Ridiculous profits? OK. Have you ever worked for a poor person?
I agree with the ‘have you ever worked for a poor person?’ argument. And I have been in business, myself.
My reference to ‘ridiculous profits’ was regarding food prices- third world production jacked up for the American market. They pay pennies on the several dollars. Now, they’re selling crap for 2 or 3 times what it used to cost.
If I may address an area I know more about than oil or food production. Women’s clothing. Or clothing in general. Let’s say a blouse, made in the third world. probably costs, at most, $25 to make (including the designer, spread out over several thousand items). Neiman Marcus sells it for $300 or $400. Isn’t that a little much? The shareholders would not have wound up ‘’poor’’ or ‘’lost money’’ had the item been sold for $200 or even $150. It’s just greed.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. AND Unintended consequences.
Too bad their mommies never told them the story about The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg when they were little. Cause you know what? The goose ain’t looking so good.
What will they have when their remaining customers can no longer sustain them in the style to which they’ve become accustomed? This is real life.
Economic theories & ideologies are all well & good, but when they fail in real life- when people go too far & take things to an unreasonable extreme. . . (shrug) It *sounds* good. On paper.
I confess I don’t have much sympathy for oil companies.
Welcome to our world. As we’ve had to cut back & do without & run up painful credit card debt- just so we could pay for the gas we had to use in the course of our jobs, our economy lost big time. It’s not because people were ‘’living beyond their means’’, either. Some of us were well beneath our means when all this started last decade.
They’ll live through it too. Or at least learn to live with it. Sorry.