This sounds a lot like taxes. The company is just the 'middleman' who
collects taxes under one name or another and passes the 'cost' of doing so
on to the consumer, or deducts the 'cost' of doing so from benefits the
workers including management would have received, or deducts the 'cost' of
doing so from the amount the 'investors' would have gained as a return on
investment. The 'cost' includes the 'tax' itself and the price paid for
doing the 'work' of collecting and passing it on to the taxing entity.

Ah well . . .some think the cost of taxes is somehow miraculously made,
presumably by sharp accountants, to what? Disappear?

The nonsense going on in Louisiana now is over the proposed lowering of the
'sugar' tariffs. We pay an artifically inflated price for sugar in the US,
much more than does the rest of the world. The reason is to keep out
competition from, primarily, Caribbean grown sugar. On the one hand is
'artificially' protects the jobs and so forth of the sugar producers in
Louisiana and Colorado but . . ...where's the rest of the story. The
housewife who pays 1.49 instead of .49 doesn't have that dollar difference
to spend 'elsewhere'. Some other business and their employees suffer to the
tune of that one dollar. Multiplied over a year times every household in
the country it's a multi billion dollar loss to other businesses. The
entire nation is forced to pay a hidden 'tax' to support a very few people
(only 20,000 in Louisiana) to the detriment of 20,000 employees somewhere
else. Not to mention the effect on the sugar industry workers of the
Caribbean and elsewhere. Who profits? Who loses? Who ate turkey? Who got
the bone?

MST