In consumerist economies it appears that the price difference between perishables and non-perishables is neither non-existent or counter-intuitive.
in particular the price you pay for something is hardly ever appears to be the real cost of production or the amount of resource (natural/human) that took to produce the thing, rather the price seems to be determined by what the consumer is willing to pay for it. i do find it extremely odd that i can buy electronic equipment for the price of a meal!
somehow there is a marked difference between the cost of perishables and non-perishables in semi-socialistic economies.
i dont know if its because these economies deliberate add levies to "luxury" goods to subsidize the price of the "commodity" goods so that they are affordable to every one in society.
somehow my gut feel is that perishables (e.g. good) should be "cheaper" than imperishables (e.g. appliances, electronics).
im running a serious risk of mixing cause and effect here -- are the prices different because of the policies enforced or is it because my gut feel for price of production is inherently wrong?
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3 comments:
not sure i agree w/ the observation. assuming PA is a consumerist society, a loaf of bread is $1.20. maybe you're mixing the service industry with "perishables"?
no .. im aware that the service sector does "value-added pricing" so thats an unfair comparison .. i meant actual food..
a watermelon costs more than a hair-dryer which is unacceptable to me since the cost of a hair-dryer gets amortized over time whereas the watermelon has no such amortization and therefore should be cheaper to encourage me to buy it :-)
wow, cheap hair-dryers! so is your issue: "all perishables should be cheaper than all non-perishables", or is it "life-sustaining perishables should be cheaper than non-perishables"? I mean, I'm sure you can come up with theories for expensive watermelons (or say, imported Indian mangoes :)... so I'm just not sure it's the quality of being perishable that matters.
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