Price Controls 101

by Jerry Taylor

Jerry Taylor is director of natural-resource studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina has shocked the nation, but so has the response to that devastation. Anger is surging over the behavior of governmental relief agencies, local law enforcement, the underclass of New Orleans, the National Guard, and the profiteers who are capitalizing on human misery. Regardless of how we feel about the former groups, the assault on profiteering is misguided and counterproductive. The crisis would be shorter and less painful if we accepted without complaint what goes by the epithet of “price gouging.”