Kamala Harris trotted out some pretty appalling economic policies this week. Among these was a plot to impose Soviet-style price controls on goods, including food.
Greg Gutfeld had a great take.
But we expect clarity on economic matters from someone who leans right like Gutfeld. The measure of how truly terrible and economy-destroying Kackles’ proposed agenda is that it earned some pushback from the Democrat hacktivists at CNN and the Washington Post.
She starts announcing her plot by noting how much prices on food have risen in the years since she and Biden took office . . . and a wrecking ball to our nation’s economy.
WaPo is particularly clear in their take.
“Price gouging” is the focus of Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic agenda, her presidential campaign says. She’ll crack down on “excessive prices” and “excessive corporate profits,” particularly for groceries.. . . . It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price growth by fiat. (There’s a reason narrower “price gouging” laws that exist in some U.S. states are rarely invoked.) At worst, it might accidentally raise prices.. . . . That’s because price-fixing is already illegal. And it should be! It’s important to distinguish between real cartel behavior (whether among TV-makers or meatpackers) vs. temporary spikes in prices and profits due to high demand or supply-chain disruptions. Harris’s economic advisers are either too confused or lazy to tell the difference. They don’t seem to know the history of these kinds of policies and apparently haven’t thought very hard about what would make markets more competitive or improve the lives of voters.. . . . But more to the point: If your opponent claims you’re a “communist,” maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls.
And it’s not just an opinion writer at WaPo; the Editorial Board also got in on the action (archive link).
From WaPo:
Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech Friday was an opportunity to get specific with voters about how a Harris presidency would manage an economy that many feel is not working well for them. Unfortunately, instead of delivering a substantial plan, she squandered the moment on populist gimmicks.Americans are clearly still anxious and angry about the high cost of groceries, housing and even $5.29 Big Macs. While the inflation rate has cooled substantially since the 2022 peak, an ostensible Biden-Harris administration accomplishment, prices remain elevated relative to the Trump years. So it’s a real political issue for Ms. Harris. One way to handle it might be to level with voters, telling them that inflation spiked in 2021 mainly because the pandemic snarled supply chains, and that the Federal Reserve’s policies, which the Biden-Harris administration supported, are working to slow it. The vice president instead opted for a less forthright route: Blaming big business. She vowed to go after “price gouging” by grocery stores, landlords, pharmaceutical companies and other supposed corporate perpetrators by having the Federal Trade Commission enforce a vaguely defined “federal ban on price gouging.”Never mind that many stores are currently slashing prices in response to renewed consumer bargain hunting. Ms. Harris says she’ll target companies that make “excessive” profits, whatever that means. (It’s hard to see how groceries, a notoriously low-margin business, would qualify.) Thankfully, this gambit by Ms. Harris has been met with almost instant skepticism, with many critics citing President Richard M. Nixon’s failed price controls from the 1970s. Whether the Harris proposal wins over voters remains to be seen, but if sound economic analysis still matters, it won’t.
Okay, so Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos also owns Amazon, which in turn owns Whole Foods, both of which would be devastated by this dangerous plan, but it’s so bad that even CNN got some shots in at the idiocy.
CNN also has a video up of an economics professor saying he hopes she “walks that one back,” and a lengthy piece entitled, “Harris’ plan to stop price gouging could create more problems than it solves.”
From the latter piece (archive link):
When prices are high, in most cases, the best policy action in response is actually taking no action, Roberts, the chair of Weber State University’s economics department, told CNN.That would cause consumers who are deterred by, say, high prices of beef, to instead purchase another type of meat or protein. That helps keep beef on the grocery store shelves for people who want it enough to pay the higher prices.And while Harris claims her proposal “will help the food industry become more competitive,” Roberts said it would do just the opposite. “It’s more likely to maintain that status quo,” he said because it would keep new competition from moving in to take advantage of the bigger profit margins — competition that could have helped lower prices in the long run.Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama administration, shared Roberts’ view that anti-price gouging laws could inadvertently harm consumers. “This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” he told the New York Times. “There’s no upside here, and there is some downside.”
As if all that’s not bad enough, Politico also published some scathing commentary on Harris’ threat to destroy our economy, accusing Kackles of “supercharging” the failed Biden-Harris economic agenda. Not that Politico thinks that’s a bad thing.
Needless to say, people have thoughts.
What happened to Venezuela under first Chavez and then Maduro is a literal tragedy, and it’s not ancient history. This all happened just a few years ago; we covered much of the horror, starvation, and suppression that resulted from policies just like the ones Kamala Harris is proposing.
Here’s what price fixing leads to every single time.
Praeger U did a short video on the destruction of a once-great country.
Here’s the thing, the destruction of Venezuela could have been stopped right away; when it became obvious that the communist policies were causing untold misery and despair and (quite literally) starving people to death, the government could have said, well, this is not what we wanted and unwind it right away. Ditto all the other times this brutal, evil ideology has been imposed on a formerly free people (from Lenin to Mao to Castro). But they never do stop it; instead, they double-down.
Maybe Team Harris-Walz is fully aware of what will happen. How could they not be with so many examples from around the globe, including the recent destruction of Venezuela? Maybe they don’t see anything wrong with imposing their ideological will on Americans, an agenda that will lead — can only lead — to tens of millions dead Americans. Maybe they are very aware of what will happen and why. Maybe they are looking forward to it.
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