Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has announced her economic plan to stem inflation. She has stated that her goal is to make life in America more affordable for everyone. Her intentions may be noble, but her knowledge of economics and human nature leaves a lot to be desired.
On Friday, Fox News reported:
A liberal economic columnist criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposal to control prices on food and groceries as “totally unworkable” and compared it to failed efforts by communist governments.
“It‘s not going to be markets, it‘s not going to be supply and demand that’s determining how much your grocery store charges you for milk or for eggs, it‘s going to be some bureaucrat in D.C., which seems like totally unworkable,” Catherine Rampell said on CNN on Friday.
Rampell, a columnist for the Washington Post and a CNN economics and political commentator, argued the plan was “bad” for various reasons, from practicality to effectiveness.
“Well, first of all, nobody can explain what price gouging means,” she said on CNN, saying the idea of “excessive” prices or profit margins is subjective and thus “very hard to pin down what this would actually mean.”
The article also notes:
“We’ve seen this kind of thing tried in lots of other countries before; Venezuela, Argentina, the Soviet Union, et cetera. It leads to shortages, it leads to black markets, you know, plenty of uncertainty,” she said.
“And beyond that, the specific way this bill is written might actually increase prices because of some of the other language in it, things like requiring companies — public companies to disclose in their quarterly reports, their quarterly earnings reports, how they’re setting prices, which is a great way to help them collude, which normally we don’t want them to do,” she explained.
If you want to bring down inflation, the first thing you need to do is cut government spending and regulation. After that is done, open up America’s energy resources and loose the free market on all areas of our economy. The return to the free market will make economic success available to anyone who is willing to work for it. That should be everyone’s goal.
Milton Friedman is credited with saying, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” Kamala Harris needs to consider that quote when planning her economic program.