Mar
11
2024

Reader, Suppose You Were a Shameless Lying Demagogue. And Suppose You Were A Politician.

But I Repeat Myself.

Apologies for slightly altering a Mark Twain quote. But it was brought to mind by a Don Boudreaux post at Cafe Hayek, which begins: The Experience of an Economist....

… listening to typical politicians discuss economics is like what I imagine would be experienced by a skilled physician listening to witchdoctors discuss human diseases and methods of healing the human body. These politicians, like witchdoctors, are not merely ignorant about that on which they hold forth, they are so utterly ignorant of the subject matter that they cannot conceive that they might be misinformed and mistaken.

This morning I had the misfortune to hear on NPR Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) pronounce on ‘shrinkflation.’ The very fact that someone so ignorant of economics has power over the economy – combined with the fact that, among successful politicians, Casey is the norm rather than the exception – is sufficient to render any case for government intervention into the economy ridiculous. Just as we would be out of our minds to trust witchdoctors to discover new modern medical treatments and to administer these in healthful ways, we are out of our minds to entrust resource-allocation decisions to politicians.

Boudreaux made the fatal mistake of listening to NPR. I sympathize. I listened to the five-minute interview; the NPR Droid, Ayesha Rascoe, did not ask any skeptical questions of the senator. Like: "Isn't 'shrinkflation' just a symptom of inflation? And isn't inflation a pretty direct result of government policies?"

If you don't hit that NPR link above, you can check out Senator Casey's press release on his bill: Legislation to Crack Down on Big Corporations Shrinking Products Without Reducing Prices.

Yes, like Elizabeth Warren, Casey's a big fan of cracking down. On everything except runaway government spending.

Bill empowers Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to crack down on corporations reducing product size without a reduction in price…

Today, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Children & Families, introduced the Shrinkflation Prevention Act to crack down on corporations…

"I’m fighting to crack down on shrinkflation and hold corporations accountable for these deceptive practices."…

In February 2024, Casey introduced legislation to protect American families from greedflation by banning grossly excessive price increases and crack down on corporate price gouging.

Like "fair share", that phrase must focus-group well.

Back to Don Boudreaux, who penned a letter to NPR in response, observing: None of These People Put Their Money Where Their Mouths Are.... Proposing a real tough question for the down-crackers:

Interviewed this morning by Ayesha Rascoe, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) repeated the economically nonsensical claim that today’s inflation is caused by greed (“What to know about the ‘shrinkflation’ bill mentioned in the State of the Union”). To support his assertion – and his pending legislation to empower government to police against ‘shrinkflation’ – Mr. Casey asserted that corporate profits are unusually high.

How refreshing it would be if at least once your reporters would ask people, such as Sen. Casey, who assert that corporations have unchecked power to raise prices or shrink package sizes this question: “If what you say is true, why don’t you start a company that charges more reasonable prices or offers larger portions? You’d make a fortune by attracting away from the price-gougers all the consumers who you assert are now suffering terribly. Rather than siccing the government on the alleged price-gougers, if you instead went into competition with them you enrich yourself and consumers! Can you explain to me why you don’t put your money where your mouth is?”

Well, Don, the obvious answer is that politicians like Casey and Warren have no discernible talent at business-running. In fact, no discernible talent for running anything except their mouths.

(The above is a mutated quote from Marion Barry, not quite as famous as his classic "Bitch set me up".)

Anyway: of course, some savvy businessperson with appropriate talent could do what Boudreaux describes, undercutting the "price gougers", and making big bucks. Or an existing candy company, one of these guys, could do it. Why doesn't that happen?

I'm pretty sure you can come up with a plausible explanation.

It is unsurprising for government-subsidized NPR to act as a cheerleader for increasing government "crack down" power. We previously looked at Cookie Monster doing his part on that front too. Jack Butler chimes in there as well: Cookie Monster: Biden Flack?.

It was strange for a character from a children’s TV show to weigh in on this subject in a manner remarkably similar to current White House messaging and preoccupation. Reporting on this, the Washington Free Beacon noted that Sesame Workshop, the organization behind Sesame Street, receives 5 percent of its revenues from the federal government, and that some of its leaders are Democratic donors.

But even if there hasn’t been deliberate coordination between the Biden administration and Sesame Workshop, the unseemliness of Cookie Monster’s apparent politicking ought to renew skepticism of the government funds going to the organization. It may be a small amount, and a small portion of Sesame Workshop’s overall revenue. But the latter fact should make us more willing to end the funding. And amid an only worsening fiscal crisis, the former fact should make us look anywhere we can for items to excise.

As Butler notes, Casey's proposed legislation was promoted by the shameless-lying-demagogue-in-chief in the SOTU speech last week. The MSM fact-checkers were not diligent about his relevant remarks:

In fact, the snack companies think you won’t notice if they change the size of the bag and put a hell of a lot fewer — (laughter) — same — same size bag — put fewer chips in it. No, I’m not joking. It’s called “shrink-flation.”

Pass Bobby Casey’s bill and stop this. (Applause.) I really mean it.

You probably all saw that commercial on Snickers bars. (Laughter.) And you get — you get charged the same amount, and you got about, I don’t know, 10 percent fewer Snickers in it. (Laughter.)

But, via Hot Air's Karen Townsend, it turns out Joe Biden is Lying About the Size of Your Snickers Bar. Quoting a tweet from someone who actually checked with the manufacturer:

Well, shoot. Now I'm craving… you know what.

You can look at Senator Casey's proposed legislation here. Nine co-sponsors, none from New Hampshire. Too stupid even for Maggie and Jeanne?