20/10/2020

Samira Pereziq

How Price Gouging helps Consumers During

Coronavirus Pandemic?
The video was very interesting to listen, I could hear various ideas and perspectives on what the
solutions could be to get the economy back on track after covid-19. When the question comes
how to get rid of the virus it is obviously by finding the right vaccine but how high are the
chances that people will take that vaccine. One interesting idea that I never heard before was
from the professor who said that the government should pay people to get vaccinated. What I do
think is that even when the ‘’right’’ vaccine will be out not that the government will pay people
to use it, but I think it will be quite expensive. I admit though it is a smart way to get rid of the
virus but how successful would that be? Let us take in consideration that the government will
pay people to get vaccinated, will most people agree on that? We should also take in
consideration that there is a percentage of rich people who you can’t lure with getting paid in one
side and a high percentage of the people who do not trust the government nor the vaccines on the
other side. So, what I would conclude is that even if the government pays people to get
vaccinated, we won’t get rid of the virus totally but we could decrease its huge spreading around
the world quite a bit.
Another thing what made me curious about or think deeper about it is when in the video it is
mentioned that price gouging is a fraud. I know that price gouging in not cool and the right way
to profit. I totally do not support the thing that the two guys did-collecting a van full of hand
sanitizers and other things to sell them extremely expensive on amazon. But when you think
from the seller’s perspective why would not you be allowed to sell the products for higher price
if you are the only one who has those available products for now. It is not only now during this
pandemic the first time that we have experienced price gouging. Now we saw how the price of
toilet paper, hand sanitizers increased but we actually have experienced price gouging many
times for example when we go to buy a ticket for a concert one day before it starts-we usually
pay at least double the price than it was several days ago. In the other side if you pay for a
concert ticket months before then usually you get the concert ticket at a discounted price. So, it
has kind of a logic behind it, and in a way people who sell them can have some sort of their own
rules when it comes to pricing. Everyone wants profit and high demand I understand that but I
think it is illogical to exaggerate it with prices because there comes a day in the future where you
will not be able to play with prices anymore because everything will go back to normal and you
could leave a bad reputation of your company because people will remember who exaggerated it
with prices and will probably not buy your products in the future anymore.
Another thing I would not agree on was on the question of the interviewer who said that why
would not we consider labor as price gouging. For example, people working in medicine did
have increase in income during the pandemic, but I would not consider that price gouging. I do
not agree on that because people working on medicine deserve to have a higher income now than
they used to have because now their tasks are more complex than before. So in my opinion when
it comes to price gouging it means that the thing you pay for it doesn’t pay off so the price is
higher than its value and for the people working in medicine this is not the case.
Michael said in the interview the following sentence:’’ There's a lot of human creativity and
resilience in the face of catastrophe’’ I liked this sentence a lot because it made sense. This
pandemic has so many downsides, but one good thing it has done is increase creativity of the
people. During this time, I was able to see so many talents. People are using their time in the best
way they could. Most of them were doing researches to try find solution for the problems we are
facing. People are educating themselves more. Even social media started to have a more sense of
creativity, I could see so many interesting ideas every day on it.
Michael also mentioned that hospitality industry had the worst impact from the pandemic and I
totally agree on that. Hospitality is an industry which needs a lot of employees and hospitality
employees are the largest in number left unemployed because of the virus. Every city in the
world has high percentage of hospitality employees. We even mentioned in class that there are
places such as Bali whose whole economy depends on tourism. It is not only the hotels and its
employees who were left with no job but also taking agriculture in consideration. Hospitality
industry is also connected with agriculture. So, the farmers cannot sell their vegetables and fruits
when there are no tourists staying on hotels, restaurants etc.
And I also agree on the thing that the longer the virus goes the longer we extend the period in
which we are economically inert. So, the sooner we can get through it the better. Being back to
normal is all people are wanting right now. So I think that to get rid of the virus people need to
get vaccinated but in order for people to get vaccinated they want strong evidences that the
vaccine does not have side effects, the government paying people would maybe help but it will
not be the whole solution. The higher the focus on medicine the higher the chances to get rid of
the virus.