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Mar

30

Milkers of PA Hurt Giant Eagle Customers

March 30, 2006 |

Unwittingly, the Peoples’ Republik of PA Milk Board may have put their foot in the proverbial “it” by messing with the very popular Giant Eagle Fuel Perks program.

You see, milk in PA is not allowed to be sold below a government mandated price despite the fact that it can be produced in quantities large enough to make it much cheaper than the price at which it is allowed to be sold. Every so many years, the Milk Marketing Board gets together and decides to adjust the price upwards, thus forcing the price of dairy products up — all in order to help out those in the business of milking cows.

PerksLogo_293_x_187.gifNow, enter Giant Eagle’s competitors and Fuel Perks. They do not like the fact that Giant Eagle is efficient enough to be able to offer their Fuel Perks program, where for every $50 you spend, you get $ .10 off a gallon of gas you purchase at the Giant Eagle-owned GetGo convenience stores. Those competitors, incapable of offering their own consumers the same benefits, decided to incapacitate Giant Eagle’s ability to do so. To accomplish this, they found the Milk Board’s floor prices, and complained that Giant Eagle was selling dairy below the state-minimum if dairy sales were included in the $50 increments for rebate points at the GetGo pump. The Milk Board agreed.

Fuel Perks folks, take note: Giant Eagle’s competitors - in both the supermarket and gas industries –have gone out of their way to make you to pay more!!! So, to hell with their competitors, I say!! I will now go wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy out of my way to shop at Giant Eagle to make up for having lost my milk bonuses. Those of you with a fleet of milk drinking teenage boys around the house ought to consider the same!

But let’s get back to this Milkers’ Protection Board. AND, I would imagine that this news puts their little, forgotten fiefdom right, smack in the spotlight of public scrutiny, where they probably didn’t want.

millkecow.jpgFor some reason, cow milkers are more important than other people; So much so, that they are granted the privilege (along with the fat union-waged, government-pensioned flunkies at the Milk Board) to force consumers to pay more than the market would otherwise bear for dairy products.

Politicians, always eager for a vote that benefits their supporters, tell us that this 1930s era laws (which was as economically stupid then as it is now) helps stop job losses. Of course, this minimum price does prevent job loses — for the milkers, at least. But, that victory for the milkers means paying them to do their job in a way that the consumer no longer wants from them. And as such, it comes at the expense of everyone else who buys dairy products (which would seem obvious enough), as well as at the expense of those who drink Soy, ginger ale, and tap water.

How so, you ask?

Let’s assume for a moment, there was not a blacksmiths’ protection…er…, excuse me… I mean “milkers’” protection law on the books. Prices for milk would drop a good bit, and that would result in a consolidation of the milkers’ industry so that only the most efficient milkers with the best dairy business acumen would survive in the business of providing milk. Consequently, consumers would save a good deal on each gallon they buy.

cows.jpgStated another way, the consumer ends up wealthier without a Horse Drawn Carriage Makers’ Enrichment Ac… whoops… I mean to say, a Milkers’ Enrichment Act since, with the lower price, they’d have money left over after they are done with their dairy purchases. Consumers would then be free to save it (which is another way of saying they would invest it into the economy through savings or investment vehicles), or spend it elsewhere. Either choice creates jobs and economic growth when you compound the tens of millions of dollars PA residents are forced to over-spend for their dairy.

Moreover, as taxpayers they would simultaneously benefit because PA could save millions of dollars by closing the Milk Board once and for all. They’d stop wasting money on an entire 34 person department that is getting paid to move money from producers to out of date business models, while taking a fat cut in the process.

Would this cost a few jobs? Sadly, it would. But newer jobs would crop up that actually contribute to the economy (vs. acting in a parasite-host relationship) in their place.

Finally, in doing so, Giant Eagle and their customers would have restored to them their right, as supposedly “free people” living in the alleged “land of the free” to play around with perks at the pump however they damned well please.

That, dear readers, is the recipe for action. Call your state senator and representative today.

NOTE: Since this article does have an economic bent to it, it is only fair to point out that smaller business — regardless if they are milkers, manufacturers, or money managers, are always at a disadvantage to larger businesses when it comes to compliance with regulation and tax laws.

rendell.jpgIndeed, the super-mega corporations that can afford to hire armies of attorneys, accountants and administrators because they have the critical mass, are actually behind many of the regulations your hear about. The net result is that a smaller business cannot afford the associated extra costs and time to jump through these costly hoops just to do legally minimize their taxes or to prove they are not crooks, whereas the large businesses can. Hence, in our example above, the milkers would be forced to suffer under this problem just like any other business.

The solution, obviously, is for politicians to simplify. This would save the economy hundreds of billions a year in compliance and time wasting costs, and force thousands and thousands of compliance related jobs - attorneys, CPAs, administrators and bureaucrats — the human anchors on the economy — into more productive jobs. Simply, this sort of restructuring would level the playing field and help restore the fading American Dream, while ending our current, strangling, parasite-host economic system. It is long overdue, and would make the U.S. dramatically more competitive on the global scale, slowing the current breakneck pace of skilled job losses to foreign nations we currently experience.

So, people — Rally! Rally now with the Operation Clean Sweep people, and restore common sense and sanity on the subjects mentioned above!


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