A Quote by Evan Davis
My instinct is to assume that we consumers are an inconsistent bunch. We like competition if it delivers low prices, but grumble if it delivers the bad news that prices need to go up.
Related Quotes
I raised my prices since there wasn't any competition it was just the smart thing to do. Why would I keep my prices up if their wasn't anyone to beat?
Who can complain about the price that Google is charging you? Or who can complain about Amazon's prices; they are simply lower than the competition's. And that's why I think we need to shift back to a more Brandeisian conception of antitrust, where we consider values other than simply efficiency and low prices.
To economists, prices serve as crucial signals to producers and consumers. In a regulated market, the state sets prices high enough for private companies to cover their costs and earn a guaranteed profit for their investors. But in a deregulated market, prices should vary with demand and supply.
High prices can be the result of speculation, and maybe plunging prices can be attributed to the end of speculation, but low prices over time aren't caused by speculation. That's oversupply, mainly by Saudi Arabia flooding the market with low-priced oil to discourage rival oil producers, whether it's Russian oil or American fracking.
People were desperately trying to fill their seats for the summer. And so prices are really low right now. And so they are kept from raising prices to make up for that difference.
You can't tell me you can make any system or country work with low wages and high prices, and high wages with high prices don't mean anything when the prices eat up the wages and don't leave anything over.
Just from a political perspective, do you think the president of the United States going into re-election wants gas prices to go up higher? Look, here's the bottom line with respect to gas prices: I want gas prices lower because they hurt families.
Lower oil prices won't, by themselves, topple the mullahs in Iran. But it's significant that, historically, when oil prices have been low, Iranian reformers have been ascendant and radicals relatively subdued, and vice versa when prices have been high.
Competition is good for consumers. It provides more choices at better prices.
There is no such thing as agflation. Rising commodity prices, or increases in any prices, do not cause inflation. Inflation is what causes prices to rise. Of course, in market economies, prices for individual goods and services rise and fall based on changes in supply and demand, but it is only through inflation that prices rise in aggregate.
Life just happens the way it's supposed to happen. It delivers you to where it delivers you.
The problem is, to have prices fall would work fine if we didn't have all these built in rigidities on downward prices, because then things don't adjust, and that's how we have recessions and depressions, is prices and costs don't adjust together and they get out of whack, and we end up with dislocations.
If commodity prices are no longer going up then food prices in the grocery store will no longer go up, at some point.
When prices are transparent and competition is encouraged, consumers win. We believe that can prove true in health care as it has in every other area of the American economy.
The most common cause of low prices is pessimism - sometimes pervasive, sometimes specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces.
This continuing spike in gas prices is bad for consumers, bad for our economy, and bad for all other businesses. It is hurting us and costing us jobs.
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