Kamala campaigned on making more price gouging illegal than currently is illegal. Thinking that this will only ever apply to the type of price gauging that was previously illegal ignores how the politics are likely to play out.
This was one of the places where I really disliked her campaigning was doing (even though I preferred her overall). The basic proposal (though they were vague) was to make a federal law that would act similarly to the various existing state laws, but then she campaigned as if it would do something about current grocery prices. Which doesn’t make sense: the grocery price changes really don’t look like they’re covered by any of the state laws, and a law that did cover them would be a huge (and quite bad) change.
Is your model that what’s covered by “price gouging” would end up expanding if a proposal like mine were implemented?
Yes, what’s covered by price gouging would likely expand.
Politicians who want to balance the budget will find it easier to argue to expand the revenue through expanding what’s covered under price gouging than to raise income or sales taxes. Opposition to the proposal would also be harder than to oppose what’s currently covered as evil socialist price setting by the government.
Kamala campaigned on making more price gouging illegal than currently is illegal. Thinking that this will only ever apply to the type of price gauging that was previously illegal ignores how the politics are likely to play out.
This was one of the places where I really disliked her campaigning was doing (even though I preferred her overall). The basic proposal (though they were vague) was to make a federal law that would act similarly to the various existing state laws, but then she campaigned as if it would do something about current grocery prices. Which doesn’t make sense: the grocery price changes really don’t look like they’re covered by any of the state laws, and a law that did cover them would be a huge (and quite bad) change.
Is your model that what’s covered by “price gouging” would end up expanding if a proposal like mine were implemented?
Yes, what’s covered by price gouging would likely expand.
Politicians who want to balance the budget will find it easier to argue to expand the revenue through expanding what’s covered under price gouging than to raise income or sales taxes. Opposition to the proposal would also be harder than to oppose what’s currently covered as evil socialist price setting by the government.
I’d be happy to give you good odds on, conditional on this policy being enacted, it not expanding to comprise more than 0.1% of total US taxation.