Might be like the auto industry in the 1980s
So how come I'm buying Gerolsteiner for $0.89/liter in glass bottles all they way from Krautland where the wages are high, with an unfavorable exchange rate and transportation half way around the world - and local water in plastic bottles costs as much?
Remember the "self-imposed" quotas of Japanese cars back then? Since they were limited on how many cars they could send to USA annually, they loaded up everything with as many options as possible to maximize profit, and sent mostly their top of the line models. Detroit had demanded the quotas so that they "could compete fairly".
So what happened? When Detroit saw the sticker prices of the cars coming from Japan, they jacked up
THEIR prices to be "just a hair below" what the Japanese prices were to maximize their profits.
I'd bet that your local water bottle firms are doing the same.
lincoln
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the United States.
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