[mike_d]

> Companies charge as much as they can, not how much it costs to produce plus fixed overhead.

Companies will sometimes overtly pass a cost on to the consumer in the hopes of creating political pressure against that cost. For example take a look at your phone or cable bill and how they itemize every tax and fee they have to pay and pass along to you.

[eesmith]

And have those itemized breakdowns resulted in political pressure to change things?

If one of those taxes were removed, do you think the overall cable bill would actually go down, and stay down?