tandempower

Yes, I used to think the same way. Indeed there is a sort of conspiracy in favor of full-timers. It's because full-timers are respected and valued more as being more devoted to sacrificing more of their time to their job. Also, there are norms and standards from which hourly income rates, rents, prices, etc. are based and so if a large segment of the population works full-time, prices rise to meet what people can afford and, as a result, more people are pushed to work full time to keep up with prices, or even to combine into multi-income households.

Indeed, it wouldn't matter if prices were kept low, either artificially by government or naturally by strong, broad frugal consumer discipline. In case you haven't noticed, however, big governments the world over employ anti-deflationary strategies to prevent prices from going down to levels that would promote less full-time employment. The proverbial 'They' really do want to keep us stuck at work as much as possible for some reason.

I suspect it's because having more disposable income to spend with less time to spend it engenders us to spend larger amounts at a time and spend more on time-saving expenditures like driving, expedited services, etc. Give us time to wait and do things for ourselves patiently and we might spend less, which would reduce revenues, which would mean employing us for less and less time. Then if having loads of free time was a norm of the labor market, it would be that much harder to motivate 'those lazy bums' to do all those service jobs that create the privileges for privileged classes.

Walter S

I was with you till the big government thing. The world is simpler than you think.

Who are these big government people you're talking about? I guess there's a network of rich people that pay them to somehow keep prices high? Good story for the national inquirer.

Machka 

Methinks that's one of his favourite publications.

I-Like-To-Bike

The Onion or perhaps the North Korean Ledger or equivalent might be the appropriate spot for the imaginative and novel over-the-top commentary posted here.

tandempower

I guess you don't follow the financial news. The US has been engaged in various stimulus policies for a number of years, while the Federal Reserve Bank maintains low interest rates and has been buying bonds in an effort to further stimulate stock investment. Now they've been shifting the bond-buying policy to the EU central bank in order to allow US interest rates to rise without provoking a deflationary trend. Indeed the world is simple. Interest rates get lowered and money gets borrowed. People keep spending borrowed money and so businesses keep their prices high. It's not complex. It's just disturbing because so much dishonest business is subsidized, along with the maintenance of artificial social-economic classes.

tandempower

I can't tell if people like you two who whitewash wrongdoing and attack others for talking about it are intentionally protecting it or just ignorant.

Machka 

You and all your conspiracy theories, which you are spreading all over this forum and which have absolutely nothing to do with living car free or light, really, urgently need to go for a long, long bicycle ride. Get some fresh air. Take in some scenery. Get away from it all for a while.

Take a day and go for a long ride ... take a week and do a short tour ... take a month or two and go visit North Dakota.

I-Like-To-Bike

Camping in the wild and outdoor showers in North Dakota in January would be stimulating and inspire lots of imaginative thoughts and theories.

tandempower

Mind your own business unless you have something to add. You don't have the right to tell other people to shut up, especially if they're not saying anything to attack you personally. You may not like my posts but if I'm not saying anything negative about you personally, why should you pester me?

Machka 

Your posts are not about anything related to Living Car Free.

If you want to talk conspiracy theories regarding business and politics, there's a forum for that. It's the P&R forum. This, on the other hand, is the Living Car Free forum.

Do you even know what the original question in this thread was?

Walter S

Thank you for pointing that out. I understand better the kind of influences on price that you're talking about. My understanding of economics is limited. I'll accept then for a moment at least, that any of your stated or implied cause and effect relationships are completely valid.

But how do you make the leap from observing these phenomenon, to deciding that the government is doing all this specifically in order to keep prices high and fatten the pockets of rich people at the expense of the poor? I find no factual support for that. My perhaps naive working assumption is that interest rate changes are made with the interests of a broad range of citizens involved and to protect our economy in general.

There has been a saddening and ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Economic policy changes since the 1950s might have a lot to do with that.

CbadRider

And we're done here. This thread is taking a political bend with the talk about the government so instead of moving it to P&R, I'm just going to close it to stop the bickering.