Nancy Classics by Ernie Bushmiller for August 28, 2020

Also known as panic buying, this is when people rush to buy up items that they believe will be scarce due to some social difficulty. The one many of us have experienced… the COVID-19 induced panic buying of toilet paper, bleach, disinfectants, pasta, rice, canned foods, and the like. Some of these are still only erratically available all these months later.

There were also the panic-driven long lines at gas stations during the Arab oil embargo and at other times of oil shortage.

The Cuban missile crisis of the early 1960s sent people swarming to buy up food and other survival supplies in fear of possible war, especially in Florida and other Gulf states close to Cuba.

There were such frequent shortages of so many products during WW II that ration stamps and ration coupons became a sort of second form of cash… intended to make scarce goods more widely and fairly available.

This strip is from 1950. The world’s economies were still recovering from the war, and there were still sporadic shortages, thus the taboo and social sanctions on buying too much of a product and possibly depriving others who needed it as well.