Former President Donald Trump is attacking Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan for a federal ban on price gouging by grocery stores and food suppliers as “Soviet-style” controls.
But Republican state officials across the country have embraced the idea of capping excessive prices for years.
GOP state attorneys general, as well as many of their Democratic counterparts, have moved to stop companies from charging what they view as exorbitant increases in the cost of some goods in certain circumstances.
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, sued a large egg supplier for raising prices by about 300 percent at the height of the pandemic lockdowns in 2020.
I don’t know how competition is invisible hand. If companies want record profits, they cannot just increase prices because some will undercut them.
Have you just not heard of price collusion in the past?
Who will force you to follow it? I mean if you think that the companies are keeping prices artificially high, thanks to free market, you can open your own store with fair prices.
You will get most of consumers because you are cheaper and you make quite a lot of money because everyone comes to you.
That’s literally not going to happen. People are going to do what’s convenient, and when grocery stores have already priced out nearly every mom & pop grocer, there is no competition.
And if you open another grocery store, you’ll be beaten by market share and economy of scale.
Seriously dude, the “magic hand” of capitalism is busted when you’re talking about billions of dollars of force tipping the scales in large corporations’ favor.
So if it is convenient for people to pay unfair prices, they can. If they are unhappy, they can start their own shop. It’s fully their choice. If there are issues with crops, vegetables, etc. prices will go automatically up unless we find a way how to control weather.
Also, the statement that opening a grocery store automatically means they will be beaten by the economy is very incorrect because by this logic there would be zero grocery stores.
I mean, competition has led to a small number of giants coming out on top, then crushing all their competition. Now they do just raise prices. Agriculture, and grocery, are primarily industries made up of a small handful of corporations in “developed” economies. It got that way without price controls, and the cost of food is still going up, even though inflation is down. You need to control the size, and scope, of corporations, and then regulate a lot of pricing. When you don’t you just get this.