by Seton Motley
We very recently noted that government fails to grasp some very rudimentary things.
Like: Stuff costs money.
Like: Price controls are exceedingly stupid.
The way a functioning economy works is: People provide goods and services – and trade them for money.
Production of goods – and provision of services – costs the producers and providers money. The idea is: To sell them for more than they cost you. In order to continue your existence – and make it worth your while.
Except the federal government remains steadfastly impervious to these realities.
The federal government spent the last three-plus years mass-printing money. Which – shocker – created massive inflation.
We’re now in Phase II of that stupidity: The Feds blame the private sector – for what they just did to it.
The Feds inflate the currency – then blame the private sector for increasing prices to reflect the inflated currency.
And then come the idiotic government price controls. Which ignore glaringly obvious facts like: Stuff costs money.
Vice President Kamala Harris – Madame Inflation herself – is running for a promotion. By, in part, screeching at grocery stores about “price gouging.”
Food prices have increased by 20% on her watch – because money was mass-inflated on her watch.
Oh: And grocery stores have a profit margin of between 1% and 3%. So Harris picked perhaps the worst of all bogus boogyman to disingenuously attack.
But wait – it gets dumber: “Vice President Kamala Harris said she has a solution: a federal ban on price gouging across the food industry.”
Except an industry with 1%-3% profits? Will no longer exist – with ANY price controls imposed. Because duh.
But who needs food, really?
This price control idiocy – is not just for Harris campaign purposes. It is already rampant in the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris mis-Administration.
The exceedingly awful Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – is looking at imposing price controls on the Internet.
And then there’s the exceedingly awful Federal Reserve. Which is now looking at imposing price controls on debit card fee rates.
Except: Stuff costs money. If The Fed imposes mandated caps on debit card prices? Banks will have to either increase the prices of other services – or lose money.
And that’s even more terrible news for small banks. Because small banks can’t afford over-regulation the way Big Banks can.
The exceedingly awful 2010 Dodd-Frank bank law has thoroughly demonstrated that.
Dodd-Frank has spent the last decade-plus mass-over-regulating the banking sector. And in the process – murdering thousands of small banks.
Which has been great for the Big Banks. Their small bank competitors die – and they buy up the carcasses for pennies on the inflated dollar.
But thousands of small banks dying – is awful for average Americans. Less banking options – means less banking opportunities.
As their competitors ate murdered, the Big Banks can afford to be more and more choosy about with whom they do business. And average Americans – are the first ones thrown overboard.
The Fed’s debit card price control imposition – would be the latest step in a long government march to de-banking average Americans.
The Fed claims its alleged authority to impose its price controls – is derived from Dodd-Frank.
Except Dodd-Frank doesn’t expressly empower the Fed to impose its price controls. And in our post-“Chevron” world? The government’s power must be expressly granted by law – not simply grabbed at will by government.
What’s Chevron? Glad you asked.
“Chevron” refers to an exceedingly awful 1984 Supreme Court ruling – Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council.
Which bizarrely gave the federal government’s millions of unelected bureaucrats the ability to set their own power limits – totally unconstrained by actual law.
Shocker – no bureacrat ever found any limit to his/her power.
This past June, the Court reversed its 40-year-old idiotic ruling – and restored some semblance of law to our order.
Which means the law has to expressly empower the bureaucracy – for the bureaucracy to wield the power.
The Fed has cited Dodd-Frank as the font for its debit card price control authority. Except Dodd-Frank grants no such authority. So The Fed does not have the authority.
Which is a good thing – for at least two reasons.
It should constrain The Fed. And constrained bureaucracies are always a good thing.
And it should constrain The Fed – from imposing really stupid price controls.
And not imposing price controls – is always a good thing.
Every time I read about “price gouging”, I am reminded of Jimmy Carter’s “Windfall Profits Tax”. Born with lots of noise, but it produced almost no revenue.
I’m sure there is gouging out there, but the price of policing it will probably be more than the actual savings.
The last figures that I saw showed that oil companies earn about 17 cents on each gallon of gasoline that they sell.
The government, in all it’s levels, gets over 70 cents in taxes on each gallon.
Who’s gouging us, again?
The food production and distribution systems in the US survive on a ~3% profit margin.
kamala is barking up the wrong tree when she accuses businesses in the food chain of “gouging.”
Her “green energy” is more responsible for higher prices than food profits.
What a waste wind, solar and EV cars are.