WHY ARE VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS SO RACIST? VA House Democrats Storm Out As Black Pastor Prays Against Abortion and Gay Marriage.
Okay, I guess Virginia’s Democratic Governor posing in blackface/a KKK outfit might have been a tipoff.
Archive for 2020
February 12, 2020
AT AMAZON, save in Safety and Security.
COVERING THE IMPORTANT NEWS: ‘The golden retriever was robbed!’ Many dog lovers disappointed that a poodle won Westminster — again.
Related: This is your poodle. This is your poodle on acid. Any questions?
OPEN THREAD: You know you’ve been waiting for it all day.
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Rio Braces for Coronavirus Risk During Carnival Party.
As coronavirus spreads on ship, Princess Cruises offers crew two months of vacation.
World Mobile Congress cancelled over coronavirus fears.
The coronavirus is hitting the Chinese economy at the worst time.
Coronavirus: One million masks to be distributed to private clinics in Singapore.
Japan: 39 new coronavirus cases on cruise ship. I feel sorry for the passengers and crew, but this is providing us with some useful data.
Can it be contained? Coronavirus tests faith in China’s crisis management.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. There Are Already Way Too Many Electric Pickup Trucks.
HARSH, BUT FAIR:
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: “Here’s Amy Klobuchar in 2006 talking taking a hardline stance on immigration, supporting a border fence and even criticizing the Bush administration for not cracking down on companies hiring illegal immigrants. ‘We need to get order at the border.’”
STEPHEN CARTER ON WHY “PRICE GOUGING” ACTUALLY HELPS: Sold-Out Coronavirus N95 Face Masks Offer a Lesson in Price Gouging: The best way to make sure supply meets demand is to let sellers charge higher prices.
Let’s begin with a thought experiment: Suppose that an entrepreneur — we’ll call him Carter — turns out to have stockpiled several thousand N95 masks a few years ago. Now, noticing the shortage, Carter opens up his storehouse and announces that he will sell N95s, in lots of 20 (as they’re commonly purchased), to the highest bidder. He even sets up a website where people can bid. Every ten minutes, until the supply is gone, the highest bidder wins 20 masks. Bids quickly run into the thousands of dollars for a package that, before the panic, could often be had for less than twenty bucks.
What happens next is of course predictable.
The outraged news media declares a scandal, the outraged Twitterverse tries to cancel poor Carter, and the outraged politicians stumble all over each other on their way to the nearest camera to charge him with price-gouging. Carter is hauled before the country as an example of how not to behave in a crisis. Greed run rampant. An immoral effort to profit from people’s fear.
You can write the script.
Carter caves. Humiliated, and worried about his business prospects, he donates his entire store of N95 masks to public health authorities, who in turn will give them out if deemed necessary (that is, if deemed necessary in their view) according to some rationing formula that will be shared with the public only if what the authorities deem to be an emergency should arise. (In China, masks are already being rationed by the government.)
But this is a dreadful result.
Here’s the simplest reason: Smarter, who happens to possess an even bigger cache of N95 masks than Carter did, will observe how he was treated and decide to keep hers under lock and key. After all, she might need them in an emergency. As a result of the insistence that Carter not sell his property at the price the market is willing to pay, the supply of N95 masks to the public is smaller than if nobody had intervened.
College students learn in Economics 101 that a demand curve slopes downward to the right. As demand falls, price falls. As demand rises, price rises. If instead you don’t allow the price to rise — because of your concern about “price gouging” — the quantity offered for sale will fall.
This isn’t complicated, and it’s true in every disaster. I’m willing to pay a lot more for a generator when I know the power is going to be out for a week than I am when the lights are on. If the price is unregulated, the difference in what I would pay in those two situations will bring more generators to market. And depending on the cost to enter the market, the rising price will lead more sellers to bring generators to the disaster site, leading to a larger supply, and eventually a lower price.
This should be obvious, but isn’t.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: UCI halves testosterone threshold for transgender riders.
A MAJOR FAIL FOR THE EPA’S MILEAGE-RATING SYSTEM: In Our Testing, the Porsche Taycan’s Range Nearly Equaled That of the Tesla Model S: The vast difference in EPA figures didn’t amount to much in the real world. The multiple discrepancies between Tesla’s EPA range and actual range make me wonder if the Tesla was designed to game the EPA rating.
OH, GOODY: Health experts warn Congress coronavirus may hit US hard in next two to four weeks.
“I don’t think we should be planning for the onesie-twosie cases that we’ve been seeing thus far in the United States,” said Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. “We have to plan for the possibility that we have thousands of cases, you know.”
That would be wise. Plus: “Gottlieb said he believes China first saw the epidemic spread internally in November and doubts the Chinese government’s data are sound.”
WHY DO DEMOCRATS HATE ASIANS? State Sen. John Liu clashes with Richard Carranza over NYC Department of Education treatment of Asian New Yorkers.
BOYS WILL BE GIRLS? Female Athletes File Title IX Lawsuit to Reverse Unfair Trans Rules.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why You Shouldn’t Mix Shotgun Ammo.
BLUE ON BLUE: The Left Comes to Kick the Corpse of Joe Biden’s Campaign.
That one is just for our PJMedia/Townhall VIP members (you can sign up here if you wish with that VODKAPUNDIT discount code), but Matt Margolis has non-members covered this hour with: 5 Times Barack Obama Protected His Allies from Justice and Democrats Didn’t Care.