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The Atlantic: ‘Sometimes You Just Have to Ignore the Economists’

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Last Friday, presidential candidate Kamala Harris did something new: she revealed some of her policies. This was her briefing on her economic policies, and she promised to stop price gouging and implement Soviet-style price controls. Even the Washington Post editorial board and CNN said Harris' price control policy would harm the economy.

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The Atlantic has a piece out defending Harris' economic policy, saying that though it might irritate some academics, sometimes you just have to ignore the economists.

Zephyr Teachout writes:

Last week, the economics commentariat and much of the mainstream media erupted with contempt toward Kamala Harris’s proposed federal price-gouging law. Op-eds, social-media posts, and straight news reports mocked Harris for economically illiterate pandering and warned of Soviet-style “price controls” that would lead to shortages and runaway inflation.

The strange thing about these complaints is that what Harris actually proposed was neither radical nor new—and it certainly wasn’t price controls. In fact, almost every state already has a law restricting at least some forms of price gouging. Although Harris has not specified the exact design of her proposal, one hopes that it would follow the basic outline of state-level bans: forbidding unwarranted price hikes for necessary goods during emergencies.

Why is price controls in quotation marks? She certainly did call for price controls. The gist of the piece is about price gouging in the sense of hiking prices during an emergency situation, like a pandemic or a blizzard.

During a rare blizzard, sellers might jack up the prices of snowblowers. But investors aren’t going to set up a new snowblower-manufacturing hub based on a blizzard, because by the time they had any inventory to sell, the snow would long be melted. So after the disruption, all goes back to normal—except with a big wealth transfer from the public to the company that raised prices.

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As Teachout reports, "almost every state already has a law restricting at least some forms of price gouging." So why is Harris focused on that along with price controls?

Price gouging isn't new to this administration — President Joe Biden accused gas stations of price gouging during "Putin's price hike." That's why you were paying $6 a gallon for gas — price gouging.

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Truth.

People are hurting from inflation, so price controls will bring them joy.

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