Where are the price wars of old?

What I want to know is what happened to the great price wars of days gone past, especially the gas wars.

For those of you who do not remember, they were great. If one guy dropped his price by one cent, the guy across the street would drop his three cents and so on, back and forth the price cutting would go on for a while and, of course, gas was under fifty cents a gallon in those days.

In addition to the gas price wars, there were always some price wars going on during each of the previous recessionary periods.

For the working person, they were great. We could actually afford to live on what we were making for awhile, until the price wars forced someone to hold the line. Then, of course, things had a tendency to go the other way and here we are today.

The price wars included food, clothes and, of course, automobiles. I think the auto industry could benefit today by this strategy to generate car sales. I know I would buy a good new car if it was under $10,000 or even better if it got close to $5,000 again. Just think of the gas you could buy with the remaining thousands of dollars over the next ten years.

I think we should find a way to bring these economic stimuli back to really jump-start the economy again. Not the phony baloney sales that we see advertised all the time.

I am saddened to see so many businesses going under and even more saddened to look at their closing the doors prices. I swear, their "70 percent off" sales are more expensive than their regular sales prices.

I understand their need to recoup as much as possible, but if they cannot sell everything, then what happens. Someone comes in and gives them ten cents on the dollar versus a true thirty cents on the dollar they would have received if they had actually sold products at their sale.

I would prefer to support true discount stores than attending so many "going out of business" sales. Which brings me to the discount outlets in Anderson. What is up with them? That center should be full of businesses. Maybe if some of these other companies would have moved their businesses there prior to the ship sinking like a stone weight around the stockholders necks.

Now there is a thought. When upper management has pulled their heads out of the sand and recognized they are in big trouble, they could move - not close - their stores to the outlet centers across the nation and sell at a true discount price.

I would sure support that more than bankruptcy and "closing the doors" sales. I am like a lot of other people who like a good deal and I do like to shop the discount centers in the area. I also compare prices from the discount type stores to the normal retail, big box and chain stores. If the store is actually offering good deals, I will remain a loyal customer unless they become corrupted and hedge on the benefit they are offering. As a point, there is such a store that I have followed from its original location through three moves.

So all of you almost "out of business" companies, maybe you should join the ranks of the less markup stores before your employees are forced to join the growing numbers of the unemployed.