Monday, December 19, 2016

Price Control

Supply and demand should determine prices, if consumers spend their own money. When supply exceeds demand, prices should go down and when demand exceeds supply, prices should go up.  This is the primary law of free market economics.  Attempts to violate this law will result in the kind of problems we are experiencing today with the cost of healthcare, government and education. We cannot escape the consequences of violating the laws of economics. Excessive money printing will result in a decline in the value of the money. It creates inflation when that money is spent.

The primary responsibility of a free market economic system is to have the consumers control the prices.  Government subsidies corrupt this process.  Our basic needs should be provided by the private sector and the cost of these goods and services need to be unsubsidized and not over-regulated.  Whenever government assumes responsibility for our basic needs, it removes consumers from their responsibility to control prices.

Insurance is a cash-flow mechanism, not a redistribution system. The original consumers of insurance were merchants whose ships and cargo were subject to being lost, stolen and destroyed.  These shipping companies bought insurance to hedge their risk and sign up for what would basically be a pre-paid loan. They built the cost of insurance into their costs and charged it to their customers.

Insurance companies began to insure lives, buildings and other property and advanced the notion of a debtor economy. When insurance policies began to include health insurance, the risk was low, in the hundreds of dollars, but now health insurance liabilities range in the tens of thousands of dollars.  These third-party payer systems have allowed costs to rise to unsustainable levels.


Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

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