Read It And Weep

I finished reading an article on the BBC webpage this evening, and once again I am unable to make any sense of what I read.

The article described how two automobile parts suppliers colluded to inflate prices on certain auto parts.  This was against United States antitrust laws, thus they were fined hundreds of millions of dollars for their transgressions.  It is easy to think that they got what was coming to them.  They made millions of dollars in illegal activity, and it was removed from their clutches.  It’s a winning situation for the American public to stop paying excessive prices for parts as original equipment manufacturing excessive costs.

However, let’s rethink that a bit.  The parts were manufactured in Japan. Japanese workers were paid to manufacture them.  They were sold in the United States at inflated prices.  United States citizens paid excessively for those parts.  The United States government collects millions of dollars in fines, and keeps it.  The Japanese workers yet got their wages.  I have little doubt the Japanese parts manufacturers still have excessive profit money in their greedy palms.  American car manufacturers tacked those costs onto the price sticker of the new vehicles, so they weren’t hurt.  Guess who is in reality paying the fines?  Of course, it’s the American public that bought the cars with the inflated price parts.

To sum it up, Japanese workers manufactured parts and were paid for their work.  Good for them.  Parts manufacturing plant owners without doubt made excessive profits.  The United States Government is proud that they’ve done a really good thing for the American public.  Once more the American public gets to pay the price.  This seems to be a very good system for everyone---except the American public.