Garage sales are a classic way to declutter your house and makes a little chunk of change doing it. They are great for the poor especially because they need to shop for discounted items. But, would the poor benefit even more if the state started regulating garage sales? Should the state set a maximum price on all the items sold at a garage sale? Should they regulate what items can be sold at a garage sale? Would these regulations or others actually help the poor?
Should There be a Maximum Price
On paper it sounds like this could benefit the poor. Imagine that all the items sold at garage sales were regulated so that the price could only be 10% of the retail price for any particular item. Now the poor are guaranteed to always get a great deal. Hurray! The government solved the problem. The poor will be much better off now. But, in reality, they just made everything worse for the poor.
Now the poor will be lucky if there is even any garage sales to go to at all. The price ceiling on garage sales will create a shortage of garage sales. This is because the lower price will attract more people to garage sales, thus increasing demand. Additionally, the lower price will discourage sellers from holding garage sales because they can’t make enough money, thus supply has decreased. When supply falls short of demand and prices can not rise, shortages are the result. This is what happens when a price ceiling is implemented in any market. This is one of the few things nearly all economists agree on. Therefore, the poor will be far less likely to be able to find a garage sale to get the discounted items they want.
Should Certain Items be Banned
The government could also decide to not allow certain items to be sold at garage sales. For example, maybe some government legislator decides that knives are to dangerous to be sold at garage sales, so they pass a law to make it illegal. Does this help the poor? Obviously, it does not. Now the poor will have a much harder time finding inexpensive knives. The government could do this with many types of items, further limiting the options of the poor.
Conclusion
There are many ways the government can regulate garage sales. All of them will result in limiting the options of the poor and making life harder for them overall. Price controls might seem like a beneficial regulation at first (I don’t think a single beneficial regulation exists), but all they will do is create shortages. Nearly everyone, including the poor, would be worse off with the regulation of garage sales. Thankfully, the government hasn’t intruded into this space yet. Let’s hope it stays that way.
The government shouldn’t be involved with anything.