John Hinderaker:
First, price controls (notably, price controls on groceries) have a long history, extending back 2,000 years. They always fail, without exception. If price controls worked, every country would have started using them centuries ago. As Milton Friedman demonstrated, and as virtually everyone now acknowledges, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. It is caused by governments; in this case, the Biden/Harris administration. Groceries have increased in price, like everything else, due to Bidenflation.
Second, when it comes to prices, there is really only one instance of “gouging.” Companies compete for our business by offering the best products they can, at the best price (for them) that consumers will pay. Competition keeps prices down and quality up; no company can just “gouge.” If it charges too much, consumers will buy somewhere else, or something else.
The exception, of course, is when a company has a monopoly and there is no effective competition. This is why we have Section 2 of the Sherman Act. But there is one monopoly that never goes away, and isn’t subject to antitrust liability: government. At the state level, there is some degree of competition. Thus, if a state charges prices—taxes—that are too high, or offers products—government services—that are of low quality, some residents (but not all) can leave for better-run states. That is exactly what is happening now, as people flee blue states for red states.
But the federal government has no competition. It can engage in price gouging and provide lousy services, and, unless you are willing to move to Costa Rica or Switzerland, there is little you can do about it.
And the federal government’s price gouging includes more than taxes that are way too high. Because the federal government engages in deficit spending for political reasons—what a deal, to give some Americans money without having to tax other Americans to pay for it!—it borrows trillions of dollars, which causes inflation. So it is the federal government’s price gouging, not that of anyone in the food supply chain, that has driven recent increases in grocery prices.
Kamala Harris is one of the premier price gougers of our time.
Ed Morrissey:
Kamala Harris doesn't grasp economics well enough to even know its terminology. As Carlson points out, Harris went on obliviously after this error, on a theme her campaign wants to emphasize as its main economic message. It's not us - it's all the price gauging!
How incompetent does one have to be to not stop and correct one's self after misspeaking in this manner?
# posted by Ranger @ 3:11 PM
