Kamala Harris Can’t Even Fathom Basic Economics; Kamala Harris Unveils Economic Plan — Including a Whopping $1.7T in Handouts, Fed Ban On Grocery Store ‘price gouging’

Kamala Harris can’t even fathom basic economics:

Kamala Harris claims she has a plan to solve the crisis she helped cause: inflation.

Under former President Trump, the inflation rate averaged 1.9%. It skyrocketed to 9.1% in 18 months under Joe Biden and Harris, fueled by a $5 trillion spending binge paid for by debt and printing money.

The centerpiece of the Harris plan is the imposition of federal price controls on “greedy corporations” she says are “price gouging” consumers. Landlords would be prohibited from raising rents more than 5% a year.

Even the Washington Post has trashed the plan, advising Kamala that “when your opponent calls you a ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls.”

Are grocery stores and 7-Elevens and Walmart guilty of price gouging? No. It turns out, as Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni points out, producer prices have risen by 19.5%, which is almost exactly the same pace as consumer prices. In other words, to stay afloat, businesses are simply passing on their higher costs to consumers.

The San Francisco Fed found the exact same thing a few months ago: “Aggregate markup across all sectors of the economy . . . has stayed essentially flat during the post-pandemic recovery.”

Kamala Harris doesn’t understand that companies must raise their prices to cover their rising costs in order to stay in business. That’s because her administration can run $2 trillion deficits from now until the cows come home.

That’s reflected in the “economic plan” she’s announcing Friday, which includes no blueprint for growth or prosperity. Instead it just makes the government bigger, with the restoration of a child tax credit of $3,600 a kid, and a new proposal to raise that to $6,000 for the first year of a child’s life.

The Tax Policy Center found the cost of the COVID-era child-tax credit was $125.5 billion. Expanding it would cost even more.

How would we pay for that? Who knows? For her, it’s just spend, spend, spend. Inflation would continue to climb. —>READ MORE HERE

Kamala Harris unveils economic plan — including a whopping $1.7T in handouts, fed ban on grocery store ‘price gouging’:

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday unveiled the economic policies she would enact in her first 100 days in office — and it comes with a whopping estimated $1.7 trillion in handouts, as well as government price controls on groceries amid ravaging Biden-Harris administration inflation.

Her economic plan includes measures to dole out $25,000 to help first-time homeowners with their down payments and give up to a $6,000 tax breaks for lower and middle-income families who have a child in their first year of life. Harris did not say what incomes qualify as “lower” and “middle.”

The housing subsidies alone are “absolutely inflationary” and would “push a $2 trillion dollar deficit even higher,” Brian Riedl, a senior economic fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Post, referrring to the already projected budget shortfall for 2024. Those subsidies make up just $200 billion of the total $1.7 trillion handouts pledged to voters.

‘Reckless’ handouts

A slew of economists The Post spoke to have already slammed the plan’s hefty price tag amid an already-struggling economy.

“The CRFB estimates make it clear that the Harris agenda—like Biden’s before it—will be fiscally reckless and economically damaging,” Adam Michel, the director of Tax Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Post.

“Writing people large checks and enforcing price controls is a recipe for expanding demand and shrinking supply, creating shortages and necessitating rationing,” Michel said. “The $6,000 child tax credit is the next entry in the child tax credit arms race, in which Republicans and Democrats are trying to outdo each other in writing Americans ever bigger checks. It will only get more expensive from here.”

“This is very reckless to be adding this type of debt to our already existing mountain of debt,” said Joel Griffith, an economic research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told The Post in reference to the rising national deficit that currently sits at $34 trillion and is expected to reach $50 trillion by 2034.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation in an analysis was particularly troubled by the lack of detail she provided over where the funding for the handouts would come. —>READ MORE HERE

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