The Harris-Walz campaign has said they want to create a federal ban on corporate price gouging (usually mentioned when folks talk about price hikes in grocery stores). I see economists complaining about variations of this policy being bad, e.g. leading to food desserts. But as far as I can tell there hasn’t been anything specific proposed. Could someone explain our best guess at what they are proposing, and if it’s been serious analyzed/tested elsewhere?
They cite existing legislation in the states; maybe explaining what that legislation does/how it works would be helpful?
I’d say stuff like stock buybacks and other ways corporations funnel profits away, should be taxed at exorbitant rates. Then start taxing assets like stock portfolios and tax dodging vehicles followed by using assets as collateral as realizing their gains.
“Buybacks were illegal throughout most of the 20th century because they were considered a form of stock market manipulation. But in 1982, the Securities and Exchange Commission passed rule 10b-18, which created a legal process for buybacks and opened the floodgates for companies to start repurchasing their stock en masse.”
Same as banks regulated by glass steagall started fucking with the economy the moment is was repealed. The fairness doctrine for media might also be needed again.
Price cap increases perhaps. No more than 5% increase from the price the product was on January 01 that year.
That one seems kinda scary - if inflation was 6% and something wasn’t sold at any profit, all stores would stop selling it. (This is true for most food.)
If they stop selling it, they stop buying it from suppliers and then the suppliers need to find a way to decrease their costs to make it so stores buy their products again. Otherwise they go out of business, so they will find a way.
I think the scary thing is if it takes the suppliers more than 3 days to figure that out. Companies oftentimes can last 3 days without food (and rarely fix things very quickly at any scale).
In an ideal world it looks like monopoly busting but so much of America is only served by Walmart after decades of terrible antitrust that I don’t have a clue how we’d make it happen. Price controls are a fucking terrible idea but I haven’t heard her talk about it outside extreme medication circumstances so I’m more worried that her plan will be ineffectual rather than openly destructive.
The most valuable bureaucrat in terms of antitrust is currently Lina Khan and Harris has been extremely wishy washy about whether she’ll keep her on. By comparison Trump would clearly fire Khan on day one so Harris is still the obvious better choice - but I wish we could get her to commit to keeping Khan.
Lina Khan is so fuckin badass and I will be PISSED if she’s let go.
I wish we could get her to commit to keeping Khan.
This will be one of the biggest tests for me with regards to Harris. If she keeps Khan after the election I think she’s at least somewhat serious about cracking down on corporations.
Price controls are the only viable solution if monopolies aren’t broken up and if collusion is rampant effectively removing competition.
While I know of no direct evidenceWhile I do not know of any direct evidence of collusion between grocers, the effects seem quite clear to me when nearly every grocer seems to be taking in record profits while many groceries are still 2-5 times higher than just five years ago.Also, if this issue is the litmus test for some people on whether they would vote for Trump over Harris, those people should have their head examined. While Harris lacks some specifics here, Trump has nothing — plus he’s a lying, misogynistic, sociopathic convicted felon — so yes, I agree, Harris is the obvious choice.
Edit> Word change to more accurately represent my intent.
I’ll note that grocers record profits are orders of magnitude less than the price increases. Maybe somebody is getting rich off of the price increases, but I’m pretty sure Walmart is not.
"Hey, our wholesale costs went up 300%, so we raised it 400% because fuck you, we’re all doing it and you don’t have any other options " is still price gouging and collusion.
