Tag: price controls

South Park — Medicinal Fried Chicken (NFSW)

 

Cartman and the gang head to KFC after soccer practice only to find out it’s been converted into a new medicinal marijuana shop. Cartman convinces his mom to drive him to a nearby town for KFC, but that show has closed as well. Cartman learns that Colorado has recently passed a bill that bans fast food in low-income areas, but it turns out KFCs were only built in low-income cities, so there are effectively no more KFCs in the state. The state government has essentially set a price ceiling for KFC in low-income areas at zero dollars. One of the predictable side effects of these price controls is a black market for the item. Items with price ceilings also tend to have inefficiently low quality. The banning of fast food causes Cartman to enter the black market to feed his KFC addiction. In later scenes, Cartman is upset because he catches a dealer cutting the KFC gravy with Boston Market gravy. When the dealer suggests he can take the gravy back, Cartman notes that no one wants fried chicken without gravy, implying the two items are complements.

Thanks to Thomas Jandora for the clip reference

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Law and Order — Selling a Kidney?

This is a series of clips from the show Law and Order where the detectives uncover a doctor operating a black market kidney ring. The detectives debate throughout the episode of whether kidneys sales should be prohibited and if there is an efficient way to allocate kidneys in the market.

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College Humor — Apartment Hunting is the Worst (NSFW)

This comedy series shows a series of examples of associated with price ceilings for apartments in New York City. It shows not only the predictably inefficiently low quality of these apartments, but also the wasted resources that are involved when there is a shortage of apartments.

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John Stossel — Rent Control in New York City

John Stossel explores New York City’s decision to implement rent control throughout the city. He covers many of the predictable outcomes associated with inefficient policy controls. Ask students to identify issues as he progresses through the video.  While the references are a bit dated, there aren’t many videos that hit the outcomes as closely as this one does.

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NYC Debate — Rent is Too Damn High

Many have seen Jimmy McMillan as a meme, but so few have gotten to see him in the NYC debates. McMillan argues that rent in New York City is too high and should be regulated by the government. This is a good clip to use before a discussion on price ceilings and the normative argument of prices being ‘too high’.

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John Stossel — Price Gouging

Is price gouging evil or is it the sensible economic decision when shortages arise? In this series, John Stossel explores price gouging around natural disasters. This topic is really good for discussing the tradeoff between equity and efficiency.

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Stealing Harvard: Selling Beer

 

Dial-a-bottle beer service provides beer to minors. The government has essentially set a price floor of an $∞ for minors to purchase, such that there is an extreme shortage of minors being able to buy beer. Tom Green steps in to offer packs of beer for well below the price floor.

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Chris Rock: Bullet Control

 

Guns and bullets are complement goods. This clip from Chris Rock’s HBO comedy special talks about how making the price of bullets $5000 would limit the amount of shootings. This is essentially talking about how when the price of a product increases, the demand for complement goods related to that product decreases. By having the price of a bullet cost $5000, Chris is basically saying that the government should put a price floor on bullets. This will result in less people being able to afford bullets and possible a black market for bullets. All of which are addressed in this clip. This clip has been edited for class use.

H/T to James Tierney

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