What took them so long to wake up?

'Labor Department data exposes Kamala’s ‘price-gouging’ lie'

<https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/labor_department_data_exposes_price_gouging_lie.html>

'The progressive left relies on the narrative that economics is a
sophisticated discipline, full of complex theories, only grasped by
“experts” and politicians, because that’s how they pass off their
flagrant lies and ignorance. Of course, there’s nothing really that
complicated about supply and demand, freedom of choice instead of forced
commerce, gross versus net, attacking the affordable energy resource
making the global economy move, cronyism, subsidies, debt, printing
money out of thin air, and cold hard data.

Thankfully, we conservatives have Andrew Puzder (I routinely lament over
the fact that he was never our Secretary of Labor), who along with EJ
Antoni at The Heritage Foundation, masterfully and simply debunks the
corporate “price-going” lie with numbers from the Labor Department—in
essence, Kamala Harris’s very own people. Here’s an excerpt, from their
report:

Prices paid by businesses (as measured by the producer price index) have
risen 19.4 percent under the Biden-Harris administration. That’s
precisely the same increase as occurred in the prices paid by consumers
over this period (as measured by the consumer price index). In other
words, inflation has been impacting the entire supply chain from
producers to consumers.

Had producers or retailers been price gouging (that is, increasing
prices more than inflation justified), the rate of inflation for
consumers would have exceeded that for producers. It did not.

As Antoni and Puzder write, it “adds insult to injury” when businesses
are blamed for the problems created by the government, because on the
contrary, businesses were bearing the brunt of inflation faster and
harder than the consumer:

In fact, consumer price increases have only recently caught up with the
price increases businesses faced. For most of the last three and half
years, cumulative inflation for businesses has been higher than
cumulative inflation for families. In other words, businesses were
increasing consumer prices more slowly than inflation was increasing
their costs.

Either businesses were unable to keep pace with rapidly surging
inflation, or they were protecting consumers from the intensity of the
Biden-Harris inflationary surge—or both. Either way, businesses clearly
weren’t price gouging.

But despite the data from the Department of Labor, here’s what Robert
Reich added to the narrative:

If you notice the Community Note, Reich is citing the gross profit
margin, when the real number to consider is the net profit
margin—obviously running a grocery empire incurs millions in operating
expenses. Now, I’m not saying the CEO’s work is actually worth $15
million, but the CEO clearly brings a whole different set of skills to
the business than someone scanning items as the register. If you don’t
like it, don’t shop at or work for Kroger; or, go and procure a CEO’s
résumé, get the job yourself, and negotiate for a lower salary package.
And, if you think it unfair that Albertson’s may soon be Kroger-owned,
then go grow and raise your food, and assume the entire burden of the
supply chain upon yourself.

Remember, Reich is an “expert” and was at one point an actual Labor
secretary—breaking the glass ceiling for economic illiterates! (Or,
maybe he’s just a deceitful propagandist.)

With all this “price-gouging” talk going on though, since the
progressive Democrats don’t seem to have a firm grip on any
understanding of it, allow me to help them out with a couple of solid
(and recent) examples:

The cost that the Democrats running the Democratic National Convention
were charging for the luxury suites, in some cases a 9,075% increase,
which I wrote about here.

The price that New York promised to pay for wind energy, ushering in a
quadrupling of cost for the consumer and creating a net profit margin of
between $45 and $54 per megawatt-hour for the turbine companies (for a
product that was only costing $36 per megawatt-hour in total), which I
wrote about here.

What about the cost of college, now that the loans are guaranteed by the
American taxpayer? Tuition has skyrocketed.

Of course, I could go on and on, but AT contributor Jack Hellner
compiled a great list of real “price-gougers,” which can be found here.

'