Price gouging as her first policy announcement? Really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, this was not a good move. WaPo featuring her backers saying that free enterprise is dead is not going to help win the middle.

And they will look dumb when her actual proposal still allows the market to set prices unless they want to increase them by massive amounts

Ok, it’s not good that people who support her look dumb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The FTC already found evidence that the companies that run grocery stores are price gouging.
https://www.ftc.gov/reports/feeding-america-time-crisis-ftc-staff-report-united-states-grocery-supply-chain-covid-19-pandemic

So what? That's the way the economy works.

If I'm a businesses, I'm going to raise my prices as high as I possibly can to maximize profits. Duh......it's as if Dems cannot understand basics business 101 and microeconomics 101. If I raise my prices too much, then consumers stop buying and my profits go down.

Why do companies keep raising prices? Because consumers keep paying! Why do consumers keep paying? Because they're flush with so much cash due to massive govt money printing and free cash handouts. This is literally inflation 101. It's hilarious how Dems cannot understand this..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you determine when companies are price gauging?

Most of them have been, the past couple years. There's data.

Please tell us about this data and where it is.

Here you go! https://www.ftc.gov/reports/feeding-america-time-crisis-ftc-staff-report-united-states-grocery-supply-chain-covid-19-pandemic

This report does not prove anything and the analysis is not detailed enough to determine why profit margins increased. They don’t even break down Walmarts sales to see where additional profits were coming from. Walmarts sells hundreds of billions of dollars of non-food items that have various profit margins. A small change in the composition of their non food products sold can easily shift total profits up or down enough to explain this. Same thing for groceries stores, did sales higher profit bakery and prepared foods increase during COVID. The answer is yes, because many restaurants were closed or went out of business. Of course their profits will go up if a larger portion of sales is from baked breads. That does not necessarily mean there is any price gauging at all. Consumers are buying different food items that are more profitable to sell, so profits increased slightly from 5.6%-7%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is actually quite clever. All the economists are freaking out and then she'll say it's a prohibition of prices increases of CPI + 25% or more and she'll say why do you support such huge increases?

So what happens when there are global supply chain disruptions? We had quite a few the last few years, and there are no signs of that changing anytime soon.

And each time there were supply chain issues, the federal government was the entity that was able to coordinate a response to get it cleared. That is Secretary Pete doing his job. It is also representative of gaps in capitalism when it happens. So if the federal government is going to be smoothing these gaps out, why should the consumer suffer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because large price increases across the entire macro economy are allllllll resultant from wide spread collusion to fix prices, gouge, and ripoff customers. It couldn't possibly be due to the simple concept of inflation.

Jesus, Dems are so dimwitted. When you print and inject trillions of dollars into the economy, more money goes around. More money= more spending = more demand = higher prices. It's really that simple.

Remember, it was Biden who handed out a trillion in stimulus and another round stimi checks as soon as he got into office because the Dems were desperate to win the GA runoff. I still remember AOC going ballistic back in 2021 about handing out more stimi checks.

Gee, who'd have ever guessed they when you pump the economy with trillions of printed cash inflation goes up. But they wanna blame wide spread conspiracy theories that every single industry out there is colluding with one another to raise prices for consumers. Dems are a really low IQ.

Uh, the GA runoff happened before Biden took office.

You really have no idea what you are talking about.

[Anonymous]

If you deported all the illegals there would be more supply and less demand for everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The FTC already found evidence that the companies that run grocery stores are price gouging.
https://www.ftc.gov/reports/feeding-america-time-crisis-ftc-staff-report-united-states-grocery-supply-chain-covid-19-pandemic

So what? That's the way the economy works.

If I'm a businesses, I'm going to raise my prices as high as I possibly can to maximize profits. Duh......it's as if Dems cannot understand basics business 101 and microeconomics 101. If I raise my prices too much, then consumers stop buying and my profits go down.

Why do companies keep raising prices? Because consumers keep paying! Why do consumers keep paying? Because they're flush with so much cash due to massive govt money printing and free cash handouts. This is literally inflation 101. It's hilarious how Dems cannot understand this..

The bolded us true. But then the GOP us calling it "inflation" when that isn't what it is. So she is trying to address that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you deported all the illegals there would be more supply and less demand for everything.

And labor costs would spike, so it wouldn't bring the purchase price down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, I think she just put her first foot wrong. Prices were up 1% on groceries this past year. This is bizarre - brings back memories of ‘70s price controls.

What do you think?

I think it’s a great idea! Someone needs to go after all these corporations stealing everyone’s money. There’s no such thing as inflation there’s only companies soaking people with high prices. Biden said this last year.

The government should determine prices on everything. They’ll do it fairly with regards to people’s income and with equity being a factor too. BIPOC and low SES consumers should be charged less than MC/UMC/wealthy whites because they’ve been historically marginalized.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you deported all the illegals there would be more supply and less demand for everything.

And labor costs would spike, so it wouldn't bring the purchase price down.

Great, well let’s try it and see who is right.

[Anonymous]

You could fix the oil & gas situation, which would decrease the price of gas, which would decrease the cost of goods.

Oh wait, that’s a Trump policy you won’t like that one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, this was not a good move. WaPo featuring her backers saying that free enterprise is dead is not going to help win the middle.

And they will look dumb when her actual proposal still allows the market to set prices unless they want to increase them by massive amounts

Ok, it’s not good that people who support her look dumb.

Can you share and specifically quote who is saying "free enterprise is dead"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you determine when companies are price gauging?

Most of them have been, the past couple years. There's data.

Please tell us about this data and where it is.

Look in the "Biden Economy" thread...there have been a hundreds posts with the data.

All the "data" in that thread consists of comments that corporations are making record profits. That is not data that supports a thesis of price gouging.

That’s the definition of price gouging. Taking advantage of economic conditions (like big Ag monopolies) to earn enormous profits because there is no competition—whether that be due to monopolies or shortages after strom.

maGAtt: food inflation is killing us. Biden omits failed. We need Trump back to get prices down

Harris: [b]here is a plan to get prices down by increasing competition in the marketplace (which is the most Adam Smith way to solve the problem)

MAGAtt: NO! Not like that!!

I’m puzzled as to why you want to protect companies that took advantage of COVID and having monopolies to raise food prices and continue ro post record profits, without lowering prices? That isn’t capitalism.

Record profits will occur simply because of inflation. You need to look at net profits, not gross profits, and inflation adjust them. Moreover, you further need to adjust the number to earnings per share. Record gross profits by themselves mean very little.

As far as I can tell, the Harris plan is price controls. Those discourage increased competition. What company wants to enter into a business where prices are controlled?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you deported all the illegals there would be more supply and less demand for everything.

And labor costs would spike, so it wouldn't bring the purchase price down.

Great, well let’s try it and see who is right.

Let's start with the illegals working on Trump properties.

(this is why it won't happen....it is all rhetoric to keep people like you angry)

[Anonymous]

You could stop foreign countries from buying farm land-or any land- in the US, thus increasing the amount of farmland we can utilize. Farm products grown closer to you will be cheaper.