I don't even think anyone can ELI50 on that one. Like the others said, it's always a political determination. So, I could ELIcynic and say that price gouging is high prices that affect politically connected groups.
Remember when the Fed had to breakout the emergency measures to save bankers from having to very periodically, very temporarily, pay .00273% interest instead of .00236% interest [1] on overnight loans? It's who you know.
But if I were to steelman, it would be something like, "taking advantage of a higher equilibrium price when it's known that there is no longer easy entry into the market", which would cover e.g. its usage in disaster scenarios.
Easy or not, taking the terms of your italics arguendo as having no vagueness, all that "price gouging" changes is who receives the goods: the people able and willing to pay more vs. the people who got in line first, bringing market transparency to where before there was just the lucky few before the shortage, and everyone else after.
Not really. This is a case where both numbers are so small that even the 10x difference between them shouldn’t matter, considering the narrow, limited scope, which was the point of the original comment.
Remember when the Fed had to breakout the emergency measures to save bankers from having to very periodically, very temporarily, pay .00273% interest instead of .00236% interest [1] on overnight loans? It's who you know.
But if I were to steelman, it would be something like, "taking advantage of a higher equilibrium price when it's known that there is no longer easy entry into the market", which would cover e.g. its usage in disaster scenarios.
[1] Total interest, not annualized rate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21000023