<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2627" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> <DIV>Doug Henwood writes : "My office is in Soho, <BR>and I'm here almost every day, surrounded by luxury goods, in <BR>boutiques and on people. Yeah, sure, there's conspicuous consumption <BR>going on, at highly inflated prices. But the stuff is still beautiful <BR>- why deny that/"</DIV> <DIV>Comment: Well maybe is not Gucci, but since you are in Soho, go the corner of Broadway and Prince to the Prada Store, take the elevator all the way down and you'll find lots of women pumps whose average price is $1,500 . I've seen these prices  with my own eyes and this in a summer sale! I don't know about their beauty. Nothing wrong with it. I thought we were talking price/cost,because next we can consider the "beauty" of a $48,000 Michel Perchin pen,or a $300,000 Breguetwatch or a $225,000 Ferrari,etc,etc</DIV> <DIV>Now if these items were manufactured in China their cost/price would be severely reduced. But then wouldn't  their "beauty"suddenly disappear  as they become available to the commoners?</DIV> <DIV>One issue here could be that desire for commercialized beauty is a very American thing associated with "the pursuit of happiness"which in turn is associated with the acquisition of private wealth and not with public goods.</DIV> <DIV>Thereis a very new good article on this subject by Julian Edney entitled "Greed"in the latest issue of the Post-Autistic Economics Review (<A href="http://www.paecon.net">www.paecon.net</A>)</DIV> <DIV>Cristobal Senior</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>