Are you smarter than a politician?
Anybody?
The answer is yes if you were among the
millions of students who,
thanks to the charity run by this high school teacher,
get to watch my videos in class.
It should only take you a couple of minutes.
Actually, not all the videos are mine but
the charity's called Stossel In The Classroom
because I offer free videos to
any teacher who wants video teaching aids
for courses in economics, government,
critical thinking, and current events.
Watching and discussing the videos gives
kids new perspective on things.
But the people that accept welfare, over time
they lose the incentive to work.
Every year we hold an essay contest.
Winners get money plus a free trip for them
and their teacher to visit us here
in New York City.
This year's contest invited students to
write about price gouging,
a practice hated by the media and most politicians.
Jeff Sessions and the President of the United  States
will not tolerate gouging.
Gouging becomes an issue every hurricane season,
because after storms, some merchants
raise prices.
They're taking advantage of us.
That leads politicians to pass laws that say:
During a state of emergency,
you cannot substantially raise prices
whether it's a hotel room, fuel,
commodities such as water, generators,
you cannot raise prices substantially
and that's what these bad people are doing.
Fortunately, our students get to hear a
Nobel Prize winning economist
give the other side of the argument.
The gougers deserve a medal.
The gougers are heroes,
said Milton Friedman
because they take risks to bring in goods
that people desperately need.
After Hurricane Katrina,
one so-called gouger was John Shepperson.
Watching news reports about Katrina,
he learned that people desperately needed things.
My wife just got out of the hospital.
She's very sick, and we need a generator.
So John bought 19 generators,
put them in a rented U-Haul,
and drove it 600 miles to
part of Mississippi which had no
electricity.
Five million people in this region are without power.
John offered to sell his generators
for twice what he paid for them.
People were eager to buy.
People were excited. We had a product they needed.
But Mississippi police wouldn't let John sell them.
They called that price gouging.
Instead, they confiscated his generators
and locked John up in this jail.
So did the public benefit?
No.
What do we need? Come on guys.
Generators, water, food.
Somebody needs to bring these products
to people
when there are disasters and emergencies,
and this is gonna be one person
that's not going to be there that
they took out of the equation.
Students who entered our video essay
contest
expanded on that point.
In modern day, you see countries like Venezuela
suffer from the fact that their
governments continue to place price controls
on all items.
17 year-old Annelise Kofod
of Raleigh, North Carolina submitted this video
and won our high school award.
34 the 50 US states have laws against price gouging.
As I did more and more research,
I was like, okay maybe price gouging
isn't such a bad thing.
Erika Lewis of Towson University won the
college-level category.
Sellers are able to earn more profit and buyers are
capable of getting the supplies they desperately need.
Actually the price gougers are the moral ones.
17 year old Maggie Hroncich of Grove City,
Pennsylvania
won her high school essay contest.
If you just look at the economics,
the most people are helped
if you keep the government out of it.
When people hear price gouging,
they think, oh gouging
this awful thing that you'd think of,
but it really is kind of just another name
for supply and demand.
Wisdom from students helped to look at
all sides of the issue
by teachers who use our videos.
Next year's essay contest will be announced soon.
Check out SITC.org
for the latest information.
