Casey Gilfillan

The sweet spot for any capitalist lies at the extreme exploitative end, nestled between what an item should cost and what the customer is willing to pay for it.

I’ve always felt about economics the way business-oriented folk tend to feel about studies in English and other humanities. Perhaps the response can be reasoned through my lack in understanding, but it just seems like silly, made-up stuff. Silly, made-up stuff mind you, that is used to facilitate the dynamic of puppeteer and his caste-bound puppets.

My first confrontation comes from the idea of Inflation. The price goes up because why exactly? Isn’t the price just whatever is set by the person selling, in the “hey this glass of lemonade costs $0.50” sense of moving capital. Further down the vine, trace it to the source of a possible cause for increase. The glass of lemonade is now $0.75 due to the rising cost of lemons – but what causes the price of the lemons to increase? Well, the lemon farm had a bad season and only produced about two-thirds of their normal output, putting the lemons in high demand, and we all know what happens when lemons are in high demand. Here is where I become lost to logic, embraced by the deep rage that a witness to corruption might bear, because why does high demand mean anything more than the lemons will be sold faster? What ethical justification is there to charge twice the normal rate per lemon, simply because there are less to go around?

The folly of an economic system is not built to maintain anything but the imbalance of class, fatally wounding the affordability of the lower class so that they may not surpass their financial overlords. And lemon farm analogies aside, there is no justification when multi-million dollar corporations steadily raise costs of basic necessities and items, quoting popularity or vague supply chain issues as rationale.

I’ve been generous to consider supply restrictions as one of the primary costs for Inflation, when the more frequent cause is Greed. I’ve observed price increases on mandated, quarterly schedules – predetermined clockwork, irrespective to the true changes to the market and supply chain. The boards and men who sit and collect upon the work of others, they care about profit margins and always how to make them bigger but never how to sustain the very market from which they profit (feed). It is sickening that such a thing is even desired, even more so that it is lawfully sanctioned and subsidized.

The economic structure should be built so that industries can survive dips and upticks in production, not defaulting the burden onto the consumer at exponentially increasing rates. These rates are increased out of “necessity” for temporary strife but never seem to go back down. Isn’t it strange that a pack of gum could be acquired for a mere nickel in the early-to-mid 20^th century, but by only a century later you’d need a minimum of 40 of the coins to achieve the same purchase? Has the rate of hourly wage increased at such a pace? It has not, even in this increasingly more expensive world. Somehow labor has never been less valuable, while the material and intangible goods are all the more costly, propped up by manipulative marketing tactics rather than true worth. Raising the cost of wages would somehow require the surge of retail pricing, but the inverse does not trigger the same causation; a more expensive life, even down to the basic necessities does not necessitate the rise in the cost we are paid, the very means by which we remain alive.

What more is there to say? To change the price because more people want or even need an item is price-gouging, is situation-milking, is unethical and should be unlawful. What is the point of the rule of law but to protect and serve the livelihood of all lives as an overhead shield. If lemons are scarce, nobody’s financial or social status should make them more apt to the availability of the scarcity. An economic system that values and benefits all, regardless of profit margin and personal gain, is the only benefit in having an economic system in the first place. Why bother following rules that allow the wealthy to run circles around and trample egregiously upon me; I struggle to a limp while they gallop to stride. What kind of world have we fostered? A world that values top dollar, the paper token of worth meaningless to an understanding beyond our facticity. All for the dollar, a manmade marker of achievement that is meaningless to God and the Universe and Death, whichever your fear answers to.