The next time some corporate shill cries that raising their expenses will raise prices for their customers, or that lowering their expenses will enable them to pass savings on to their customers, know that they’re spewing bullslop.

The taxing authority of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was shut down recently, so airline passengers should have seen about a 10% reduction in the price of their airplane tickets. After all, there was no tax on those tickets. But did the airlines “pass the savings on to YOU!”? Of course not. Ticket prices stayed the same, except that the money that USED to go to the FAA was kept by the airlines.

So now we know that making products with Chinese slave labor is not to give us low prices, but to give corporations higher profits. When electric utilities get less regulation, we don’t get lower rates – the utilities get higher profits. When big corporations drive down the wages of their unionized workers, they don’t lower their prices – they fatten their profits.

So the next time some pundit is on the radio or TV saying that some policy will mean higher or lower prices for consumers, you know it’s bullslop. “Lower prices” is little more than code for higher corporate profits. We never see lower prices, but those corporations sure have great earnings reports.