Posted on 11/01/2012 2:21:02 PM PDT by Kartographer
State troopers have been dispatched to gas stations along the New Jersey turnpike to supervise Sandy survivors already shaken by the storm as authorities anticipate the tempers to grow as fuel supplies diminish.
They are again being tested yet again by dangerously dwindling gas supplies amid massive blackouts, leftover from Monday’s killer storm. Throughout New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, gas is running out, and many stations within the city are additionally crippled, as they have no power.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
You have a point there. I’ve spent weeks snowbound so no one was going anywhere anyway, so no need for gasoline. We heat with wood (still do), no need for gas or electricity. I guess a generator would use gasoline, but the only thing I’d having a hard time doing without is Free Republic. City folks just have it differently.
Having just read about some folks trapped on Coney Island with no food or water, and saying it was worse than Katrina, guess my sympathy dropped a bit low.
Disagree. You need incentives to bring high-demand supplies into the area, and the profit motive will do that. "Hey Bill, we could make a killing on bottled water in Jersey, let's load up and go!"
Which would you rather have, drinking water at $5 per gallon, or no drinking water at $2 per gallon?
You’re oversimplifying, but then again I’d imagine you have several stations to pick from and they all have gas.
If the state shouldn’t intervene to prevent gouging, then they shouldn’t intervene when the owners are lynched and their gas is appropriated. I guess the looters mentioned on FR are just “nature taking its course”.
No they are not. Prices reflect reality. When something is scarce, the price rises. This causes both a decrease in usage and an increase in supply. In one disaster, some guy loaded up a bunch of generators on a truck and took them to the people who needed them and charged double what he paid for them. And they gladly bought them! Then the local gendarmes arrested him and confiscated his generators. The result - people who needed and wanted generators and were willing to pay for them did not get them.
Price controls always cause shortages, because they do not reflect the true value of the product. Government has no reason to interfere in a voluntary transaction between buyers and sellers. Period.
What amount of time must pass until it would be legal to raise prices? Never?
If, at the price dictated by government, the owner does not wish to sell, will the government force the owner to sell?
If the owner of a gas station decides to rent a tanker himself and take the risk of obtaining additional supplies, but only manages to get the supplies to where they are needed after the emergency passes and the retail price returns to "normal", who pays for that additional cost?
If you were familiar with the laws you would realize they are allowed to raise prices; there is simply a limit as to how much they can raise them during an emergency. The government doesn’t set their price; the stations do. The laws limit how much they can be increased.
Under the gouging laws prices can rise; they are limited in what percentage they can rise during a crisis.
Generators aren’t regulated in the same manner that gasoline (or even milk) is by the government, so I’m not sure why the situation you described took place.
I believe the gouging laws are a way for the government, which clearly should have ordered more evacuations in this case than they did, to protect the most vulnerable; otherwise the ugly situation would get much uglier very quickly (and the gougers would be praying for that same governmnet to rescue them from the mob).
From http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2953909/posts :
Exhibit A are laws, like those in New York and New Jersey, prohibiting "price gouging" — defined as a merchant using the demand created by a natural disaster to charge more for items like gasoline, bottled water or generators.
So, by how much can a vendor raise his prices?
I believe they are allowed to increase the price up to 10%.
Much of the cost of gasoline is tax; NJ has among the lowest gasoline prices in the nation because we have low gasoline taxes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.