The Economic Way of Thinking 13th Edition by David Prychitko, Peter Boettke, Paul Heyne

Exercise 10

According to a report by the American Planning Association, the average four-member household uses about 345 gallons of water daily. The report broke that down into 235 gallons for inside use and 110 for outside use. Of the "inside" water, about 95 gallons per day went to flush toilets. Drinking and cooking used 9 to 10 gallons per day. Water rates vary, but they are rarely higher than 0.1 cent (that's $0.001) per gallon (which is a much lower price than we used in our hypothetical township example!). Would a doubling or even a quadrupling of water rates from the $0.001 level work a serious hardship on poor people?