Posted on 06/28/2007 6:50:28 PM PDT by Rick_Michael
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Thursday abandoned a 96-year-old ban on manufacturers and retailers setting price floors for products.
In a 5-4 decision, the court said that agreements on minimum prices are legal if they promote competition.
The ruling means that accusations of minimum pricing pacts will be evaluated case by case..............
"The only safe predictions to make about today's decision are that it will likely raise the price of goods at retail," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in dissent.........
Joining Kennedy in the majority were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. With Breyer in dissent were Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The case is Leegin v. PSKS, 06-480.
I think it’s a good decesion...as long as subsidized foreign businesses don’t get an advantage.
I remember very early in Reagan's 1st term that he removed the price controls on gasoline. At that time I was paying about $1.22/gallon if I remember correctly. Frank Reynolds open the ABC World News Tonight broadcast that day with this: "President Reagan guaranteed that the price of gas will go up today."
Within a few months I was paying less than 70 cents a gallon.
When John Roberts became Chief Justice, I stated that I hoped that Robert would persuade Kennedy to come back from the "Dark Side." This has apparently been the case.
Hopefully Ginsburg and Stevens will be leaving the court in the near future, and they can be replaced by Roberts/Scalia/Alito clones!
In Maryland, it is illegal to sell gas at a cheap price.
No, this is not a joke.
It is both odd and amusing that the Supremes would be asked and actually hand down a decision from on high something that every citizen should know to be correct and immutable by the age of 6.
This could be great for artists:
Create a unique art piece that any reasonable dealer would sell for $1000. Set the minimum price at $50 million.
While a thousand people may have been eager to buy it cheaply, it is now only available to billionaires who don’t care what the difference is between $1000 and $50 million.
I, on the other hand, think that the market should be allowed to operate as such. Sooner or later, it will reach equilibrium. There really is no choice.
It's like gravity, not only is it a good idea; it's the law.
” I remember very early in Reagan’s 1st term that he removed the price controls on gasoline. At that time I was paying about $1.22/gallon if I remember correctly. Frank Reynolds open the ABC World News Tonight broadcast that day with this: “President Reagan guaranteed that the price of gas will go up today.”
Within a few months I was paying less than 70 cents a gallon.”
OMG...competition...what’s that!? ; P
I have already positioned myself to benifit from the long term change.
>I think it’s a good decesion...as long as subsidized foreign businesses don’t get an advantage.
Hopefully, that is a joke, or were you forgetting the 100% controlled price floor, set by Iran, Iraq, SA, Kuwait and the other cartel members of the OPEC monopoly that is owned by the (hostile) foreign governments that control crude oil supplies?
Even so, the gas prices in Maryland have long been lower than those in Delaware. For years I would fill my tank in Marydel, while picking up beer on a Sunday.
How does legally condoned collusion to set a minimum price result in competition? What happens when every retailer in town has a surplus of an item with a fixed minimum price? There is no ability to set a "clearance" price to retrieve some value from inventory that is wasting space on the shelf. It's more stupid nanny state interference in the free market.
I’m well aware of that. Fortunately we primarily depend on Canada. I would love to leave OPEC in the background.
Should be OK if they aren’t colluding with other manufacturers.
Probably a Depression era law. That was an age when government encouraged price fixing on the theory that prices were too low. A lot of those laws are still on the books.
The minimum pricing is used against industry competition.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1572002/posts
Small dairyman shakes up milk industry
I haven’t read the decision, but I suspect that they are only saying that a manufacturer can set a minimum price that its dealers can sell its product at. That does not restrict competition at the factory level, and although it does restrict it at the retail level, it’s only a restriction on that particular manufacturer’s dealers. Manufacturers already have a whole lot of control over there own dealers anyway. If you don’t give the manufacturer the freedom to enter into these kinds of agreements, then you are encouraging manufacturers to operate their own dealerships, where they can do anything they want. So I am not sure that this really limits competition.
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