Washington Post: 'If your opponent claims you’re a communist...'
Maybe it's not a good idea to propose federal price controls.
Catherine Rampell last week wrote an important article on Kamala Harris, who recently unveiled a new price control proposal.
“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.
So what level counts as “excessive,” you might ask? TBD, but Harris will ban it.
That’s the thing about price gouging: As has been said of hardcore pornography, you know it when you see it.
It’s not hard to figure out where this proposal came from. Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.
Rampell goes on to explain that price controls won’t. In fact, basic economics tells us that they’d make things much worse.
Prices are signals that help us allocate resources in an economy more efficiently. They tell us when demand is high (prices go up) and when demand is low (price falls). By not allowing prices to fluctuate, we distort these market signals, which causes all sorts of economic problems.
Rampell, who is no free market warrior or conservative, knows all this. And she ends her column with a zinger.
“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.”
It’s a great line, but in my column at the Washington Examiner I point out that there is a method to Harris’s economic madness, and history suggests her bankrupt strategy may actually help her win in November. 👇👇👇
Harris’ comments should be the end of her but probably not. The public in general has almost no concept of economics or how businesses work. They know what is fair, in other words they want stuff cheap and “ free “ in other words at the expense of the forgotten man( and I’m using that old saw in William Graham Sumners way not FDRs misappropriation).I wish this weren’t so but it is.
The price controls are already there. Existing “prices” might as well be already carved into stone, vis a vis the fiat currency system governed by the parasitic financial cabal. This is a most offensive aspect of the political discourse—that is, feigning as if it’s not already the case, which obscures the real issue.