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This weekend brings Passover to New York City, and the City is ready: Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced a few initiatives to make sure Pesach is peaceful. First, security will be increased with more police foot patrols and security at synagogues; plus the police will patrol "sensitive" areas in certain neighborhoods. The City's Bureau of Consumer Affairs also wants to crack down on price gouging of Passover related items, so they're asking for residents to fill out this form. Finally, the Department of Sanitation will have more trucks available to pick up food in the pre-Passover/Chometz ritual - aka, ridding the house of bread products. Just think, these are pre-Atkins traditions! Perhaps this is an opportunity to do a little spring cleaning yourselves.
Gothamist will have more Passover-related posts about eating and arts events. And Newsday profiled the matzoh making frenzy some area matzoh manufacturers go through to meet the demand. And Gothamist on matzoh t-shirts and allegiances.
With contribution from Rina
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Doesn't everyone realize that price gouging is better for consumers than the alternative?
Would you rather have a more plentiful supply of temporarily increased prices, or a more constricted or no supply of certain items?
To undertstand the economic and ethical basis for price gouging, read this: http://www.conciseguidetoeconomics.com/book/priceGouging/
Just a brief bit:
"Price gouging--charging higher prices under emergency conditions--evokes strong emotional responses that are understandable but terribly wrong-headed.
In the words of economist Walter Williams, "passionate issues require dispassionate analysis." The passion generated by price increases for necessities in an emergency is just such a case. Three lines of analysis demonstrate that "price gouging" is not only not offensive, but that preventing it would increase misery, and that it is even a desirable practice! "
???? Whatever iceberg. A ripoff is a ripoff. The amount of overcharging for "Kosher" goods is quite disturbing and is simply profit and greed.
If you're chanrging more than the standard 20% markup, you deserve to get busted. Especially when someone is manipulating religious preferences to create a faux increase in "demand" to sate supply. I find that to be very disgusting.
Since when is profit and greed a crime? Or for that matter, undesirable?
There is no such thing as overcharging, only in a post facto scenario. If you agree to pay a certain price, you have accepted to, and cannot characterize the transaction as criminal. Criminal would be the case only if someone forced you to buy the product. But since it was not such, and you, the buyer voluntarily parted with your money in exchange for the goods, what the ???? are you complaining about?!
Also, how does one come to determine what level of markup is good or bad? I would leave that to the preference of the buyer- let him decide whether he wants to pay such prices.
Manipulating religious preferences- what have you been smoking? By your same non-logic, car manufacturers are manipulating automobile preferences, and pickle manufacturers are manipulating briny cucumber lovers.
And whether you find an examplary peaceful, mutual-benefitting economic transaction as disgusting or praiseworthy is irrelevant, as you are a third-party and have no business dictating whether others can engage in voluntary exchange.
"And whether you find an examplary peaceful, mutual-benefitting economic transaction as disgusting or praiseworthy is irrelevant, as you are a third-party and have no business dictating whether others can engage in voluntary exchange."
Actually the whole complaint process is hinged on the concept of the second-party (the consumer) believing that the first-party (the seller) is overcharging for goods. You're basically saying "It's none of your business..." Well, if someone wants to be ripped off they can. But they need to know that they are being ripped off and not simply swallow/accept the "Kosher for Passover" overcharging.
So yes I am a third-party, who is defending the concept and rights of the second-party/consumer to have recompense when they are being fleeced.
In the case of Passover goods, religious preferences in food are indeed being manipulated. It's the 21st century. Not the 19th. Nowadays it's trivially easy to make adjustments in manufacturing to make a Kosher product Kosher for Passover. So trivial in fact that the higher-price for Kosher for Passover goods is simply fleecing a population based on religious preferences. The price should simply be the same across the board with no different price for Kosher for Passover goods.
It's akin to someone saying that Easter Peeps should cost more than Halloween Peeps since one is a religious holiday and the other is a pagan one.
It's hightway robbery plain and simple. And while I am not a religious Jew, it disgusts me when I see others ripped off by the Kosher vs. Kosher for Passover scam.