As a Democrat if you lose CNN and The Washington Post you know you have made a severe mistake somewhere.
Two of the most liberal news organizations in the United States have hit Harris over her economic policy that, to many, appears to be the blueprint for a Soviet-style socialist remake of our nation.
An opinion piece on CNN argued that the vice president’s economic plan could create more issues than it solves.
“Food prices have surged by more than 20% under the Biden-Harris administration, leaving many voters eager to stretch their dollars further at the grocery store. On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris said she has a solution: a federal ban on price gouging across the food industry, CNN economics reporter Elisabeth Buchwald said.
“My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules,” Harris said, the story highlighted.
“There’s just one issue: Harris’ proposal could create more problems than the one it’s trying to solve, some economists say. Gavin Roberts studied anti-price gouging laws some states passed during the pandemic. One of the biggest effects he observed, especially at grocery stores, was that these laws motivated people ‘to go buy goods more than they would if prices had risen,’” she said.
“When prices are high, in most cases, the best policy action in response is actually taking no action, Roberts, the chair of Weber State University’s economics department, told CNN. That would cause consumers who are deterred by, say, high prices of beef, to instead purchase another type of meat or protein. That helps keep beef on the grocery store shelves for people who want it enough to pay the higher prices,” the reporter said.
“And while Harris claims her proposal ‘will help the food industry become more competitive,’ Roberts said it would do just the opposite. ‘It’s more likely to maintain that status quo,’ he said because it would keep new competition from moving in to take advantage of the bigger profit margins — competition that could have helped lower prices in the long run,” she said.
“This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” Obama administration economist Jason Furman said to The New York Times. “There’s no upside here, and there is some downside.”
And Buchwald warned that a campaign fact sheet said Harris has plans for “the federal government to identify and take on price-fixing and other anti-competitive practices in the food and grocery industries.”
And The Washington Post Editorial Board was not any kinder.
“Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech Friday was an opportunity to get specific with voters about how a Harris presidency would manage an economy that many feel is not working well for them,” the board said on Friday. “Unfortunately, instead of delivering a substantial plan, she squandered the moment on populist gimmicks.”
“One way to handle it might be to level with voters, telling them that inflation spiked in 2021 mainly because the pandemic snarled supply chains, and that the Federal Reserve’s policies, which the Biden-Harris administration supported, are working to slow it,” the editorial board said. “The vice president instead opted for a less forthright route: Blaming big business.”
But some progressives are fans of the Harris economic agenda.
“I definitely don’t think that the price gouging statute will result in shortages,” Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank, said to CNN.
She said that the plan would give government agencies like the Federal Trade Commission the authority it needs to “crack down on bad actors” for allegedly overpricing food to customers. “It’s good to see this aggressive approach.”
