It is now being estimated that the total amount of economic damage caused by Hurricane Harvey will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 190 billion dollars. It is a disaster unlike anything that we have ever seen before in all of U.S. history, and federal officials are already admitting that they are literally going to be dealing with the aftermath of this storm for “years”. At this point, more than 100,000 homes have been destroyed, “up to one million vehicles” have been ruined, and many retailers have already been caught engaging in extreme price gouging. But this could be just the beginning, because this storm has already rendered many areas along the Gulf coast “uninhabitable” for an extended period of time, and as you will see at the end of this article another hurricane may be arriving early next month.
What we just witnessed in Houston is being called “a 1,000-year-flood”, and many basic necessities are now in extremely short supply. So of course it was inevitable that this would lead to price gouging, and this is reportedly even happening at some of the largest retail chains. For example, at one Best Buy store cases of bottled water were being sold for 42 dollars…
On Friday, a Twitter user shared a picture of cases of bottled water being sold at a Best Buy in Houston. One of the cases was being sold for $42 when it normally retailed for about $15.
A Best Buy spokesman later apologized, saying it was a ‘big mistake’.
But that water was quite cheap compared to prices in other parts of the city. According to CNN, one convenience store in Houston was actually charging 20 dollars for a single gallon of gasoline and 99 dollars for a case of bottled water…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
