People price gouge when they buy goods during an emergency in order to re-sell them for a higher price. Why does price gouging feel wrong to us? In this post I consider a couple of possible reasons and argue that price gouging feels wrong because when people price gouge others, only two kinds of people can buy a scarce good: the rich and the desparate. So it makes prior inequalities between people more salient. I call this “shooting the messenger of inequality” and argue that doing this i...
