No, it doesn’t, I already covered this in the paragraph that began with: “Even Googling the big study that the NTY op ed writer was part of…”
My understanding of economics is just fine. Some economists claim that subsidies lead to artificially low prices. I understand the argument, but I contest it with additional economic understanding, which is that if subsidies are being put in place to bring prices down to affordability, that’s a market failure to match the actual non-artificial price which must be in line with consumer demand at any given time. If consumers cannot afford something at a certain price, it is artificially high. If subsidies are being used to simply bring prices back into line with consumer ability, then subsidies are not making them artificially low (though they are correcting the market in an improper way, thus allowing corporations to keep profit margins when instead the prices should be allowed to plummet on their own).
I did not say there could not be artificially low prices, but that it would require a loss in profitability on the seller’s part. If they were profitable, the price point would be in line with costs and consumer ability and could not be fairly called artificially low. If a seller cut prices to gain a user base at the expense of all profit (or even negative profit) for a certain amount of time, that would be an artificially low price. But the attempt of some economists to define prices too high for consumer demand brought down (incorrectly, from a market forces standpoint) by government intervention as “artificially low” is simply wordplay. An artificially high price cannot be defined as “artificially low” simply because governments are willing to lower the prices without the corporations losing their profit margins. It’s not letting the market work correctly, but it’s exactly the reverse of “artificially low”.
