Cal88 said:
Big C said:
bear2034 said:
Kamala's first announced policy was something that came from left field: to propose price control on food.
This is indicative of the problem with VP Harris and if the GOP is smart, they will spend more time trying to pin her down on her policies and less time with the racist and misogynist stuff (and forget about Walz entirely).
She should have vetted this idea about stopping price gouging, or at least explained it better (I could have helped her with the wording). Instead, her people think they are the smartest folks in the room, but they are unable to come up with a big picture philosophy for her (and she surely doesn't have one of her own). Instead, it was like, "They're trying to hit us on inflation! Quick, let's come up with a few bullet point actions to fight inflation!"
She never said anything about price-gouging, she wants to stop the rampant scourge of price-gauging, there's too much of that going on and it's hurting the people.
How do you define price-gouging when the margins and profits are lower now and even at the height of inflation than it was pre-pandemic? And where is the evidence of rampant price-gouging? And how do you stop "price-gouging" without price control?
Do you know what is driving down inflation? Market forces and not regulation. Just basics of supply and demand. Yes, you can stimulate or control otherwise overheating demand environment with monetary and fiscal policies, but market forces will lower inflation when demand is reduced. Why have prices not increased as much recently? Because the government is not giving away free money as much and interest rate is high, and people are pushing back against rising prices and do not have as much discretionary income to fight over limited supply by bidding up prices. Now, consumers are choosing the lower priced options. That lowers demand leading to decreased competition for finite supply which leads to lower prices.
Government social engineering such as artificially encouraging home ownership to people who cannot afford and pushing college education to those people who are not best suited or beyond capacity in legitimate universities have always created bubbles and crashes, with over inflation on prices leading to people overburdened with debt and with rising homelessness and exacerbating the original problem.
Hell is paved with good intentions, especially when those intentions are executed by inexperienced politicians and bureaucrats with zero business sense.
