Sunday, March 15, 2015

Toilet Paper: The US vs. Venezuela

WaPo reports what happens when you allow free markets:

Americans have a new favorite way to flush money down the drain: luxury toilet paper.

Sales in the United States of what the industry calls "luxury" rolls — anything quilted, lotioned, perfumed or ultra-soft, from two- to four-ply — climbed to $1.4 billion last year, outpacing all other kinds of toilet paper for the first time in nearly a decade, data from market research firm Euromonitor International show.

The luxury market is one-fourth the size of the standard TP market, but its prominence in Big Wipe is growing faster than many industry watchers expected. Luxury toilet paper sales have grown more than 70 percent since 2000, and they're expected to keep growing faster than all other categories every year through at least 2018.

And AP reports what happens when you institute price controls:
First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities - toilet paper.[...]
One supermarket visited by The Associated Press in the capital on Wednesday was out of toilet paper. Another had just received a fresh batch, and it quickly filled up with shoppers as the word spread.
"I've been looking for it for two weeks," said Cristina Ramos. "I was told that they had some here and now I'm in line."

  -RW

2 comments:

  1. http://lesterhalfjr.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-communist-toilet-paper-manifesto.html In the USSR it wasn't just that they had no toilet paper, their whole conception of a sanitary bathroom experience was non existent

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  2. 2015: The Sahara Desert goes socialist.
    2065: Worldwide sand shortage!

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