| madcorgi |
07-03-2013 08:32 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by red-beard
(Post 7528415)
My question is who is making the money on this situation? 5 years ago 500 rounds of .22LR was around $10. Then it went to the $15-17 region. Since last December, it is now around $50. I understand supply and demand. But who is getting the additional markup? Local gun dealer or the manufacturer?
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Kaos is right--all of them. It's like the panic buying of gas during the "shortages" or the 70s and 80s. Everyone along the supply chain sees a chance to make a quick buck, based on increased demand. It's capitalism.
BTW--I think it was driven by the Newtown massacre and the public's fear of another knee-jerk Congressional response like the Patriot Act, rather than any sort of action by you-know-who, who has done pretty nothing to restrict gun ownership in any way. As always, fear causes irrational behavior in the markets. The fear goes away, and the prices settle out as demand falls.
What's interesting here is that demand for guns is far less elastic than I would have expected. For those who missed class that day, elasticity of demand is the extent to which demand changes in reaction to fluctuation in price. Very roughly speaking, demand is said to be elastic if small changes in price cause big changes in demand. Examples are usually things like luxury items that people can live without. Demand is said to be inelastic if significant changes in price do not affect demand. Examples are essentials, like gas, food, and, interestingly, cigarettes.
I expected demand for firearms to be fairly elastic--people would decide to do without as prices rose. But it was far more inelastic than I anticipated, i.e., people didn't seem to think they could do without guns. The stochastic part of all this, however, was the extent to which people truly believed that the government was going to confiscate guns, which threw a monkey wrench into simple supply/demand theory because it was an unknown variable. That and the effects of herd mentality--everyone is dong it, so I'd better too.
Economics is an inexact science for good reason.
Terry
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