No, I'm saying fewer people can afford a vehicle the car manufacturers can sell profitably. So in response, the car companies decrease production of these lower margin vehicles and focus on a market they can profitably sell to.

It's really not so much the car companies fault. I don't believe they are price gouging at all. Putting price controls on cars IMV would be a disaster. Still, the cars either need to be cheaper or people need more money to buy them.

My point in this discussion is not to say any specific product is necessarily at fault. But cars, groceries, etc are unaffordable if the public doesn't have the resources to buy them.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

car companies are not in the business of selling cars - they are banks selling car loans.

 

[acbytesla]

car companies are not in the business of selling cars - they are banks selling car loans.

GM for sure.

 

[rdwight]

Not one bit. This is the natural evolution to economic conditions. Automobile manufacturers cannot profitably sell high volume vehicles with smaller margins to the masses because fewer and fewer people can afford them. So instead they sell overpriced vehicles loaded with options to high end customers. And as a footnote, the Ford Maverick isn't a pickup. It's a car with a tiny bed in the back. I need a 3/4 ton base pickup that I can tow a trailer or take to the dump, the construction site or to the nursery. What I don't need is a truck with leather interior and every gadget known to mankind.

There are plenty of lower price options. But your example need makes a point. You have a very specific need for which costs have risen for new models that cover all of them. It's not something we can really attach to the market as a while.

I'd argue that even the vehicles on the cheaper end of the spectrum are unaffordable to anyone buying them. This is why they push 5, 6, even 7 year financing so people purchasing them. Back in the 70s it was 2 and 3 year loans.

No. I used your example of the POS Pinto compared to a modern car with a negligible price increase accounting for inflation. And new cars are not for the poor. The used market has stabilized as well. You might actually end up doing well there on a truck eventually, buying a gently used one from a soccer mom that will meet your needs.

They offer these financing options because people buy more car then they can afford. That's a buyer side issue.

Nonsense. And what exactly is government restraint? Cutting the social safety net?

Well we can look at current policy decisions. The 25k home buyers credit for instance, costing 25 billion per year. Canceling student loan debt, which will help wealthy and high income earners far more than the poor, costing 1.6 trillion. Even without new funding to offset these things, proposals continue that have nothing to do with a social safety net.

 

[acbytesla]

Well we can look at current policy decisions. The 25k home buyers credit for instance, costing 25 billion per year. Canceling student loan debt, which will help wealthy and high income earners far more than the poor, costing 1.6 trillion. Even without new funding to offset these things, proposals continue that have nothing to do with a social safety net.

I noticed you didn't address the infrastructure argument or the social safety net.

My entire life Republicans have been staunch opponents of anything to do with the social safety net. For the life of me, I can't fathom GOP opposition to school lunches. But they do. Republicans loudly oppose Social Security, Medicare, AFDC and every program targeted to help the poor.

When was the last time the Republicans pushed for ANYTHING that would help the poor or middle class directly? Why is it that I have never seen that in a lifetime of being moderately involved in politics?

I'm a huge believer in adult education. But it needs to be useful and affordable. Canceling student debt doesn't just help the wealthy. When I went to college it was at least semi-affordable.

I'm not saying every Democratic proposal is the right one. But at least they are trying. The GOP focuses entirely on helping the wealthy crush the lower class and then spin it.