Price controls do not reduce inflation

Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that if elected President of the United States, she would enact a federal ban on food price gouging, leading many people to believe that we can expect price controls in the future.

Harris' supporters will argue that she is not thinking about price controls, but she has not answered questions from the press or her constituents about this, so we can only speculate. Nor does she define what price gouging is, or how she will determine who is guilty of price gouging.

Others wonder why, if the Biden administration believes price gouging is such a widespread problem and that a solution would reduce inflation, it has not done so, even though it has been in control of the government since shortly after Biden took office as president.

Prices for food and other goods initially rose after the pandemic as supply chains were disrupted. But once supply chains returned to normal, Harris and President Biden passed the Inflation Control Act after many economists warned it would lead to inflation, and lo and behold, it did.

Anyone who has ever shopped will tell you that it's not just food that's gotten more expensive. But Harris has chosen to focus on food prices because she thinks it will win her votes. As will the plan to give people money to buy homes. Unfortunately, that does nothing to lower housing prices. Any more than funding students' college will lower the cost of an education. And the Democrats' plan to stop landlords from raising rents will only result in fewer people building apartments and rental properties. Who will build or invest in an apartment building if they have no control over how much rent they can charge?

The problem in agricultural regions is that while farmers and ranchers have no control over the prices they receive for their products, they are likely to bear the brunt in the event of a war between food producers and sellers on the one hand and the government on the other.

In an August 17 article in FeedStuffs, Jonathan Coppess of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said, “Of course, companies are very good at influencing impacts along the supply chain, and so it's possible that farmers, who see little of the price of food, are feeling the impact more. How much more is a difficult question that can't be answered without more details.”

For this reason, groups such as the National Chicken Council and the Meat Institute oppose price controls.

“Chicken prices are largely driven by supply and demand, the cost of key inputs such as corn, soybeans, energy, packaging and transportation, and tax policy and burdensome government regulations. Not price gouging,” Kushner said. “It's time for this administration to stop using the meat and poultry industry as a scapegoat and a distraction from the root causes of inflation and the significant challenges facing our economy,” said Gary Kushner, interim president of the National Chicken Council.

If Harris were smart, she would realize that one easy way to bring prices down is to lower energy prices. Rising energy prices impact every person, business, and industry in the United States.

Although I am not an economist, I am convinced that inflation can be controlled by lowering energy prices.