ABSTRACT
Prices appear to be a matter for managerial determination, subject to any constraints that exist at the hands of public agencies for price control. The idea implicit in this notion is that prices essentially rest on costs. If an enterprise fixes prices far divorced from the cost basis, another enterprise can snatch away the customers, assuming that competition exists. Where it does not, prices can far exceed costs; yet from the consumer's point of view special reason has to be produced before a non-cost-based price is demanded of him. Herein lies one version of the overlap between public enterprise and the public exchequer. The former, through internal managerial decision, extracts from a group of citizens, its customers, incomes that strictly can only be demanded by a taxing authority. The profits may go into expansions, at one end, or into "conspicuous consumption" through enhanced employee benefits at another.
