Except when government does it!
The Werkes would like to put in a good word for price gouging. Somehow, this honorable practice has gotten a bad name. (Nobody names their kids Adolph any more.)
Speakers at the Democrats’ national convention this week denounced price gouging as if it were as nefarious as Proud Boys with zip ties — or school choice vouchers. Who does this price gouging? If you answered “Greedy Corporations” you may be more Woke than Elizabeth Warren after an all-nighter at Starbucks. (By the bye, other than Kamala and Coach Tim, it sounded like Miss Fussypants got the longest and most erotic ovation at the DNC this week.)
Real-life story: The Werkes prowled the dealer’s lot to look over one of the new Ford Mavericks, a car-like truck. Sticker bore an entry that read “Market adjustment: $3,000.” That’s price gouging in writing. We walked away but we’re seeing these much-in-demand vehicles on the road. How many times have dealers been forced to discount cars that weren’t selling just to get them off the lot?
Government-run economy
What could go wrong? Ford expects to hemorrhage $5 Billion after losing $44,000 on each electric vehicle it sold. Greedy corporations! But Democrats mandated vehicle manufacturers build the damn things and phase out internal combustion engines before the next mass extinction. Mandates like that are a hidden tax.
Admittedly, Kamala proposes to ban price gouging only on groceries — for now. You know what high prices on, say, a nice cut of beef does? You there, desperately waving your hand. (Oh. It’s down the hall to the left.) What it does, class, is encourage more ranchers to grow more steers, is what. Then prices go down. It’s the law! (of supply & demand).
An old story. Guy goes to buy some thing or other, is appalled at the price. Tells the sales clerk it’s half price at his competitor. Is told, then go there and buy it. “But they’re out,” the customer confesses. “I’m not,” the sales clerk rejoins.
Scapegoating price gouging
That’s Democrats’ way of explaining away cost of living increases. Blame greedy corporations for inflation instead of profligate government spending! If the Left wanted to end price gouging, they would let college students default on their loans. Watch Departments of Grievance get defunded. Tuition alone at Columbia University’s Gaza campus is $66,139/year. You could buy a Tesla for that — thanks to the $7,500 government subsidy. Didn’t know you were buying Teslas for the cognoscenti, did you?
None dare call it price gouging that the City of Madison WI wants another $22 million annually in spending on top of property tax authority in a property-rich and growing city. Madison public schools covet $507 million in “updates” and another $100 million to keep the lights on. City and school referenda scheduled for November 5 when Madison runs up the tally for Kamala/Walz and Tammy tell me true.
Only two of 20 alders — Ike Knox and Barbara Harrington McKinney (both black) voted against. Madison’s school board is even more socialist. No accident the local socialist party endorsed school board vice president Maia Pearson for state office.
Same situation but smaller numbers in the Monona Grove school district. Board members express shock and dismay that they’ve spent themselves into a hole. Board president Elizabeth Cook and most of the school board members were endorsed by the teachers union and/or the AFL-CIO.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: “It’s for the kids” is a ransom note that should be written with letters cut out of a magazine. Kamala says “We’re not going back” but didn’t Nixon try wage and price controls?
15 responses to “Hooray for price gouging!”
Price controls not only don’t work at solving the problem of high prices, but they also suppress the market reaction that would actually bring prices down. The arrogant belief that people who have never so much as read a book on economics, is what Hayek called the “Fatal Conceit.” They have no idea how prices work in the first place, but they firmly believe they can make prices go down by sheer will. And when they do have some knowledge of economics, they just ignore it and say things they do not actually believe themselves. And it works because half the country doesn’t understand economics either. Two semesters of econ should be required to graduate high school.
My two semesters of Econ at UW Madison (prereq for admission to the School of Business) have been invaluable to my career and life in general. If only courses in Economics in high school could be mandated by the legislature. Dream on; Evers would surely veto it. Even if enacted, DPI would put a DEI spin on it. Never mind!
“An old story.”
Customer: “it’s only $2.99/lb. at your competitor, but they’re sold out.” Grocer: “when we’re sold, ours is only $1.49/lb.”
The Gotch
Joe Kernen destroyed Elizabeth Warren this morning after she repeated her price gouging lies.
Once marxism takes root, it never leaves willingly or nicely. Please vote Trump/Vance now endorsed or helped by such dimwitted rhinos or left leaning libertarians as tulsi gabbard, rfk jr and your dream candidate haley. The level of devious and heavy handedness of the current administration is beyond scary. 818,000 thousand jobs never existed, oh just a simple clerical error. Former military congress woman and candidate for president gabbard on tsa terror watch list are you kidding me. The lists go on and on. Democrats=Marxism and equal misery for all
It’s Curious there is no mention about Colleges & Universities “price gouging” from Kamala & Company. Hell my last semester at UW L in 1990 tuition was less than $800. I believe it’s 10x that now. Inflation has not gone up that much in 34 years has it?
“I believe it’s 10x that now.”
And then some; U.W. Madison fall semester resident tuition is $11,216, non-resident is over $40 large!
The Gotch’s last semester (Fall/1979) cost $288.50…and no Friday classes!
The Gotch
Colleges and universities–public and private–make (alleged) price-gouging by corporations look like a penny-ante game. But how else to pay for layers upon layers of administrative bureaucracy, including such indispensable positions as Dean of DEI; or for brand-new dormitories that could pass as four-star luxury resorts, or for brand-new classroom buildings that look like corporate headquarters, which replaced buildings that were only 40 years old; or for tenured professorships in Grievance Studies departments that are nothing but thinly disguised fronts for the propagation of woke ideology (with a little dash of racism for good measure)?
Tuition for my last semester (Spring ’76) at Texas Tech was $75 for 15 hours. $5/semester hour. Books however were about $350.
Just wait a while. The education bubble has been building and will burst sooner than anybody thinks. Read the tea leaves. UW-Platteville Richland, UW-Milwaukee at Washington County, UW-Oshkosh Fond du Lac and UW-Green Bay Marinette have all closed. UW Milwaukee just eliminated 11 faculty positions, and UW Madison just dropped any academic or scholarly requirements to get into the flagship campus. From the 60’s through the 80’s, conventional wisdom was, everybody should go to college, if you can. Baby boomer parents believed it and so did all of their children. Then government decided to help EVERYBODY get in. Massive lending programs were instituted. Borrow anything and everything you want. We don’t even care what you want to study. No market for a degree in gender studies? No problem! So what if you have $180,000 in debt that can’t even be discharged in bankruptcy. You’ve got a college degree! Never mind that you’ve been out of school for ten years now and are working that loan off as a bartender, while renting a room from a plumber who makes six figures without a college degree or debt. One day, that Master’s degree in Puppetry will be worth its weight in gold. That means a one-ounce diploma is worth about $2,500. Too bad it costs $250,000.
Any corporation that used such shameless bait-and-switch tactics would soon feel the wrath of Kamala and her acolytes, but colleges and universities get away with it year after year. Couldn’t be because their employees reliably shower the Democrats with cash every election cycle. I’d say that particular bubble has a way to go before bursting. As a conspicuous example of the reverse of karma, UW-Madison, as the “flagship” campus, blithely sails along with more money in its cargo hold than it knows what to do with, while the other UW campuses (i.e., the leaky vessels) find themselves frantically trying to stay afloat by tossing more of their cargo overboard every year, watching nervously as others in the fleet sink beneath the waves. (Please excuse the overabundance of nautical imagery.)
“The education bubble has been building and will burst sooner than anybody thinks.”
Glenn Harlan Reynolds (“The Higher Education Bubble.” fleshes that out a tad.
(bolds/caps/italics mine throughout)
“Even as the once-mighty University of California system slashes programs and raises tuition, it has created a new systemwide ‘VICE CHANCELLOR FOR EQUITY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION.’ This is on top of the already enormous University of California diversity machine, which, as Heather Mac Donald notes, ‘includes (but isn’t limited to):
*the Chancellor’s Diversity Office,
*the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity,
*the assistant vice chancellor for diversity,
*the faculty equity advisors,
*the graduate diversity coordinators,
*the staff diversity liaison,
*the undergraduate student diversity liaison,
*the graduate student diversity liaison,
*the chief diversity officer,
*the director of development for diversity initiatives,
*the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity,
*the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues,
*the Committee on the Status of Women,
*the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion,
*the Diversity Council,
*the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center,
*the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and,
*the Women’s Center.”
“While the UC system loses top cancer researchers to Rice University, it is creating new chaired professorships in, you guessed it, DIVERSITY STUDIES. Likewise, in North Carolina, UNC-Wilmington is combining the physics and geology departments to save money while DIVERTING MORE FUNDING TO CAMPUS DIVERSITY OFFICES.”
It gets worse.
This was published 12 years ago as we speak, so the research goes back even farther: In that time, has this has gotten better, stayed the same, or gotten worse?
Oy; we’ve gone from bad to diverse! (H/T Good Dog Happy Man)
The Gotch
Well, at least the guys getting degrees in Diversity Studies will be employable…for a while.
I daresay one would find that most if not all those positions at U-CAL have their counterparts at UW-Madison (and a good number of them at the other 4-year campuses in the UW System). One of the dirty little secrets about Grievance Studies Departments is that they’re kept afloat not because of an insatiable demand from students but because their courses are required for graduation.
“their courses are required for graduation.”
Mandating market share; the Higher INDOCTRICATION equivalent of manufacturing’s planned obsolescence.
The Gotch