(The Center Square) – Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is taking fire for her new “price-gouging” ban that critics say is little more than communism-style “price controls” where government heavily regulates industries.
Harris’ effort to address elevated consumer prices hits at a key pain point for Americans, but the details of how Harris plans to go about fixing that problem will be the subject of close scrutiny when she lays out the plan at a North Carolina rally Friday. Harris is expected to unveil a broader economic plan at the same rally, but so far there are few details on specifically how she will address inflation. Prices have risen more than 20% overall since she and President Joe Biden took office.
Harris’ campaign this week touted the “federal ban on corporate price-gouging” to help Americans with high grocery prices and prevent “excessive” profits. Harris’ campaign said she would also order the Department of Justice to take a look at mergers between grocers and food producers.
Critics of the plan immediately blasted it as “price controls,” anti-capitalism and noted similar ideas failed in other countries. They also argue Harris is blaming corporations for high prices when inflation fueled by government spending is really to blame.
“Price controls might sound good to some, but they do not work,” U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “They lead to supply shortages and in the end, higher prices. Looks like Kamala Harris is a communist at heart.”
Price gouging is currently already illegal, but the Biden-Harris administration has argued that corporations have taken advantage of elevated inflation to raise prices even higher.
“Tomorrow, Vice President Harris, a person who has never built a business, doesn’t understand profit and loss, has never met payrolls, and who has never competed in a consumer market, is going to propose federal price controls,” U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said in a statement. “That should terrify every American. She claims that Congress needs to ban ‘price gouging,’ which is already widely illegal and not the cause of high prices. The skyrocketing prices created by the Biden-Harris administration aren’t price-gouging, it’s inflation.”
Price controls are a feature of communistic “command and control” economies, the reason Harris will likely seek to avoid the term, if her plan will truly include price controls at all, and why such a strong reaction broke out against the plan this week.
“[Harris’] solution to the Harris Price Hikes she caused is big government on steroids – where Washington bureaucrats stick their hands into American businesses and say what they can and can’t sell a product for,” Scott said. “It never works because it causes companies to make much less of something – destroying supply and causing a mass shortage of goods.”
Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran in the Republican presidential primary and is considered a potential cabinet appointee if former President Donald Trump is elected, called out Republicans on the issue, asking whether they would have “the spine” to critique Harris’ plan.
“The GOP has a wide-open opportunity to embrace capitalism again,” Ramaswamy wrote on X. “No, that doesn’t mean blindly reciting neoliberal shibboleths about spreading ‘democracy through capitalism’ abroad (that doesn’t work: see China). But it *does* mean embracing exceptionalism & merit over protectionism & patronage here at home. That’s the fork in the road ahead for our own movement.”
Polling shows that inflation remains a top concern for voters and small business owners. Inflation has slowed from its breakneck pace earlier in the Biden-Harris term, but some goods and services have continued to rise.
As The Center Square previously reported, roasted coffee prices rose 9.1% and dairy product prices increased 9.4% in the past two months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pork and “processed young chickens” prices saw slightly higher increases.
So far, Harris’ policy agenda has been sparse, and what record she does have on the border and her time as a prosecutor she has tried to distance herself from, making this new policy agenda crucial for her campaign.
Forget the price controls, but focus on the Lice controls that will shake these blood sucking financial parasites all out of our hair for good. Those of us who were around when Jimmy Carter and then Nixon imposed government price controls, soon without fail, witnessed the market price increase in each and every one of those commodities. Those who learn not the lessons of history are indeed doomed to repeat them, and will again with the broken records of their broken price control promises that ALWAYS deliver the opposite of what was promised in government power grabs. If they spent more time studying the economic laws of supply and demand, instead of the art of political demand and control, WE THE PEOPLE would again begin to prosper when we the consumer gets to make the choice of what we spend our finite resources on, instead of the infinite machinations and manipulations of an economy that always prospers better, when it is the government interference that is kept under control. Left to Kamala’s devices our economy will leak money, faster than the border leaked illegal aliens, but like the border, her select party people will be the only ones getting richer, that will increase the need to like Joe himself, to ditch her. Why not just pass on her up front, and save us ALL the pain.
Kamala has proven that she cannot abandon her Jamaican heritage,,,,she will not only abandon Bidenomics BEFORE the election, but exchange it for Voodoo economics, which is even worse. If she bites off the heads of her chickens to get her economic solutions, like she bit off the heads of her resigning Veep employees, you can bet she will make America even poorer than what Joe did.
CAN she ever name one nation in which price controls, EVER MADE THINGS better??
No she can’t.
Is it possible that the public can be ignorant enough to buy into the concept of “government price controls”? This has never ever worked in any economy in history. Every GOP political message should be an attempt at economic education that even someone with an I.Q level of 55 can understand.
Next will come govt ‘nationalizing’ all businesses.. Just you wait!
That’s the goal.
What’s the bet she’ll also do china’s national public rating thinggy.. AS WELL AS nationalize banking.
Kamala Harris is just a self-serving, self-righteous, liar and a Parasitic worm that feeds off of others.
Kamala Harris is not a leader but a follower. Kamaleon Harris will just be another obedient puppet to the treasonous, destructive, woke, DEI, lying, socialist Democrat Party. One can already see how Kamaleon Harris is trying to copy Donald Trumps leadership and trying to pass Donald Trumps leadership off as her own.
This Democrat Party has become our country’s most dangerous an deadliest ENEMY!
And, she’s so ugly that when she was born, the doctor slapped her mother.
We’ve allowed far too many people in this country far too quickly and it has lead to our current Soviet Economics. A slow steady flow of people vetted and assimilated should have been the plan, but an INVASION of parasites is what the Dems used to destroy our nation.
“Harris’ campaign this week touted the “federal ban on corporate price-gouging” ”
When will they address Federal TAX GOUGING? Want to stop inflation? Stop printing money and giving it away.
Maybe Camela failed Economics 101 (probably never took it). Her comments here if enacted will create a holy mess.
This lady is also going to tell us all to”Go eat Cake” and she will get in trouble for plagiarizing the once famous Queen of France, Marie Antoinette.
She won;t even give us cake to eat.. Unless its cowpat cake.
This lady is also going to tell us all to”Go eat Cake” and she will get in trouble for plagiarizing the once famous Queen of France, Marie Antoinette.
Perhaps she should make it her campaign slogan.