John Gruber Quotes

The prices of raw materials do not fluctuate directly with the labour cost of producing them.

That iPad you just bought. Do you care that it cost a few pence to manufacture? No. It's cost you several hundred pounds because somebody else was willing to pay that much for it. If they weren't... it wouldn't.

Gasoline prices are a direct reflection of the cost of the raw materials to produce the gasoline, no different than any other product that you would buy, whether it's a good or some other consumable, or it's a luxury item. It's all a function of what do the raw materials cost.

When the price of a drug rises, it becomes profitable and the target of new competition.

In stating the principles which regulate exchangeable value and price, we should carefully distinguish between those variations which belong to the commodity itself, and those which are occasioned by a variation in the medium in which value is estimated, or price expressed.

I just get the same stuff as I did before, but the price tag is much higher.

It's a market economy. Apparently the demand for great coaches exceeds the supply, so of course the price of good coaches is going to be high.

Prices don't merely reflect what people think things ought to cost today; they also reflect what people expect items to cost tomorrow.

When the commodities go up and the cost of transportation is going up, and the value of the dollar is going down, it's all going to translate to an 8 to 10 percent rise in food prices.

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.

To economists, prices serve as crucial signals to producers and consumers. In a regulated market, the state sets prices high enough for private companies to cover their costs and earn a guaranteed profit for their investors. But in a deregulated market, prices should vary with demand and supply.

And this thesis is somewhat connected with general social and political observations, because it establishes the fact that the number of consumers is considerably larger than the number of producers, a fact which exercises a not inconsiderable social and political pressure.

The price of every thing rises and falls from time to time and place to place; and with every such change the purchasing power of money changes so far as that thing goes.

My instinct is to assume that we consumers are an inconsistent bunch. We like competition if it delivers low prices, but grumble if it delivers the bad news that prices need to go up.

We're more familiar with what economists call an English auction - prices start low and rise as people bid. However, there is also the Dutch auction, where prices start high and go lower until somebody bites. Movies are sold to the audience via a very slow Dutch auction, where each phase between price drops can last weeks or months.

A common price isn't the lowest price. It will most obviously be the highest price.

A consumer doesn't take anything away: he doesn't actually consume anything. Giving the same thing to a thousand consumers is not really any more expensive than giving it to just one.

The exchangeable value of all commodities, rises as the difficulties of their production increase.

If all you needed to do is to figure out what company is better than others, everyone would make a lot of money. But that is not the case. They keep raising the prices to the point when the odds change.

Part of the film business is, if you want an apple, you buy an apple.

I tend to look at things from the supply side, looking for ways to make it less expensive to do more production. I think that's what creates a demand and keeps an economy moving.

It has been shown that, in contrast to everything which classical national economy has hitherto taught, not the producer but the consumer is the ruling factor in economic life.

The diversification of the people's demand could not be followed by the state apparatus.

I strongly believe that for the steel prices to be market-driven, without distortions, we need to substantially increase the production capacity.

We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.