[Pox]

I don't doubt that many illegal aliens are being payed under the table for their labor in the sugar industry, but I did not claim that higher wholesale price is derived from that. While I don't know the numbers of illegals in that industry, at least efforts are being made across the board to rein in those employers who are using such labor. Maybe not sufficient efforts, but better than nothing at this point.

The perverse side of the illegal immigrant labor issue is the fact that those savings are not being passed on to the consumer. That is likely true for most industries benefiting from cheap labor. It's not too difficult to see where those savings go.

You keep whining about raw materials pricing but that has little to do with the end cost of our products. Once again, reign in the outrageous regulations and absurd union costs, not to mention overhead from investor payouts (have to please those investors and cough up dividends, not a major problem but it has an effect that can't be ignored at all levels of a corporation) and employers (an issue that does exist, but not a major problem overall), and you'll get a better balance, IMO. There are a lot of factors to consider and the price of raw materials is low on the list.

Hershey can kiss my ass if they leave. I couldn't care less. That move will not come from raw material pricing. If they do move, there is no reason their finished product should also not have a tariff as their sidestepping the rules we have saddled ourselves with in this country should end up with that result. In your example, it is more than possible for a company to step in and replace Hershey if they are able to squash union uselessness (see Foreign Automakers for a very good example) and even more if they can in any way reduce the overbearing burden of excessive and unnecessary regulations.

The playing field can be leveled with occasional impositions of tariffs, and they should always be used sparingly, but again, the crying of those who bitch about not getting the lowest possible price is the song of ignorance, IMO. If I would see the benefit at the consumption level, I could be more for it, but that is not the result I've witnessed in my lifetime.

[Wuli]

“You keep whining about raw materials pricing but that has little to do with the end cost of our products.”

I am really sorry but in your ignorance you ignore that that is not me “whining” but the owners and management of many manufacturing companies that KNOW that to be one of their biggest problems, that is THEIR position, and they ought to know.

It is fine that you understand that some companies are most beleaguered by many other problems, such as unions and regulations.

Your mistake is in using those additional problems as scapegoats and excuses for ignoring our problems, to domestic manufacturers, arising greatly on occasion from our own import restrictions. Ignoring that those issues exist and are real does not make them figments of the imagination of the manufacturers that report them.

[Wuli]

“Hershey can kiss my ass if they leave. I couldn’t care less. That move will not come from raw material pricing.”

And just how is is that you are more informed about their industry and their own busimess than they are??

[Wuli]

“If I would see the benefit at the consumption level, I could be more for it, but that is not the result I’ve witnessed in my lifetime.”

That is another one of your statements demonstrating a disdain for any financial benefit that is not a benefit demonstrated in the retail consumer price. You have directly complained about an improvement in cost going to investors dividends, and executive compensation instead of a lower price to you.

You’ve never run a company built on capital others have taken the risk to invest.

By your logic a business whose largest problem, in comparison with their competitors, is in attracting new capital for improving the business, and you would have them go ahead and fail to do that, by raising their divdends, and give it all to you in a lower grocery store price, down from a price that is already the lowest in the market.

Your biggest failure is your disrgard for the business as a consumer, who is as entitled as you are to look for the “best price” and to complain when it is “excessive regulation” that is keeping him from getting it.