The Agenda-Setting Press Loves Raining on Parades
A counter-opinion to the Washington Post
WaPo editorial headline:
Opinion The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks.
‘Price gouging’ is not causing inflation. So why is the vice president promising to stamp it out?
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The problem with many journalists writing about economics is they leave out the facts that counter their arguments.
Corporate price gouging, as Harris alleges, is a real thing. And isolating it in the supply chain and rooting it out with legal action to slow it down can help. And that means enforcing vigorously existing anti-trust and consumer laws and working to enact better laws as well, which is something Harris has a background in doing well. That’s what she’s talking about as I see it.
And on Harris’ proposal for housing, which the Post editorial also attempts to dismiss…. The Post analysis fails to recognize that downpayment assistance is available now, though not at the scale Harris’ proposes. And she is also proposing expanding the housing supply by some three million homes, which means a construction jobs boom if we reform our immigration laws to allow for the labor needed, as she also proposes.
