Ex-Obama administration economist sounds alarm on Harris policy proposal: 'There's no upside here'

Former Obama administration economist Jason Furman has sounded the alarm about Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris' communist price control scheme.

Speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina on Friday, Harris touted a blatantly communist agenda that calls for imposing price controls on food manufacturers and inflicting more taxes on the American people:

BREAKING: Kamala Harris proposes Soviet-style communist price control scheme similar to Venezuela and Cuba pic.twitter.com/rCwMoKfde0

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 16, 2024

talking with The New York Times On this agenda, Furman criticized the vice president's plans.

“This is not a sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality.“, he said. “There is no advantage here, and there is some disadvantage.“

In fact, there are a LOT of downsides.

“Price controls have been disastrous whenever they have been implemented,” he said reason magazine “Prices are signals, ways of communicating the quantity of a good that consumers need and the quantity that must be produced. Interfering with these signals will create a terrible shortage.”

“Giving the government the power to intervene in the economy in this way will not lower prices, it will force some businesses out of business and some consumers into shortages of goods they could have otherwise bought. The the scale at which this devastation occurs depends on the scale at which the government decides to intervene,” the magazine notes.

Rising prices are not the cause of inflation; they are the result of inflation. Price controls will not cure inflation; will cause shortages. More government is not the solution; is the problem Free competition solves inflation and scarcity. This is what America built. https://t.co/sq1mu9nz7c

— David Asman (@DavidAsmanfox) August 16, 2024

Harris' proposal has also been criticized by financial expert Dave Ramsey.

“It's not sustainable because it's artificial,” he said Fox News. “If you just put a lid on something and if you want to explore what's really going on, you just have to go back to the 1970s. We tried that. There was a whole movement for price controls on everything, because inflation was out of control and it was rampant, just like now. And it's tried. It doesn't work.”

“What works is flooding the market with supply. More oil means lower oil prices. Lots of labor means lower labor prices, lots of whatever means lower prices. It's a simple supply and demand curve. It's called economics, and it's called a free market economy. When you bring the government into it and try to artificially limit it, it just doesn't work, because you can only hold that hose for so long until the pressure builds up and then it blows,” he added.

In fact, former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford's price controls in the 1970s were a complete and utter failure.

“The era of price controls is best remembered for the long lines at gas stations,” The Washington Times notes “The controls were put in place by the Nixon and Ford administrations as a reaction to a spike in fuel prices caused by production cuts by the newly formed international oil cartel, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.”

“The price controls resulted in a fuel rationing system that made available about 5 percent less oil than was consumed before the controls. Consumers resorted and sat in lines to secure gas stations found they only had to stay open a few hours a day to empty their tanks, and since they couldn't raise prices, they closed after selling their gas to maintain their labor costs and operational”.

“Interestingly, Richard Nixon stopped a pipeline and also imposed price controls. He basically restricted the supply, and then artificially lowered the price, thereby creating a shortage. Which, by the way, is exactly what the Democrats of today”.

with @LisaMarieBoothe pic.twitter.com/2iiRiFxMMN

— Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein) October 4, 2023

Even a columnist for The Washington Post, Catherine Rampell, has blasted Harris' plan.

“It's hard to overstate how bad this policy is,” he wrote in a column this week. “It is, in all but name, a broad set of price controls applied by the government to all industries, not just food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. The distant bureaucrats of Washington would. The FTC could tell, say, an Ohio Kroger what price it can charge for milk.”

Senior Staff Writer
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V. Saxena is a writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.

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