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Brett Stephens's avatar

Thinking like an economist is hard. We have deep seated (possibly innate) intuitions about fairness and reciprocity. My econ brain tells me gouging is good because it rations demand and rewards supply, but every instinct I have tells me it's exploitation. Ironically in the case of grocery stores, we have recent evidence that they kept prices below the market clearing price, which is why you couldn't get toilet paper.

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Christopher Brunet's avatar

in Canada, the NDP have been obsessively yelling about how greedy grocery companies ("big grocery") have been gouging consumers for the past 2 years

It blows my mind that this works, and that it's the party's main talking point. But Canadian socialists keep gobbling it up... wild.

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