Even left leaning WAPO knows an idiot when they see one.
That idiot would be Kamala Harris.

'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.'

<https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/>

'“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.

That’s the thing about price gouging: As has been said of hardcore
pornography, you know it when you see it.

It’s not hard to figure out where this proposal came from. Voters want
to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates
have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration
or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.

In a news release Wednesday, her campaign said the first 100 days of her
presidency would include the “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on
food and groceries — setting clear rules of the road to make clear that
big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive
corporate profits on food and groceries.”

What are these “clear rules of the road” or the thresholds that
determine when a price or profit level becomes “excessive”? The memo
doesn’t say, and the campaign did not answer questions I sent seeking
clarification.

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.

It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name,
a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every
industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine
prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC
would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can
charge for milk.

Advertisement
At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among
other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price
growth by fiat. (There’s a reason narrower “price gouging” laws that
exist in some U.S. states are rarely invoked.) At worst, it might
accidentally raise prices.

That’s because, among other things, the legislation would ban companies
from offering lower prices to a big customer such as Costco than to
Joe’s Corner Store, which means quantity discounts are in trouble.
Worse, it would require public companies to publish detailed internal
data about costs, margins, contracts and their future pricing
strategies. Posting cost and pricing plans publicly is a fantastic way
for companies to collude to keep prices higher — all facilitated by the
government.

Normally, the government doesn’t like collusion. In fact, the Harris
campaign’s statement about her anti-“price gouging” agenda highlights a
case she won as California attorney general against companies colluding
to fix prices for LCD flat screens. Presidential administrations of both
parties have similarly pursued cases against cartels and other
anti-competitive conduct.

That’s because price-fixing is already illegal. And it should be! It’s
important to distinguish between real cartel behavior (whether among
TV-makers or meatpackers) vs. temporary spikes in prices and profits due
to high demand or supply-chain disruptions. Harris’s economic advisers
are either too confused or lazy to tell the difference. They don’t seem
to know the history of these kinds of policies and apparently haven’t
thought very hard about what would make markets more competitive or
improve the lives of voters.

They don’t even seem terribly familiar with what’s happening to grocery
prices, where the battle against inflation has, believe it not, pretty
much already been won.

On Wednesday, a government report showed that grocery prices in July
were up a measly 1 percent from last year, as the White House itself
touted. Indeed, annual grocery price inflation has hovered around that
level for the past eight months, way down from the double-digit
inflation in mid-2022.

Additionally, profit margins for supermarkets are notoriously thin.
Despite Harris’s (and Warren’s) accusations about “excessive corporate
profits,” those margins remained relatively meager even when prices
surged. The grocery industry’s net profit margins peaked at 3 percent in
2020, falling to 1.6 percent last year. If that sounds high, note that
the average net profit margin (what’s left over after expenses) for all
public companies nationwide is 8 percent.

So what actually happened with grocery inflation, if not “price gouging”
(however defined)? Superstrong consumer demand plus major supply
disruptions (the coronavirus pandemic, bird flu, Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine, etc.) pushed prices and profits up. Once those shocks abated
and consumers started spending down their pandemic savings, price growth
cooled.

These are the kinds of facts the Harris campaign should be explaining to
consumers, not exploiting for demagogic gain because push-polling
suggests people are mad about “greed.”

But more to the point: If your opponent claims you’re a “communist,”
maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be
labeled as federal price controls. We already have plenty of economic
gibberish coming from the Republican presidential ticket. Do we really
need more from the other side, too?'

On 2024-08-18, John Smyth <smythlejon2@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Even left leaning WAPO knows an idiot when they see one.
> That idiot would be Kamala Harris.
>
> '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.'
>
><https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/>
>
> '“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.
>
> That’s the thing about price gouging: As has been said of hardcore
> pornography, you know it when you see it.
>
> It’s not hard to figure out where this proposal came from. Voters want
> to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates
> have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration
> or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.
>https://redstate.com/slee/2019/03/05/bill-de-blasios-wife-case-missing-850-million-taxpayer-money-
n102201
> In a news release Wednesday, her campaign said the first 100 days of her
> presidency would include the “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on
> food and groceries — setting clear rules of the road to make clear that
> big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive
> corporate profits on food and groceries.”
>
> What are these “clear rules of the road” or the thresholds that
> determine when a price or profit level becomes “excessive”? The memo
> doesn’t say, and the campaign did not answer questions I sent seeking
> clarification.
>
>
> 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.
>
> It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name,
> a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every
> industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine
> prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC
> would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can
> charge for milk.
>
> Advertisement
> At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among
> other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price
> growth by fiat. (There’s a reason narrower “price gouging” laws that
> exist in some U.S. states are rarely invoked.) At worst, it might
> accidentally raise prices.
>
> That’s because, among other things, the legislation would ban companies
> from offering lower prices to a big customer such as Costco than to
> Joe’s Corner Store, which means quantity discounts are in trouble.
> Worse, it would require public companies to publish detailed internal
> data about costs, margins, contracts and their future pricing
> strategies. Posting cost and pricing plans publicly is a fantastic way
> for companies to collude to keep prices higher — all facilitated by the
> government.
>
> Normally, the government doesn’t like collusion. In fact, the Harris
> campaign’s statement about her anti-“price gouging” agenda highlights a
> case she won as California attorney general against companies colluding
> to fix prices for LCD flat screens. Presidential administrations of both
> parties have similarly pursued cases against cartels and other
> anti-competitive conduct.
>
>
> That’s because price-fixing is already illegal. And it should be! It’s
> important to distinguish between real cartel behavior (whether among
> TV-makers or meatpackers) vs. temporary spikes in prices and profits due
> to high demand or supply-chain disruptions. Harris’s economic advisers
> are either too confused or lazy to tell the difference. They don’t seem
> to know the history of these kinds of policies and apparently haven’t
> thought very hard about what would make markets more competitive or
> improve the lives of voters.
>
> They don’t even seem terribly familiar with what’s happening to grocery
> prices, where the battle against inflation has, believe it not, pretty
> much already been won.
>
>
> On Wednesday, a government report showed that grocery prices in July
> were up a measly 1 percent from last year, as the White House itself
> touted. Indeed, annual grocery price inflation has hovered around that
> level for the past eight months, way down from the double-digit
> inflation in mid-2022.
>
> Additionally, profit margins for supermarkets are notoriously thin.
> Despite Harris’s (and Warren’s) accusations about “excessive corporate
> profits,” those margins remained relatively meager even when prices
> surged. The grocery industry’s net profit margins peaked at 3 percent in
> 2020, falling to 1.6 percent last year. If that sounds high, note that
> the average net profit margin (what’s left over after expenses) for all
> public companies nationwide is 8 percent.
>
> So what actually happened with grocery inflation, if not “price gouging”
> (however defined)? Superstrong consumer demand plus major supply
> disruptions (the coronavirus pandemic, bird flu, Russia’s invasion of
> Ukraine, etc.) pushed prices and profits up. Once those shocks abated
> and consumers started spending down their pandemic savings, price growth
> cooled.
>
> These are the kinds of facts the Harris campaign should be explaining to
> consumers, not exploiting for demagogic gain because push-polling
> suggests people are mad about “greed.”
>
> But more to the point: If your opponent claims you’re a “communist,”
> maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be
> labeled as federal price controls. We already have plenty of economic
> gibberish coming from the Republican presidential ticket. Do we really
> need more from the other side, too?'

This is far too complex for the nimrod radical left lunatics who read these groups.
You need to simplify it. Something like this.

Banana is to monkey
as
Watermelon is to ___________

--
pothead
Kamala Harris = Four More Years Of Obama.
Send Her To The Curb.
Vote snit "Kook Of the Decade".

On Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:51:23 -0000 (UTC), pothead <pothead@snakebite.com> wrote:

>
>This is far too complex for the nimrod radical left lunatics who read these groups.
>You need to simplify it. Something like this.
>
>Banana is to monkey
>as
>Watermelon is to ___________

Incontrovertible proof that you're a racist.

#NEVERtrump

In article <eep6cjdkcaqv13ukntfoqq8ifpv0s4v0up@4ax.com>,
governor.swill@gmail.com says...
>
> On Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:51:23 -0000 (UTC), pothead <pothead@snakebite.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >This is far too complex for the nimrod radical left lunatics who read these groups.
> >You need to simplify it. Something like this.
> >
> >Banana is to monkey
> >as
> >Watermelon is to ___________
>
> Incontrovertible proof that you're a racist.
>
Funny only you saw race in that.