Kamala Harris has suggested that, if elected, her administration would “pass the first ever federal ban on price gouging on food.” She has also stated that she would undertake several interventions into the healthcare industry, including a promise to “cap the cost of insulin at $35 for all Americans.”These proposals represent nothing other than the promise to institute price-fixing on groceries and aspects of healthcare. To end so-called “price gouging,” the government would have to fix the top rate permissible to ask for certain goods. All talk of attacking “price gouging” by politicians implies price fixing.The problem with price fixing is that it creates shortages and drives up the prices of other goods. Rather than reducing inflation, price fixing leads to shortages of the goods whose
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