At some point during the past two weeks, the Harris presidential campaign finally realized that the Vice President would be forced to address the most important issue of the election. Consequently, they cobbled together a speech and shoved Harris in front of the cameras last Friday so the voters could watch her read what her teleprompter plans to do about the economy and inflation.
The final brick in the wall is a proposal for a $40 billion “innovation fund” to motivate cities to build more housing.
And Harris said what it told her to say: “I will work to pass the first ever federal ban on price gauging on food.” Nor did she correct herself. She simply followed the teleprompter’s instructions to pause while her audience clapped like trained seals, then continued reading her lines.
If this point seems frivolous, consider what it confirms about Harris’ grasp of the issues and her command of standard English. She has uttered so much gibberish since 2020 that it is quite plausible that she read a typo on the teleprompter without realizing that “gauging” and “gouging” have different definitions.
This, in turn, suggests that she has no idea that a ban on price gouging enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is simply the latest iteration of the government price controls that have failed every time they have been used to control inflation. Kevin Hassett, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, explains the economics and origin of this plan on Fox News:
When the government starts setting food prices, that’s when countries start having famines because the people who produce food can’t afford to do so … The fact is that Harris’ proposal is modeled after a proposal by Elizabeth Warren that is so open-ended that the government could set the price for everything.
And so if you think that this is just something that’s going take the far left people and make sure that they’re ready to vote for her. No. This is a serious proposal. In fact, while she’s out there talking about this price-gouging she’s also bragging about the price-setting that the government has already done in the prescription drug space.
This is a reference to price controls imposed on pharmaceutical companies by the “Inflation Reduction Act” that has already created shortages for medications needed by seniors who suffer from diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and atrial fibrillation.
This ill-conceived policy has also caused premiums to increase for Medicare Part-D patients. This is hardly something to brag about, but neither Kamala Harris nor her teleprompter understand that price controls always cause shortages — every time they are imposed. Not some of the time. Not most of the time. Every time. They also cause hoarding (better stock up on toilet paper again). Worst of all, price controls always distort supply and demand creating higher inflation.
The other proposals we heard on Friday would cause similar economic disruptions and make life more difficult for middle class Americans. The Harris teleprompter also proposed down-payment assistance for all first-time homebuyers up to $25,000.
Any sane homeowner interested in selling will add $25,000 to his asking price. Moreover, the increased demand that will inevitably accompany this program will exacerbate the current shortage of homes available for sale. Meanwhile, it will increase the federal budget debt by a minimum of $100 million. This brings us to the teleprompter’s child tax credit proposal (CTC). According to data compiled by the nonprofit Tax Foundation, this is a very pricey proposal:
Harris would restore the CTC expansion under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which increased the credit from $2,000 under current law to $3,000 for older children and $3,600 for younger children for 2021 only.
The ARPA expansion also removed work and income requirements to claim the credit, providing credit to qualifying individuals regardless of whether they had earned income … Tax Foundation estimates Harris’ CTC expansion would cost about $1.6 trillion over 10 years on a conventional basis. The expansion would shrink long-run economic output by about 0.1 percent by removing the credit’s phase-in.
The final brick in the wall is a proposal for a $40 billion “innovation fund” to motivate cities to build more housing. This, like every other feature of the teleprompter’s “opportunity economy,” is thin on details. Yet it is clear that the machine doesn’t trust a housing market in which demand for homes stimulates more construction.
Instead, the impetus for “innovation” must come from the primordial swamp from which all good things emanate. It doesn’t really matter if it actually produces affordable housing. The only thing that matters is how many Electoral College votes are certified on Jan. 6, 2025 and who moves into the White House two weeks later. The rest is just sound and fury from an idiot reading the teleprompter.
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