Our
View: Publishers jack up prices
There
seems to be a pattern in the United States
that continues to grow and spread into areas
formerly free of it. The phenomenon of people
going outside the borders to make purchases
has spread from businesses taking their
factories elsewhere, to senior citizens
buying their prescriptions from Canadian
pharmacies.
But
now a new wave has hit and it has more of
an effect on students than prescriptions
do. Students are rapidly learning that by
purchasing their textbooks from overseas
they can cut large chunks of the cost off,
even after paying for the shipping. By searching
the Amazon Web site for the United Kingdom
students can often find textbooks for much
cheaper, even with the British pound being
worth more than the dollar and paying for
shipping. Now that's amazing!
It's
amazing that our publishers, most of who
publish in the United States, can jack up
the prices for their own students here at
home, and then sell cheaper to people over
seas. What kind of system is this? Is it
because we have so much more money? They
must not know that our tuition got jacked
up 40 percent in the last year, and that
we're mostly working minimum wage part-time
jobs to try to make ends meet.
But
still, this reveals the blatant hypocrisy
of businesses. They can go out and purchase
labor from the lowest bidder in other countries,
but when it comes to consumers we have to
purchase from the businesses and we can't
find the lowest bidder for our products.
This is how capitalism works?
I
thought this was a free market? What happened
to the global economy? If they can go to
Malaysia and buy workers for $5 a week why
can't students buy books at discounted prices
from other countries? Sounds fair to us.
The
truth is, you hear about pharmaceutical
companies getting all bent out of shape
over people buying prescriptions that are
cheaper in other countries, and now publishers
are sure to start getting upset when the
bookstores return all of their books. It's
blatant hypocrisy on the part of the corporations
and shouldn't be stood for by students or
the elderly.
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