Kamala Harris’ “price gouging” claims serve as further proof (add it to a long list) that she simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about. In a recent interview with Fox Business, grocery chain CEO Stew Leonard Jr., who runs the “Stew Leonard’s” chain, told us why Kamala Harris is full of you-know-what.
“I haven’t met anybody price gouging.” Stew Leonard Jr. told FOX Business‘ Elizabeth MacDonald during an interview on “The Evening Edit.
However, he noted the farmers and ranchers he has met have adjusted their prices to reflect the rise in costs.
“Our farmers and our ranchers have been reflecting their price increases that they’ve had, which has elevated food prices over the last two, three years now,” he noted.
“We’re seeing increases, you know, like everybody who has a house or a condo or an apartment, you’re seeing costs go up on fuel and energy or gas used to be around 2 or 3 bucks a gallon, it’s a little higher than that now,” he continued.
That last part – “it’s a little higher than that now” – is probably something of an understatement. But his primary point, that nothing Kamala Harris has to say about “price gouging,” is accurate – there he’s spot on.
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Here’s what Kamala Harris’ campaign has to say about all this:
The Harris campaign released a document last week saying that if she’s elected, her administration would work with Congress to “advance the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries; set clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive profits on food and groceries.”
Now, I’d be interested in knowing where in the Constitution I might find the enumerated power of the federal government to control prices on food and groceries, but I think we all know that the Harris people don’t know or care about the Constitution.
In reality – a concept with which Kamala Harris appears to not have even a nodding acquaintance – grocery stores operate on narrow margins of profit. When costs go up, and the rising price of fuel in and of itself is enough to raise commodity prices, then grocery chain prices must go up as well. The other option is to have no more grocery stores. Even if we set aside profit, the end purpose of any business, any grocery store, or indeed any business of any kind, is to, at a minimum, cover costs. Buildings must be maintained, fixed costs from insurance to business licenses have to be covered, utilities must be paid for, and oh, yes, employees have to be paid. Laws against “price gouging” can prevent the necessary response to increasing costs – and the only way to enforce such laws would be an entirely new bureaucracy to monitor grocery store chains, presumably to monitor their bookkeeping. A whole new army of apparatchiks, in other words, to regulate grocery pricing – what could possibly go wrong?
Markets are messy things. They aren’t perfect. But if left alone, they generally get things right in the end.
Watch the complete Fox Business interview:
