Tomorrow President Bush will be inaugurated for the second time. This is the first post-9/11 inauguration, and obviously security is a hot topic with everyone in Washington. But not everyone is quite as concerned with security as they are with protesting the inauguration.Some leftists are calling tomorrow “Black Thursday”. They are telling people to call out of work, not buy anything, turn off their cable TV, not make long-distance phone calls and an infinite number of other things to slow the economy for the day. They feel that the Bush administration and their corporate supporters will only respond to the voice of the almighty dollar. They want as few tax dollars to go to the government, and as few dollars as possible in revenue to go to corporations tomorrow, in hopes that they can change the world.

What they don’t realize is that what they forego buying tomorrow, they will have to buy eventually. Think about this from a corporation’s point of view. Let’s say a typical month brings in $1 million in sales, or $33,333 per day. Say these people are so successful that they get half the country to not buy anything from this company tomorrow. That would mean that the company would only make $16,667. Now, come Friday when these people find that they need whatever this company sells they’re going to go out and buy it. Basically all they’re doing is waiting a day to buy something. When the company looks at it’s monthly sales reports they won’t even notice this “boycott”, because by the end of the month these nut jobs will likely have already purchased what they didn’t get on “Black Thursday”. As far as the government is concerned, this one day will have no impact on tax revenue, for the same reason. These people will end up buying what they did not buy on Thursday and the tax revenue will still end up in Uncle Sam’s pockets.

Just to prove how little thought actually went into this whole scheme, one website promoting this idea said people should not watch cable tv. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of a usage based cable bill. Isn’t it usually a flat monthly rate? If you watch tv tomorrow or not makes no difference on how much your monthly cable bill will actually be. I can see the argument for not watching pay-per-view movies tomorrow, but even with that if they want to watch that movie, they’ll probably end up staying in on Friday night to watch it.

Then there are the other protestors who say that Bush should donate all the private money used to hold all the inaugural events to help the tsunami victims, or some other charitable cause. Why should he though? This is his time to shine. When I graduated college, should my class have not had a graduation ceremony so that the saved money could be donated to some charity? No, we worked hard and we deserved the ceremony we got. Should Hollywood celebrities have canceled the Golden Globes so that the saved money could be donated? No, once again they worked hard and they deserved to be recognized. You may not always agree with what these celebrities have to say, but this is still their “graduation”, or their “inauguration”. The President, like graduates and Hollywood celebrities deserves his moment of celebration.

The bottom line is, one day of this nonsense won’t change the country, or even disrupt the economy. This is simply another misleading, emotion based response from this country’s liberal left.

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Over the past six weeks, Florida, and much of the Southeastern United States have been pummeled by hurricanes. Many lives were lost, and billions of dollars of property was damaged. Many people returned from shelters to find their homes in ruins. They were the lucky ones who escaped the hurricane with their lives. But now they’re faced with another problem. They’ve got nowhere to live and they need to rebuild.If this were truly a free society, where there was limited government interference in our lives, we would notice that prices on pretty much everything in Florida would increase. Is this a bad thing? I would argue that it’s not.

Think about the case of a hotel that usually charges $40/night, that started charging $160/night after the first hurricane came through. They were accused of “price gouging”. Many retail stores were accused of the same. What people don’t realize though, is that there is a good reason for increasing prices – other than padding the big bad business man’s pockets.

Think about a hypothetical hotel, with 50 rooms, in a town that was destroyed by the hurricane. Now let’s say that the town has only 50 families. If the hotel’s normal price is $40/night, some of those families may not have much of a problem with occupying two or more rooms. Do you see the problem here? If any one family occupies more than one room, there will be another family that won’t have a place to stay. So, if the hotel owner decides to increase their prices to $160/night, some of those families may think twice about renting out more than one room. They’ll manage to all stay in the same room, just so they won’t have to pay so much. They might not be quite as comfortable as they would be, had they rented out two rooms, but they still have a place to stay. Basically, what the hotel owner is doing is adjusting the price accordingly to the increase in demand for a place to stay. It’s not sleazy; it’s basic supply and demand. It makes sense doesn’t it? I mean if the demand for something goes up, the price people are willing to pay for it should go up with that demand.

Now I’m not saying that businesses should increase their prices so much that people won’t be able to afford the things they need, like food, shelter, water, etc. I just think that the price should increase enough so people are only buying what they need to buy. Enough so that when you walk into the store to buy 20 gallons of water, at the regular price, you’ll think twice and only buy the 2-3 gallons that you may really need – leaving the other 17-18 gallons for someone else to buy.

Think about it. The more valuable a product or service is, the more money people should be willing to pay for that product or service, to equal the demand for it. It’s not sleazy, its just basic economics.

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