Issues - Kamala Harris for President: Official Campaign Website
kamalaharris.com
BUILD AN OPPORTUNITY ECONOMY AND LOWER COSTS FOR FAMILIES Vice President Harris grew up in a middle class home as the daughter of a working mom. She believes that when the middle class is strong, America is strong. That’s why as President, Kamala Harris will create an Opportunity Economy where everyone has a chance to […]

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?

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    2·
    2 months ago

    I would think there would need to be some kind of trigger for when retail prices for classes of products “necessary for survival” - think food, clothing, shelter, energy kind of things - increases faster than inflation by some threshold over some period of time. Tripping that flag would result in some kind of more detailed human investigation, because maybe there are extenuating circumstances that would reasonably justify a price increase of that kind. There could also be percentage limits to price increases in certain situations. Different from fixed price controls, which are definitely a bad idea (see: The French Revolution), rather a kind of mandated slowing down of such increases to allow the economy a chance to adjust without having inflation go crazy.

    To be clear, I have only just poured this all out of my own head. None of it comes from political or economic sources, and my ideas could very well have unintended consequences, because I am neither a politician nor an economist.