New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Monday launched an investigation into post-Sandy price gouging after receiving hundreds of complaints from consumers across the state.
Schneiderman said his office has received complaints from consumers from areas of the state hit hardest when the massive storm struck one week ago – New York City, the Hudson Valley and Long Island.
The largest number of complaints are related to increased gasoline prices, he said in a statement, but consumers also have reported possible gouging for emergency supplies like generators, hotels raising rates due to “high demand,” as well as increased prices for food and water.
(Reuters)
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If you have a fixed supply, and high demand you have two, and only two choices. You can sell to the highest bidder (the capitalist solution, which results in the poor being unable to get the commodity) OR you can ration, meaning you sell at a lower price (in effect ripping off the suppliers who have no incentive to get more of whatever it is you want, this being the socialist solution – note that whether you receive depends on how well politically connected you are). In effect, the “friends of Eric” get the goods cheaply, and the rest won’t. If they fix the price below the cost to the suppliers, no one gets anything it but all will get it equally (this being socialism at its best).
Mobil on Kings Hwy and Nostrand raised their price 16 cents a gallon.
New hardware store on Avenue J sold flashlights and batteries for almost triple the price.
That is nothing Gulf station Avenue P and Coney Island Ave went from pre storm $3.79/gal to post storm $4.15/gal and talk demand ppl are paying it go figure how ppl give in to big oil companies. How we are such suckers and that hurts.
So you would rather have someone with “clout” (“protecksia, if you speak Israeli) get the gas at $3.79, leaving you facing an empty pump – albeit with a price at $3.79, as opposed to being able to actually buy the gas at $4.15. Price controls work fine if your in with the controller (and distributor), but is disasterous if you are an outsider. And for the most part, frum Yidden are outsiders in this world.