Last Wednesday night Kamala Harris offered some proposals to fight price gouging. They've gotten pretty bad reviews in the press, so I was curious to read what she actually said. Not paraphrases from reporters or speculation about what she "probably" meant from columnists. Just what she actually said.
That turned out to be surprisingly hard! Her campaign released a statement, but it's nowhere to be found. However, I finally tracked down a reporter who, I think, reprinted the whole thing. Here it is:
Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz will work to enact a plan in their first 100 days to go after bad actors to bring down Americans’ grocery costs and keep inflation in check. They will work with Congress to:
- Advance the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries.
- Set clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive profits on food and groceries.
- Secure new authority for the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate and impose strict new penalties on companies that break the rules.
Extreme consolidation in the food industry has led to higher prices that account for a large part of higher grocery bills. To confront this issue, Vice President Harris will also direct her administration to crack down on unfair mergers and acquisitions that give big food corporations the power to jack up food and grocery prices and undermine the competition that allows all businesses to thrive while keeping prices low for consumers.
And her plan will support smaller businesses, like grocery stores, meat processors, farmers, and ranchers, so those industries can become more competitive.
As many people have commented, there's not much detail here. Basically, she'll task the FTC with investigating companies that "break the rules," but there's no explanation of what rules she has in mind. Her only firm proposal is to "crack down" on unfair mergers, which just means getting aggressive on antitrust and price fixing, which is already illegal.
Here's what she added in a speech she gave on Friday:
I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food. My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules, and we will support smaller food businesses that are trying to play by the rules and get ahead.
We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy. More competition means lower prices for you and your families.
There's a little more here: the penalties are for companies that break the rules during crises. Our best guess about what this means comes from her own past:
In 2020, when Harris was a U.S. senator, she co-sponsored legislation that would have defined price gouging in an emergency as charging more than 10 percent above the previous average price. The bill built in a defense for sellers that could show price hikes flowed from their own rising costs. The proposal was modeled after California's anti-price gouging law, which Harris warned businesses against violating when she was the state's attorney general.
Most states already have laws very similar to this, so it's unclear how much difference a federal law would make. That said, the evidence suggests Harris wants two things:
- A federal law similar to existing state laws that prohibits sudden, unjustified price hikes during emergencies (floods, hurricanes, pandemics, etc.).
- More aggressive enforcement of price-fixing and antitrust regulations.
There's nothing about price controls here, and not even much suggestion of anti-gouging action outside of natural disasters (and even then, only if it's gratuitous gouging, not price hikes due to higher wholesale costs). This may or may not be a good idea, bit it's surprisingly modest given the ruckus it produced in the press.
Bringing back 1950s income tax rates would do a lot more to fix this problem (and many others) than anything else. With the brackets adjusted for inflation, of course.
sad
From https://newrepublic.com/article/184937/harris-price-gouging-corporations
"But if you compare corporate profits in 2019 to the last four years, you’ll find corporations have gouged their way to an almost unbelievable $1.5 trillion in excess profits since 2020—that’s in addition to their pre-pandemic profit rates."
People are sick and tired of this. Any proposals from Harris to stop or curtail it will be very politically popular.
"This may or may not be a good idea, bit it's surprisingly modest given the ruckus it produced in the press."
There has been a lot of discussion in recent days of how people vote from their guts and then try to justify their votes intellectually. Kamala must have been listening. Despite the ruckus in the press her message will have a net positive gut reaction.
There are a lot of examples in recent years of the MSM jumping to conclusions and then rationalizing their irrational conclusions intellectually. Kamala noticed.
It's instructive that the press immediately accepted the Republican framing without question.
More like disgusting and not surprising. Dems have to run against Republicans and the media.
Yup. Even those who aren't corporate media who actively want TFG back want a close horserace. And they want to appear "fair and balanced" by both-siderism.
Voilà !
Not just Republican framing but one article I read was quoting Miller from his perch in the Heritage Foundation. He was claiming that Harris wanted price controls but since I actually watched the speech she gave I knew that was a lie. It is rather sad that a guy (me) sitting at home seemed to know more about the actual speech than various commentators who were doing what--talking to other commentators in a bar perhaps. Between the lies the Trump crowd don't even hesitate to engage in and the unwillingness of much of the media to actually engage in fact checking it is indeed a sad commentary on the state of American Democracy.
Competition is a natural brake on price increases. Consolidation has been happening up and down the grocery supply chain, not just retailers. And not just in the food sector, either. It's long past time the FTC grew a spine and started blocking the M&A that is responsible. Start by stopping the Kroger-Albertson's merger (FTC has already sued to block it, but it's now up to the courts). Both Kroger and Albertsons are too big individually. Blocking their combination should be a no-brainer.
I think this is the main point. Wall Street loves monopolies exactly because they can gouge their customers, and so pushes every public company to seize their competitors. Peter Thiel is open about this! Since Reagan and William Bork also loved favoring the oligarchy over the general public, they gutted anti-trust. This leads to "Don't Be Evil" Google actually paying to suppress competition. And look at Amazon, forbidding anyone from undercutting their prices.
Bringing back anti-trust in every field, not just groceries, will do a lot to balance this country.
It's literally impossible to have an constructive conversation about this issue until we have a common understanding of the meaning of the word "capitalism." Choose one of the following three options:
Option 1: Competition is good.
Option 2: Killing the competition is good.
Option 3: Option 1 until "we" are big enough, and then Option 2.
Applause.
There are two kinds of "killing the competition"
1. Beating them by offering better value to the customer
2. Buying them out
I'm sure I don't need to explain why one is preferable to the other.
Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey
The press has its own imperatives and practices that moved it to a quick "ruckus." And there can't be a single sizable business in the entire US of A that can sit easy with an even slightly more activist anti-trust position from the feds or welcome more frequent squinty-eyed state and FTC examination of the books. These businesses believe in eternal vigilance and their well-compensated lobbyists and comms people know very well how to seed the media so it will produce a ruckus. Mission accomplished there.
Honestly, though, I don't think the specific details matter all that much. Harris isn't only saying "I feel your pain," she's saying "I feel your pain *and* we're ready to do something about it." The "and" is the smart part, and it's why even details that aren't very specific and don't move much past current practice still matter.
Encouraging to see that basic political blocking and tackling seem to be back in style.
This is definitely a scary subject for the owners and executive leadership of the large media companies in the US. We should expect them to act as self-interested parties here and not pretend that they aren't going to be putting their thumb on the scale.
I mean, yeah. The punditry claiming she was calling for price controls are tools who jumped to conclusions.
Model it after Florida's §501.160. Partial excerpt:
Let's enjoy the fireworks of DeSantis and Florida Republicans attempting to repeal §501.160 while others claim this is communist type price controls.
Z U G Z W A N G !
Coke and Pepsi raised prices quite a bit. Are they price gouging?
https://www.vox.com/money/23979340/diet-coke-price-coca-cola-pepsi-inflation-walmart-costco#
Quit drinking it? You won’t die of thirst.
You have to admit it's hilarious that Republicans complain about "inflation" but then if you say you're going to do something about it, they complain "you can't do that".
It's almost as if all the complaining about "inflation" was just their latest way to complain about spending but try to say it using popular language.
The interesting question is why this dumbness still works (in the sense that substanial number of voters still regard republicans as better at handling the economy). You would have hope that by now voters would see through it.
I think regional networks are important; be they farming and food or trucking or media. When an area loses its newspapers, IGA's, and food production, it's lost its flavor.
And we all sense we're poorer for that. Excessive consolidation is bland and destructive to local community.
Nixon had done some price-setting during World War II. It's not unnatural for a president to have previous experience shading their ideas and policies during their administration. Jimmy Carter was a nuclear engineer in the Navy, so as president, one of the things he had a great interest in was nuclear power (and then Two-Mile Island happened) and the military, which he supported fully. Bill Clinton had been governor of Arkansas and believed in proper budgeting, education, and personal things like the saxophone. As president, his budgeting work paid off best. The Bush presidents had interest in oil and boy did they help Big Oil as presidents. The U.S. war machine burns it faster than anything and they put it to work on major wars.
Kamala Harris did several things in CA, but was most noted for her work prosecuting criminals. She may have to do a lot of that as president, and enforcing anti-gouging laws could be one part of it. This is a key reason we need to consider a candidate's past history to envision their possible future as a president. It's also why Donald Trump worked so hard to HIDE his past. He wasn't a successful business leader, and he wasn't quite so rich, and he wasn't a "good family man".
This is also a key reason we tend to support and encourage successful politicians to work in several different areas. It helps them learn more about government (at city, state, and federal levels) in domestic and foreign affairs. Take Pete Buttigieg, for example. He worked at the city level and now at the Cabinet level in the federal government. I'd like to see him positioned as Sec. of State to gain international experience too. He's very capable politically, but more real experience could help a lot. Of course, we have a Sec. of State, but I think the next few years might see Tony Blinken best as a Special Envoy to the Middle East and to the Russia-Ukraine war. There is a lot to those zones which has yet to be fully resolved.
they could be doing a "15000 days since trump went a full day without spreading bullshit" like they did with the iran hostages or use stock phrases like "disgraced former president trump"
but they'll spend a week nitpicking an anodyne policy from the dems
fuck the press
What we're seeing is the devious trick media plays on Democrats time and time again.
Media, for several years: Inflation is a terrible problem. What are you going to do about it, Dems?
[Inflation comes down faster and farther than experts expected.]
Media, later: No, Dems, you don't get credit for bringing down inflation. The problem is high prices. What are you going to do about high prices, Dems?
[Kamala makes (modest) anti-gouging proposal to help bring down high prices for consumers.]
Media: Oh, no, you don't! We are capitalists in this country and we don't do "price controls" here. You're a bunch of communists!
Media are dumb and dishonest, and have helped take us to the brink of neo-fascism.
Big corporations have too much power in our economy and too much power in our media. People have had enough. Time to fight back.
The ghost of disgraced former president Richard Nixon has entered the chat.
Has this country given up on breaking "trusts"? Seems so.
Were you asleep when Google lost big?
If states have such laws, they're sure as hell not enforcing them.
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