[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Itse

Prices especially in late-stage capitalism are dictated primarily by supply and demand, not costs...

In theory what you stated was great. In application it kind of fails against how the American system works. What you've described is more classic capitalism than late-stage capitalism IMO. What you've left out are your definition and discussion are the actual manipulations of the market put in place by the monopolies, the robber barons, and their paid for servants in Washington (and state houses around the nation). You're referencing a free- market mindset where supply and demand establish prices, which is clearly not the case in the United States. The government creates these trade barriers, where the costs are passed onto the consumer, then monopolies use those price increases to raise their prices and generate greater profits. Worse, the government then piles on "incentives" or subsidies to certain participants in the market which are derived directly from taxes, so the people take in the ass coming and going. That's late-stage capitalism, what we've seen in the economy, not what you've described (which was a great description of how the market should work - freely).

It is absolutely just not true that tariffs on Chinese imports are automatically paid for by US regular people.

Can you point to any examples of these tariffs NOT being passed onto the consumer in the Trump era? Because every indication is those tariffs have been treated like a cost and then just passed onto the consumer to spike greater inflation.

If companies could just move all costs into customer prices, it wouldn't make sense for them to burm large piles of money fighting regulations and taxes, and busting unions to keep the costs down.

That's some serious Utopian thinking. You still need to make your product affordable to consumers. If costs are at a certain level you can combat those forces by controlling others like regulations and labor. If spending one dollar controlling regulations and labor mean I make two dollars in additional profit and don't impact the cost of product to consumers, hence not impacting my market, then that's a great use of funds and still makes me more money. If I just accepted those forces and passed those costs of business onto the consumer I would quickly see me outprice my product and lose my market all together.