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Yes, Kamala’s Price Controls Lead To Socialism

Posted on Friday, August 23, 2024
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by Outside Contributor
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“Kamala Harris Is No Communist, Socialist, or Nixon,” Jill Lawrence assures us. OK. But are we sure?

Not that anyone’s asked me, but as someone who regularly accuses progressives of being “commies,” I think I can help shed some light on why many voters are getting the wrong idea.

For one thing, handing self-professed socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez prime-time slots at the Democratic National Convention could send some independent voters mixed signals.

Nominating a vice-presidential candidate who not only honeymooned in Red China on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre but once taught high school kids that the Maoist system — one of the most (if not the most) murderous and dehumanizing regimes in history — is a place where “everyone shares” and gets free food and housing? That wasn’t helpful, either.

All that said, you definitely don’t want to make one of the pillars of your economic plan price controls.
Kamala Harris certainly isn’t the first politician to suggest controlling politically inconvenient prices, but history has conclusively proven that price caps cause shortages, hoarding, black markets and an array of other unpleasant outcomes.

If you’re going to rationalize this policy by blaming the kulaks of “price gouging” and peddling the age-old notion that cabals of bad guys in competitive markets can get together and dictate prices, it’s going to raise alarm bells.

There isn’t a scintilla of evidence that “price gouging” — a conveniently elastic term, to begin with — exists. Big Grocery is one of the least lucrative big businesses in America with a profit margin consistently under 2% — in fact, this year it was 1.18, a figure that lands on the lower end of the historical profit spectrum. While there’s nothing wrong with making a healthy profit, consistent margins tell us that price spikes are propelled by inflation, not some insidious plot.

Until the government shutdown of the economy during the COVID pandemic, grocery prices had been low and dropping. Probably because Big Grocery is also one of the most competitive industries in the country, with numerous national chains, regional chains, higher-end markets, affordable big-box chains and online competitors, including Amazon.

Yet we’re supposed to believe that one day, just as overall inflation happened to hit a 40-year high, everyone in grocery business decided to get together and collude to raise prices in a manner that was consistent with overall inflation? They think you’re idiots.

In an embarrassing Axios defense of Harris’ plan, headlined “Don’t call it price controls: How price gouging bans really work,” Emily Peck contends that “Harris’ economic proposals, broadly speaking, are meant to help middle-class Americans deal with a higher cost of living.”

Oh, is that what they’re meant to do? Axios assures us that states already have innocuous anti-gouging laws on the books for emergencies. (Yes, those are also completely counterproductive. “Price gouging” during emergency shortages helps alleviate hoarding.)

In any event, to stress the innocuous and ubiquitous nature of anti-“price gouging” laws, Peck is compelled to rely on the expertise of far-left Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout, as one assumes no self-respecting economist would go on the record defending price caps.

Which brings me to The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who argues Harris really isn’t backing price controls, per se, but merely a ban on “price gouging on groceries” — which he surely knows is a myth. Harris’ plan is nothing but a “populist political gesture,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist explains.
Since the presidential candidate hasn’t offered any concrete plans, we must assume she still supports enacting Elizabeth Warren’s Price Gouging Prevention Act, which, despite the assurances of Axios and Krugman, would imbue the Federal Trade Commission with wide-ranging unilateral federal authority to dictate prices on groceries. And if you believe government regulatory agencies will judiciously use this power, I have news for you.

So, sure, it’s a bad sign that Harris intends to fight inflation using failed socialist policy prescriptions. Let’s not forget, though, the last time Harris vowed to help fix inflation, she was the “tie-breaking vote” on the effort to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into an overheated economy.

It’s fair to say that inflation is a complex, multifaceted issue that isn’t entirely any one entity’s fault. You don’t need to be a socialist lawyer from Fordham to understand that the Biden administration did everything to exacerbate inflation — ignoring warning signs, cramming through a massive partisan spending bill using parliamentary tricks, all the while undermining energy production.

Last I heard, Kamala was a member of that administration.

Has Harris proposed price caps on groceries because she’s a devout Marxist? Unlikely. The power-hungry politician’s tendency to embrace collectivist and zero-sum economic thinking is merely a sign of an authoritarian demagogue. Kamala is not Stalin. She’s more like some middling Latin American dictator. That’s bad enough.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.
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The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.

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Michael J
Michael J
3 months ago

Consumers pay for everything. Government ensures you won’t get it cheap if at all. Price fixing will reduce demand by eliminating selection. What could be more clear?

Keith Clemons
Keith Clemons
3 months ago

I would not be so at ease presuming Kamala is not a communist. American citizens who have fled from communist countries have been warning that contemporary America with its bizarre culture war and divisive identity politics (“oppressors versus the “oppressed) bears all the marks of transformation into a communist society. Hostility toward Christians, suppression of free speech, an objective of confiscating firearms, government seeking to usurp the authority of parents and family, trashing and distorting our history while advancing the clearly communist Critical Race Theory and 1619 Project, politicians protecting & promoting the communist BLM and Antifa, now price controls … Need I go on. I urge people using Twitter to follow in particular Xi Van Fleet, a lady who grew up in communist China and has been sounding the alarm loudly. We are in the American version of Mao’s “Cultural Revolution”; no doubt about it. The objectives of the UN & WEF are itself a part of this modern slant neo-communist objective, incorporated into globalism – “You will own nothing and be happy.” And that’s an order, comrade.

JAMES CARLYLE
JAMES CARLYLE
3 months ago

She was raised by card carrying Communists and has been in sync with the far Left philosophy ever since her entry into politics. I bear witness to this having been a California resident up until this spring. “If it walks like a duck, etc.”

Keith Clemons
Keith Clemons
3 months ago

I’d like to add that I revisit often a 1984 interview with former Soviet KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov, who warned way back then that communist “Ideological Subversion” was underway in the U.S. and had already completed its first stage of “Demoralization” – indoctrinating people (mostly via our universities, then) to doubt traditional values, the ideals of their country, love for their country, etc. That had already begun in the 1960s. So this communist transformation isn’t a new thing, but has simply reached its climax now. There are multiple videos of that Yuri interview on YouTube. One of the better ones, uninterrupted by commentary and complete, is entitled “Former KGB Agent, Yuri Bezmenov, Warns America About Socialist Subversion.” Note that Socialism is just a less threatening door, leading slowly to the same place. I want to clarify something that many Americans weirdly seem to miss: The Soviet Union collapsed around 91 into 92. Russia, as the Russian Federation, is no longer a communist country. Some people have gone on since then thinking we were still in a Cold War with Russia. Ironically, we were not, but now, courtesy of the neo-con crazies expanding NATO all the way to Russia’s border, we kind of are again, due to that NATO expansion and the 2014 coup in Ukraine pushing Russia into communist China’s arms as a military alliance to help Russia counter our moronic military industrial complex. Stupid politicians.

David Millikan
David Millikan
3 months ago

We have been run by Socialist/Communist policies since the beginning of biden/harris.
Difference is, they want it permanently. Why else are they working so hard to cheat and rig the 2024 Presidential election by having Illegal Aliens vote Illegally and Unconstitutionally?.

Sally Duncan
Sally Duncan
3 months ago

I disagree vehemently that Harris is not Marxist. That is exactly what she us. She has pretended to be the village idiot to get people “comfortable” with her “word salad”, but just listen to her speech at the DNC, it is full of Marxist ideas and pretty well spoken. Pretty scary!

Give me liberty
Give me liberty
3 months ago

Not socialism… Communism.

ref
ref
3 months ago

Kamala is a person that is running on the “don’t worry, be happy” platform. She has no substance and has no plan for anything, let alone doing anything for the people.
What a FRAUD she is!!

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