What Would You Call the Biggest Cause of Inflation?

So I guess it's the book-seller's responsibility to not sell the book for more than he bought it for (and/or the buyer's responsibility to not BUY it for too much money). What makes one book worth more than another book?

Correction: I won't mind buying an old book if it is still usable.

Not really some books can still be sold more than it was bought specially if it is a collector's item. Maybe if the author has become popular... what do you think?

That's what I hate about 'being imprisoned' the way I am (not "in a prison," but rather 'unable to buy things on the `Net and unable to travel easily enough to buy things from competitors instead of the first seller I see'). Because 'competition over me' would help me do my part to keep prices down, but I don't have the choice of 'here or the competition'---for me, it's either 'buy here' or 'go without'; and sellers don't feel much pain in losing me as a customer.

yes. shopping for the cheapest item, even when there are several different shops to chose from is very hard. i have one shop i use most, and it plays games with the customer, and it reduces the price of something not selling well for a while, then if it sells more at the lower price, they put it back up again, but not to quite as high as it was before. i bet they have a computer that helps them. but its like a game, and i go there quite a lot, so i have to play a game too where if they raise the price of something too much i don't but i any more. but its hard work, and the trouble a lot of the other customers are quite young, and don't really notice how the prices change. i worked out i could do this when i saw a couple old people looking at the price of loose vegetables in a supermarket, and complaining how the price had gone up, and i thought to myself if everyone did that it would make a difference. but they don't.

in the first sentence "poor" should read "power".

Looks like a good reason to 'Escape the USA' (I learned from a site that sells information on a 1st-World country where EVERYTHING is paid-for IN CASH ... so 'worth' isn't such a slippery variable).

Oh, it's greed here in America too ... how do you think we got it UP to $280 (which still sounds like a very-low-paying job to me)? Does Mexico have a 'democracy' too (America doesn't really have one, but the people have increased 'Freedom of Speech'---if they don't like something, they're freer to say so without worrying too much about consequences).

Just to play devil's advocate, here-- "greed" is an abstract concept. If you judge your "time" spent doing anything as "worth" 100.00 per hour-- you are free to do so-- and others may, or may not, choose to validate YOUR self-perceived worth at the level you do, by either paying you that value, or not. And you are free to do likewise. Who are you to decide MY concept of my worth? I can choose to look at YOUR definition of your worth, and accept that definition-- or not. And you can do the same with me. If I judge my worth to be 100.00 per hour-- and I choose to KEEP that money someone pays me, for myself-- this is MY moral choice, along with all the consequences attached to that choice-- just as it is for you. If I choose to give away half of that-- and I have before, far more than half-- that is also MY choice. if you choose to buy someone's time, at the price they fix for that time, then you are in a poor position to complain they are "greedy". YOU ALLOW THEM TO BE GREEDY, UNDER YOUR DEFINITION OF GREED-- whatever that definition may be. If I told you Exxon made 7 Billion dollars last year, net--well, you might think they were "greedy". But if you then researched the FACTS, you would discover their profit margin is around 7%--93% of their collective "time" was given to others either voluntarily, in the form of wages, research and development costs, or taken from them through regulation-- taxes, operating permits, etc. So, in this case--I guess Exxon is "greedy" because they kept 7% of their collective Time. Gee-- How much of your "time" do YOU keep? If you run an information business--probably 30% or so, sometimes more. If you run a Mc Donalds, or any other restaurant--15% if you are lucky. If you run a farm, 9% or so-- if you are very lucky. If you own Walmart.. somewhere between 11 and 14%. Would you consider that greedy? Really? My time, by the way, is worth about 40.00 per hour-- and people buy it willingly and thank me for providing it. But after taxes (self-employed people pay a lot) and savings, and servicing debt, and paying for other people's time-- my net profit margin is about 9%. I don't think I'm greedy, under my definition

And Maria-- In Mexico, this is caused by both government manipulation and devaluation of currency, and an exploitative corporate environment. You are experiencing both inflation and deflation-- your money is inflated-- therefor it buys less than it used to. And because people can't afford to buy, business doesn't make money-- and can't pay for services, or chooses to pay as little as possible-- and have to lower prices eventually, to sell at all. Greed is present, of course-- but greed based economies don't survive, and greed based businesses don't survive either. Look at Hostess, here-- The greed of the Unions, and the executives, ate up all the PROFITS. and without profit, you can't pay people, or produce merchandise, or sell merchandise-- and you have no business left. The greed of individual executives, and the greed of a collective union, killed the business for everyone.