Aug
25
2024

Message: I Care

George Will notes plenty of voodoo doodoo: Abracadabra! It’s the dueling Harris and Trump economic magic acts..

Adding a dash of substance to her one-word political program (“Joy”), Kamala Harris says that as president, she would tell the Federal Trade Commission to first define “excessive” price increases, then prosecute the living daylights out of the miscreants responsible for cornflakes costing (by some undisclosed metric) too much. She who is in the administration that has approved spending in trillion-dollar tranches thinks that understanding inflation in terms of mundane matters such as supply and demand is for weaklings who do not grasp the marvels that muscular government can accomplish. Next? Perhaps legislating that lobsters shall grow on trees.

But on to the other guy:

Donald “Tariff Man” Trump’s Harris-esque contribution to this year’s magical beliefs expands upon his 2016 promise that Mexico would pay for his “beautiful” border wall. Now he says China, like all nations that export goods to the United States, will somehow pay the additional tariffs (the rates he mentions vary with his whims) that he promises to impose on everything from everywhere. So remember: When you pay, say, 20 percent extra for an imported appliance, you did not really pay it. Magic!

Protectionism, which amounts to blockading one’s own ports, is, always and everywhere, a tax on consumers. At this point, it is unknowable whether Trump’s tax-increase-by-tariffs would be larger than the potential increase from — this prospect horrifies him — Congress allowing some of his 2017 tax cuts to expire.

Like Mercutio, GFW wishes a plague on both their houses. The only silver lining: one of them will lose.

Our weekly table follows. Although pundits were impressed with the DNC, the bettors cooled a bit on Kamala over the past week:

Candidate EBO Win
Probability		 Change
Since
8/18
Kamala Harris 50.4% -1.6%
Donald Trump 48.1% +2.2%
Other 1.5% -0.6%

Also of note:

  • Apologies will be accepted, if you include a check. Noah Rothman observes that According to the Press, America Has Already Let Kamala Harris Down.

    According to two recent analyses in some of the country’s biggest media outlets, it’s we who are to blame for the fact that Harris’s far-left policy proposals have landed with a thud.

    A New York Times “news analysis” via reporter Jim Tankersley, both Harris’s “foes and allies may have the wrong idea” about her plan to set price caps on basic commodities — a proposal to fix prices that definitely does not constitute “price controls.”

    As Tankersley notes, “people familiar with Ms. Harris’s thinking” believe her “price-gouging ban” is neither a “price-gouging ban” nor a “Soviet-style” intervention in the private economy. It is whatever you want it to be, as long as you want it to be good because the Harris “campaign has created space for multiple interpretations.” What we can be sure of is that Harris’s plan would definitely not create scarcity by disincentivizing firms to meet demand where it exists in response to market signals — e.g., prices. Why? Mostly because voters wouldn’t like that.

    Similarly, Noah Smith is impressed that Kamala has "clarified" her position.

    Except he gets this "clarification" not from Kamala, but from an article in the Atlantic by Jerusalem Demsas.

    And Demsas didn't get the "clarification" from Kamala either, but from an (apparently) anonymous "enior campaign official".

    Anyway, Smith is relieved that, based on this third-hand information, Kamala "can be relied upon to listen to the relevant experts and avoid taking extreme and dangerous policy steps."

  • Somewhat less gullible is Jacob Sullum at Reason: Kamala Harris' 'Price Gouging' Ban: A New Idea That Has Failed for Millenia.

    Harris, of course, says she would target only unjustified price increases, the kind that amount to "illegal price gouging" by "opportunistic companies." But as she emphasizes, there currently is no such thing under federal law, and any attempt to define it would be plagued by subjectivity and a lack of relevant knowledge.

    The fact that Harris pins the sharp grocery price inflation of recent years on corporate greed suggests that her judgment about such matters cannot be trusted. Economists generally rate other factors—including the war in Ukraine as well as pandemic-related supply disruptions, shifts in consumer demand, and stimulus spending—as much more important.

    High profits, in any event, are another important signal that encourages investment and competition. By forbidding "excessive profits," Harris' proposed price policing would undermine the motivation they provide.

    Perhaps she imagines that she can look into the hearts of CEOs and reliably detect illegal levels of "greed".

  • But do Kamala's proposed price controls lead to socialism? If you've been wondering about that, David Harsanyi has an answer for you, Bunkie: Yes, Kamala's Price Controls Lead To Socialism.

    Kamala Harris certainly isn’t the first politician to suggest controlling politically inconvenient prices, but history has conclusively proven that price caps cause shortages, hoarding, black markets, and an array of other unpleasant outcomes.

    If you’re going to rationalize this policy by blaming the kulaks of “price gouging” and peddling the age-old notion that cabals of bad guys in competitive markets can get together and dictate prices, it’s going to raise alarm bells.

    There isn’t a scintilla of evidence that “price gouging” — a conveniently elastic term, to begin with — exists. Big Grocery is one of the least lucrative big businesses in America with a profit margin consistently under 2 percent — in fact, this year it was 1.18, a figure that lands on the lower end of the historical profit spectrum. While there’s nothing wrong with making a healthy profit, consistent margins tell us that price spikes are propelled by inflation, not some insidious plot.

    I have no idea how all this will play out politically.

    I am (however) impressed with how Kamala's penchant for loopy inappropriate cackling is being rebranded as "joy". A perhaps unfair tweet:

  • Attention must be paid. Thomas Sowell has advice: Republicans Better Get on the Ball.

    If the Republicans lose this year’s election—against an administration whose policies have been rejected by the public in poll after poll—they will deserve to lose.

    But do 330 million Americans deserve to see their lives ruined by another four years of the Democrats’ economic disasters and unchecked violence by both domestic and imported criminals?

    Does America deserve more tragic military fiascoes like that in Afghanistan? Or like allowing a spy balloon from China to photograph our military installations from coast to coast, before finally being shot down, after it was too late?

    And these are the people who are telling Israel how to fight a war.

    Sowell notes that it's getting pretty late in the game for Republicans to come up with an effective message.

  • Equally pessimistic is… John Hinderaker at Power Line: Democrats’ Strategy Is Bizarre, But It May Work.

    That, really, is Harris’s campaign: she is the not-Donald-Trump. Complaints that her current persona is inauthentic, and she has no platform, miss the point. She is perfectly authentic as not-Donald-Trump, and that negation is her platform. Anything beyond that is window dressing.

    This approach wouldn’t normally work, of course. If the Republicans had nominated anyone except Trump, Harris’s record, her political views and her platform would be front and center. Against anyone but Trump Harris would be a pitifully weak candidate. She couldn’t run as not-Nikki-Haley, not-Ron-DeSantis, or whoever. It is only the Republicans’ nomination of Donald Trump that makes the Democrats’ strategy possible.

    Will the Democrats’ unprecedented strategy work? It may. A year and a half ago, when most anticipated a Biden-Trump rematch, I predicted that neither Biden nor Trump would be on the 2024 ballot. I said that the Democrats would be crazy to nominate Biden, and the Republicans would be crazy to nominate Trump. I was half right: the Democrats were smart enough to switch out Joe Biden. But the Republicans couldn’t resist going with Trump for the third time in a row.

    Nikki Haley would have… nah, I won't repeat myself.

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Last Modified 2024-08-26 4:46 AM EDT