Posted on 03/14/2020 11:22:43 AM PDT by TigerClaws
VANITY. Anecdotal but here it is:
A friend in Miami area said food stores are running near empty. Asked the store manager about restocking and was told that shipping costs have increased quite a bit with the National Emergency.
But the anti-gouging laws mean stores can't raise prices. So they'll just go empty because it's too expensive to restock. Stores can't pass any cost increase on to consumers.
Anyone in those industries that can fill in more on this? Thank you.
Anti-Gouging laws have long been criticized as they interfere with the market and might have unintended effects like these.
Yes. Yes.
Yes.
I can see this happening.
To avoid empty shelves, stores could simply limit purchases to x-number per customer, as they often do with sale items.
“But the anti-gouging laws mean stores can’t raise prices”
—
Did you ask about such laws applying to the truckers, others in the supply in?
I wish they would. So many here think they need 10X the usual amount they would purchase. A lot of the people here in central Texas came from where we came from, the South Bay. We dealt with these people 365/24/7. Any sale that used to start on a Sunday would see them lined up at the door before the store opened, and many of the sale items would disappear by 9am that Sunday. I thought we had moved away from that, but that would be NO. ARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
Its a communistic ideal.
The producers will simply NOT increase production.
Watch and see how well this goes. We already have lines in this panic. Soon it may result in violence. Fighting over store shelf existing stock, etc.
Shipping costs go down during emergencies.
Many regulations waived.
My wife just returned from Aldi here in rural Illinois. The store was out of toilet paper, facial tissues, all bread items, chicken breasts, ground beef, soup, mac and cheese, and various non-perishable items. I was in the same store a week ago, and it was fully stocked. As my wife put it, “It looks like a different America today.”
I understand not wanting $50 a gallon gas during a hurricane.
10-20% cost for food IF shipping is up... seems reasonable.
Here’s a related story:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/17-700-bottles-hand-sanitizer-155735689.html
On March 1, the day after the first coronavirus death in the United States, brothers Matt and Noah Colvin set out in a silver SUV to pick up some hand sanitizer. Driving around Chattanooga, Tennessee, they hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, a Staples and a Home Depot. At each store, they cleaned out the shelves.
Over the next three days, Noah Colvin took a 1,300-mile road trip across Tennessee and into Kentucky, filling a U-Haul truck with thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer and thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes, mostly from “little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods,” his brother said. “The major metro areas were cleaned out.”
Matt Colvin stayed home near Chattanooga, preparing for pallets of even more wipes and sanitizer he had ordered, and starting to list them on Amazon. Colvin said he had posted 300 bottles of hand sanitizer and immediately sold them all for between $8 and $70 each, multiples higher than what he had bought them for. To him, “it was crazy money.” To many others, it was profiteering from a pandemic.
The next day, Amazon pulled his items and thousands of other listings for sanitizer, wipes and face masks. The company suspended some of the sellers behind the listings and warned many others that if they kept running up prices, they’d lose their accounts. EBay soon followed with even stricter measures, prohibiting any U.S. sales of masks or sanitizer.
I guess thousands of local leftist cable news addicts have bought up all the food, especially meat, poultry dairy and my beloved pancake mix. There is no bacon or biscuits.
Apparently, virtue signaling does not extend to leaving enough food on the shelves to feed your fellow man.
The post modern American, pop culture driven society is woefully unprepared for a real crisis. Now would be a perfect time for Red China or Russia to launch missile attacks against US critical infrastructure - Houston, Los Angeles, New York.
Thankfully we have a competent Chief Executive (despite his somewhat suspect picks for leadership positions)
The fear mongering fake news media is breeding panic... likely as a coordinated effort to use the crisis to hurt Trumps re-election. Best thing we could do is not watch CNN and the other fake news.
Are transportation companies covered by the anti-gouging laws? Maybe that’s what up. They just jacked prices to cash in.
Another related article:
How the Coronavirus Outbreak Is Testing Amazon Delivery’s Limits
https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/11/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-is-testing-amazon-del.aspx
Transportation costs have NOT increased, and have actually fallen with the lower price for diesel.
I own a semi, this isn’t just an opinion.
These azzholes hording far beyond what is needed, buying up thousands of bottle of hand sanitizers etc, and trying to peddle them for $70-$100 bucks a bottle are not only causing these GD shortages but are taking total advantage of others.
Nobody will need to buy tp for the next 6 months
This what socialism looks like. Controlled prices to help the “common man” thereby removing any market incentive to produce more. Result: perpetual shortages of essential goods. Everybody get it?
2. Those who bought everything up (and brag about it!) need to be asked, "You don't need that much. Don't you care about anyone but yourself?" Shame them.
According to Walter E. Williams, they do lead to shortages. Higher prices are a way of rationing the product. You buy only a few when prices are high.
But that’s not how it’s done today. Stores limit the quantity purchased. But that doesn’t prevent the customer from going to another store, sending a family member, or coming back later. So there are empty shelves.
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