Kamala Harris' price controls will never work and that's the subject of "The Riff." Kamala Harris' economic plan, released today in North Carolina, is a command and control, socialist-type, central planning package the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1930s depression.
Or, for those who remember the old Soviet Union communists, or for those unlucky enough to visit today's Venezuela, it's crazy stuff. No one is going to take it seriously. That kind of ultra-far-left planning has been out of favor in the U.S. for nearly 100 years.
Democratic economists are attacking it. The Washington Post is attacking it. Early estimates of the cost of her plan are already running upwards of $1.3 trillion, which of course means more deficit spending and more inflation, in the unlikely event she were to be elected.
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The big items so far: the $3,600 kiddie credit that costs about $1 trillion over 10 years, the newborn child credit -- another $100 billion, and a $25,000 home mortgage subsidy would be about $250 billion, and of course, there's going to be a lot more as the details come out.
There's new tax credits for Obamacare, another bump-up in the earned income tax credit, some kind of debt cancellation for health care costs, and of course, let's not forget the unconstitutional student loan cancellations. The details of all that stuff are so far unknown, and of course, the headline grabber -- which is the first ever federal ban on "price gouging" on food and groceries -- is really just price controls dressed up as ... price controls.
In other words, to quote Churchill, a "sheep in sheep's clothing" and President Trump's got it right, as well -- here, take a listen:
DONALD TRUMP: Now, Kamala is reportedly proposing communist price control, but they don't work. They actually have the exact opposite impact and effect, but it leads to food shortages, rationing, hunger, dramatically more inflation. // We call it the Maduro plan. Like something straight out of Venezuela, the Soviet Union.
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There you go. For one thing, no one's ever proven price gouging. No one even knows what it is. Even though the Bidens have tried for over three and a half years, a study by the San Francisco Fed ruled it out.
What the Kamala Harris Democrats don't understand is that rising prices don't cause inflation -- inflation causes rising prices and inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. All of which devalues the money in your wallets and pocketbooks.
This whole baloney about price gouging and excess profits, and corporate greed, is the longtime hallmark of the distant far left, and it pops up every now and then, is laughed out of the room, and we don't hear about it for a long while. Prediction: That's going to happen again this time around.
This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the August 16, 2024, edition of "Kudlow."
