I hope this isn't a misstep, but rather a good political calculation that recognizes that whatever the truth is, there is a massive PERCEPTION problem out there about the reality of the economy, largely fueled by right-wing BS media that says the economy has never been worse.
American voters really don't care about charts or policy details -- I don't mean this as a criticism, just a fact, people are busy. They care about results. Like with healthcare, they care about whether they can see their doctor when they need to, get surgery when they need it, and will it bankrupt them?
Likewise here. I tend to agree with other commenters who think this is more about messaging. A lot of Americans have the populism bug, and they just need to feel like whoever is at the top gives a shit about what they're going through. I think (I hope) this is a chance for her to say "No matter what the fancy experts say, I know many of you are hurting, and I'm going to go to bat for you."
We'll have to see what she says and actually proposes. Obviously the entire Right is ready to scream "COMMUNIST PRICE CONTROLS!" and I'd hate to think the Harris campaign just handed them that on a silver platter.
==> Obviously the entire Right is ready to scream "COMMUNIST PRICE CONTROLS!"
I have to wonder if that might not be the point. Get the right to scream it as loud as they can. The effect on many low information voters is that every time a politician suggests something to help (even though IMO price controls are terrible) the right screams COMMUNIST. The louder they scream it, but more it diminishes the impact.
I wondered about this. The "but we really mean it this time, why isn't anyone listening" vibe is strong. The speech is tame, but draws out these extreme reactions, and then she trolls them with all that stuff about encouraging competition at the end.
I she makes it into office a fine way to do the messaging would be to forbid price gouging while defining it correctly---which would mean that the rule would basically never need to be enforced.
I had already written and posted my comment, before seeing this comment. I agree with your take on it I think we have a lot of middleman problems in Healthcare and other areas. Mark Cuban is involved in a startup, Cost Plus, that promises to bypass the middlemen in prescription drug prices. That approach, applied in other areas, might reduce a lot of prices and do it with Market forces that's the way the free market is supposed to work, but monopolies interfere with that process. They are growing like a cancer on our economy. If we excise that tumor prices will come down, inflation will come down and we'll have to be careful about deflation. But maybe if it's done organically that won't happen. Ask Noah.
Not sure what area of the country you were looking to move, but the reality is that we have too little housing in desirable areas. Outside of maybe Houston, TX and now Austin, TX.
In NYC there is a rent stabilization law that is intentionally designed to perpetuate scarcity, so we have average rents of $1600 and average asking rents for an available 1BR apartment of around $3500.
I read that Harris statement, and I think you are taking it many miles too far.
"Price gouging" leaves her a ton of weasel room. (Especially now when inflation has fallen off.)
The play here is entirely political. When bad things happen, human beings need a scapegoat.
Over the years, prices went way up on stuff like health care and college and real estate. While income remained fairly flat for most people. But at least, inflation on everyday stuff remained low. Then post pandemic income finally went up, particularly for the less affluent half of the population, but damn it, price increases on things like food and gas consumed a huge portion of that increase. People were pissed, and since dimming rates of inflation do not mean falling prices, they are going to be pissed for some time.
Republicans offer a scapegoat: the Biden administration.
Harris's job is to deflect that. The political loser answer, which I expected from Democrats, is a technical response about all those pay raises adding to the cost of things, and Trump's part in Covid relief legislation, and (especially) how pay raises have kept ahead of inflation. Regardless of the merits, none of this would move the needle an iota.
The political winner is to offer a better scapegoat than that offered by the Republicans. Something easier to understand. Easier to act on. So... prices went up due to price gouging, and we will forbid it. (After you make me president, and send Donald Trump into retirement.)
Note that she did not say that she is going to limit the price increase on milk and eggs and bread to a specific government-determined number. Rather, after she takes the oath of office, she would be looking at particularly egregious cases of price gouging. You can bet she will take action cautiously, because odds are great that the process will not go quickly and the courts will take a dim view.
The road from this to price controls... I'm not seeing it in my worst nightmares. Simply will not happen.
You, sir, are a fricking genius. Publicly shaming the worst of the gougers is something she can do for a big surge in popularity; and to hopefully pressure said gougers to stop gouging. Win for her--win for consumers like me.
Is she going to be browsing the egg section at Safeway (imagine she actually shops in addition to cooking and cackling) and keep notes on egg prices compared to what she imagines a reasonable price is. She will need a big notebook, for the various grades and sizes of eggs, and varieties (white, brown, free range, pasture raised, organic, vegetarian fed, conventional (banned in California so she needs to check in DC as well as LA), fertilized (at Trader Joe’s maybe not Safeway) and sizes (dozen, 18, 24) and compare weekly sale prices and regular prices. Then compare with Costco, Target, Walmart, Whole Foods, Walgreens, Aldi, HEB , Wegmans, Kroger, and each corner bodega. Then translate that as a law with penalties for any of the stores and combinations of varieties of eggs.
And that’s just for eggs. This is a completely ridiculous proposal.
Rather than price controls, what we will see is a tiny handful of public challenges to egregious prices -- which will lead to little more than anger at the vendor.
Oh, and very possibly put her political opponents in the unpopular position of defending the right of companies to charge crazy prices.
But no table of maximum prices, and I am willing to bet, not a single binding judgment against a particular high price.
Actually, it's an effort to return to pre-culture war politics. Dems blaming big business, GOP blaming government. Never thought I would feel nostalgia for those days. :)
The anger at egregious violations probably won't lead to major judgements, but it might build some momentum for more meaningful reform, say antitrust reform that improves competition in the grocery and food processing sector. It might also produce some voluntary self-regulation when it comes to price increases.
The multinationals whose products occupy most of the shelf space at my local Safeway should now be very careful about a fresh round of price increases. Especially the publicly traded ones like Unilever, who could be easily busted in the court of public opinion for price-gouging over cost increases.
Publicly shaming a few choice scapegoats--like Unilever--would do wonders for enhancing the public mood. Shame the worst offenders by name, who can then watch in horror as they lose market share to their less greedy competitors.
If there's no political will to push back on the monopolies, duopolies and monopolies that dominate our markets, then at the very least shame the worst offenders into more responsible behavior.
If Harris wants to win she needs to show that she takes voter's concerns about inflation seriously, which means policy proposals. Voter's #1 concern is inflation and you need something to talk about that isn't "look at these charts and stop complaining".
A good companion piece to this is today's Josh Barro "I Said Democrats Should Pander More, and Kamala Is Delivering"; per that the most popular disinflationary measure in polling is to prosecute companies for price-gouging and price-fixing.
Good post, bad polling. Of course people will say prosecute for price gouging. Thats like asking if you should prosecute murder. Instead poll "go after food companies for higher prices" and the number will gonto 0 fast. Ask farmers about price gouging and it will poll negative.
I've still got it in for Proctor & Gamble and Unilever, two mega-corps that jacked up their retail prices two years ago way over increased expenses, and turbocharged the beginning of the current inflationary spiral.
The wife and I decided to boycott them--and found to our surprise that about 80% of products in the sundries aisles of our local Safeway were made by them or their subsidiaries. Oligopolies suck.
Of course, to the point of this article (and Harris's press release), those are the suppliers to grocery stores rather than grocery stores themselves, right?
It’s horrible politics for normie reasonably pro-biz people like me in the suburbs. It’s the only policy thing that’s gotten me excited in a bad way. Well that and no tax on tips but eh this is a much bigger deal to me actually.
He cites this slide which shows prosecuting price gouging as third most popular and the other two would have the reverse effect of what the public wants. https://x.com/TheRealERS/status/1823916400781467914.
are any indication, people (even middle class Dems?) are still very angry about the burst of inflation and do not take kindly to the "look at the graph wages and prices went about the same on average, we don't need to do anything" explanation.
We need a few corporate scapegoats. Out some of the more odious price-gouging companies, and throw them to the lions. Red meat for an angry citizenry.
There's still historically bad feeling that Wall Street got no concrete blame for their securities fiasco that caused the Great Recession, and allowed "too big to fail" banks get even bigger.
Plus, many people who are not financially savvy played the inflation period suboptimally (to pu it mildly), and it is not the greatest idea to tell them it is their own fault. (Less of a big deal in the US, but e.g. in Germany many people---especially old people---keep their savings in bank accounts and there are more barriers to stock and home ownership. Those people are very angry at Scholz.)
Makes sense. I don't particularly like the inflation situation overall, but my home's value is up 60+% since 2019, and my retirement account is worth more than twice what it was then. I feel like the USA's 30-year fixed mortgage market and extremely common retirement funds that are mostly in stocks are actually secret superpowers for the middle class that apparently are not common elsewhere.
It's to the point where you've got folks arguing not to bother buying a house, and putting your savings in ETFs, because the returns are better. I went the house route because no one will let you buy stocks on margin with only 10-20% equity, and I can't live in my brokerage account. Home ownership doesn't always win out, but in my case, $100k down in 2017 has now led to $800k in equity, and my mortgage is to die for - 2.75% for about 25 more years - and I'm only 43.
Look at all the Americans that are looking to retire abroad - the US may not be a great place to retire, but it sure is a great place to build wealth to retire elsewhere.
I think it's safe to think the Harris campaign senses strongly that prices will subside before we're very far into the first hundred days, making any congressional or executive action unnecessary.
Far better would be for her and Biden to use the bully pulpit to shame specific oligopolistic price gougers like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever, who unilaterally jacked up their prices 2 years ago considerably above their operating costs, turbocharging the consumer side of the inflationary spiral.
Hold press conferences and grill these CEO's in congressional hearings. Publicly shame these price-gougers I say for their greed--and their role in driving inflation. But don't resort to price-fixing.
Tim Walz is wrong on that. Recklessly burning political capital is only okay if you're fine with the other side winning. On a federal level, it is NOT okay for the GOP to win until they rid themselves of Trump and their authoritarian streak. Burning so much political capital that you lose the next election is simply not okay.
I agree you don't want to burn *all* of your political capital to the ground. But there's a grain of truth there. Winning is a means to an end, not the end in itself!
I think he learned this lesson from ACA (which he miraculously survived voting for).
The broader lesson is: if you believe the policy you are spending your capital on is actually good, it makes sense to burn capital on it. It will stand the test of time, survive the backlash and emerge better for it on the other side. And if not, then it was dumb policy and you deserve to get smacked for it. The point is, on a personal level it might be worth the sacrifice if the policy survived but you don't.
For what it is worth, this is what republicans are trying with abortion now. If they survive the backlash and trump is elected, they win and it is all worth it for them. (And Pence will feel vindicated.) I hope they fail, but that is the play and they are going for it.
I understand that this election will be decided based on vibes and not policy but for someone who was defined by her laugh and poor public speaking skills not so long ago, I'm not sure that embracing idiotic ideas is a good way to shore up support among independent/undecided votes. Democrats are getting a free pass on a lot of terrible ideas because the alternative is a dumbass like Trump.
Agreed. Harris is easily the best choice, because her party will restrain any truly crazy ideas she tries to implement, while the same is less true of Trump.
Really? Far from restraining Harris, her party has enabled her to bypass the normal controls at every possible point. Also, Biden passed a massively inflationary spending bill right into the teeth of huge lockdown-driven inflation. That seemed crazy but he wasn't restrained by his party.
And yet inflation came down dramatically despite Biden's spending bills [1]. I can understand your point about the policy risk of Biden's bills given what we knew *at the time*. But here we are years later, knowing that the actual outcomes don't support the criticism, yet the criticism is still being leveled anyway. Policy works better when we try to take actual results into account!
"Restrain presidents" from doing what, exactly? It seems that the party determined that a one-time infrastructure bill wouldn't result in runaway inflation, in which case they didn't need to restrain Biden from passing it. And now that we have the results, we can see that the party's judgement was correct. That seems pretty relevant.
The counterargument seems to be something like "well, I believed that it would produce runaway inflation, and the Democratic party should be graded on their willingness to govern based on my predictions, even after the fact when my predictions have been proven wrong." It's a weird criticism.
I'll accept that the IRA has with the benefit of hindsight not been crazy, even though you don't actually reduce inflation by doing tax-and-spend bills. Also, I should probably not use the word crazy for spending bills, which are in general not particularly crazy things in the broad spectrum of acts a government can engage in. I'll actually moderate further and say Biden has lived up to expectations of not being a crazy president. That expectation is why the party maneuvered to pick him originally, right?
Nonetheless, it must be recalled that the original form of the IRA (the Build Back Better Act) was 2x the size and died specifically because Joe Manchin thought that it would increase inflation. He changed his mind and produced the new IRA only after his party "turned the dogs loose" on him (his words). That the bill would have been double the size if not for the tenacity of one man doesn't suggest a large degree of institutional capacity for restraint.
The risk for America is that it goes the same way as the UK, being in some way 'spoiled' by moderates for so long that it doesn't realize what a modern left wing party is really like until after they're in power. Obama won largely due to his centrism, and he pre-dated the left's turn towards harsh wokeness. Biden is the last of the Clintonian third way old guard. A lot of people here seem to have been caught out by the sudden appearance of price controls as a policy, and are now rationalizing that it wouldn't really happen because the moderation of the past will continue. Perhaps bringing up the IRA was a distraction, but my question remains: where's the evidence restraint would happen? If we look at Europe, there has been very little institutional moderation going on of far left ideas. The BBBA/IRA was moderated only by one man, who since left the Democrats and now runs as an independent. It doesn't bode well for economic centrism going forwards.
My hope is that besides this being a political gambit, the real plan is for anti-trust enforcement where it’s needed and some amount of “jawboning”. A little presidential wrath and shaming could work to reduce margins in high margin name brand foods like Coke products or breakfast cereals. I agree that actual price controls are a bad idea.
Wasn't that long ago that Biden blamed rising prices on gas stations. Blaming stores for high grocery prices is pretty rich from an administration that triggered a big round of inflation. Maybe Noah is on to something, and they get their economic insights from Apporea.org
Herein lies the problem with campaigns providing policy ideas - Trump offers nothing for the past 10 years to great success - Harris offers one idea (with no details) and the scribes go berserk. "Big mistake!". "Communism!".. "Soviet price controls!".
How about we wait for the convention and some formal policy statements before we hyperventilate?
Upon further reflection I was wrong to lump you in with the rest of the MSM. I'm suffering from the fatigue of watching Republican policies receive superficial, if any, analysis (Repeal the ACA! With what? Crickets.) from the MSM while Democratic policies with detail get ripped to pieces.
While I read you, Delong, and a few others, few of my "normal" friends or family get past the MSM headlines - thus my frustration.
I think you must not have been reading Noah's blog very long if you think that this article is more "hyperventilation" or "berserk" than anything he has said about Trump's economic policies.
I think this wad legitimately the most alarmist post of the bunch. I get the disappoinment when a candidate doesn't get "it", whatever your definition of "it" is, but taking your time to formulate a sane response (and trying to reason through what they might be thinking) goes a long way towards persuading anyone, unless you are just trying to preach to the choir. I think this is one of the few things that (the better parts of) the EA crowd tend to get right.
Edit: I guess if you have a big enough megaphone, you could also be trying to signal to the people pushing this policy that this is your red line. But that becomes less effective each time you do it.
We really have to wait for them to take office and use the powers of the executive or see what Congress comes up with to see the real power behind the policy.
If this ends Harris' honeymoon period and price controls prove unpopular, she will memory hole it and life goes on.
Perhaps lower pricing can come through the newly emboldened antitrust front. There are still ways to fix price upwards even without direct collusion. In Popular Information, Judd Legum wrote about how Atlantic City hotels used a software company's algorithm to collectively raise prices even as booking occupancices fell.
Legum: "According to Cendyn, its customers accept the "optimal" rate suggested by Cendyn algorithm 90% of the time. The company advises customers that accepting the recommended rates will result in an increase in revenues of "up to 15%." Since 2018, when the hotel-casinos in Atlantic City began using Cendyn, there have been "substantial increases in room rates and revenue coupled with marked decreases in occupancy rates."
Traditionally, Atlantic City hotel-casinos competed on price to increase their occupancy rates. Hotels that maintained higher prices would be undercut by competitors who offered similar rooms at lower rates.
Once the hotel-casinos began using the Cendyn to set rates in 2018, that changed. Filings with New Jersey state officials reveal that all the hotels significantly increased their rates and allowed occupancy rates to drop."
Trump has numerous policies outlined on his website. One of them is the tip tax policy that Harris just decided was so great she adopted it as well. He also had several famous policies in his first administration like becoming more hawkish on China, building a border wall and more. It's pretty strange to claim that Trump has offered no policies.
You might consider mentioning the 1971 experience in the United States when President Nixon imposed a three-month freeze on wages and prices, which ultimately failed to control inflation after the freeze was lifted.
"What about Nixon’s price controls in the 1970s? Blinder and Newton (1981) argue that these controls had a very small and ultimately temporary effect on prices — similar to what Aparicio and Cavallo found for Argentina. And they argue that the “rebound” from the end of temporary price controls exacerbated the inflation of the late 1970s."
Argentina actually had quite a lot experience with wage and price fixing though! The most notable ones were in 1975 and 1985, and both ended in rapid currency devaluation, and finally, hyperinflation. You could look at Rodrigazo and the Austral plan to understand more about how they failed!
Kamala was full of bad ideas--Medicare for all, for example--when she ran for president in 2020. Now she's pushing for price controls on grocery stores and not treating tips as taxable income. She seems to be picking up where she left off. There's no question that she's infinitely better than Trump--because she isn't an amoral sociopath--but as for having "good" ideas that are actually good, well, the jury's still out on that one.
The no-tax-on-tips is a horrendous policy that would open up a lot of chicanery in the food and services industries. Pity that the U.S. can't be like in European no-tip countries, where you can be a food server in middle age and live comfortably on a salary.
What will happen in the U.S. is that service wages will go tips-only, hence no tax. This is going to cut earnings of workers and make these jobs informal in plain sight, unless they are hotels in big cities that are unionized, creating a "labor aristocracy". I will also see patrons of these places more likely to leave zero tips, or those fake dollar bills that troll the figuratively and literally poor workers with scriptural verses on them.
Let's not even go into how is the U.S. going to collect FICA on a no-tax tip, particularly when the work goes tips-only.
Maybe she will combine both policies, so when the stores run out of eggs at the non-gouging price and you really want an omelette, you will need to tip the grocery clerk $5 to get the ones she has stashed in the back. The tax free tips encourage the stashing.
for whatever it is worth: "do something about prices" was one of the first things carville started saying as soon it became clear she would be the nominee
There's a few other 2024 articles from Left-leaning economists arguing the same point.
The reference I can't seem to find is from an EU Government economist in 2022 (?) who estimated 50% of inflationary pressure (in just the EU?) was from what's now termed "greedflation" by companies like Unilever.
She also mentioned algorithmic price fixing collusion in her speech. It sounded dubious, but there is actually a recent (few days ago) Atlantic article about that in the housing market:
Maybe one effect of her speech is that we will start to get more articles like this and learn that there is, actually, some fire there. (Yes, it's the trumpy ``someone ought to look into it''... but maybe someone really ought, no?)
As a duly authorized representative of the American Left, I can say with full confidence that we do indeed trust the markets when they're appropriately regulated, to ensure that the inevitable bad apples don't muck things up for all parties.
Having actually lived through a (thankfully brief) period of price controls on basic food items, there is no way this is good policy. In all fairness, my circumstances were very different, as I lived in a country that had just exited communism and was in a debt crisis. Prices had been fixed for decades, and understandably the new government was reluctant to unleash them, knowing it will lead to high inflation.
The result was predictable, as suddenly basic items disappeared from shop stalls. It became so bad in the capital that they had to introduce rationing stamps on basic foodstuffs and fuel. It lasted from late 1990 to early 1991, so just a single winter, but people much older than me (I was 13 at the time) said the last time they had rationing was in WWII. And as you may expect, as soon as price controls were lifted, there were no longer shortages.
I truly hope Harris meant limiting the growth of profit margins rather than direct price controls. While limiting profit margins is still likely to be ineffective, it is a bit better than outright price controls, no matter how appealing it may be to some voters. Some European countries impose restrictions on profit margins, but it has always been a temporary measure, like during the latest energy crisis, and with dubious effect.
The current unhealthy levels of market concentration means, that when large companies like Unilever decided 2 years ago to raise their prices considerably above margin, that it would have an outsize ripple effect across the economy. Without any fear of a Windfall Profits tax.
If Harris would name a few names--like Unilever--and shame them for their role in supercharging inflation, they would lose market share. And their competitors would be grateful.
Well, all Trump has to do is say “Harris is a dangerous Communist who wants to implement Soviet price controls.” Populism and wonky (ill-conceived) policy don’t mix. Populist rhetoric in this context would be “we are mad at hell at expensive grocery prices and we’re not gonna take it anymore!” Full stop.
You utterly missed the point of this announcement. There is no way a Harris administration will implement Soviet style price controls. The point is to call out the malign sources of much of our food and staples inflation and have a more public conversation that will inform the election.
Maybe write about our sorry state of market concentration, and how the monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies that now dominate every sector of the economy are bad for consumers and bad for workers?
Did you read the article? Grocery stores have consistently low profit margins and are therefore not responsible for the price inflation, which is instead due to the huge government spending.
This post is excellent and important information for people to understand.
The campaign’s announcement today is further evidence that the Democratic Party made a big mistake in anointing Harris. Her previous endorsement of making tips tax-free is an equally, astoundingly bad idea. With respect to tips, she could have explained why Trump’s stupid idea was a stupid idea; absurdly counterproductive and wildly unfair to non-tipped workers. A layup. Yet, she passed on that opportunity and instead copied Trump’s policy. Incomprehensible.
And now today it’s “anti-gouging” measures to be enacted against the business that is surely in the single worst position to gouge anyone, even if that was their inclination. Grocery stores are a terrible business; the only wonder is that more don’t throw in the towel. At a minimum, they should be appreciated for providing an essential service for a very low price. Instead, her proposal will make unsophisticated consumers more likely to think that their neighborhood store is “gouging” them. Damaging, all around.
And food, it should be pointed out, is LESS expensive relative to income in the US today than it ever has been for virtually any civilization in the history of the Earth.
I don’t think that the electorate as a whole is dumb enough to believe that price controls are a good idea, so I don’t think this will even work to her advantage politically. This episode is reflective of Harris’ judgment generally. Her economic proposals so far consist 100% of extremely, demonstrably, obviously bad ideas.
The Dems should have run an open, competitive process. It would have yielded a much stronger candidate, someone more likely to defeat Trump, and someone much better suited to actually serve as president.
i think that the truth value of your assertions depend heavily on the details of the proposals if and when someone actually tries to put them into law. I can imagine numerous different versions of each one. You are picking the ones that suit the point you are trying to make and running with it. I get the urge to do that. But putting words into a politicians mouth doesn't really convince anyone that you are right. If you interpret vague proposals as "things the VP thinks should be improved", then the next step is to figure out how to go about doing that in practice (a lot of it is stuff biden already did or is doing... go figure!) Also, having tuned out of politics since trump lost last time, I am still learning the shorthand. Why does "Warren" stand for "bad" these days? I remember her appearing repeatedly on Jon Stewart years ago. She seemed like an intelligent, clear thinking person. Still the same person now. What gives?
"it should be pointed out that food is LESS expensive relative to income than virtually any civilization in history"
No one ever points this out. Dennis Leary in a comedy sketch years ago (paraphrase): "Here in Los Angeles you have people driving around in these huge f--ing SUVs, talking on their cell phones to friends thousands of miles away, drinking bottled water that costs more per gallon than gasoline, and complaining about how hard it is to live in America." I'm not a Dennis Leary fan, but that one really stuck in my head.
I hope this isn't a misstep, but rather a good political calculation that recognizes that whatever the truth is, there is a massive PERCEPTION problem out there about the reality of the economy, largely fueled by right-wing BS media that says the economy has never been worse.
American voters really don't care about charts or policy details -- I don't mean this as a criticism, just a fact, people are busy. They care about results. Like with healthcare, they care about whether they can see their doctor when they need to, get surgery when they need it, and will it bankrupt them?
Likewise here. I tend to agree with other commenters who think this is more about messaging. A lot of Americans have the populism bug, and they just need to feel like whoever is at the top gives a shit about what they're going through. I think (I hope) this is a chance for her to say "No matter what the fancy experts say, I know many of you are hurting, and I'm going to go to bat for you."
We'll have to see what she says and actually proposes. Obviously the entire Right is ready to scream "COMMUNIST PRICE CONTROLS!" and I'd hate to think the Harris campaign just handed them that on a silver platter.
==> Obviously the entire Right is ready to scream "COMMUNIST PRICE CONTROLS!"
I have to wonder if that might not be the point. Get the right to scream it as loud as they can. The effect on many low information voters is that every time a politician suggests something to help (even though IMO price controls are terrible) the right screams COMMUNIST. The louder they scream it, but more it diminishes the impact.
I wondered about this. The "but we really mean it this time, why isn't anyone listening" vibe is strong. The speech is tame, but draws out these extreme reactions, and then she trolls them with all that stuff about encouraging competition at the end.
Rather like every time the Right suggests something the Left screams "NAZI".
I she makes it into office a fine way to do the messaging would be to forbid price gouging while defining it correctly---which would mean that the rule would basically never need to be enforced.
I had already written and posted my comment, before seeing this comment. I agree with your take on it I think we have a lot of middleman problems in Healthcare and other areas. Mark Cuban is involved in a startup, Cost Plus, that promises to bypass the middlemen in prescription drug prices. That approach, applied in other areas, might reduce a lot of prices and do it with Market forces that's the way the free market is supposed to work, but monopolies interfere with that process. They are growing like a cancer on our economy. If we excise that tumor prices will come down, inflation will come down and we'll have to be careful about deflation. But maybe if it's done organically that won't happen. Ask Noah.
Your problem is very real, it it’s not inflation or a bad economy, it’s housing scarcity / under supply. See Matt Yglesias
Not sure what area of the country you were looking to move, but the reality is that we have too little housing in desirable areas. Outside of maybe Houston, TX and now Austin, TX.
In NYC there is a rent stabilization law that is intentionally designed to perpetuate scarcity, so we have average rents of $1600 and average asking rents for an available 1BR apartment of around $3500.
Can you elaborate or add a link that describes the situation in nyc specifically?
I read that Harris statement, and I think you are taking it many miles too far.
"Price gouging" leaves her a ton of weasel room. (Especially now when inflation has fallen off.)
The play here is entirely political. When bad things happen, human beings need a scapegoat.
Over the years, prices went way up on stuff like health care and college and real estate. While income remained fairly flat for most people. But at least, inflation on everyday stuff remained low. Then post pandemic income finally went up, particularly for the less affluent half of the population, but damn it, price increases on things like food and gas consumed a huge portion of that increase. People were pissed, and since dimming rates of inflation do not mean falling prices, they are going to be pissed for some time.
Republicans offer a scapegoat: the Biden administration.
Harris's job is to deflect that. The political loser answer, which I expected from Democrats, is a technical response about all those pay raises adding to the cost of things, and Trump's part in Covid relief legislation, and (especially) how pay raises have kept ahead of inflation. Regardless of the merits, none of this would move the needle an iota.
The political winner is to offer a better scapegoat than that offered by the Republicans. Something easier to understand. Easier to act on. So... prices went up due to price gouging, and we will forbid it. (After you make me president, and send Donald Trump into retirement.)
Note that she did not say that she is going to limit the price increase on milk and eggs and bread to a specific government-determined number. Rather, after she takes the oath of office, she would be looking at particularly egregious cases of price gouging. You can bet she will take action cautiously, because odds are great that the process will not go quickly and the courts will take a dim view.
The road from this to price controls... I'm not seeing it in my worst nightmares. Simply will not happen.
I mean, I hope you're right, but if you are, perhaps reading my post will help push them toward making you right.
You, sir, are a fricking genius. Publicly shaming the worst of the gougers is something she can do for a big surge in popularity; and to hopefully pressure said gougers to stop gouging. Win for her--win for consumers like me.
Is she going to be browsing the egg section at Safeway (imagine she actually shops in addition to cooking and cackling) and keep notes on egg prices compared to what she imagines a reasonable price is. She will need a big notebook, for the various grades and sizes of eggs, and varieties (white, brown, free range, pasture raised, organic, vegetarian fed, conventional (banned in California so she needs to check in DC as well as LA), fertilized (at Trader Joe’s maybe not Safeway) and sizes (dozen, 18, 24) and compare weekly sale prices and regular prices. Then compare with Costco, Target, Walmart, Whole Foods, Walgreens, Aldi, HEB , Wegmans, Kroger, and each corner bodega. Then translate that as a law with penalties for any of the stores and combinations of varieties of eggs.
And that’s just for eggs. This is a completely ridiculous proposal.
My point exactly.
Rather than price controls, what we will see is a tiny handful of public challenges to egregious prices -- which will lead to little more than anger at the vendor.
Oh, and very possibly put her political opponents in the unpopular position of defending the right of companies to charge crazy prices.
But no table of maximum prices, and I am willing to bet, not a single binding judgment against a particular high price.
Actually, it's an effort to return to pre-culture war politics. Dems blaming big business, GOP blaming government. Never thought I would feel nostalgia for those days. :)
The anger at egregious violations probably won't lead to major judgements, but it might build some momentum for more meaningful reform, say antitrust reform that improves competition in the grocery and food processing sector. It might also produce some voluntary self-regulation when it comes to price increases.
The multinationals whose products occupy most of the shelf space at my local Safeway should now be very careful about a fresh round of price increases. Especially the publicly traded ones like Unilever, who could be easily busted in the court of public opinion for price-gouging over cost increases.
Publicly shaming a few choice scapegoats--like Unilever--would do wonders for enhancing the public mood. Shame the worst offenders by name, who can then watch in horror as they lose market share to their less greedy competitors.
If there's no political will to push back on the monopolies, duopolies and monopolies that dominate our markets, then at the very least shame the worst offenders into more responsible behavior.
All of which will be done at ridiculous administrative cost.
If Harris wants to win she needs to show that she takes voter's concerns about inflation seriously, which means policy proposals. Voter's #1 concern is inflation and you need something to talk about that isn't "look at these charts and stop complaining".
A good companion piece to this is today's Josh Barro "I Said Democrats Should Pander More, and Kamala Is Delivering"; per that the most popular disinflationary measure in polling is to prosecute companies for price-gouging and price-fixing.
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/i-said-democrats-should-pander-more
Good post, bad polling. Of course people will say prosecute for price gouging. Thats like asking if you should prosecute murder. Instead poll "go after food companies for higher prices" and the number will gonto 0 fast. Ask farmers about price gouging and it will poll negative.
I've still got it in for Proctor & Gamble and Unilever, two mega-corps that jacked up their retail prices two years ago way over increased expenses, and turbocharged the beginning of the current inflationary spiral.
The wife and I decided to boycott them--and found to our surprise that about 80% of products in the sundries aisles of our local Safeway were made by them or their subsidiaries. Oligopolies suck.
Of course, to the point of this article (and Harris's press release), those are the suppliers to grocery stores rather than grocery stores themselves, right?
Man, prosecuting is ten steps past price controls. Let’s crawl before we can walk.
Thanks for the link. That was really illuminating.
I came here just now to post this very article. It's sad, but I suspect Barro's right about it.
It may be bad economics but it’s good politics. And the point is to get elected.
How sure are we that it's good politics?
It’s horrible politics for normie reasonably pro-biz people like me in the suburbs. It’s the only policy thing that’s gotten me excited in a bad way. Well that and no tax on tips but eh this is a much bigger deal to me actually.
Pretty sure. https://open.substack.com/pub/joshbarro/p/i-said-democrats-should-pander-more?r=5frtp&utm_medium=ios
Really? I didn't see Barro pull any evidence.
He cites this slide which shows prosecuting price gouging as third most popular and the other two would have the reverse effect of what the public wants. https://x.com/TheRealERS/status/1823916400781467914.
Looks like a quality poll and support is high.
Hmm, I don't buy it. Rent control always polls really well in the activist push-polls, then voters usually shoot it down.
https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/1824326749913747576
If the comment section of Krugman's recent article
"Can we make america affordable again? Should we?" https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/opinion/inflation-prices-economy.html
are any indication, people (even middle class Dems?) are still very angry about the burst of inflation and do not take kindly to the "look at the graph wages and prices went about the same on average, we don't need to do anything" explanation.
We need a few corporate scapegoats. Out some of the more odious price-gouging companies, and throw them to the lions. Red meat for an angry citizenry.
There's still historically bad feeling that Wall Street got no concrete blame for their securities fiasco that caused the Great Recession, and allowed "too big to fail" banks get even bigger.
Plus, many people who are not financially savvy played the inflation period suboptimally (to pu it mildly), and it is not the greatest idea to tell them it is their own fault. (Less of a big deal in the US, but e.g. in Germany many people---especially old people---keep their savings in bank accounts and there are more barriers to stock and home ownership. Those people are very angry at Scholz.)
Makes sense. I don't particularly like the inflation situation overall, but my home's value is up 60+% since 2019, and my retirement account is worth more than twice what it was then. I feel like the USA's 30-year fixed mortgage market and extremely common retirement funds that are mostly in stocks are actually secret superpowers for the middle class that apparently are not common elsewhere.
It's to the point where you've got folks arguing not to bother buying a house, and putting your savings in ETFs, because the returns are better. I went the house route because no one will let you buy stocks on margin with only 10-20% equity, and I can't live in my brokerage account. Home ownership doesn't always win out, but in my case, $100k down in 2017 has now led to $800k in equity, and my mortgage is to die for - 2.75% for about 25 more years - and I'm only 43.
Look at all the Americans that are looking to retire abroad - the US may not be a great place to retire, but it sure is a great place to build wealth to retire elsewhere.
Another new NYT article on causes of inflation with a very enlightening comment section:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/15/business/economy/kamala-harris-inflation-price-gouging.html
NYT readers don't seem to be buying it.
Yes, sir.
I think it's safe to think the Harris campaign senses strongly that prices will subside before we're very far into the first hundred days, making any congressional or executive action unnecessary.
But for today, gotta do politics.
It's...unfortunate that she's playing politics.
Far better would be for her and Biden to use the bully pulpit to shame specific oligopolistic price gougers like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever, who unilaterally jacked up their prices 2 years ago considerably above their operating costs, turbocharging the consumer side of the inflationary spiral.
Hold press conferences and grill these CEO's in congressional hearings. Publicly shame these price-gougers I say for their greed--and their role in driving inflation. But don't resort to price-fixing.
I don't think that's the only point...
"You don’t win elections to bank political capital—you win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.”
- Tim Walz
Tim Walz is wrong on that. Recklessly burning political capital is only okay if you're fine with the other side winning. On a federal level, it is NOT okay for the GOP to win until they rid themselves of Trump and their authoritarian streak. Burning so much political capital that you lose the next election is simply not okay.
I agree you don't want to burn *all* of your political capital to the ground. But there's a grain of truth there. Winning is a means to an end, not the end in itself!
I think he learned this lesson from ACA (which he miraculously survived voting for).
The broader lesson is: if you believe the policy you are spending your capital on is actually good, it makes sense to burn capital on it. It will stand the test of time, survive the backlash and emerge better for it on the other side. And if not, then it was dumb policy and you deserve to get smacked for it. The point is, on a personal level it might be worth the sacrifice if the policy survived but you don't.
For what it is worth, this is what republicans are trying with abortion now. If they survive the backlash and trump is elected, they win and it is all worth it for them. (And Pence will feel vindicated.) I hope they fail, but that is the play and they are going for it.
I understand that this election will be decided based on vibes and not policy but for someone who was defined by her laugh and poor public speaking skills not so long ago, I'm not sure that embracing idiotic ideas is a good way to shore up support among independent/undecided votes. Democrats are getting a free pass on a lot of terrible ideas because the alternative is a dumbass like Trump.
Agreed. Harris is easily the best choice, because her party will restrain any truly crazy ideas she tries to implement, while the same is less true of Trump.
Wait, hold my beer: Trump torpedoing Lankford-Sinema was a *bad* thing for the country?
I'm kidding.
Really? Far from restraining Harris, her party has enabled her to bypass the normal controls at every possible point. Also, Biden passed a massively inflationary spending bill right into the teeth of huge lockdown-driven inflation. That seemed crazy but he wasn't restrained by his party.
And yet inflation came down dramatically despite Biden's spending bills [1]. I can understand your point about the policy risk of Biden's bills given what we knew *at the time*. But here we are years later, knowing that the actual outcomes don't support the criticism, yet the criticism is still being leveled anyway. Policy works better when we try to take actual results into account!
[1] https://jabberwocking.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/blog_fed_inflation-3.jpg
If the argument is about whether parties will restrain Presidents it doesn't matter what happened afterwards.
"Restrain presidents" from doing what, exactly? It seems that the party determined that a one-time infrastructure bill wouldn't result in runaway inflation, in which case they didn't need to restrain Biden from passing it. And now that we have the results, we can see that the party's judgement was correct. That seems pretty relevant.
The counterargument seems to be something like "well, I believed that it would produce runaway inflation, and the Democratic party should be graded on their willingness to govern based on my predictions, even after the fact when my predictions have been proven wrong." It's a weird criticism.
Noah's words: "from doing crazy things".
I'll accept that the IRA has with the benefit of hindsight not been crazy, even though you don't actually reduce inflation by doing tax-and-spend bills. Also, I should probably not use the word crazy for spending bills, which are in general not particularly crazy things in the broad spectrum of acts a government can engage in. I'll actually moderate further and say Biden has lived up to expectations of not being a crazy president. That expectation is why the party maneuvered to pick him originally, right?
Nonetheless, it must be recalled that the original form of the IRA (the Build Back Better Act) was 2x the size and died specifically because Joe Manchin thought that it would increase inflation. He changed his mind and produced the new IRA only after his party "turned the dogs loose" on him (his words). That the bill would have been double the size if not for the tenacity of one man doesn't suggest a large degree of institutional capacity for restraint.
The risk for America is that it goes the same way as the UK, being in some way 'spoiled' by moderates for so long that it doesn't realize what a modern left wing party is really like until after they're in power. Obama won largely due to his centrism, and he pre-dated the left's turn towards harsh wokeness. Biden is the last of the Clintonian third way old guard. A lot of people here seem to have been caught out by the sudden appearance of price controls as a policy, and are now rationalizing that it wouldn't really happen because the moderation of the past will continue. Perhaps bringing up the IRA was a distraction, but my question remains: where's the evidence restraint would happen? If we look at Europe, there has been very little institutional moderation going on of far left ideas. The BBBA/IRA was moderated only by one man, who since left the Democrats and now runs as an independent. It doesn't bode well for economic centrism going forwards.
independents absolutely love this policy, it polls extremely well. That's why Kamala is talking about it.
I think... And I hope... That this is a messaging idea.
This is her saying "I care about inflation".
I don't think she will say the words "price control."
My hope is that besides this being a political gambit, the real plan is for anti-trust enforcement where it’s needed and some amount of “jawboning”. A little presidential wrath and shaming could work to reduce margins in high margin name brand foods like Coke products or breakfast cereals. I agree that actual price controls are a bad idea.
Wasn't that long ago that Biden blamed rising prices on gas stations. Blaming stores for high grocery prices is pretty rich from an administration that triggered a big round of inflation. Maybe Noah is on to something, and they get their economic insights from Apporea.org
Excellent summation.
Herein lies the problem with campaigns providing policy ideas - Trump offers nothing for the past 10 years to great success - Harris offers one idea (with no details) and the scribes go berserk. "Big mistake!". "Communism!".. "Soviet price controls!".
How about we wait for the convention and some formal policy statements before we hyperventilate?
Yeah, why doesn't Noah Smith write any posts bashing Trump's policy ideas?
It's not as if he did that...
*checks notes*
...yesterday!
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/mass-deportation-would-accomplish
Upon further reflection I was wrong to lump you in with the rest of the MSM. I'm suffering from the fatigue of watching Republican policies receive superficial, if any, analysis (Repeal the ACA! With what? Crickets.) from the MSM while Democratic policies with detail get ripped to pieces.
While I read you, Delong, and a few others, few of my "normal" friends or family get past the MSM headlines - thus my frustration.
I think you must not have been reading Noah's blog very long if you think that this article is more "hyperventilation" or "berserk" than anything he has said about Trump's economic policies.
I think this wad legitimately the most alarmist post of the bunch. I get the disappoinment when a candidate doesn't get "it", whatever your definition of "it" is, but taking your time to formulate a sane response (and trying to reason through what they might be thinking) goes a long way towards persuading anyone, unless you are just trying to preach to the choir. I think this is one of the few things that (the better parts of) the EA crowd tend to get right.
Edit: I guess if you have a big enough megaphone, you could also be trying to signal to the people pushing this policy that this is your red line. But that becomes less effective each time you do it.
We really have to wait for them to take office and use the powers of the executive or see what Congress comes up with to see the real power behind the policy.
If this ends Harris' honeymoon period and price controls prove unpopular, she will memory hole it and life goes on.
Perhaps lower pricing can come through the newly emboldened antitrust front. There are still ways to fix price upwards even without direct collusion. In Popular Information, Judd Legum wrote about how Atlantic City hotels used a software company's algorithm to collectively raise prices even as booking occupancices fell.
https://popular.info/p/how-hotels-are-colluding-to-jack
Legum: "According to Cendyn, its customers accept the "optimal" rate suggested by Cendyn algorithm 90% of the time. The company advises customers that accepting the recommended rates will result in an increase in revenues of "up to 15%." Since 2018, when the hotel-casinos in Atlantic City began using Cendyn, there have been "substantial increases in room rates and revenue coupled with marked decreases in occupancy rates."
Traditionally, Atlantic City hotel-casinos competed on price to increase their occupancy rates. Hotels that maintained higher prices would be undercut by competitors who offered similar rooms at lower rates.
Once the hotel-casinos began using the Cendyn to set rates in 2018, that changed. Filings with New Jersey state officials reveal that all the hotels significantly increased their rates and allowed occupancy rates to drop."
Boy, thanks for reminding us all what a god-awful idea it is to go to AC.
Trump has numerous policies outlined on his website. One of them is the tip tax policy that Harris just decided was so great she adopted it as well. He also had several famous policies in his first administration like becoming more hawkish on China, building a border wall and more. It's pretty strange to claim that Trump has offered no policies.
There is an exactly zero percent chance that the FTC can enact price controls like this after Loper Bright.
You might consider mentioning the 1971 experience in the United States when President Nixon imposed a three-month freeze on wages and prices, which ultimately failed to control inflation after the freeze was lifted.
How about this paragraph?
"What about Nixon’s price controls in the 1970s? Blinder and Newton (1981) argue that these controls had a very small and ultimately temporary effect on prices — similar to what Aparicio and Cavallo found for Argentina. And they argue that the “rebound” from the end of temporary price controls exacerbated the inflation of the late 1970s."
Perfect!
You realize that paragraph was already in the post, right? 😃
Haha, my bad!
Argentina actually had quite a lot experience with wage and price fixing though! The most notable ones were in 1975 and 1985, and both ended in rapid currency devaluation, and finally, hyperinflation. You could look at Rodrigazo and the Austral plan to understand more about how they failed!
Argentina's experience with hyperinflation differs significantly from the US's current inflation experience and requires distinct policies to address.
Kamala was full of bad ideas--Medicare for all, for example--when she ran for president in 2020. Now she's pushing for price controls on grocery stores and not treating tips as taxable income. She seems to be picking up where she left off. There's no question that she's infinitely better than Trump--because she isn't an amoral sociopath--but as for having "good" ideas that are actually good, well, the jury's still out on that one.
The no-tax-on-tips is a horrendous policy that would open up a lot of chicanery in the food and services industries. Pity that the U.S. can't be like in European no-tip countries, where you can be a food server in middle age and live comfortably on a salary.
What will happen in the U.S. is that service wages will go tips-only, hence no tax. This is going to cut earnings of workers and make these jobs informal in plain sight, unless they are hotels in big cities that are unionized, creating a "labor aristocracy". I will also see patrons of these places more likely to leave zero tips, or those fake dollar bills that troll the figuratively and literally poor workers with scriptural verses on them.
Let's not even go into how is the U.S. going to collect FICA on a no-tax tip, particularly when the work goes tips-only.
Maybe she will combine both policies, so when the stores run out of eggs at the non-gouging price and you really want an omelette, you will need to tip the grocery clerk $5 to get the ones she has stashed in the back. The tax free tips encourage the stashing.
Europe has tips, although the rates are somewhat less standardized than in the us.
This makes me so sad. Where is she getting this from? Who is the brain trust responsible for this?
Elizabeth Warren.
for whatever it is worth: "do something about prices" was one of the first things carville started saying as soon it became clear she would be the nominee
what is the best devil's advocate argument for why warren thinks it is a good idea, then?
Maybe that EU report that estimated that 50% of total inflationary pressure was from greedy price-gougers?
link?
Here's a Gaurdian biz article: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits
There's a few other 2024 articles from Left-leaning economists arguing the same point.
The reference I can't seem to find is from an EU Government economist in 2022 (?) who estimated 50% of inflationary pressure (in just the EU?) was from what's now termed "greedflation" by companies like Unilever.
She also mentioned algorithmic price fixing collusion in her speech. It sounded dubious, but there is actually a recent (few days ago) Atlantic article about that in the housing market:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/08/ai-price-algorithms-realpage/679405/
Seems bad!
Maybe one effect of her speech is that we will start to get more articles like this and learn that there is, actually, some fire there. (Yes, it's the trumpy ``someone ought to look into it''... but maybe someone really ought, no?)
The left has always liked price controls, why would there need to be some justification specific to Warren? They just don't like or trust markets.
As a duly authorized representative of the American Left, I can say with full confidence that we do indeed trust the markets when they're appropriately regulated, to ensure that the inevitable bad apples don't muck things up for all parties.
Having actually lived through a (thankfully brief) period of price controls on basic food items, there is no way this is good policy. In all fairness, my circumstances were very different, as I lived in a country that had just exited communism and was in a debt crisis. Prices had been fixed for decades, and understandably the new government was reluctant to unleash them, knowing it will lead to high inflation.
The result was predictable, as suddenly basic items disappeared from shop stalls. It became so bad in the capital that they had to introduce rationing stamps on basic foodstuffs and fuel. It lasted from late 1990 to early 1991, so just a single winter, but people much older than me (I was 13 at the time) said the last time they had rationing was in WWII. And as you may expect, as soon as price controls were lifted, there were no longer shortages.
I truly hope Harris meant limiting the growth of profit margins rather than direct price controls. While limiting profit margins is still likely to be ineffective, it is a bit better than outright price controls, no matter how appealing it may be to some voters. Some European countries impose restrictions on profit margins, but it has always been a temporary measure, like during the latest energy crisis, and with dubious effect.
The current unhealthy levels of market concentration means, that when large companies like Unilever decided 2 years ago to raise their prices considerably above margin, that it would have an outsize ripple effect across the economy. Without any fear of a Windfall Profits tax.
If Harris would name a few names--like Unilever--and shame them for their role in supercharging inflation, they would lose market share. And their competitors would be grateful.
some southern european countries have caps on cost of bottled cold water in the summer... and it doesn't lead to shortages. What gives?
Well, all Trump has to do is say “Harris is a dangerous Communist who wants to implement Soviet price controls.” Populism and wonky (ill-conceived) policy don’t mix. Populist rhetoric in this context would be “we are mad at hell at expensive grocery prices and we’re not gonna take it anymore!” Full stop.
You utterly missed the point of this announcement. There is no way a Harris administration will implement Soviet style price controls. The point is to call out the malign sources of much of our food and staples inflation and have a more public conversation that will inform the election.
I'm pretty sure I didn't utterly miss the point of this announcement.
Maybe write about our sorry state of market concentration, and how the monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies that now dominate every sector of the economy are bad for consumers and bad for workers?
Did you read the article? Grocery stores have consistently low profit margins and are therefore not responsible for the price inflation, which is instead due to the huge government spending.
What about the massive multinationals that set their own product prices in said supermarkets?
Or do you believe there's been no price-gouging?
Which sources of inflation are you talking about? What did she call out in a way that informs people, rather than misinforming them?
“Powell did it. Raised rates too late. Now lowering them too late. Hey hey. Ho Ho. Slow Jerome has got to go!”
This post is excellent and important information for people to understand.
The campaign’s announcement today is further evidence that the Democratic Party made a big mistake in anointing Harris. Her previous endorsement of making tips tax-free is an equally, astoundingly bad idea. With respect to tips, she could have explained why Trump’s stupid idea was a stupid idea; absurdly counterproductive and wildly unfair to non-tipped workers. A layup. Yet, she passed on that opportunity and instead copied Trump’s policy. Incomprehensible.
And now today it’s “anti-gouging” measures to be enacted against the business that is surely in the single worst position to gouge anyone, even if that was their inclination. Grocery stores are a terrible business; the only wonder is that more don’t throw in the towel. At a minimum, they should be appreciated for providing an essential service for a very low price. Instead, her proposal will make unsophisticated consumers more likely to think that their neighborhood store is “gouging” them. Damaging, all around.
And food, it should be pointed out, is LESS expensive relative to income in the US today than it ever has been for virtually any civilization in the history of the Earth.
I don’t think that the electorate as a whole is dumb enough to believe that price controls are a good idea, so I don’t think this will even work to her advantage politically. This episode is reflective of Harris’ judgment generally. Her economic proposals so far consist 100% of extremely, demonstrably, obviously bad ideas.
The Dems should have run an open, competitive process. It would have yielded a much stronger candidate, someone more likely to defeat Trump, and someone much better suited to actually serve as president.
i think that the truth value of your assertions depend heavily on the details of the proposals if and when someone actually tries to put them into law. I can imagine numerous different versions of each one. You are picking the ones that suit the point you are trying to make and running with it. I get the urge to do that. But putting words into a politicians mouth doesn't really convince anyone that you are right. If you interpret vague proposals as "things the VP thinks should be improved", then the next step is to figure out how to go about doing that in practice (a lot of it is stuff biden already did or is doing... go figure!) Also, having tuned out of politics since trump lost last time, I am still learning the shorthand. Why does "Warren" stand for "bad" these days? I remember her appearing repeatedly on Jon Stewart years ago. She seemed like an intelligent, clear thinking person. Still the same person now. What gives?
"it should be pointed out that food is LESS expensive relative to income than virtually any civilization in history"
No one ever points this out. Dennis Leary in a comedy sketch years ago (paraphrase): "Here in Los Angeles you have people driving around in these huge f--ing SUVs, talking on their cell phones to friends thousands of miles away, drinking bottled water that costs more per gallon than gasoline, and complaining about how hard it is to live in America." I'm not a Dennis Leary fan, but that one really stuck in my head.