I see bottled water being sold for $6 for a 12 pack when it used to be $2 for a 24. Convince me that isn't price gouging. It's literally plastic and water.
> Convince me that isn't price gouging. It's literally plastic and water.
Not that I fundamentally disagree, but your example is probably not a great one.
First is that fuel costs were abnormally high for several months and water in plastic bottles isn't exactly cheap to transport.
Second is that plastic is sourced from oil and guess what? It's been quite expensive until the recent leveling off.
Third is that as some regions of the US start to run out of ground water due to unusually long drought conditions, the availability of local water sources also dries up and thus requires buying more expensive sources of water or bringing that water in from further away.
These issues affect everything a grocery store sells. Crops are water dependent, food is heavy and bulky to transport, and it's all wrapped in plastic.
Previously the food industry competed on price. Supply was disrupted which any econ student would tell you increases prices. But the second order consequence was that these companies no longer competed on price, for a short time. They could justify price increases because everybody including their competitors were doing it. Since the grocery stores set the price, they determined that luxuries like 'bottled water' could go up higher since their price-sensitive customers rely more on necessities. Once supply stabilizes, these companies might start competing on price again. But in a free market, as long as their competitors keep their high margin items expensive, they can do so too.
To provide another perspective, it's worth noting that the example given contrary to "gouging" doesn't account for the practice occurring in multiple industries given that it only looks at food as a share of an individual's disposable income ("the average share of Americans’ disposable personal income (DPI) spent on food").
Bottled water is a bizarre example to pick for price gouging of food, since water is available for essentially free for almost everyone in America. When it has a cost it is measured in $/kilogallons not $/liter
The entire city of pittsburg has ongoing lead in tapwater scandals. To a lesser extant so has the entire state of Milwaukee.
That is already millions, but...
Flint still has problems. Brady Texas has radium, Washington DC has intermittently had Lead. It is entirely on well owners to test and maintain their own water. New Jersey leads the country in BPA in water, some of which is safe, but the advice is to check with each municipality if it is safe....
And so on for all kinds of places and reasons. We just don't take tap water seriously as a country even though it wouldn't be a hard problem for us to solve.
Palo Alto Park Mutual Water Company, deserving about 600 houses, in the middle of the Silicon Valley. Water is not potable.
I have an extensive filtration system for making it potable. It is expensive, but the convenience is worth it as I can afford it. My neighbor has to go out refill 18L jugs for his drinking supply.
The rich can buy more reducing supply, raising prices.
Rich industrialists buy up raw materials, package it, and sell it leaving less raw material (or lightly refined like flour from wheat, sugar from cane) for the masses to get cheap.
We pay to cover the industrial cost of the work to package cereal rather than the cost of flour and sugar.
It’s simple arithmetic and a bunch of philosophy, platitudes, and euphemisms justifying it.
A friend of mine is a collections agent who just signs computer generated letters just to role play our socioeconomic game. Give them an equivalent UBI, and we don’t have to provide them a work computer to go along with their personal gadgets.
We produce way more than we need to to satisfy the job LARP.
I see bottled water being sold for $6 for a 12 pack when it used to be $2 for a 24. Convince me that isn't price gouging. It's literally plastic and water.