The Economy

If only we had a price czar that dictated how much things have to cost. Then nobody would get "gouged."

I am sorry. Nothing about this reality has changed: Demand for nearly everything (except for maybe the air we need to breathe) is elastic to one degree or another. Demand for most things (where prices ran up steeply as the Fed monetized an insane amount of debt in a very short period of time) is VERY elastic. When prices go up, people demand less of them (The converse is that when price goes down, the incentive to sell them wanes and you get less of them supplied). All the things he goes on about, technology, his supposed "power" that businesses have over people (which is largely nonsense), etc.? It doesn't change basic supply and demand and how they work together. If you price something too high into elastic demand, you are going to lose enough sales to where you earn less. This is how markets regulate prices naturally. It's why the cure for hgh prices (gouging!) eventually is. ... high prices.

The amount of superstitious thinking about what is fairly straightfrward is mind boggling.

 

The demand for food itself is very inelastic, obviously.

But there is signficant cross-price elasticity of demand within "food." Like if the price of beef goes up a lot, people might eat more chicken instead. And if the price of any one food item goes up a lot, a lot of people will just stop consuming it altogether and eat other things they find more affordable.

 

That has been an ongoing supply problem (actually a multi-year shit storm) that has caused worldwide shortages for formula. If you are trying to figure out how the demand for baby formula is impacting the shortages (and massive run in price), you are probably looking in the wrong place. It's been a supply problem that has been unique to. ... baby formula.