In my experience, grocers always do include unit prices…at least in the USA. I’ve lived in Florida, Indiana, California, and New York, and in 35 years of life, I can’t remember ever not seeing the price per oz, per pound, per fl oz, etc. right next to the total price for food/drink and most home goods.
There may be some exceptions, but I’m struggling to think of any except things where weight/volume aren’t really relevant to the value — e.g., a sponge.
Worse, I've seen CVS do things like place a 180-count package of generic medication next to an identically-sized 200-count package of the equivalent name brand, with the generic costing a bit less, but with a slightly higher unit price due to the mismatched quantities.
In Canada I think they are legally required to, but sometimes it can be frustrating if they don’t always compare like units - one product will be price per gram or 100 grams, and another price per kg. I’ve found with online shopping, the unit prices don’t take into account discounts and sale prices, which makes it harder to shop sales (in store seems to be better for this).
It is...kind of. But we're talking about severely limiting the ability of insurers to distinguish high risk parties from low risk parties and price accordingly. When the insured parties have limited agency over the risk they present — as with, e.g., health insurance for congenital diseases — this kind of regulation can make sense. But when insured parties can control the risk, such regulation usually makes insurance markets much less efficient. Essentially, it takes away the incentive for insured parties to avoid risky behaviors, creating moral hazard. This is a well-understood mechanism for market failures.
We already have this problem with car insurance in California. In the 1980s, at the tail end of a long series of stupid initiative ballot measures, Californians wrote down that there are only 2 strata of risk: good drivers, and everyone else. "Good Driver" is defined as a person who has had a license for 3 years without killing or injuring anyone. Because of this, California is the only American state where the law requires that a middle-aged person who drives a base model Honda Fit, and a 19-year-old with a Dodge Hellcat who miraculously hasn't killed anyone, yet, that we know of, both get the same "discount". And consequently it is unlawful here to offer those telematics systems that charge less to good drivers and more to bad ones.
I think it needs to also be acknowledged that insurance itself is a moral hazard. Focusing on the "efficiency" and moral hazards of only the insureds is an incomplete analysis.
Insurance is a for-profit enterprise and as an expert told me, "the goal of insurance companies is to not pay claims". It essentially wants to be passive income at the end of the day.
Modern capitalism runs on insurance but should it? Health insurance is a great example: it shouldn't exist, and is unnecessary in single-payer systems. Car insurance is another example, where you can argue that insurance is locked-in to hide the fact that cars are systematically unsafe. Note how you don't need insurance to ride the subway.
The point is, insurance exists to make rich people richer off of risks that could be addressed socially in other ways. When we see that entire states are losing home insurance because of other systematic problems like climate change we should look at the system itself. Maybe making profit off of people's unavoidable risk isn't a great idea.
EDIT: in response to parent, my point is that focusing on the ills of regulators harming efficiency needs to account for the impossible job regulators have in the first place, which is making an unfair system (insurance) fair.
The way I read it, it’s actually the opposite of what you wrote. You suggested that the Fed relied on inflation numbers that it knew to be too low — i.e. that inflation was understated due to failure to account for substitution effects and the like. In fact, the Boskin commission concluded the opposite — i.e. that inflation figures were overstated in aggregate due to failure to account for things like quality changes and the substitution effect.
No, they suggested it now relies on inflation numbers that it knows to be too low. They said that inflation numbers used to be more realistic, but they have recently been lower than real inflation that consumers experience.
I have nothing to contribute but this video from comedian Rob Paravonian It's probably 20+ years old, but it frequently pops into my mind when I think about the apartments I lived in during my 20s. The materials were shoddy, but the price was right!
It wasn’t clear to me from the article itself, but for those familiar with research in this area: has anybody attempted to disentangle differences caused by genetics vs. by environment per se?
The proposal in the article is to tax wealth at an annual rate of 2%. Not realized gains. Not unrealized gains. Wealth.
Under such a system — unless I've badly misunderstood something — if a billionaire's assets decreased in value over the course of a year, they would still pay 2% on their assets. I can't think of any sense in which a decrease in the value of one's assets would be defined as income.
I have an opinion of the wisdom of a wealth tax, and I could be wrong. Regardless of my opinion, I think it's indisputable that a wealth tax and an income tax are different and that conflating the two makes a debate on the merits much more difficult.
Seems silly to debate a hypothetical tax you extrapolated from a single sentence.
The "billionaire's tax" Biden proposed earlier this year is closer an income tax that also includes unrealized gains and only if there are tens of millions in unrealized gains in that year.
That said: you pay property tax even if the value of your home declines. It's not that crazy.
The whole point of proposals like the one the entire linked article is about is to make it seem like vast sums of money can be raised from seemingly small taxes on a few wealthy people by definining those taxes as an annual percentage of total wealth rather than income. The framing is meant to trick readers into mentally comparing the 2% tax it proposes and the 0-0.5% tax it claims the wealthy are currently paying with the familiar 20-40% or more they have to pay on their own income, when in reality the two are calculated in vastly different ways and the article gives readers no way of putting it in any more meaningful context.
I'd compare the 2% tax to the average yearly gain in the stock market. Based on https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/average-stock-m... it appears that the overage again is about 7% to 10% depending on how you figure it. The rule of thumb that I've heard in investing is 5%.
Therefore, my conclusion is that a 2% wealth tax on the ultra-wealthy on average wouldn't even keep them from gaining wealth; they would just increase their wealth more slowly.
I find the article pretty clear, though brief and not very well written. The actual report it's discussing is crystal clear.
The situation is that the wealthy keep getting wealthier without generating any taxable income. Obviously a minimum income tax rate could not possibly solve this problem unless we also redefine income.
Sure, but I think this is an example of markets working well. Customers don’t want to have to adapt to a new platform every year and are willing to pay for that service. Microsoft recognizes that desire and provides backward compatibility. Microsoft charges a price above what it costs to provide the service but below what their customers are willing to pay. Both parties win. Seems like a good thing.
Rarely have I seen "both parties win" used in describing dealing with Microsoft.
There is tons of documented history of their anti-competitive behavior and deceptive practices. It is not very often that a CEO of a company in a market that is "working well" is called to testify in front of Congress.
You seem to have changed the topic. As the previous poster was saying, them doing this particular thing for money is not bad. It's good. The fact that you're for some reason pulling in unrelated things that Microsoft has done presumably means you agree, but it's a mystery as to why you don't want to say so.
There may be some exceptions, but I’m struggling to think of any except things where weight/volume aren’t really relevant to the value — e.g., a sponge.