‘Supply and Demand Issue:’ CNBC Host Destroys Elizabeth Warren Over Price Gouging
“This is the way you never lose an argument because no one can ever say anything back to you, Senator. It’s frustrating.”
Man, CNBC’s Joe Kernen destroyed Elizabeth Warren over price gouging.
It was glorious. I hate it when people make economics difficult. It boils down to supply and demand. I love how Mediaite tried to paint Kernan as the bad guy.
CRYING.
Supply and demand because duh:
“If beef is too high, people don’t move to chicken because competitors don’t come in to undercut where the beef prices are. Nothing works when you try to artificially try to control prices. It’s just a supply and demand issue. It’s a flawed idea,” he said.
“So did you have a question here?” Warren asked.
“Yes, why would you propose a flawed idea when the real problem — if you really want to help the middle class, if you really, sincerely want to help people having trouble at the grocery store, it’s not price gouging that’s the issue, and if you look at it seriously and you really want to help him, let’s do something about it together, fine,” Kernen shot back.
“I understand if you want to do a lecture about this, but let’s just start with where have you been for the last 30 years as three dozen states have price gouging laws and they have used them effectively?” Warren responded.
CRYING.
I love that Kernan brought up profit margins. Any time Warren posts something about price gouging I respond with tweets from Scott Lincicome showing a small profit margin for grocery stores.
Kernen later called the effort a “fool’s errand” noting that grocery stores have much smaller profit margins than in other industries like technology. There would be no practical way to control prices across a supply chain without the cost coming back on the consumer, he said. Kernen also accused Harris, Warren, and others of focusing on “price gouging” to distract from other things driving inflation, like government spending.
“How do you decide? This is not the government’s job to decide these things. It’s a fool’s errand. And also, you’re using it to divert the real cause of inflation over the last four years which is you had demand after the pandemic, which obviously there was a lot because reopened, and all of a sudden there are supply chain issues and the demand is juiced by all of this stimulus from the [Inflation Reduction Act] and all of the other spending that we did,” he said.
“One of the causes of prices going up is there are companies that have market dominance that have said, oh, this is a moment when everyone is talking about —” Warren said before a frustrated Kernen cut in.
“Okay, give me another one. Name another one. Give me an instance,” he said.
Spoiler: She couldn’t.
Kernen then brought up how Warren has alleged Kraft-Heinz “increased profits by 448% in 2022.”
“Kraft, you say, was 440% profit increase. The example you used, the prior quarter from the year before, they had a charge of 1.3 billion dollars, an accounting change, which wiped out profits,” he said.
Warren talked over the CNBC host again, and he asked her to let him complete his thoughts.
“You didn’t let me finish. Look at the data. Come on. We have economic study after economic study,” she said.
“This is the way you never lose an argument because no one can ever say anything back to you, Senator. It’s frustrating,” Kernen later said.
Kernen with the mic drop: “The cure for higher prices is when people come in and undercut those prices and supply goes back up. This has been since 1776!”
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Comments
Properly expose Warren and her policy positions, and she’ll be as popular as refurbished toilet paper.
Goof for CNBC for broadcasting this. I didn’t expect it.
I meant good, of course. CNBC does occasionally do something good.
Warren has gotten where she is by being a crybully not by her economic literacy.
as usual she pulls out
“its been working for 30 years”
according to those who implement the socialist agenda
no it hasnt as the marketplace always is based on as this article notes,
supply and demand
she is a bully and a communist
you can put a feather in that cap
Warren is about as right concerning price gouging causing inflation as she is about high cheek bones causing her to be an Indian.
Apple’s bottom line as a percentage of revenue is roughly 15X that of major grocery chains like Kroger. It is also pretty much a monopoly. Why doesn’t Warren go after Apple, where the consumer spends a ton of money on cell phones? Note that Apple’s revenue is over $1000 per American man, woman and child.
Good point. And, it’s obviously because Big Tech comprises one of the most generous donor bases and most staunch corporate supporters of the Dhimmi-crat Party, of any industry.
Hollywood and the publicly-traded companies that own the major movie and TV studios escape Dhimmi-crat condemnation and vilification, for the same reason, though their gross margins are also substantially above the grocery store and consumer products sector.
Apple sells toys. Nothing they sell is a necessity.
Indeed. Apple can charge as much as they do for their products because people are willing to spend for what they perceive is a superior product not because there is no alternative. Lizzie’s understanding of economics is directed towards people who shallow graze every subject. She says ridiculous things that on the surface sound reasonable and the people who listen are the ones that are not only jealous of others success, they won’t delve more than a inch into the subject to find out she is not a very bright person and what she says makes no sense.
You would think that eager young journalists looking to make their mark in the industry would see this and realize how easy it is to debunk a Democrat with just a smidgen of thought and effort.
But they won’t.
Price gouging is a positive corrective force.
1. It eliminates hoarding and restricts consumption to people who really need it. Say ice to cool insulin rather than beer.
2. It draws out supply. Those people need ice. We have ice, we have a truck, let’s go and make some money.
I have mixed feelings about price gouging being good because it restricts casual consumption. Oh, it’s clearly somewhat true; it just may not be true enough to be worth the way it restricts consumption to the people with cash to spare.
So-called price gouging being good because it increases the supply is so true that it shouldn’t be called price gouging at all. The term should be restricted to increasing the price of goods already in the affected zone, and perhaps the ROUTINE shipments there. Someone who maxed out his credit cards and the credit cards of three of his neighbors to fill his van full of generators and drove to the hurricane devastated zone is hardly gouging anything when he wants triple what he paid for the risk, the drive, the sleeping in his van….
It’s not actually a problem if somebody makes money. The owner of the ice machine that still has ice in it will just take the ice home if he can’t sell it for a huge profit. The huge profit keeps him from doing that.
As for people with cash enough, they won’t buy extra at huge prices, they’ll wait for the rest until the price drops. It’s a really bad investment to hoard at price gouging prices.
The poor will buy only one roll to toilet paper, which they can in fact afford. That’s what the shortage requires. Otherwise the poor buy everything on the shelf just in case.
Rising prices for X will bring more supply of X to meet the increased demand for X. Incentives matter as do clear price signals to producers. The demand side moves the price both higher and lower and the +/- in price signals producers to ramp production up or down and signals potential suppliers/producers whether to invest to meet increasing demand or not to invest due to decreasing demand.
The quickest way to distort the marketplace is to get govt edicts involved about how much prices can rise or fall and where/when/whether/for what price someone can or can’t sell their product.
Adam Smith proved all this in 1776!
“Price gouging” is just a pejorative rabble-rousing term. It’s exactly like the hate speech against moneylenders and “middlemen”, as if those weren’t vital jobs that keep any economy going.
(Note that such hate has historically been directed against Jews, who were often in such roles.)
So nice, so positive:
$3,799: 15 N95 face masks
$10: 1 gallon of milk
$79.99: 36 rolls of toilet paper
It’s only illegal, after all.
How many gallons of milk did you buy?
Matters not. It’s illegal. Those were extreme examples. Guess you’re into usury, too. 30% interest enough for you. Or perhaps you’re disappointed you had no milk to offer.
You sound like a progressive liking a policy when they will never be affected.
You are the “progressive” here.
It’s only illegal because these stupid and evil laws were made by people like you. It’s morally right and just, and economically vital, and the hatred directed by people like you against those who do this actually justifies them charging even more, as compensation for the very real risk they’re taking that you and your friends will whip up a mob to lynch them and steal all their stock.
Just mute her!
It’s just depressing. Imagine her influence in a Harris Walz administration. (And the people of Massachusetts continue to elect her.
Liawatha, Fauxcahontas and Squaw Spreading Bull knows as little about economics as she does about native American cuisine. I refer to the recipe she brazenly stole from Pierre Franey, to use as her submission to the “Pow-Wow Chow” cookbook.
Warren says it’s not stealing when an Indian takes something from a pale face. In any case, why pay for it? Wampum doesn’t grow on trees you know.
Your financial acumen shows wisdom derived over many moons!
The strident stupidity of this woman makes my hair hurt.
Warren is particularly odious. Another professional politician.
With 2 outfits…
They seem to have forgotten that they blamed rising prices on Putin.
CNBC is owned by NBC, and tilts toward Dems. But more like michael bloomberg type Dems. I haven’t heard anybody on CNBC say anything positive about kamala’s policies.
Joe should have went down this path, a few months ago she and and another author released a new book on Bankruptcy and Article IX. This book costs $64..76 on Amazon. Do text book writers and publishers gouge their customers? Why not charge $25 for text book?
That’s actually pretty cheap. I remember paying almost $250 for an Organic Chemistry textbook and near $500 for a statistics program needed for a class. Foolish money.
Professors have wide latitude in choosing textbooks for their classes so the game is one writes a book, charges an outrageous fee for it and the friends require it for the class then vice versa.
Warren is an embarrassment, perfect for Massachusetts.