Free Republic

History has a short memory. In recent weeks, as Vice President Kamala Harris’s policy proposals sparked a national conversation about price-controls, that phenomenon is on full display. Price-controls have failed humanity for thousands. They invariably create devastating shortages and diminish product quality. These policies decimated Babylonian trade in 1750 B.C. They caused bloodshed in second-century Rome. They nearly starved George Washington’s army at Valley Forge. Within living memory, they also caused an American oil and gas crisis in 1971. Of course, politicians still cannot resist promising their constituents consequence-free price reductions.

Guess who finally updated her campaign website? And with just a day before her first presidential debate ... and only second media appearance since her anointment as nominee?Having seen her momentum deflate like a Patriots football, Kamala Harris finally went public with her agenda, at least in general strokes. Team Kamala finally added an Issues page to her official campaign website, and it's filled mainly by the rehashed Bidenomics that Harris attempted to pass off last month. It even includes the absurd reference to price-gouging that economists across the spectrum laughed off when Harris first floated the argument, another leftover...

Vice President Kamala Harris’s latest ad touts her price control policy proposal, which has been widely criticized, considering price controls historically result in shortages of goods. The advertisement, titled “Focused,” hypes Harris’s plan of “cracking down” on grocery “price gouging.” “She’ll make groceries more affordable by cracking down on price gouging. And she’ll cut housing costs by taking on corporate speculators,” the ad vaguely promises.

From taxes to spending, Kamala is the most left-wing major party candidate since George McGovern -- who proposed a Universal Basic Income in 1972 and went on to win a single state.But her most hare-brained scheme -- so far -- has been price controls, where she's to the left of McGovern, threatening to punish grocery stores for daring to charge more than their costs.In fact, grocery stores make 1 to 2 pennies on the dollar. Meaning they have to pass along costs that come straight from the Washington money printer.That means price controls would, in short, break food.Price Controls Always...

Multiple Democrat lawmakers are quietly telling allies worried about Vice President Kamala Harris’s controversial grocery price-control plan that the proposal will die in Congress, Politico revealed. After economists pushed back on Harris’s “Soviet-style” plan to centrally administer price controls on food in her first policy-focused speech on August 16, one anonymous Democrat told the outlet that it was a “lofty goal.” “I honestly still don’t know how this would work,” a second lawmaker said.

CNN destroyed Kamala Harris’s Soviet-style price controls proposal and said it would lead to higher prices and shortages. Kamala Harris traveled to North Carolina on Friday to announce a Communist-style price control scheme to combat the inflation crisis she created. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’ The IRA made inflation unbearable for Americans. Food prices are skyrocketing because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden recently turned his ire toward grocers and said he is going to send state attorneys general after them for price gouging. Grocers are not price gouging. The annual profits for...

Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off her campaign speech in North Carolina on Friday announcing her new economic plan that would give about $1.7 trillion in handouts to those struggling in the current Biden-Harris economy and set price controls on groceries. Her economic plan includes measures to ban federal “price gouging” – stopping sellers from setting unfair prices on groceries – giving out $25,000 to help first time home owners with their down payments and up to a $6,000 tax break for lower and middle income families who have a child in their first year of life. The Trump campaign...

Even the Washington Post isn’t buying Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to slap socialist price controls on groceries. The longtime, left-leaning broadsheet — owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos — published a scathing editorial ripping the Democratic presidential nominee for claiming price gouging is causing inflation and, rather than offer a legit plan to fix it, offering only “populist gimmicks.”With food prices surging more than 20% nationwide during the Biden-Harris administration, Harris, during a North Carolina rally earlier Friday, unveiled economic policies she’d enact during her first 100 days as president that include enforcing government price controls on groceries. Instead of...

Kamala, and these who surround her and support her claim that that gross profit margins are up among food producers and retailers and that is proof that they are gouging consumers. That is BS or pure stupidity. You can tell they never ran a business. Kamala says she is going to focus like a laser beam on grocery stores who are guilty of "price gauging" as she, sic, put it. These people get so aggravated if someone pronounces her name wrong but she can't even read a teleprompter and pronounce "gouging" correctly. They clearly don't understand direct costs and overhead...

Richard Nixon's imposition of wage and price controls in 1971 were among the biggest regrets of his presidency—and he had plenty to regret. Now, Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris has announced similar economic plans, signaling that the "passage of time" that has "been unburdened by what has been" will make her impervious to the doom loop promised to those who do not learn history. That is, if she remembers we've seen this dog-and-pony show. Her plan calls for more money giveaways, vows to regulate business even more, usher in national rent control, make housing more expensive by putting the government...

It is “hard to exaggerate how bad” Vice President Kamala Harris’s proposal to implement government-enforced price control on groceries is, according to a Washington Post essay slamming the plan as both vague and harmful, and cautioning those labeled “communist” by their opponents should think twice before pushing such radical economic policies. In a piece published Thursday, titled “When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?” Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell argues that it’s difficult to overstate just “how bad” Harris’s plan is. “It’s not hard to figure out where this proposal came from,” the essay states. “Voters...

* 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. WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to propose the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries,” her campaign announced late...

The 60,000 patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer over the next three years could be out of luck for a treatment, thanks to Biden and congressional Democrats.Less than 18 months after Democrats rammed through a series of price controls on what Medicare pays for prescription drugs — the better to pay for Tesla subsidies and other green pork — and guess what has happened? Drugmakers are responding to the (bad) incentives Democrats created.Just before the holidays, Bloomberg reported on how many pharmaceutical companies have delayed bringing products to market to maximize the revenue they can generate before Medicare gets to “negotiate”...

Rationing today is seen as a sign that things have gone very wrong. In HBO’s The Last of Us—where humanity has been decimated by a fungal infection that turns people into violent meat sacs—quarantine zone residents swap ration cards for shoelaces and trade them on the black market for drugs. In the real world, meanwhile, produce is being rationed in the UK amid a whopping 17 percent rise in grocery prices, seen by many as a failure of government planning. But rationing, when needed, hasn’t always gotten such a bad rap. Sometimes people have even supported it, even after largely...

History has a way of repeating itself. Or maybe it's that people cling to defunct beliefs, stubbornly refusing to learn from experience. Such stubbornness is on display when pundits, legislators and President Joe Biden blame inflation on corporate "greed." The fix, they claim, is price controls. But such controls would only bring further economic calamity. To explain hikes in the prices of meat, poultry and energy, many politicians and pundits say we must look no further than cold-hearted corporate CEOs padding their bottom lines at the expense of ordinary Americans. Companies today are allegedly so greedy that they use the...

With some pundits advocating for price controls to fight inflation, it suddenly feels like the 1970s again. This type of overbearing intervention has never worked as marketed, something President Richard Nixon discovered in 1973 when he lifted the wage and price controls he had implemented two years earlier. Still, to those unwilling to learn from history, such controls will always seem sensible. Inflation amounts to rising prices, they say, so locking in prices is a supposed easy fix. But treating inflation this way is like masking a symptom rather than curing the illness. Inflation can no more be controlled by...

eople are paying a lot more for food, gas, cars and services, and inflation isn't over yet as the pandemic continues to distort the economy. So should governments consider setting the price of essential goods? t's been done before, typically during times of crisis, but for most mainstream economists, the answer to this question is a resounding "no." Limiting how much companies can charge will distort markets, they argue, causing shortages and exacerbating supply chain problems while only temporarily reducing inflation. "Price controls can of course control prices — but they're a terrible idea," David Autor, a professor of economics...

As a gesture of goodwill, President Biden recently announced that the U.S. will be shipping 20 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to other countries. This altruistic policy not only puts American values on full display but is also a testament to the strength of American pharmaceutical innovation. It is no coincidence that the U.S. has robust intellectual property (IP) protections and was the first out of the gate to have a COVID-19 vaccine ready. Unfortunately, these strong IP safeguards may be on the chopping block. The Biden administration’s recent decision to support an IP protections waiver for COVID-19 drugs is a...

President Trump has pulled the trigger on actually lowering prescription drug prices. By ending arbitrary trade barriers he could save Americans over $50 Billion a year. Even staunch believers in free-market capitalism recognize that there are areas where the government is required to put on a striped shirt and play the referee. Republicans going back to Teddy Roosevelt have understood that. Especially when companies have acquired monopoly powers. President Roosevelt ruffled feathers among Wall Street tycoons when he launched his effort to break up the trusts. Trusts that were abusing their market power, creating monopolies. American consumers were being harmed...

Despite overwhelming historical evidence demonstrating the folly of government-imposed price controls, modern politicians just can't seem to quit inflicting them on us. One obvious example involves health care, where price controls on prescription medications always seem to be just around the corner and are now being considered in the rush to eliminate surprise medical bills. Fewer people know about similar efforts regarding the aluminum market, where some politicians are contemplating price controls to compensate victims of the trade war. Back in March 2018, President Donald Trump announced that he would impose a 10% tariff on all imported aluminum (unless an...