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   I have two articles, and I need you to write a “Paragraph Summery” and a “Paragraph Opinion” for each article. So, I need only one page for each article, meaning that one article = one page of both “Paragraph Summery” and Paragraph Opinion”. I’m stressing that because my instructor emphasize that we should write only one page for each article. 

‘Price Gouging’ After a
Disaster Is Good for the Public
If government prohibits suppliers from charging more, consumers hoard, exacerbating
shortages.


Residents of Naples, Fla., try to buy gas, Sept.
13. PHOTO: SPENCER PLATT/GETTY
IMAGES
By Donald J. Boudreaux
Oct. 3, 2017 WSJ

As Hurricane Maria barreled toward Puerto
Rico, Sen. Bill Nelson worried that ticket
prices for flights out of San Juan and other
Caribbean cities would surge. The higher
costs would prevent some people from fleeing
the storm, the Florida Democrat figured.
Using his influence as head of the Senate
committee that oversees airlines, he urged
major U.S. airlines to cap fares for flights
leaving cities in Maria’s path.
Airlines quickly complied. Mr. Nelson’s
office declared victory. Economists wept.
That’s because high prices are an essential
way to ensure that resources get where they
are desperately needed. Imposing artificially
low prices creates shortages of vital supplies
and makes it harder for people to recover
from disasters.

Consider gasoline. In Orlando, Fla., a gallon
of regular was selling for as much as $5.99 in
the days before Hurricane Irma made landfall,
and a 24-pack of bottled water was spotted
selling for $99.99 from a third-party vendor
on Amazon.
The impulse to denounce the greed reflected
in such prices is human. But price hikes are a
response to scarcity, and signals that reveal
the true severity of scarcity are critical during
storms and other crises. Price hikes let
consumers know that fuel is scarcer than it
was. Price hikes prompt consumers to use
fuel more judiciously, buying less gasoline
than they would at a lower price. They take
fewer unnecessary trips, diminishing pressure
on supplies. Price hikes also create a financial
incentive for suppliers from outside the area
to move their product into high-demand
zones. As supplies return to normal, so do
prices.
Unfortunately, some politicians can’t restrain
themselves from intervening to stop prices
from rising. Florida merchants are fined
$1,000 for price-gouging during emergencies.
Multiple violations in a single day can draw
fines as high as $25,000. Members of the
House Judiciary Committee recently asked
the Federal Trade Commission to investigate
“disaster profiteers” who exploited hurricane
victims with price gouging.
Yet politicians who suppress prices make it
more difficult for storm victims to get much-
needed supplies. Artificially low gasoline
prices ensure that limited supplies are

depleted too quickly, as consumers hoard
cheap fuel while they can get it. When price
controls on gasoline kicked in with the 1973
OPEC oil embargo, consumers increased the
average “reserve” level in their gas tanks. Six
years later they began hoarding again when
price controls came back after Iran’s 1979
revolution.
The behavior was rational, but only because
U.S. policy makers created panic and
artificial shortages. During both crises, global
oil supply hardly decreased. But Americans
wasted hours in long lines and filled their
tanks with gas they didn’t necessarily need.
Wasted time has real costs. In 1980 a
regulatory quirk forced a handful of
California Chevron stations to sell gasoline at
below-market prices. Long lines formed,
consumers purchased more gas than they
otherwise would have, and stations had to
ration supplies.
Most of the consumers taking advantage of
artificially low prices would have been better
off doing just about anything else. In a 1985
study, economists Robert Deacon and Ron
Sonstelie concluded that those who waited in
line for 15 minutes saved only about $2—less
than the average nonsupervisory employee
would have earned in a quarter-hour at the
time.
History proves that artificially low prices
reduce supply, too. As New Year’s revelers in
New York City welcomed 2015, Uber’s
surge-pricing algorithm stopped working for
nearly 30 minutes. Without the guarantee of
extra pay, drivers had little incentive to brave
New Year’s traffic. Requests spiked 300%,
wait times doubled, and the rate of completed
trips fell 80%. People who really needed
Ubers—and would have been willing to pay
surge pricing—couldn’t get a ride.
A similar situation unfolded in Florida last
month when JetBlue , Delta and American

voluntarily restrained ticket prices on flights
out of Florida before the hurricane. By
dropping prices during the evacuation, the
airlines ensured that flights filled up more
quickly, making it harder for many to escape.
Some evacuees no doubt booked multiple
low-cost flights after prices dropped as a
hedge against cancellation. Paying a premium
for airline tickets is unpleasant, but letting
seats go to waste during an evacuation is
tragic.
Price increases are an important means of
encouraging as many people as possible to
cope as well and as creatively as possible
with natural disasters. True, the rising price of
goods like gasoline can create problems for
consumers, particularly the poor. But these
drawbacks are negligible compared to the
life-threatening shortages that can result when
ill-informed public outrage keeps prices
artificially low. Even a poor person is better
off being able to buy a bottle of water for $10
when the alternative is to have $10 and go
thirsty.

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Bison Industry Drives to Recruit
Ranchers as Demand Climbs 

Processors, marketers say they need more
producers to further build the market

As the bison meat industry grows, processors
and marketers say they need more producers
to help build the market. One major hurdle to
recruiting ranchers: convincing them to
handle animals that can grow to the size of a
Mini Cooper. Photo: AP
By JACOB BUNGE
Aug. 3, 2016 WSJ

The U.S. bison industry is trying to draw
more ranchers to where the buffalo roam.
After collapsing in 2002, demand for bison
burgers and steaks from retailers such as
Whole Foods Market Inc., Wal-Mart Stores
Inc. and Kroger Co. is rising, sending
processors and marketers on a recruiting drive
to round up more producers to raise the
hulking creatures.
One major hurdle to recruiting ranchers:
convincing them to handle animals that can
grow to the size of a Mini Cooper, and
sometimes get ornery.
“That’s like sticking bobcats in gunnysacks,”
said Lee Graese, a former bodybuilder who
raises bison with his wife, Mary, a dietitian,
near Rice Lake, Wis. “If you can run into it at

35 miles per hour with your pickup and it’s
still standing, you’ve got a pen that’ll hold a
bison.”
Bison-meat sales topped $340 million last
year, according to data from the National
Bison Association. This is a tiny fraction of
the more than $100 billion in sales of cattle,
hogs and poultry produced in the U.S. in
2015. But bison producers say their meat
boasts an edge in the marketplace as
consumers seek out more naturally raised
protein, and sales have grown by 22% over
the past five years. Fans say it tastes like beef,
but leaner and slightly sweeter.

!
Retailers like Whole Foods are getting their
bison-meat orders filled, but Theo Weening,
the company’s global meat buyer, said he
could sell a lot more. “I’d love to do a feature
on ground buffalo or seasoned buffalo
burgers, but if the supply is not there, we
can’t feature it,” he said.
!
Wholesale bison-meat prices, currently
around $4.50 a pound, have trod reliably
higher, nearly doubling from January 2009
through June of this year. That outpaces a
42% increase for similar beef grades, a 41%
rise in pork and an 18% gain for broiler

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chicken, according to U.S. Department of
Agriculture data.
Dave Carter, executive director of the
Westminster, Colo.-based Bison Association,
says the industry needs commercial-scale
ranches like the beef industry has, capable of
raising thousands more bison to further build
the market. Cattlemen, he said, are natural
candidates, beleaguered by a 20% decline in
cattle-carcass prices since early 2015.
In the often-punishing meat business, where
ranchers and meatpackers contend with
whipsawing prices and shifting consumer
tastes, shaggy bison have other
attractions.They are hardy, built to survive
blizzards, happy to munch grass. Their meat
is high in protein and produced without
growth-promoting medications and hormones
that have fallen out of favor with some meat
eaters.
To clear ranchers’ path to buffalo country, the
Bison Association, a trade group, successfully
lobbied the USDA for programs that help
bison ranchers get disaster relief funds, and
offset the cost of fencing. The May
designation of the American bison as the U.S.
national mammal was a recent coup. (The
bald eagle remains the U.S. national animal.)
There are signs the rancher drive is working.
The Bison Association’s number of active
producers has climbed by nearly a quarter to
about 850 from 2010 to 2016, and about a
fifth of attendees at the group’s recent winter
conferences are first-timers, Mr. Carter said.
The group also drafted a 300-page guide to
managing the animals and the industry.
Advice includes “build a good fence,” though
“’Jurassic Park’ corrals” aren’t needed if a
rancher forges a bond with the beasts. “Spend
some time thinking about what we do with
our bison and how it may look or feel from
their perspective,” the manual counsels.

Randy Miller, a former hair-salon magnate
who left that business to raise about 1,000
bison across two ranches in Nebraska and
Missouri with his wife, Jane, erred when he
lugged a bucket past a female bison named
“Muddy.” She assumed it contained feed and
exuberantly charged. Mr. Miller leapt into a
hay bin, and now tells people it was his own
fault.
The bison industry has had its own close
calls. A surge of speculative investment into
bison in the late 1990s, driven partly by
troubles in the cattle business, pushed the
price of animals to several thousand dollars a
head.
But the nascent bison-meat market struggled
to soak up the meat, and a drought scorched
grazing lands and forced ranchers to slaughter
more animals. That created a glut that by
2002 had plunged prices below $300 a head
and drove many ranchers from the business.
Now, many in the bison business call the
collapse a blessing. Bison meat previously
had struggled to tempt diners because of its
high price, but it became a bargain for
retailers and restaurants as bison flooded
processors like Rocky Mountain Natural
Meats, a Henderson, Colo.-based company
that ranks as the largest U.S. processor of
bison meat.
“Some of those customers are still buying
bison today at three to four times the price it
was then, because they figured out it was a
good product,” said Bob Dineen, chief
executive of Rocky Mountain. The company
supplies bison steaks, burgers and pot-roast to
Whole Foods, Costco Wholesale Corp. and
Wal-Mart, which this year began carrying Mr.
Dineen’s in about 500 stores.

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