1. DOING THE RIGHT THING



In the summer of 2004, Hurrican Charley roared out of the Gulf of Mexico and swept acroos Florida to the Atlantic Ocean. The storm claimed twenty-two lives and caused $11 billion in damage. It also left in its wake a debate about price gouging.


At a gas station in Orando, they were selling two-dollar bags of ice for ten dollars. Lacking poweer for refrigerators or air-conditioning in the middle of August, many people had little choice but to pay up. Downed trees heightened demand for chain saws and roof repairs. Contractors offered to clear two trees off a homeowner's roof--for $23,000. Stores that normally sold small household generators for $250 were now asking $2,000. A seventy-seven-year-old woman fleeing the hurrican with her elderly husband and handicapped daughter was charged $160 per night for a motel room that normally goes for $40.





Many Floridians were angered by the inflated prices. "After Storm Come the Vultures", read a headline in USA Today. One resident, told it would cost $10,500 to remove a fallen tree from his roof, said it was wrong for people to "try to capitalize on other people's hardship and misery". Charlie Crist, the state's attorney general, agreed: "It is astounding to me, the level of greed that someone must have in their soul to be willing to take advantage of someone suffering in the wake of a huricane."