“Kamala Harris is not a communist, a socialist or a Nixon,” Jill Lawrence assures us. OK. But are we sure?
Not that anyone has asked me, but as someone who regularly accuses progressives of being “communists,” I think I can shed some light on why many voters get the wrong impression.
For one thing, allocating prime-time airtime to avowed socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez at the Democratic Party Convention could send mixed signals to some independent voters.
Nominating a vice presidential candidate who not only honeymooned in Red China on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, but who once taught high school students that the Maoist system—one of the most murderous (if not the) and most inhumane regimes in history—is a place where “everyone shares” and gets free food and shelter? That didn’t help either.
However, you should definitely not make price control one of the pillars of your economic plan.
Kamala Harris is certainly not the first politician to propose controlling politically unfavorable prices. However, history has conclusively shown that price caps lead to shortages, panic buying, black markets, and a host of other unpleasant consequences.
If one tries to justify this policy by blaming the kulaks for “price gouging” and propagates the age-old idea that in competitive markets cabals of villains can band together and dictate prices, then alarm bells will ring.
There is not a shred of evidence that “price gouging” — a loose term anyway — exists. Grocery retail is one of the least profitable large businesses in America, with profit margins consistently under 2 percent — in fact, this year it was 1.18 percent, a figure that is at the low end of historical profit margins. While there is nothing wrong with making a healthy profit, consistent margins tell us that price spikes are caused by inflation, not some insidious conspiracy.
Until the government shut down the economy during the Covid pandemic, food prices were low and continued to fall. Probably because “big grocery” is also one of the most competitive industries in the country, with numerous national and regional chains, upscale markets, discount big-box chains, and online competitors, including Amazon.
And we’re supposed to believe that one day, when inflation happened to be at a 30-year high, everyone in the grocery trade got together and agreed to raise prices in a way that was consistent with inflation? They think we’re idiots.
In an embarrassing defense of Kamala’s plan on Axios, headlined “Don’t call it price controls: How price gouging bans really work,” Emily Peck argues that “Harris’ economic proposals are broadly aimed at helping middle-class Americans cope with higher living costs.”
Oh, is that really their purpose? Axios assures us that states already have harmless anti-price gouging laws for emergencies. (Yes, these are also completely counterproductive. “Price gouging” during emergency shortages helps prevent panic buying.)
In order to emphasize the harmless and ubiquitous nature of the laws against “price gouging,” Peck is forced to rely on the expertise of the left-leaning Fordham. Law Professor Zephyr Teachout, since it is safe to assume that no self-respecting economist would publicly defend price ceilings.
This brings me to Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who argues that Kamala does not really support price controls per se, but merely a ban on “food price gouging” – which he certainly knows is a myth. Kamala’s plan is nothing more than a “populist political gesture,” explains the Nobel Prize-winning economist.
Since the presidential candidate has not laid out any concrete plans, we must assume she still supports passage of Elizabeth Warren’s Price Gouging Prevention Act, which would give the Federal Trade Commission sweeping, unilateral federal powers to set food prices, despite assurances from Axios and Krugman that it’s our own Gosplan. And if you think government regulators will use that power prudently, I have news for you.
So it’s certainly a bad sign that Kamala wants to fight inflation with failed socialist policy proposals. But let’s not forget that the last time Harris promised to get inflation under control, she was the deciding vote in an attempt to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into an overheated economy.
It’s fair to say that inflation is a complex, multifaceted problem, with no single institution responsible for it. You don’t have to be a socialist lawyer from Fordham to understand that the Biden administration has done everything it can to exacerbate inflation – ignoring warning signs, using parliamentary tricks to rush through a massive partisan spending bill, and undermining energy production at the same time.
The last I heard, Kamala was a member of that administration.
Did Harris propose food price caps because she is a staunch Marxist? Unlikely. The power-hungry politician’s penchant for collectivist and zero-sum economic thinking is merely a sign of an authoritarian demagogue. Kamala is not Stalin. She is more like a mediocre Latin American dictator. That is bad enough.
