Not only has the Biden-Harris Administration deftly woven together a wonder-tale in their obnoxious claim that “greedy, price-gouging corporations” have caused higher costs of living, rather than what Economics 101 could tell them - that an inflated government money supply bids up prices -- Kamala Harris, now the Democrat nominee for president heading into November, just proposed centrally-planned, fascistic “price controls."
Which history already has shown to always fail.
And to top that off, she also just pushed a new, centrally-planned “housing based” economy, proposing massive new government spending for home-buyers that will add to the skyrocketing U.S. debt, will artificially stimulate home-building, contrary to what the natural market might want, and follows other pie-in-the-sky central plans on the primrose path of fascistic failure.
In North Carolina Friday, August 16, Harris repeated the Administration's attack on grocery store owners and food sellers, claiming that they are “gouging” customers, and she announced her Soviet-style central plan to hand $25,000 to people for new home ownership.
Her rhetoric about “gouging” not only stands contrary to the reality that grocery stores have some of the slimmest margins of any U.S. industry (roughly 1 to 3 percent, according to NYU) and that they have to compete with each other for consumer interest, it overlooks the fact that the price increases they, and we, suffer are a result of central-bank inflation of the money supply, which, itself, has been conducted over decades, to facilitate government debt.
As the New York Times has noted, Harris has not offered any specifics about how she will impose a maximum price for things like food, and neither she, nor the NYT, have bothered to mention that both logic and history offer ample evidence of the fact that government price controls cause shortages, because they suppress the price system that suppliers need to tell them that consumers want something, and how much of it they want.
Harris’ proposal was slammed by economics writer and editor Chris Rossini, who streamed Friday with former Congressman Dr. Ron Paul, and said, in part:
“We shouldn’t be surprised… that Kamala Harris would embrace price controls, which, throughout all of history, even down to the Roman Empire, (have shown to be) a total disaster-creator.”
Of course, Kamala probably didn’t watch their free-market presentation.
Likewise, she might have missed well known economist Milton Friedman’s statement from years ago, in which he offered, in part:
“You know, economists don’t know very much, but there’s one thing we know very, very well, and that’s how to produce shortages. Tell us what you want a shortage in. If you want a shortage in lettuce, we’ll set a maximum legal price for lettuce below the price that prevails in the market and I guarantee you, you’ll have a shortage of lettuce.”
As I’ve written for MRCTV, the very term “price gouging” is not applicable in free market trade, because, in market trading, the participants freely decide to engage in the transactions. They have their own reasons, weigh them, see what is offered, and choose to participate.
If a price drops, do politicians claim that the consumer is “gouging” the seller? Should the Harris team push for a MINIMUM price, to befriend sellers?
Related: Liz Warren Leads Push to Blame Shop Owners for High Prices
In the two-way, voluntary, exchange of the market, everyone is supposed to be free to choose based on his or her own calculations. Those calculations are revealed in the price upon sale, and that information is utilized by others to adjust their market activity, supply more, or supply less, invest more, invest less, and so on.
Ironically, Harris also engages in the second form of foolishness just noted, because she wants to subsidize home-builders and sellers.
In North Carolina she also proposed a Soviet-style central plan to hand out $25,000 each to potential new home buyers.
Like her price-cap idea, this is not only unconstitutional and unethical, it leads to disastrous consequences.
First, it pumps up prices by artificially increasing demand, a process that economists often spell out by saying, “If you want to see resources shifted into a certain field and see prices rise, just have the government subsidize it.”
Second, it repeats the utterly fool-hearty approach of criminal masterminds Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Yes, Harris offers the same obnoxious, cronyist, pie-in-the-sky rhetoric George W. Bush pushed in his era, that of the "ownership society." Coming on the heels of the Clinton Admin's push to have Janet Reno pressure banks to make them hand out home loans to people who were racially favored by the administration, rather than necessarily viable recipients of home loans, the "Bush Push" for more homes also ran on the back of an artificially low Federal Reserve lending/interest rate. Many people got "variable rate" mortgages at near 0%, and the Fed pumped out the money, bidding up the prices of homes and shifting market resources. But then, as always has to happen, around 2008, people could no longer afford their mortgages, many saw their rates rise, and they defaulted on their loans. Banks holding these "toxic mortgages" shuffled them to the federally-created and subsidized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (thus seeing them getting BILLIONS in bailouts, soon, thereafter). The prices for houses and the attendant resources needed for them began to be understood as far too high compared to their actual value, those mortgages became albatrosses, and the high-priced homes had to be liquidated, even as the feds bailed out banks and Fannie, etc.
Kamala doesn't have any moral, constitutional, or economically-consequential ground to stand on, and yet she pushes the same kind of pandering, utopian central planning that previously has failed.
And she is not alone. With personalities stripped and party affiliations removed, Donald Trump also embraces this kind of egomaniacal, pie-in-the-sky, utopian central-planning mindset.
Despite Elon Musk trying to explain to him that inflation is an increase in the money supply caused by central banks facilitating crazy, expensive government pork, warmongering, and welfare, Trump recently told Americans he thirsts for more government central plans, plans that are as zealously anti-market as Harris’ dumb “25K government house subsidy” idea.
In a recent video that former Reagan advisor David Stockman correctly called "absurd," Mr. Trump told viewers he wants to take some of the federally “owned” U.S. property and -- no, not sell it off to cut the debt, nope -- he wants to create “Freedom Cities” on them.
The fact that the Constitution doesn’t allow the central government to own or run land other than the ten-square mile area for the Capitol, military garrisons, and territories – not parks, not “open spaces,” and not “monuments” – is lost on him. The fact that the U.S. isn’t supposed to be investing in “cities,” regardless of the darkly ironic use of the term “freedom” attached, that also, seems to be lost on Mr. Trump.
The fact that the Communist Chinese government already engaged in this central planning and created thousands of acres of “Ghost Cities” that pushed out private landowners, remained unused, and now are sucking up government money to be torn down?
Also, lost on Mr. Trump, who usually takes plenty of time to scorn China and demonize Chinese exports.
But it gets nuttier and more economically disastrous. Trump also pushed for federal subsidies of passenger rocket flight, he wants centrally-planned industrial projects, and wants to have Congress subsidize births with what he calls “baby bonuses” – an idea already tried, through numerous direct and indirect means, in Australia, Italy, and Germany.
It's all comically sad and removed from economic reality, akin to a cartoon character running off a cliff, and continuing to run in mid-air when he doesn’t realize there’s nothing beneath him.
Eventually, reality sets in, and the fall occurs.
The problem is that these politically cartoonish figures and their ideas carry us down with them.
Both Harris and Trump are not listening to economic reality, and they are disregarding the US Constitution. It doesn’t matter what political party one likes, these are facts, and those facts are waiting, for the cartoon characters to look down, and see what’s looming due to their central plans.
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Just like KJP, Kamala Harris supporters are at a loss for words when it comes to naming anything she’s accomplished.
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