Quote:
Originally Posted by TCSimpson
They obviously DID NOT think it through ...
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Are you basing this on a study of the legislative history, or just on the general principle that if we don't understand the reasoning, there must be none?
The first thing I'd want to do is read the text of the law, which I have not yet found. Does anyone have it? Is there a way to interpret it as forbidding shipping discounting just as it limits book discounting?
I just read a
history of A&P, which was once the world's largest retailer. A&P faced not only these sorts of minimum pricing laws, but also had to pay some state and local taxes on a formula where the tax-per-store increased depending on how many stores you had in jurisdiction!
Up until a bill, with a reasonable chance of passage, was introduced in Congress that would have shut them down (by setting the tax at about half of
sales), A&P's policy was to -- get this -- quietly comply with the minimum price laws and pay their taxes without complaint or hiring of lobbyists. And even where they legally could have used loss-leader pricing to harm competitors, and when marketeers in their own organization advocated it, the strict policy of top management, during the period when A&P was on top, was to charge consistent everyday prices.
Acting the ugly American to the French legislature could turn out to a bigger mistake than any loophole in the French law.