A breaking news story hit the net on Wednesday night. You might want to sit down, but Kamala Harris finally has an official policy proposal. Having been in the race for nearly a month, has she found a brilliant, novel approach to the issues that matter most to Americans?
No, she just microwaved a bit of communism and proposed price controls.
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Harris will propose what her campaign calls “the first nationwide ban on food and grocery price gouging. It would establish clear rules to make it clear that large corporations cannot unfairly exploit consumers to make excessive profits on food and grocery products.”
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) 15 August 2024
Of course, the press picked up on this, and several journalists on social media treated it as if Harris had just descended from the high place to proclaim the Ten Commandments. Nothing matters on that front. When Harris’ campaign team says it, it is portrayed as “joy” and “optimism” wrapped up in pure genius.
For the average American, however, this policy has consequences, and price controls would be an economic disaster. To understand this, one only has to look at the history of the Soviet Union, or, if one wants a contemporary analogue, Venezuela. When the government is used to cap prices on everything from food to rent, the result is inevitably market stagnation or even regression.
The short-term price reductions are nothing compared to the shortages that arise in the long-term. Who cares if bread is “cheaper” when there is none because production is suppressed by price controls? And who cares if rent is “lower” when there will ultimately be a massive shortage because no one is investing in recent housing?
With that in mind, the question is whether that’s the real issue here. Here’s another theory as to why Harris is making this announcement.
Price controls are a terrible policy, but their purpose here is political, not economic. Harris is trying to rewrite the history of the Biden-Harris years and accuse anyone who opposes her idea on the merits of wanting to keep prices high. This is grotesque. https://t.co/CeeJ4oWuuj
— Charles CW Cooke (@charlescwcooke) 15 August 2024
Proposing a policy and actually implementing it are two different things. Harris is clearly trying to make the argument that Republicans are not willing to take action to lower prices, and the press will certainly play along.
It’s worth noting how contradictory this is. On the one hand, the Biden-Harris administration claims the inflation problem is solved. On the other hand, they claim that Republicans don’t want to do anything to solve the inflation problem. In a more reasonable media environment, such idiotic inconsistency would be dismissed as frivolous. Unfortunately, we don’t live in such an environment.
In brief, at best, Harris is spouting communist babble to win the election with no intention of actually enforcing the executive order she issued. At worst, she’s grave and the entire U.S. economy ends up looking like it’s making Nicolas Maduro blush. Neither is a good option.
