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Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What is "price gouging"?

I hear it a lot lately, specifically as something that grocery stores are doing with food prices.

My instinct is that if retailers raises prices, even if only because they think customers will pay more, and then customers do pay more, then that is the new market price. As such, there can't really be "gouging" by definition, no matter what price retailers set.

I don't understand how 'price gouging' could apply to grocery store food prices in the context of inflation, at all. If all prices are increasing, so food prices increase, how is that "price gouging"? And - if it's increasing much faster than inflation, how does inflation give them an opportunity to do so when they couldn't before

You use the motivation of inflation to raise prices across the board regardless of whether the price of an individual product increased or not.

Customers are largely locked in so they pay what they must as the oligopolistic market moves in uncoordinated unison.