Igor The Terrible wrote...
It's a huge conspiracy. Remember that the inflation rate is the AVERAGE rate of the price increase of a selected basket of consumer products. There is no law requiring the price of any individual item in the basket to rise at the same rate as the average. A tomato blight breaks out and the price of tomatoes increases 50%, is that a criminal offense because the average inflation rate is 4%?
I'm bothered that Congress is "investigating" the recent gasoline price spike. They are so outraged that the oil companies dared to make a profit while American SUV owners paid $3-gallon for gas and they are demanding an explanation in congressional hearings. Of course, one might ask if the righteous unselfish congressmen were so concerned about selfish oil company greed, why they haven't created their own non-profit oil company to refine gasoline to sell at cost to the poor SUV owners.
I thought America stood for the capitalist free market. In other words, the market sets the price and not the government. The alternative is government price controls, so you wind up with fabulously low prices and no products available at those prices. Soviet citizens only had to pay a penny a gallon for gasoline, they simply had to wait 3 years for their ration (not to mention the 6-year waiting list for cars).
