Your confusing the issue yet again...price represents what the aggregate MARKET feels is an efficient outcome.
Ah, but you are missing my point, too. What the market 'feels' can be manipulated. Propaganda works. Advertising works. If what the person actually wants can be manipulated, then the rock-solid predictability of the market can be shifted. This is not a normal market situation any more when the producers can, to a certain extent, manipulate the desire for their products.
But the data also shows that there is a loss in average income and a general move from ownership to being an employee, too. Perhaps you should look at some research, albeit Canadian in focus:
www.research.ryerson.ca/research/job.html
The study shows a general decline in income for the majority of the population, while a small portion have seen a great increase. Is landing a job after Wal-Mart decimates the town such a good thing when the job pays so much less than owning your own business?
Because the economies of scale which you dismiss in Walmart and other larger chains increases the value of the dollar and thus increases the total purchasing power of the consumer.
If you are no longer employed or are now underemployed because of Wal-mart moving in, the increase in the purchasing power of the dollar is offset by the fact that you no longer have any dollars or do not have enough of them to make purchases.
Either increases labor demand.
Explain this please. More money for loan does not directly correlate with an increase in the demand for labour - with all the higgery-jiggery in the stock scene, there are plenty of ways to earn interest without having to invest in a venture that actually employs people. Soros made millions off of currency speculation that didn't employ a single soul, for example. Couple this with the increase in labour *supply* because there is a measurable net loss in jobs when a big business moves into a town, and I think that you are perhaps overstating your case.
And what you term as psychological tricks, i.e. brand identity, is something that consumers want and are willing to pay for.
What they want is the feeling of inclusion. This can get this from their family, their community, their sports team, their friends ... but branding gives them a supposedly easier option where to get into a group of 'committed athletes', all you have to do is buy NIKE. To be on the forefront of technology, all you have to do is buy MS. They don't have to actually *be* a committed athlete or be on the forefront of technology, but the product supposedly assures them that they are there.
Branding textbooks (I have literally read dozens) read like government propaganda textbooks from the old Soviet Union. Why is manipulation of opinion considered acceptable when it is a company doing it and not when it is done by a government?
Huh? I don't understand how paying $120 for a pair of $6 shoes benefits anyone but the producer. Maybe, in some fantasy world, the shoes make the buyer feel more sporty, but they don't actually make the person more sporty, so they are getting sold a bill of goods that isn't there in truth. Perhaps you could explain this further.
This debate is more than a bit off track, and my main point was that 'business as usual' is very different under Hasbro rather than when WotC was running things still stands. Big business looks at the world differently than medium or small business. Can we agree on that much?
