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- Saving the Sea Turtles...But at What Cost? (PRA Site »)
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- The Economics of #StimulusFail
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- Obamacare, Free Trade, & Our Economic Prosperity
Friday, March 12, 2010
- Rusty Bowers Signs the Taxpayer Protection Pledge for AZ-01 Race
- Ask Your Virginia Legislator to Vote "NO" on Any Budget Containing Higher Taxes
-
ATR Supports H.R. 4781, the
"Keeping American Businesses
Competitive Act of 2010" - Stimulus Dollars Are Taking You for A Ride - On Greyhound Buses (CFA Site »)
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
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- ATR and CFA Support Earmark Moratorium
- CFA Supports Earmark Moratorium (CFA Site »)
- Voter Fraud in the Name of Tax Hikes
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- Pelosi: "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" (CFA Site »)
- ATR Staffer Testifies Before U.S. House Energy & Commerce Select Committee
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
- The endemic rot in government run health care
- The Debt Panel's 800-lb. Gorilla: Why Andy Stern Stands Out
- The Left Agree: Obamacare Ushers In Their Radical Ideological Agenda
- We Ought Focus On Cutting Taxes & Spending, Not Deficits
- The Debt Panel's 800-lb. Gorilla (AWF Site »)
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Does the Obamacare Investment Surtax
Apply to Capital Gains? - ATR Urges Opposition to Sen. Isakson Pension Bailout
- Taxpayers to Legislators: Clean Virginia Budget of Taxes
- ATR Supports the Georgia JOBS Act
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
- ATR Urges Utah Governor Herbert to Veto Tax Increase
- More on the VAT
- Public Sector Jobs
- How 550,000 jobs were destroyed by the minimum wage hike
- How Obamacare Will Hurt Poor Women & Children Most
- Federal Workers Make $11,000 More Than Private Sector Workers, and There’s More of Them (AWF Site »)
Monday, March 8, 2010
- Legislation Introduced to Put Ronald Reagan on the $50 Bill
- Pledge Signer Wins Illinois Republican Gubernatorial Primary
- "Net Neutrality" To Kill Jobs
- NY Supreme Court Votes to Evict Residents and Close Businesses (PRA Site »)
- California US Senate Candidates Square Off in First Debate
Friday, March 5, 2010
- ATR and CFA Support the Spending Limit Amendment
- Utah Representative Breaks Tax Pledge
- AWF Will Rate Vote on House Jobs Bill (AWF Site »)
- Energy Tax Hike Series: Use it or Lose it Tax
Thursday, March 4, 2010
- The reliability of spending "estimates"
- Utah State Senator Tries to Sweeten Tax Hike with Pork
- Obama Administration Makes Attempt to Seize Millions of Acres Across America (PRA Site »)
- More "Stimulus" Boondoggles - Social Engineering and Lobbying for Higher Taxes
- Energy Tax Hike Series: Raises Taxes on Tertiary Injectants
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
- Is This Reality or a Science Fiction Dystopia?
- Andy Stern Update: US Attorney Reviewing Case & Obama Appoints Stern to Debt Panel
- Texans: Do You Know Which Candidates Have Signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge?
- AWF Asks White House to Take Position on Andy Stern Investigation After Appointment to Debt Panel (AWF Site »)
- AWF Continues Andy Stern Investigation (AWF Site »)
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
- Energy Tax Hike Series: Superfund Tax Reinstated
Monday, March 1, 2010
- Rick Berg First Pledge Signer in North Dakota Congressional Race
Friday, February 26, 2010
7-11 Demands That Congress
Raise Slurpee Prices
From Ryan Ellis on Thursday, October 8, 2009 9:37 AM 
Well, not quite—but it got your attention. Recently, 7-11 delivered 1.6 million petitions to Congress demanding that 7-11 be allowed to charge extra to customers who use credit and debit cards. Never mind that this is asking Congress to rip up a contract 7-11 has signed agreeing not to do this to us.
What’s the issue?
Whenever we go to the store or online to make a purchase, we often choose to use a credit or debit card. These aren’t free. Some company has to process these transactions, make sure everyone gets paid, etc. In order to pay for this convenience, merchant card companies charge the businesses that accept cards—usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.75% of the cost of whatever you and I buy (known as an “interchange fee”).
Naturally, the businesses selling things to us would like to be able to pay less for this service. Paying less for the same service is certainly attractive. I would like to pay less for my NFL Sunday Ticket package on DirecTV, but that's what it costs.
7-11 is trying to get around this little problem of reality by getting Congress to do their negotiating for them. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is marking up a bill this week, H.R. 2382, the “Credit Card Interchange Fees Act of 2009.” It would for the first time use the force of law to nullify valid contracts negotiated in good faith between the merchant card industry and retailers. The most pernicious action would be to allow businesses to charge us more for the privilege of using a merchant card (a practice we’re protected against by the current merchant card contract). The hope is that this Congressionally-obtained bargaining chip can be used to negotiate a lower interchange fee.
The retailers and Congressman Frank will tell you they want to be able to charge less to those who pay with cash. But unless Congress is going to get into the business of setting the price of everything from lattes to licorice, the reality is this will leave the base price the same and become a surcharge for card-swiping customers. The practical effect of this legislation is that everything we buy could cost more if we use a credit or debit card rather than cash.
You might remember that when preening Congressmen bash merchant card companies this week.
Comments
So wait a minute--if I don't like paying for something I voluntarily buy, I can get Congress to re-write the terms of my purchase? Cool. I guess I can start with the rent I pay, maybe my iTunes purchases, and then move on to my grocery bill. After all, I need the latter to live, right? Isn't this was Congress is trying to do with health insurance, too?
>> Not Anonymous Tuesday, October 6, 2009 11:08 AM
Keeping with your analogy, what if in addition to your Sunday Ticket you had to buy the MLB channel, the NBA channel, College Volleyball, The Cricket Channel, the Asian Golf Channel and the Pakistani Horseshoe Throwing Channel? And you can gett all of those wonderful channels for only $25,000 a year? Do you still want Sunday Ticket? Ordering just Sunday Ticket is no longer an option. That's what Visa and MasterCard call the "honor all cards" rule. This is just one of the dozens of problems around credit card fees--the most agregious being that they are monopolies and prices are dictated rather than allowing free market forces.
>> CommonSense Tuesday, October 6, 2009 1:19 PM
If the Sunday Ticket Package made me buy all those other things, I would have a choice. I could either suck it up and buy all the other crap because I like the NFL so much, or I could not buy the uber-package at all. What is not an acceptable free-market solution is for me to go to Congress and force DirecTV to sell me the package I want under my terms and prices.
>> Not Anonymous Tuesday, October 6, 2009 5:25 PM
Hey Grover...how much are you taking from the cards and banks to take THIS position????
>> You Kidding Me? Wednesday, October 7, 2009 11:17 AM
You Kidding Me?, What position do you have a problem with? The free-market, separation of government and business position? Or the keep-contracts-consistent-and-valid-rather-than-change-them-on-a-whim position? Seems pretty consistent with ATR's beliefs to me. The government should not have any say on what businesses charge for anything. They should only enforce the contracts made between 7-11 and the credit card companies.
>> TCH Thursday, October 8, 2009 10:34 AM
Stores should be able to set different prices for cash versus credit card if they so desire.
>> Miki Ellis Thursday, October 8, 2009 12:53 PM
This article misses a quite obvious economic principle. If stores are allowed to impose a surcharge on the customer for use of a credit card, this will result in a net decrease in costs imposed on the stores. This will enable stores to charge less for their products, passing the savings on to the customers. At worst, this plan is a break-even for customers. More likely, it will result in savings for customers, since they will have a disincentive to use credit cards. So the customers that switch to cash will get the benefit of lower prices without the cost of any surcharge. The only ones that lose are the credit card companies, which will see diminishing use of their product.
>> Cool Joe Thursday, October 8, 2009 1:10 PM
I think that many are missing the point of this post. It is not about whether 7-11 should be able to charge more to people using credit cards or not, it is about the importance of consistency in contracts and the government’s role in enforcing them. 7-11 is under contract to not charge more for credit card transactions (I am unsure from this post if that contract is gov imposed or one that was freely entered into). Now 7-11 wants to use the guns of government to nullify that contract and make a new one. This would render contracts meaningless if the gov can come in at any time and change them for favored businesses. 7-11 should be able to set its prices however it wants, but it must also honor contracts that it voluntarily agreed to.
>> TCH Thursday, October 8, 2009 4:42 PM