Posted on 08/15/2024 7:13:23 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
* Vice President Kamala Harris will propose the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging” in the food industry, her campaign announced.
* Harris will also pledge that if elected, she will direct the Justice Department to increase scrutiny of potential mergers between grocers and food producers.
* The ban is part of a broader effort by the Democratic presidential nominee to respond to voters’ ongoing frustration with the high cost of meat and groceries.
“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign said in a statement. “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”
The proposed ban is part of a broader economic policy platform that the Democratic presidential nominee plans to unveil Friday at a campaign rally in battleground North Carolina.
Harris will also pledge that if elected president, she will direct her administration to increase scrutiny of potential mergers between large supermarkets and food producers, “specifically for the risk that the proposed merger would raise grocery prices for consumers,” her campaign said.
This package of regulatory proposals is one of the Harris campaign’s earliest efforts to outline an economic platform that is independent of President Joe Biden’s agenda.
Before Biden abruptly dropped out of the race in July and endorsed Harris, he had spent more than a year campaigning for reelection and blaming corporate greed for consumer prices driven higher by inflation.
Harris’ plan still sits firmly within the overall Biden approach to regulation, however, which has prioritized consumer protections across a range of industries and sued to block several massive corporate mergers.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
The Kroger/Alberston’s merger has NOT happened. The supermarket/distributor landscape was similar to the landscape when Trump was president. Why did these oligopolists pick the Biden admin to start price gouging?
Price controls never work. Democrats never learn. Big government is the problem, not the solution.
Typical socialism
Nixon
These people need a crash course in history, Carter tried doing this with prices and all hell broke loose.
There it is...whip up anger “against THE MAN” to the masses to get their vote when there’s already anti-trust laws in place for non-competitive monopolies.
The last place I’d look for price gouging would be groceries. This is just a vote grab when nothing she can do would change anything.
Then you can start with big mobile...3 companies control the mobile phone business (Tmobile should have never been allowed to buy Sprint). Then Big Tech, like Google and Meta. Then Big Media.
“Record profits” never includes a definition whether gross or net. If what they’re calling profits is actually just income, it does not take into account the increased outlay.
Another economic no-knowing and one worse than Obama.
Blaming capitalism on the inflation they caused and the idiots applaud
Tell every person you know under 50 what this led to in the 1970’s because I guarantee a lot of them think this is a good idea.
While there maybe some price-gouging the majority of the rise in prices is Biden inflation.🤔
Remembering Nixon’s Wage and Price Controls
https://www.cato.org/commentary/remembering-nixons-wage-price-controls
First, it’s usually Congress that lays the foundation for an imperial presidency with unconstitutional delegations of authority to the executive branch. The Economic Stabilization Act of 1970 gave Nixon legislative cover for his actions.
The act was “a political dare,” according to top Nixon official George Shultz — the Democrats thought Nixon wouldn’t use the powers they’d granted him, but he called their bluff.
Second, the damage presidents do with economic powers they shouldn’t have can take years to repair. Price hikes from the 1973 Arab oil embargo made it politically difficult to unwind controls on gasoline, which led to the gas lines of the late 1970s.
Third, the episode shows the enduring relevance of cartoonist Walt Kelly’s Pogo Principle: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” As noted, the freeze was overwhelmingly popular. “Bold” presidential action on the economy often is, even when “just stand there — don’t do something!” would be wiser counsel.
In the recent debt-limit fight, for example, liberal Democrats who’d spent eight years railing against Bush’s executive unilateralism begged Obama to break the law and unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, using a fig leaf of a constitutional argument based on the 14th Amendment.
Occasionally, though, we learn something from our mistakes. As Shultz told Nixon in 1973, at least the debacle had convinced everyone “that wage-price controls are not the answer.”
Ironically, Nixon’s actions also helped galvanize an emerging libertarian movement opposed to the bipartisan welfare-warfare state. “I remember the day very clearly,” Rep. Ron Paul, R‑Texas, recalled in 2001, saying the events of Aug. 15, 1971, drove the reluctant young obstetrician into politics.
For years, Paul waged a one-man war against economic nostrums and presidential command and control. Lately, though — with the rise of the Tea Party and his strong showing in the Ames straw poll — he’s not looking so lonely anymore.
Nixion froze prices, it was a flop.
So, what she is campaigning on is a demand for food shortages?
The alleged extra 2% in prices from profits is apparently gouging. The extra 30% in inflation is not gouging.
Camel promises to make food scarce and of very poor quality.
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