She plans on fixing prices to bring down costs. That is f#cking stupid. The opposite happens. She’s beyond dumb.
Kamala’s take on the Economy
- Thread starter snarlcakes
- Start date
She plans on fixing prices to bring down costs. That is f#cking stupid. The opposite happens. She’s beyond dumb.
If she is elected thus resulting in another Great Depression as Trump tells us, prices will drop.
Most people remember Nixon unfavorably because of Watergate and/or his execution and expansion of the Vietnam War (and understandably so). However, I might argue that the worst (or at least most costly) legacy of his was the wage and price controls -- some of which lasted through to the Reagan presidency.
It's a shame that more people don't have a grasp of basic economics. It makes them vulnerable to this kind of appeal -- which may be useful for a politician seeking office, but would be so clearly harmful if it was ever put into practice.
What do you do in construction? Sit in a lawn chair at your job site giving occasional directions while reading history books? How th F do you remember so much
Heh. I mostly just sign outgoing checks these days -- and hope that the incoming ones total more than they do.
I've been a longtime critic of Nixon's wage/price controls. A number of them didn't last very long, thankfully. But some of them did and they were among the biggest reasons we had fuel shortages, gas lines, etc. throughout the 70s. They also coincided with a policy that effectively shut down the Bretton Woods system and moved us off the gold standard.
But with inflation and unemployment up, Nixon decided to seek the counsel of esteemed economist Arthur Burns (Fed Chair), esteemed economist Paul Volcker (future Fed Chair), and lawyer/politician John Connally (then Treasury Sec, former Texas Gov).
Guess whose advice he took.
Sounds kind of dictatorial. But that can't be.
I'm beginning to wonder if this fed learned anything from that era. High interest rates are good at sopping up excess capital, but they have an inverse effect wrt supplying the economy with commodities. The cure for high prices is high prices, if you believe in supply and demand.
You're confusing effective policy with effecting campaign messaging. She's merely saying what people want to hear. She's going to take on The Man on behalf of The Oppressed. People love that shit. You're simply not the audience she's pitching to.
Economists don't agree on everything with politicians taking sides with say a Keynes or Friedman.
My college taught a "liberal" approach to economics in which we had to be able to explain the theories of all the well known economists throughout history. This was enough to drive a student crazy, which happened in my case
Unfortunately, I think she actually believes it. I wouldn't be surprised if she tried to implement the polices. Biden floated the idea a month ago or whomever is making the decisions for Biden floated it. I assume most of the same people will be in a Harris administration. I'll admit you could be correct that she is just taking advantage of her really dumb voters.
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So... this is where I have a problem
She says she wants to take on corps that engage in illegal price gouging. Okay by me. We already do that.
Take on landlords that unfairly raise rent. Okay by me. We already do that.
Cap the Costs of Drugs.... okay by me. I understand this is a broad statement. Perhaps there is nuance and I'm misguided. I don't want too much gov interference, but for Fs sake, you guys don't want like the costs of Insulin to be capped so a person with limited access to it doesn't have to pay $3k for a shot that someone in the suburbs pays $300 for?
Precisely. But they're bound and determined to prevent or resist the corrections rather than letting them work their way through. And this is nothing new.
Below are snippets from President Hoover's memoir discussing two schools of thought in his administration when things started going haywire. Andrew Mellon famously advised to let prices do their work. Roy Young (Fed governor) and others advised all kinds of interventions to work against this -- which, of course, not only didn't work but probably delayed recovery.
The historical conventional wisdom is that Hoover did too little, too late. Personally, I've always thought he should've listened to Mellon. The Fed's policy moves back in that time weren't only unhelpful, they almost certainly were the primary driver of the asset bubbles and the deepening of the crisis after they busted.
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Whether you cap the cost of drugs, food, or housing it is just going to end up increasing the cost.
She didn't say food or housing. And inferring that the healthcare business model is anything like food or housing is quite disingenuous. I don't need to see my doctor, get a prescription, file a claim, and meet a deductible in order to buy a cheeseburger.
The single best thing we could do to ease drug pricing is use our trade leverage to influence other countries to lift their price controls. We have a pretty obvious free rider problem in pharmaceuticals - which results in US consumers subsidizing consumers elsewhere.
Even CT Sen. Murphy (kind of surprisingly) recognizes this.
Also, imagine what the price of, say, steaks and lobsters would be if this is how we paid for them.
She talked about the rising costs of food and housing in the clip. The cost of both of those increased drastically while she has been office because of inflation from printing money. It has shit to do with price gouging or big corporations. Harris is the one who inferred the increase in costs was from price gouging and she was going to take them on and fix it. Not me. Save me the disingenuous talk. Point Break is awesome
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Scary thought. Imagine a drive thru? You would pay some entity for just entering the McDonalds drive thru line. You would pay a separate entity that took your order. And then you'd pay a different entity that provided the food.
Why they try to remake movies like that and Roadhouse.... why taint something that was infallible.
Well, there’s that.
But the bigger problem is that you as consumer would be largely insulated from the pricing signals that are so vital to market efficiency.
If we all paid a fixed monthly fee for access to grocery stores, guess what those shelves would look like. Your incentive, like everybody else’s, would be to race to get all you can of the most desirable things available.
Markets work, if we have the wisdom and courage to let them. And a huge part of that is consumers being properly situated at the table.
In healthcare, virtually all decisions are made by providers, pharm and device suppliers, and insurers (both public and private).
I haven’t looked for quite some time but Cuban had that as motivation in his pharma co
Wouldn't it be fair to say that the bubbles were formed long before Hoover was in office? My contention is that asset bubbles by definition are formed when prices exceed the underlying value of the asset. IOW, we can all invest in Target stock. The price of stock will undoubtedly rise, independent of the ability of Target to make money, and return a profit to an investor.Precisely. But they're bound and determined to prevent or resist the corrections rather than letting them work their way through. And this is nothing new.
Below are snippets from President Hoover's memoir discussing two schools of thought in his administration when things started going haywire. Andrew Mellon famously advised to let prices do their work. Roy Young (Fed governor) and others advised all kinds of interventions to work against this -- which, of course, not only didn't work but probably delayed recovery.
The historical conventional wisdom is that Hoover did too little, too late. Personally, I've always thought he should've listened to Mellon. The Fed's policy moves back in that time weren't only unhelpful, they almost certainly were the primary driver of the asset bubbles and the deepening of the crisis after they busted.
When investment exceeds value, bubbles form. Why should someone expect stock prices to return 11%, while gdp is 1.5%? How is this sustainable? Notwithstanding, the fact that publicly traded companies don't represent a whole of an economy. The fact still holds.
Edit: The interesting thing that binds the three eras(30's, late 70's, and potentially now)is the shortages of commodities and the inability of our institutions to adapt to said shortages. Often missed wrt today is that the U.S. and S.A. had significant droughts during covid. Some countries including China had shut downs months after we got back to "normal". Even this past year, China suffered from ASF and bird flu. This is not insignificant in the big scheme of things, unless tampons have entered a boy's restroom. Then we should probably focus on the tampons.
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Sound money. The free market is deflationary, it has to be. Eventually all goods would fall to their marginal utility cost.
Easy to say, hard to do when you're President. Watching all those people go through misery and doing nothing about it would have lost him his office, too.Precisely. But they're bound and determined to prevent or resist the corrections rather than letting them work their way through. And this is nothing new.
Below are snippets from President Hoover's memoir discussing two schools of thought in his administration when things started going haywire. Andrew Mellon famously advised to let prices do their work. Roy Young (Fed governor) and others advised all kinds of interventions to work against this -- which, of course, not only didn't work but probably delayed recovery.
The historical conventional wisdom is that Hoover did too little, too late. Personally, I've always thought he should've listened to Mellon. The Fed's policy moves back in that time weren't only unhelpful, they almost certainly were the primary driver of the asset bubbles and the deepening of the crisis after they busted.
And how do you weigh the suffering of all those people Hoover was trying to help vs. the good Mellon's advice might lead to? Tough calculus when you're in the moment vs. looking at it after the fact.
There was a depression in 1920. The recovery was much quicker than the Great Depression when the government increased spending and taxes. I’d argue FDR extended the suffering.
Had he taken Mellon’s advice, I bet it would’ve been over a lot quicker than it was. That was also the conclusion that Ohanion/Cole came to. They estimated 7 years extension.
We can only speculate, of course. Maybe they aren’t right. But, if they are, then the policy responses to the crash and Depression resulted in more hardship, not less.
Consumers can only price discriminate when they have both the knowledge of the market and an options to exercise that knowledge. I can easily choose at the grocery between Oreos and Kroger brand chocolate chips. Or skip both if they are priced more than I value them.
You can price shop with reasonable knowledge for say dental work or eyeglasses... But not for more complicated medical procedures, testing or many pharma purchases, often needed under severe physical duress.
That's why insurers exist (both public and private). They have the institutionalized buying knowledge of what is and isn't a fair price to pay providers.
