Is price gouging a good thing or not? Or is it just necessary? Explain why.

To begin, price gouging is legally known as when retailers and or other sellers take advantage of spikes that happen in demand by charging buyers an excessive amount for necessities. This mostly occurs in the event of a natural disaster. After reading, "Florida lawsuits allege price gouging" by Phillips, R. (2014, August 18), and looking through the graphs to choose from on price gouging, I considered all things from the article. Things such as the writer's tone and bias on which opinion they obtain on price gouging. For example, in "Florida lawsuits allege price gouging" the writer speaks about how a lawsuit against two hotels for price gouging came to be after a natural disaster, in the second paragraph he states, "Hurricane Charley is the worst natural disaster to befall our state in a dozen years, and it is unthinkable that anyone would try to take advantage of neighbors at a time like this". This and more information led me to believe that the best choice for this article is graph A, that is because graph A is it shows that the consumers are willing to pay more for possible quantities of good, which also causes an increase in price. As for the second article, "They clapped: Can price-gouging laws prohibit scarcity?", I considered all the same things I considered when reading the first article, only this time the results were different. I chose graph D because the sellers of the ice were selling it for 4 times more than their original price, while the buyers were willing to pay more for less.

References:

CNN.com - Florida lawsuits allege price gouging - Aug 18, 2004Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist filed lawsuits Tuesday against two hotels he said engaged in price gouging and other unfair practices as people fled Hurricane Charley.

They Clapped: Can Price-Gouging Laws Prohibit Scarcity? - Econlib"There were no generators, ice, or chain saws to be had, none. But that means that anyone who brought these commodities into the crippled city, and charged less than infinity, would be doing us a service." Here's the thing: They clapped. I can't for the life of me understand why the people would clap. But [...]Econlib