south carolina continue to recovery from rains wind and cataclysmic flooding. ian slammed into south carolina just shy of category 5. the current death toll of at least 45 people likely to come in the days as search and rescue cruise go through blocked floodwaters, as of this morning, 1.3 million homes and businesses still in the dark. according to the latest estimate ian may have caused as much as $47 billion in insured losses which could make it the most expensive storm in the state history. the figure comes from core logic, that s a research firm that estimates losses from natural disasters. the estimates, combined ensured losses through private insurance, which typically covers wind damage. and fema s national flood insurance program that covers water damage. their estimates as of thursday, wind damage, $20 billion to $32 billion. flood damage, $6 billion to $16 billion. so the low end of the combined estimate would be $28 billion. before we spend, let s ask ourselves, is
people stockpile often unnecessary items, says chris bigelow. and dr. mohammed, it reminds me for reasons i still don t understand, at the outbreak of the pandemic, the toilet paper was gone. every time there s a catastrophe, we see the film footage of cleared out shelves in grocery stores. so react to that response. well, this is the tension between the two options, a high price can solve that but there are societal issues to that. low price encourages this type of hoarding. there should be restrictions as costco certainly did with toilet paper at covid. with these two extremes, economic versus societal issues that we re trying to merge together and this is why i think social media is so important today to publicly shame companies that do increase price. and encourage them to serve the community by adding supply. okay. but i don t want to villainize the guy who is now going to
determined by market forces, not individual companies. and claims that the price at the pump is anything but a function of supply and demand are false. there are anti-price gouging laws on the books in the 48 states and the district of columbia. and plus, sellers have no incentive to expend extra effort to ramp-up supply which causes shortages for all. joining me now to discuss is raffy mohammed, he s a pricing strategy consultant and author of the book the art of pricing. and a harvard business review article called the problem with price gouging laws. remind us the case of john schepperman, post-katrina, the gentleman with generators. what s the short version? the short version, he was entrepreneurial, he got a bunch of generators, he went to florida and tried to sell it for