Kamala Harris says she is going to propose a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries and to impose stiff penalties in the food industry, according to her campaign. In other words, price controls–or communism, for short.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would like you to believe that career politicians know better than the free market what the price of eggs should be. They’d also like you to believe that the entire food industry just happened to enact their greedy “price gouging” spree during the COVID shutdowns, with no connection to a disrupted supply chain, low interest rates, extreme government spending, and an international inflationary spiral.
Never mind that in 2023, profit margins in the grocery industry were just 1.6%. Politicians will say anything to stay in power so they don’t have to work a real job where the realities of running a business, creating wealth, and paying your employees would stare them in the face every day. Much simpler to blame working Americans for their “greed” demonstrated by generating wealth and jobs and providing real services that benefit people’s lives. The only sanctioned way to make money, if you are a leftist, is to live off the government dime and rake in tax money without providing anything of value in return whilst dictating how Americans should run their businesses and how much of their hard-earned money they should pay in taxes (the answer is always: more).
Ms. Harris’ proposals are particularly galling because America is facing a farm crisis. Net farm income is set to drop by $43 billion dollars from 2023 to 2024, the largest two-year decline in our history. At the same time, the production costs farmers and ranchers pay are set to increase by $17 billion.
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) recently said at a House Ag Committee hearing, where a panel of experts testified about the severe challenges ahead for American agriculture, “Most farmers and ranchers are likely to be worse off financially by year’s end.”
From uninhibited government spending causing an inflationary spiral and a dramatic weakening of the American dollar to suppression of the domestic energy industry increasing prices at every level of production, the government is to blame for expensive groceries and an economy in free fall.
While Kamala Harris is demonizing the food industry, U.S. agriculture stands on the brink of crisis. Her machinations are nothing more than a thin attempt to blame industry and working Americans for the failures of bad government policy.
