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I attended the University of British Columbia Forestry School as a graduate student in the early 1970's.
After a bit, I started understanding the sale of public timber in British Columbia. I told the economics professor..."so basically, your giving away public timber to the corporations (it was 1973, and I previously was at Berkeley).
His answer, was "we don't care about selling the timber and returns to the Provincial government. The point is to create jobs and keep the timber industry in BC strong". It was funny, that the Canadians NEVER could understand the concept of bidding for public timber. The thought, NEVER crossed their minds.
The second link was a complete hoot!!! I would like to say "clueless in Canada", but the BC government as well as the corporations operating in Canada (some of which are American) know full well the extent of the government subsidies.
BUT on the flip side. BC and Canada know exactly what they are doing. They just have a different way of looking at private versus public resources. Canada has always had a corporate mentality and quite frankly viewed the government and corporations as ONE.
Who are we in the US to change Canadian political values??
Calm down guys we're getting a multi trillion stimulus bill to create jobs and build infrastructure. We'll have a bunch of people sitting around with jobs but no materials to use.
Create jobs? My contractor and my landscapers have departed because the worker bees have opted to just stay home and get more money under the new expanded unemployment program.
Ah yes, the dilemma with tariffs. Despite all the claims to the contrary, tariffs are paid by consumers and those producers whose profits are being protected by them take advantage. Witness beer tariffs in the Bahamas. There is a duty of about $1 per bottle on imported beer. The local brewers wholesale locally brewed Bahamian beer for the same price as the imported beer after the $1, effectively making $1 extra profit per bottle, an undisguised gift from the government to the owners of the breweries. Crony capitalism takes many forms.
I disagree. Tariffs are put in place to assure local production of an item can take place and compete, and are necessary to assure a country doesn't become a nation of jobless consumers purchasing all imported items. England, for example, has some of the most expensive living costs in the world, yet protects domestic production of many items with a [b]40%+ import tariff/B] When a nation goes down the consumer path, and simply prints more money instead of solving the problem, we see perpetual currency devaluation and the continued acceleration of inflation and cheap imports. The end game becomes a Greece like existence of continuous bailouts and financial failure.
To compare, say the Bahama's lifted all the tariffs on beer. First, everyone is happy because beer goes down $1 to say $4 per bottle. Pretty soon all the local Bahamian Beer companies are gone and all there is is import beer. The beer company workers are now jobless and maybe homeless, the taxes they and their workers paid into the system are gone. Yet taxes get raised on the remaining workers in other markets for their paying for all the safety net programs. The country experiences deficits because it doesn't produce nearly as much as it consumes, and is forced to print money to keep operating, which further devalues the currency. Now lacking the local competition, the import beer gets watered down with recycled waste water and the price increases to $7 a bottle. Of that $7 a bottle, $1 goes to the "Bahamian Big Guy" to assure that the tariffs are never put back in place. So you've got jobless, homeless, more taxes, devalued currency, and corruption....kind of like another country I know.
A simple example is beef-liver. Many stores now only carry it in their freezers.......because it just sits and sits and they do not want to have to throw it out. But the little liver that many stores carry in their freezers is not selling for 99-cents a pound, but $5 a pound. So they sell a lot less, but make-up for it by charging much more and having nearly no product that is thrown away.
I would gladly pay more than $5 per pound not to eat liver.
I disagree. Tariffs are put in place to assure local production of an item can take place and compete, and are necessary to assure a country doesn't become a nation of jobless consumers purchasing all imported items. England, for example, has some of the most expensive living costs in the world, yet protects domestic production of many items with a [b]40%+ import tariff/B] When a nation goes down the consumer path, and simply prints more money instead of solving the problem, we see perpetual currency devaluation and the continued acceleration of inflation and cheap imports. The end game becomes a Greece like existence of continuous bailouts and financial failure.
To compare, say the Bahama's lifted all the tariffs on beer. First, everyone is happy because beer goes down $1 to say $4 per bottle. Pretty soon all the local Bahamian Beer companies are gone and all there is is import beer. The beer company workers are now jobless and maybe homeless, the taxes they and their workers paid into the system are gone. Yet taxes get raised on the remaining workers in other markets for their paying for all the safety net programs. The country experiences deficits because it doesn't produce nearly as much as it consumes, and is forced to print money to keep operating, which further devalues the currency. Now lacking the local competition, the import beer gets watered down with recycled waste water and the price increases to $7 a bottle. Of that $7 a bottle, $1 goes to the "Bahamian Big Guy" to assure that the tariffs are never put back in place. So you've got jobless, homeless, more taxes, devalued currency, and corruption....kind of like another country I know.
Excellent take. What if the Bahamian brewer didn't raise his price by $1 per bottle and demand skyrocketed for local beer because it was $1 cheaper and he had to expand the brewery and hire more workers? Then again, maybe he increased wages and benefits with the extra profit but I'm thinking that didn't happen. Anyway, thanks for opening my eyes to seeing it from another angle.
I would gladly pay more than $5 per pound not to eat liver.
I used to go to LUby to get my share of beef liver and onion,they go together like horse and carriage.
They sell pork liver in Chinese supermarket,when H Mart first open,it was 55 cents /lb,no it is over $1.29
Never see beef liver in Chinese supermarket,but they do sell grass fed beef? Beef tenderloin,beef tendons,beef shank,beef neckbones are popular.
If you believe such a thing exists, please cite a published, agreed upon definition used in scholarly research.
What, you can't do so? Like I said, there is no such thing as price gouging.
It violates your set of restrictions but the great state of Texas and several others define price gouging and it can be a crime. The fact is across economics there is no consensus as to what price gouging is exactly and a few argue price gouging isn't possible.
IMO there are three broad price gouging tracks.
A. Fear exploitation. A hurricane is coming, "let's raise the price of generators."
B. False scarcity. A deep freeze is coming, "we only have two gas stoves left".......when there are 10 or whatever in the back.
C. Related to anti-trust behaviors.....planned predatory pricing.......the old Standard Oil play. Drive the competition out of business and then raise prices beyond earlier levels. A certain massive discount chain has been busted for this little trick in Oklahoma several times. FWIIW OK has very clear predatory pricing laws.......most states do not.
Excellent take. What if the Bahamian brewer didn't raise his price by $1 per bottle and demand skyrocketed for local beer because it was $1 cheaper and he had to expand the brewery and hire more workers? Then again, maybe he increased wages and benefits with the extra profit but I'm thinking that didn't happen. Anyway, thanks for opening my eyes to seeing it from another angle.
This would of course depend on the cost/profits of the local brewery. Those who are smart in business realize that expanding sales volume and production is the key to profitability and a system that works. I.E. lets do a $1million in sales at a net profit of 10% ($100K) instead of trying to get a 25% profit and only end up with $200K in sales ($50k profit).
I was looking at things as if they aren't profitable and needed that $1 tariff to be able to operate at all, or would have to operate at a loss to compete with foreign imports, which is often the case as many countries have lower costs of living and cheaper wages. Our areas lumber mills were mostly closed for almost a decade and Canadian import lumber dominated the market, until Trumps tariffs allowed them to be profitable and compete again. Somewhere in the supply chain now though, greed has to be happening. There is no way to justify a sheet of 7/16" OSB now being 5X the price of what it was in January of 2020. Yes that's correct, $51.45 a sheet yesterday at "orange square".
This would of course depend on the cost/profits of the local brewery. Those who are smart in business realize that expanding sales volume and production is the key to profitability and a system that works. I.E. lets do a $1million in sales at a net profit of 10% ($100K) instead of trying to get a 25% profit and only end up with $200K in sales ($50k profit).
I was looking at things as if they aren't profitable and needed that $1 tariff to be able to operate at all, or would have to operate at a loss to compete with foreign imports, which is often the case as many countries have lower costs of living and cheaper wages. Our areas lumber mills were mostly closed for almost a decade and Canadian import lumber dominated the market, until Trumps tariffs allowed them to be profitable and compete again. Somewhere in the supply chain now though, greed has to be happening. There is no way to justify a sheet of 7/16" OSB now being 5X the price of what it was in January of 2020. Yes that's correct, $51.45 a sheet yesterday at "orange square".
Generally speaking and we have 100+ years of pretty good data on this, tariff protected companies tend to restrict output relative to current demand for a couple of reasons.......A). growing implies risk taking. B). a consistently short supply helps justify tariff inflated prices.........."Jim we aren't ripping your off because of the tarrifs but we only have X to sell this month" or whatever.
Relatedly, right now part of our lumber shortage is due to the fact that US lumber producers have been unwilling to add second and third shifts at their large sawmills. They are simply restricting output behind a tariff. This is complicated by the fact that some of these mills have also been hit pretty hard by covid and we have freakish demand across sub-markets like pressure treated pine* and OSB as you noted.
FWIIW I'm not really bashing Trump's tariffs. The Chinese have been screwing us over across many markets for decades. The Canadians similarly in softwoods.
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We had our lake house "sea-wall" replaced last year...........in late '19 we were on an 8 month waiting list. The contractor said something like, "this is going to sound like BS but you'd better buy your PT pine in advance I don't think I'll be able to get enough this summer" we needed several hundred board feet of 2"x12" up to 16 feet. I bought in advance thinking I was a fool. He was right.
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