Posted on 08/15/2024 3:20:27 PM PDT by karpov
Early in the pandemic, a local merchant I know in New York, an immigrant who owns a small stationary store, worked tirelessly to obtain the goods his customers all then believed were needed—masks, hand sanitizer, and so on. He paid a markup for these goods, not to mention the time it cost him to secure them, and naturally passed the higher prices on to his customers. But given the emergency, he faced a price limit on what he could sell the masks for, with steep fines if he didn't comply. He fought these mandates in court and nearly lost his business.
This is the world that could await us if Vice President Kamala Harris has her way. So far, the Harris/Tim Walz economic policy platform is a bit of a mystery. Will it reflect her left-wing campaign of 2019, which featured Medicare for all and a ban on fracking, or something more moderate? Voters will get some idea on Friday, when Harris reveals the centerpiece of her economic policy: price controls. Her campaign announced that she would pursue a federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries.”
This is the wrong solution to a nonexistent problem. Food prices have steadily fallen over time as a share of income. The exception was the pandemic, where the cost of food eaten at home rose 20 percent. This was caused not by grocers’ price gouging but by shortages and elevated demand from excessive fiscal policy. The natural market response to less supply and more demand is to raise prices. Doing so eliminates shortages and keeps markets functioning.
Inflation on food at home now stands near zero. People are frustrated, though, because prices are significantly higher than they used to be
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
“Gouging” is Kommie economics for kindergartners.
Yeah price controls, because that worked really well in venesuela. What a great idea! We can all go on an empty shelves diet while commie que mala blames the bad orange man.
My brother, a democrat voter, always talks about ‘gouging’ and now I know why.
The “I’m talking” chamaeleon speaks.
And here I thought she was talking about Willie . . .
Price controls will lead to higher prices, which will then be perceived as ‘gouging’ by idiotic government officials, which will lead to more price controls, leading to even higher prices, which will be perceived as more price gouging... etc.
Endless vicious cycle. Economics for dummies.
Inflation is what started this. Government prints money, then yells, “Squirrel!”
They devalue the currency, so it takes more dollars to buy the same thing. And they do find that his price is going up.
And weren’t the merchants jut as greedy under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush43, Obama, and Trump?
Yet we didn’t have this inflation under those administrations. So, even if the merchants are greedy, the previous 6 administrations were able to control it. So Biden/Harris are still incompetent because they can’t do what the previous 6 did.
If not price gouging it’s corporate greed. The very dim-bulb minds of liberals truly believe that.
In former days it was wreckers and hoarders or kulaks.
Richard Nixon, please claim your poodle at baggage counter.
So where was Biden Harris in all of this? They’ve had 3 1/2 years.
The problem is there are people that hoarded emergency supplies to resell at a higher price when they were needed the most.
They didnt create more supply or solve scarcity. They cleaned out gas stations and pharmacies then resold to their desperate neighbors for profit.
I guess it is part of the free market and not sure how to stop it. Doesnt seem like something moral people should do.
And $20.00 minimum wage for burger flippers.
Credit to Reagan for getting the problem fixed.
Bush I continued the same monetary policy.
Clinton also continued the stable currency policy and even balanced the budget.
Bush II, stable currency. Barack Obama, stable currency. Trump, stable currency.
After forty years, it looked like a good non-partisan policy that would stick.
This time around it is *not* a return to incompetent central planning.
It is deliberate total economic war against the people.
I still cannot understand the communist style “partnership” of woke CEOs (ESPN,Disney, all the BLM and George Floyd kissups....) who then think for selling out America to the marxist-leninists they will really get big payoffs from the inner circle.
Then Kamala kicks sand in their faces and blames them for capitalist exploitation of the working proletariat.
Serves the traitors right.
I liked the old days of bedrock patriotic conservatives who ran all the corporations and looked like Judge Smails, white hair and all.
.
How come the government is never accused of “gouging.”
It’s just amazing...making a profit is now gouging...
While raping the taxpayer is now paying your fair share !!!`
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