Kamala's Tools to Fix Broken Economy: Hammer and Sickle

(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)

It is no exaggeration to recognize a campaign proposal announced last week by Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to impose a “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries,” and punish companies for charging too much as anything less than a disastrously dangerous Venezuelan-style Socialist assault on America’s bountiful capitalist free market system.

According to her plan, government — acting through “new authority” the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general — would be empowered to determine prices and to punish companies who charge “too much” with penalty fines up to 5% of annual revenues.

So, how much is “too much”?

Maybe consider that supermarket profit margins for food and grocery sales are among the lowest of any businesses, typically ranging between 1.5% to 2%, compared for example, with 8% on average for other enterprises.

Amazon’s gross profit margin, which ranges between 15%-20%, was 19.4% in June of this year.

As noted by Wall Street Journal editors, “Fixing prices is a recipe for shortages, as controls would discourage grocery suppliers. Voilà, empty store shelves,” just as they “have led to shortages everywhere they’ve been tried, from Moscow to Caracas.”

Having been one of the earliest Americans invited to repeatedly visit Moscow to meet with top Russian space program planners and cosmonauts following the implosion of the Soviet Union, I witnessed dreadful economic and social consequences of central government control first-hand.

Whereas I developed deep and continuing affection for generosity and family values of the Russian people and enormous respect for the technical competence of space program elites, it was mind- and heart-numbing to observe the extent a socialist system of government can disincentivize, demoralize and disrupt living and work environment standards in the general population that so many of us take for granted.

Public shop shelves were empty of food and merchandize while black markets flourished; inflation was raging; alcoholism was rampant; industrial products such as automobiles were far inferior to world standards; and disincentivized production employees quipped “they pretend to pay us — we pretend to work.”

Even liberal Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell has likened Kamala’s proposal to “policies previously seen enacted by authoritarian governments.” She told far-left CNN anchor Jessica Dean that such “Soviet Union” style price controls are “totally unworkable” and “might actually increase costs of goods and services.”

Rampell warns that Kamala’s plan empowers the FTC to use any metric it deems appropriate to determine what profit markets are excessive, which basically means rather than going to markets to determine prices based upon supply and demand what Kroger can afford to charge for milk or eggs in Michigan, it will instead be some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.

As Rampell accurately points out, “We’ve seen this kind of thing tried in lots of other countries before — Venezuela, Argentina, the Soviet Union, et cetera — it leads to shortages, it leads to black markets, plenty of uncertainty.”

When CNN’s Dean asked Rampell why she was so skeptical of V.P Harris’s proposal to fix prices after years of rising inflation, she replied: “Well, first of all, nobody can explain what price gouging means. ... It’s like that old line about pornography, I know it when I see it in the sense that what does it mean to have an excessive price or an excessive profit margin?”

The timing of Kamala’s price control announcement apparently channels Republican President Richard Milhous Nixon, coming on the eve of the 53^rd anniversary of his failed August 15, 1971 wage and price control gambit to collar inflation which only exacerbated the problem.

Inflation is a predictable consequence of government spending in excess of what it brings in paid for by checks that don’t bounce financed by printing more money and credited to growing debt upon which interests rates alone currently equal America’s defense budget.

Kamala personally deserves much accountability for year-over-year seasonally adjusted consumer price index (CPI) ratings that averaged 5.7% under the Biden-Harris administration compared with 1.97% under Trump.

The cost of a 30-year home mortgage rate under Trump was 2.65%, compared with 7.57% as of June under Biden-Harris — nearly three times higher.

As Biden-Harris inflation has made homes unaffordable for most young families, Kamala’s “solution” is to provide “free” federal taxpayer funded subsidies such as $25,000 in down-payment assistance for “first-time” home buyers that will would merely drive home prices higher.

As former U.S. senator frome California, Kamala was an original Senate co-sponsor of the "Green New Deal" wind and solar subsidy blowout, which she has since said she'd be in favor of repealing the filibuster to restore.

Sen. Harris co-sponsored similar price control legislation with socialist Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020.

V.P. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Biden-Harris Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act budget boondoggle that included $7.5 billion to build 500,000 public EV charging stations across the U.S., which, as of April, only eight had been built.

Vice President Harris also voted to break the tie on the $1.85 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, largely a COVID-19 relief bill that unleashed massive government spending and debt.

Let’s keep in mind that just as Kamala failed dismally in staunching inflation of illegal migrant numbers as our nation’s border czar, any new role as economic czar is fated to turn out no better.