[TheBagman]

A simple explination on the wonders of "price gouging" from Neal.

BRING ON THE WONDERFUL ANTI-PRICE GOUGING LAWS!
By Neal Boortz

Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed some sort of an emergency proclamation yesterday as Alberto took aim on the Florida Gulf coast. Upon the signing of this emergency declaration the news reports that anti-price gouging laws will go into effect.

What nonsense.

Anti-price gouging laws may make politicians look good to government-educated economic illiterates, but that's about all they do. The fact is the laws actually decrease the available supply of the very goods and services that people in hurricane-damaged areas need so desperately.

Let's address one area. Hotel rooms. With these anti-price gouging laws in effect a hotel operator can be severely fined and face the prospect of having one limb amputated if he dares to increase the price of his limited resource in the face of increased demand. Let's say you have a family of five evacuating a coastal area. You have mom and dad, the two rug rats, and the mother-in-law. You arrive at the Comfort Inn to find that rooms are running at their usual rate ... say about $79 a night. Well! What luck! Now you can afford to get three rooms! Mom and dad can have a room of their own for a little motel sex. The kids can have another room, and the mother-in-law can have a third room so she can smoke to her heart's content. Then .... along comes another family looking for shelter. The Comfort Inn has no more rooms. Why? Because most of the people who arrived earlier took advantage of the low prices and got multiple rooms. Now if the operator had increased the price of these hotel rooms in response to the increased demand ... say to $200 a night .. our evacuees wouldn't be so eager to rent three rooms. Perhaps one would have sufficed, and the old bag would just have to sleep on the pull-out couch and smoke her dope outside. Then there would be rooms available, although at higher prices, for the next family to come driving in.

The anti-price gouging laws hurt consumers in almost all other areas. Generators, for instance. When the electricity goes out, and stays out, people want generators. Once the local Home Depot and hardware store runs out, that's pretty much it. When the price is kept artificially low in the face of increased demand and limited supply people suffer. Just as with hotel rooms, you will get some buyers who will walk out with two or maybe three generators! Not only do they want to power the essential equipment in their kitchen, and maybe the downstairs air conditioning unit, they want another generator as a standby unit, or to power extra equipment. Now ... allow the price of generators to rise with the increased demand and the situation changes. Fewer people buy multiple units. You will also have entrepreneurs buying generators in other markets, loading them on trucks, and driving to Florida to sell them. When some people did this after Hurricane Charlie they were arrested and their goods confiscated. So --- you want to call these entrepreneurs greedy? They're profiteering? They're making money off the misery of others? Oh .. I get it. In your world a person is only allowed to make a profit selling something or providing a service that people don't really need, right? How brilliant is that?

So ... congratulations to the politicians who push these anti-price gouging laws. They're not stupid. They know what the true economic impact of their action is. It's about pandering --- pandering to the economic ignorance of the common man, even if the common man suffers as a result. Votes are everything. Leadership is nothing.


http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html

[AnnonUSA]

Originally Posted by da420

So ... congratulations to the politicians who push these anti-price gouging laws. They're not stupid. They know what the true economic impact of their action is. It's about pandering --- pandering to the economic ignorance of the common man, even if the common man suffers as a result. Votes are everything. Leadership is nothing.

It called Pandering to the UnEducated voters. Vote Buying.

While I don't want to see people gouged in their time of desperation or need, I do agree with the statements above. As has been said before in time of crisis, you and your family are going to be on your own for some period of time. Plan ahead and make preparations to minimize your dependence on others and on the Government for at least a few days.

[budslide]

His examples seem pretty out there to me.

Okay, so it's better for a motel to charge $150 for a room instead of $75 because that way people will only get one room instead of two, therefore another family can rent the other room? That's the stupidest thing I've heard all day!
What if the other family can't afford to pay $150 for motel room? I'm sure the family that's going to get a seperate room for their kids can afford it wither it's $75 or fucking $300... if your going to spend that kind of money so you kid can sleep on a bed, you obviously have money to throw around anyway.

Same with the generators. If you can afford to buy a generator to power your TV and computer you probably are well enough off to buy even if it's a grand (even better, well enough off to fucking move out for awhile).
All you are doing is making it impossible for the POOR people to buy even ONE generator.


That guy obviously has an agenda of his own, and doesn't give a flying fuck about the people that are actually effected by this law

[TheBagman]

Trust me, if it's a necesity the family will find the funds. It's all about planning. The only ones that get truly fucked up are the ones that do not plan ahead expecting a disaster. I mean they live in a high disaster area. Planning for these types of things should become second nature or they should get the fuck out of the area.

His only agenda is to get people to think for themselves and not to rely on the government to take care of all thier woes.

There are folks that cant afford 75$. So shall we force the hotel owners to give up profit to be had and let them stay for free? If they did, hell yeah, I would if I could. But that very well could be very well be devastating to the hotel owners. Depending on thier situation. Many people will find shelters or peoples hourse they can use temporarily while they get therir feet on the ground.

[budslide]

No we shouldn't force the hotel owners to give up a place for free, but we shouldn't make it EVEN HARDER on the people by taking the price up on everything.
Okay say you plan for a diseaster, you have $100 for hotel, $200 for generator, $300 for food and household things. This would normally be enough on any given day.
now a hurricane hits, a everybody hikes their prices up. The hotel that was 100 is now 130. The generator that was 200 is now 400. Since there are only a few grocery stores around THEY hike up prices as well and now your paying 400 instead of 300. Now they can't afford to buy everything they need because of price hikes, even if they did think ahead.

If your going to worry about people buying too many than limit how much you can buy. Say one generator per family. Make them show ID to help stop from having mother, father, and son all walk in a buy a generator. At the hotel tell tell those greedy fuckers they can only have one room because of the emergency situation... there are better ways than hiking up prices

[elroypornlab]

Moms gonna fix it all soon

[TheBagman]

Originally Posted by budslide

No we shouldn't force the hotel owners to give up a place for free, but we shouldn't make it EVEN HARDER on the people by taking the price up on everything.
Okay say you plan for a diseaster, you have $100 for hotel, $200 for generator, $300 for food and household things. This would normally be enough on any given day.
now a hurricane hits, a everybody hikes their prices up. The hotel that was 100 is now 130. The generator that was 200 is now 400. Since there are only a few grocery stores around THEY hike up prices as well and now your paying 400 instead of 300. Now they can't afford to buy everything they need because of price hikes, even if they did think ahead.

If your going to worry about people buying too many than limit how much you can buy. Say one generator per family. Make them show ID to help stop from having mother, father, and son all walk in a buy a generator. At the hotel tell tell those greedy fuckers they can only have one room because of the emergency situation... there are better ways than hiking up prices

If you live in a high disaster area you sure as hell better have more than $600 bucks saved up.

What Boortz is saying is that the goverment should not be controlling what prices businesses set, but what the market can handle. There are many charities willing to help out the more needy that didn't plan for themselves or the ones that truly couldnt help it. But, if you think of it. Are you sure that many of them "truly" couldnt help it? Or was it thier decisions that put them in the place they are in?

[budslide]

I see what your saying. I wasn't talking exact numbers there, I was just making a point.
What if they save up checking the prices of shit like that, than it doubles after this hurricane. What if they don't have the kind of money where they can save up thousands of dollars for diseaster recovery? Like people that have five kids or whatever.

If there's a disaster i don't see why they should raise prices, think about that. Are we that greedy were willing to fuck a bunch of ppl out of shit they need because we want to make more money? (and I know most of you are saying yes, which is kind of sad, but also very funny)