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Governments intervene to fix market failures, protect consumers and workers, redistribute wealth, ensure economic stability, and promote competition.

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Governments intervene to fix market problems and ensure fairness. Trust is key because it encourages people to invest, trade, and support a stable, growing economy.

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Governments help with market issues and keep things fair. Trust is important for good economies because it saves money, enocurages investing, keeps financse stable, and brings people together to achieve common goals, which is benefiting everyone.

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Government intervention helps make the economy fairer. If we can't trust each other, or if inequality is out of control people can do drastic things and feel they are in danger and must use last resorts.

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Travis

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Governments intervene to save people from themselves, this is their way of keeping the market stable, and stop things like price-gauging taking place.

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Governments inervene because unfortunately people cannot be trusted with a free reign on capitalism. Governments intervene to keep the economy fair (in theory).

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Governments intervein as the government do not trust the people to be collectives and as one. Governments put rules and restrictions to help Australians.

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after reading the article, i now have a better understanding of what happens behind the scenes at supermarkets/markets in terms of things such as price jacking/gouging, buying stock to sell at a higher price ect.

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People don’t trust others to do the right thing, so governments put in place laws so people have a safety net to fall back on.

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The markets in an economy will most likely not be able to provide fundamentals such as a strong military or other public goods. This is because people will usually buy and sell in goods that are most profitable, this is unlikely to be things that the government provides in the public sector.

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people during this crisis are spending more money than usual on necessary goods and even un necessary goods due to fear of being in lockdown for long periods - Sean

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People have also become more aware of others (like elderly and disabled) needs.
-Emily

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It will make people more aware of what they need over what they want.

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Im unsure how Aussie funds are going to be effected by the I think 120billion dollar stimulus package by Gov and RBA. Will this contribute further to Australia debt?

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"The economy's not a car, there's no engine to stall
No expert can fix it, there's no "it" at all
The economy's us, we don't need a mechanic
Put away the wrenches, the economy's organic"
(Russell Roberts and John Papola)

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We need to stop creating a false dichotomy between "economic costs" and "human costs." All economic costs are human costs and all human costs have economic cost... s. What do you think the economy IS, if it's not a complex adaptive system of HUMAN interaction? And when we make choices as humans, or choices about policy that affect humans, we have to recognize those have economic costs as well.

For example, I do not know if shutting down the US economy as we have is the best way to fight this disease. I DO know that those economic costs also come with human costs as unemployment and poverty (even short term) are associated with all kinds of negative physical and mental health outcomes. Some people will get sick and die because of the lockdowns. Whether it's the right policy, I'm not sure. But note the intertwining of economic and human costs.

Again, the economy is human beings and every human choice has an economic dimension to it. To treat the economy as somehow abstract from actual flesh-and-blood humans has been the problem with mainstream economics for almost 100 years. Don't make that mistake.

"The economy's not a car, there's no engine to stall
No expert can fix it, there's no "it" at all
The economy's us, we don't need a mechanic
Put away the wrenches, the economy's organic"
( Russell Roberts and John Papola)

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We need to stop creating a false dichotomy between "economic costs" and "human costs." All economic costs are human costs and all human costs have economic cost... s. What do you think the economy IS, if it's not a complex adaptive system of HUMAN interaction?

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This article helps us understand how human behaviour is driving shortages

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This is part of our "Econ Extra Credit" project, where we read an introductory economics textbook provided by the nonprofit Core Econ together with our listeners.
Price discrimination is baked into a lot of mundane daily transactions.

"If we see a sale; if we see coupons; if the price is different for seniors or students at a movie theater than it is for adults - all of that counts as price discrimination," said Homa Zarghamee, an economics professor at Barnard College who advises Core Econ, the publisher of the open-source economics textbook Marketplace's David Brancaccio is reading with listeners.

We're perhaps most accustomed to it when we're buying airfare, knowing that purchasing a ticket months in advance will likely be cheaper than buying it the night before.

Price discrimination looks a little different in this era of novel coronavirus, however. On eBay, right now, people are still selling packs of toilet paper at inflated prices given the bare shelves in some stores. Many sellers are presumably profit-seeking scalpers, who grabbed the TP early.

When stores can't use dynamic pricing when demand surges ⁠- because in an emergency, we call that "price gouging" ⁠- one consequence is the scalping, a so-called "secondary market." Some see "efficiency" in letting stores or scalpers jack up prices to what ever people are willing to pay.

But, Zarghamee says, you have to account for income inequality.

"Of course, that's revealing something that's already true in markets, which is that your willingness to pay determines whether you're going to get the good to begin with," she said. "But what gets lost in a lot of this talk is that the term 'willingness to pay' makes it in some sense sound like we're all starting with the same amount of money. And so our willingness to pay is a good indication of how much we actually want something. And that gets very distorted when you have inequality because, really, what willingness to pay is, is your willingness and ability to pay. And so somebody with much higher income will always be willing to pay more because they're able to pay more."
Click the audio player above to hear the full interview. If you're a member of your local public radio station, we thank you - because your support helps those stations keep programs like Marketplace on the air. But for Marketplace to continue to grow, we need additional investment from those who care most about what we do: superfans like you. Your donation - as little as $5 - helps us create more content that matters to you and your community, and to reach more people where they are - whether that's radio, podcasts or online. When you contribute directly to Marketplace, you become a partner in that mission: someone who understands that when we all get smarter, everybody wins.

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The economics behind why toilet paper is sold out - Marketplace

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This is part of our "Econ Extra Credit" project, where we read an introductory economics textbook provided by the nonprofit Core Econ together with our listeners. Price discrimination is baked into a lot of mundane daily transactions.