"The Durabrand 10-inch portable DVD player available at Wal-Mart retails for $199.94. A group of senators would like to raise the price to $254.67"
If you want to protect the working man, then don't interfere when we finally get the opportunity to be able to afford stuff you wealthier people take for granted. I love Wal-mart it has improved my living standard. Unemployment is around 4.7% which is extraordinarily low. When you combine a job with low priced goods, that is a good thing. Ignore the old rust belt bosses and archaic economic thinking, if you raise that price, then I have to go without, and that is a real ,immediate fact, screw your chauvinist ideas that Americans, just have to make shoes or the world will end.
Oh please, give me a break. The unemployment rate by historical standards(meaning how it was measured pre 1990s) is more like 7%, using the U-6 BLS numbers rather than the U-3 they use today. Also with DVD players, an item people get once every five years, a 25% surcharge would work out to 3 cents a day, big whoop.
At hwat cost should we follow "free" trade as it siezes upward mobility up and continues to put down ward pressue on wages? The US economy the last several years has not been moving forward becaue of wage increases, it has gone forward because of home re-fis, and re fis have ben all but exhusted.
That detail aside, I won't buy either of the example products. In Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" parlance, these things are non-essential "doo dads". A terrible way to invest your hard earned money. Raising the price higher just makes them more expensive "doo dads" that are less worthy of purchase. I'm happy to "do without" such items. I would rather invest that money into something that will pay me in the future.