livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
Opinion
When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?
It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Kamala Harris’s price-gouging proposal is.“Price gouging” is the focus of Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic agenda, her presidential campaign says. She’ll crack down on “excessive prices” and “excessive corporate profits,” particularly for groceries.
So what level counts as “excessive,” you might ask? TBD, but Harris will ban it.
The most likely template for Harris’s proposal is a recent bill from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). (Harris co-sponsored similar legislation with Warren in 2020, when Harris was a senator.) Warren’s bill would ban any “grossly excessive price” during any “atypical disruption” of a market. Alas, no definition was provided for these terms, either; rather, the bill would empower the Federal Trade Commission to enforce bans using any metric it deems appropriate.