Sticking Up For Price Gougers

THE FIRST THING that the media and camera-hungry politicians look for after a national disaster are price gougers. Woe betide the evil gas stations that put prices up when supplies tighten! The reporters and politicians are shocked by the greed of the price gougers. How could they do it?

Thanks for nothing, pal. When I went to my local Arco gas station, on Friday September 2, the price was nobly unchanged from before the unundation of New Orleans, but what use was that? A battalion of TV watchers had descended on the gas station and pumped every last gallon of gas into their cars before I got there. So I got none. Fortunately, there were no evil price gougers in sight. But evil gas hoarders had scarfed up all the precious gasoline to top off their tanks. How could they?

So what is fair? To reward the hoarders who rush out and pump gas into their cars before the price goes up? Or to raise the price to make the hoarders pay for their greed, and keep the gas station open, providing gasoline for consumers at some price, however obscene.

Most people seem to forget that the reason we have an abundance of goods and services at our disposal is that their producers and middlemen get to charge whatever price they want. Sometimes, they put goods on sale (so consumers get to do some price gouging) and sometimes they raise prices (so producers get to do some price gouging.) The point is that by letting producers adjust prices according to market demand, we always have goods and services available for purchase.

What about the carpenter who travels to New Orleans to help rebuild the city, asks John Stossel? Is he a price gouger if he charges above the going rate for carpenters in New Orleans before the flood? Hardly. It�s going to cost him a bundle to move to New Orleans and provide his services there. He�s going to want to be handsomely rewarded for his labor and for disrupting his family for months.

Any tradesman who treks to a disaster area must get higher pay than he would get in his hometown, or he won�t do the trek. Limit him to what his New Orleans colleagues charged before the storm, and even a would-be hero may say, "the heck with it."

So is he evil for demanding more? On the contrary.

It�s the price "gougers" who bring the water, ship the gasoline, fix the roof, and rebuild the cities. The price "gougers" save lives.

But that�s not what we Americans want to hear. We resent paying more for goods that are suddenly in short supply. And we want someone to blame.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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