An Obama-era economist has weighed in on a new policy proposal from Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and said he hopes it never comes to fruition.
Harvard economist Jason Furman said The New York Times criticized her policies as making no sense at all.
“There’s no good here, just some bad.”
The Harris campaign released details of its economic plan on Wednesday, including price controls. At the top of the list was a federal ban on “price gouging” on groceries and food. The Times reported that price controls are popular with battleground state voters and progressives, but most economists oppose them.
Among them is Furman, who said price controls have no positive value.
“This is not a smart policy, and I think the best hope is that we end up with a policy that’s all rhetoric and no substance,” he told The Times. “There’s no upside to it, and there’s more downside to it.”
Furman also explained why rising food prices are not necessarily evidence of price gouging and why price controls can prevent markets from increasing production to counter high prices.
“Egg prices went up last year because there were fewer eggs, so egg production went up,” he said.
The price of eggs Dropped Since the surge last year.
In a press release, Harris argued that consolidation among meat producers has reduced competition and artificially inflated prices, but when The New York Times reached out to her campaign to explain how their policies would alleviate the situation, they did not immediately respond.
The campaign has faced increasing pressure and scrutiny for refusing to take questions from the media.
Others compared his economic policies to those of former President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, when high inflation and unemployment led to his eventual defeat by President Ronald Reagan, ushering in a decade of conservative administrations.
“As vice president, Kamala Harris created the worst inflation in a generation. Now she’s promising to fix the mess she created with price controls? She’s just a far-left socialist from San Francisco.” Responded Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
This isn’t the first time Furman has poured cold water on Democratic economic policy.
In December 2021, he publicly noted that although wages have risen since President Joe Biden took office, inflation has eaten up all of those gains, leaving compensation lower than it was in 2019.
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