Headline in the Honolulu Star Bulletin today.
‘Shock wave’ at the pump looming
House Speaker Say hopes oil companies do not charge the maximum on Sept. 1
By B.J. Reyes
Preliminary calculations show the cost of gasoline could rise once state price controls on wholesale gas take effect next thursday, but lawmakers who passed the legislation say they do not believe that will happen.
"I truly feel, and I hope I'm correct next week, that oil companies will not raise their wholesale prices" to the maximum allowed, said House Speaker Calvin Say (D, St. Louis Heights-Wilhelmina Rise)."
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Hawiian Pols Do a Favor for Economics Professors
Cafe Hayek
By Don Boudreaux on Prices
The belief in magic never dies. Politicians in Hawaii apparently believe that ink on paper (backed up by people with guns) can keep the cost of gasoline lower than the price that would prevail on the market.
They're wrong. Shortages and queues will result.
The silver lining around this politically induced foolishness is that it makes the teaching of economics easier. I taught my first economics class in the Fall of 1982. All of my students then clearly remembered the gasoline shortage of the summer of 1979 -- the long lines, the five-gallon-maximum purchases, the anxiety of not knowing even if you could even find a station selling gasoline, and the crazy rationing schemes (such as selling on some days of the week only to motorists whose license tags ended in even numbers, and on other days of the week only to motorists whose license tags ended in odd numbers).
For my students in the early- and mid-1980s, their recollections of the palpable and highly unpleasant oil-price controls made teaching economics easier then than it is today, when students have no memories of any such absurd regulations whose consequences are so plain and unpleasant for anyone with eyes not blinded by utter, shrieking hostility to markets.
So, while I pity poor Hawaiian motorists, I'll have lots of good, modern pictures of queues at gasoline stations to share with my students. |
