Democrats profiting off the little guy: Corporate profits at 12% under Bidenflation have been much better than under Trump at 4%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dirty little secret about corporate profits: they've been much better after 13 quarters of Biden than they were after 16 quarters of Trump, averaging 4.14% yoy under Trump and 12.13% under Biden.

 

This is a great little arrangement between Democrats and big business. Democrat-aligned business makes off with your cash while politicians pretend to do something about it in exchange for campaign contributions, with the important benefit that inflation inflates away the cost of their spendthrift deficit spending.

The so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which did no such thing and Democrats said would cost nothing, is estimated to cost the taxpayers nearly $800 billion by 2031 according to the liberal Brookings Institution.

This is your fascist America.

 

Shielding price increases by blaming them on inflation has been the modus operandi of the period. Price gouging is real, but gimmicks which address only symptoms won't solve the problem, which is caused by increasing the money supply and deliberately increasing other costs as a matter of policy, like energy and regulation, which businesses also can plausibly blame.

 

But Harris knows the demagogic value of running against price gouging.

 

Price controls poll particularly well. You can fool most of the people most of the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Catherine Rampell at WaPo, who is no friend of the right: It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Kamala Harris’s price-gouging proposal is, a bunch of communist, economic gibberish

  

 It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is.

It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food.

Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels.

Far-off Washington bureaucrats would.

The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.

At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price growth by fiat. (There’s a reason narrower “price gouging” laws that exist in some U.S. states are rarely invoked.)

At worst, it might accidentally raise prices. ...

If your opponent claims you’re a “communist,” maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls. We already have plenty of economic gibberish . . ..     

-- WaPo 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/     

 

Harris is 0-2. 

She picked a terrible VP who is as far to the left as she is.

Now her first policy announcement is a throwback to the 5-year plans of the USSR.

Extremely inauspicious.

Kamala Harris wants you to know she's worried about price gouging at the grocery store and that she's just the person to do something about it

 

The continuing price gouging by US natural gas utilities is astounding

Look at all that daylight between what utilities charge and the gas actually costs.

 

The gas and electric utility Consumers Energy here in Michigan is price gouging under Green Energy Joe, yours probably is too

Compared to November 2020, my new budget plan payment for combined natural gas and electric for the coming winter will be 42% higher than it was three years ago, despite the fact that natural gas prices have normalized almost to the penny.

Electricity is up 25% since Green Energy Joe got elected and isn't coming down, but that can't account for it since I consume far less electricity than natural gas on an average basis. More than 65% of my energy consumption in kWh is from natural gas in the last year, as it is every year, less than 35% is from electricity.

A 25% increase to 35% of my old bill would result in a total payment today less than 9% higher. Instead it's 42% higher.

Remember that the utility uses natural gas to generate the electricity, too, and it's paying normal prices today for the gas, not the inflated prices of the recent past.

There's no excuse for the extra cost I'm paying.

The utility is price gouging.

 

 

 

Gasoline price gouging in the wake of the attack on the Saudis: As if the pump nozzle here is directly connected to the tank there