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Biden Takes Aim at Grocery Chains Over Food Prices
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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Do not respond to my comments again with personal attacks. If you do this again, or respond before fixing this comment, I will unfortunately have to report you to the community moderators.
Until you fix it, your comment is not worth addressing.
Ad hominem aside, TheSanSabaSongbird's basic point, that price controls are an economically illiterate idea, is right. Prices are an economy's way of signalling scarcity, so messing with that signal prevents the underlying problem from being solved. Inflation has to be tackled through monetary and fiscal policy; the alternative approach, micromanaging prices, is how you get to the economy of Argentina.
No, you don't understand. The invisible hand is attached to the wrist of God. Prices are never manipulated and gouging is a good thing.
Products don't become more scarce when fewer competitors exist in the market, but it nevertheless causes prices to rise. Not all price changes are signals for increased production and the market is rarely the ideal frictionless exchange that can respond to rising prices as presented in intro economics books.
That is a big over simplification of how prices work. As another commenter pointed out, lack competition and a high barrier to entry can cause elevated prices even in the absence of scarcity. Price controls are found all over the economy and do not have the effects you allude to.
Price fixing works if you're coming at it from two directions. Set the price for consumers and subsidize the producers. Setting the price for consumers ensures middle men aren't taking absurd and unearned profits. Subsidizing will increase supply sufficiently that the artificially lowered price is not relevant. This ensures black markets don't arise selling those goods at a markup.
Tying inflation to monetary policy is not useful. The primary lever of monetary policy is debt lent by the federal reserve to banks. Cheap debt causes an inflation in the prices of housing, socks, and other investments. It does not have a large effect on the consumption of eggs or milk. There's no reason people's consumption, and thus the supply of groceries, should be impacted by cheap debt.
The initial burst of inflation was caused by supply shocks due our fragile global shipping infrastructure, fuel prices, productivity decrease due to COVID-19, and other related issues. Subsequent inflation was companies raising prices because consumers would know inflation was happening and be less likely to shop around, greedflation in other words.