Monopoly Round-Up: Price Gouging vs Price Fixing vs Price Controls

Harris is doing an absolutely phenomenal job on policy.

Kamala Harris proposed a slew of proposals arguing that pricing in America has gone haywire. Economists got mad. Trump called her a Communist. What does it all mean?

MATT STOLLER
AUG 19, 2024

Today’s monopoly round-up for paid subscribers has a ton of great stuff, from a new judge blocking a sports streaming monopoly to a coming formal government request to break-up Google. But the biggest story, and one I’ll spend some time on, is the first slug of Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic plan, the goal of which is to bring down the cost of living, especially with regards to purchasing a home, paying rent, and buying food.

The big news here is that Harris blamed big business monopolists for inflation, and proposed antitrust policies - price fixing and price gouging rules - to bring it down. The media coverage of Harris’s plans was kind of insane, with economists upset and editorial boards dutifully agreeing with their betters. So what exactly did Harris propose? And why were economists so hostile? That’s what I'm going to answer.

SNIP
The most important thing Harris is doing, therefore, is to just say that pricing rules will be a key priority for her administration. That, more than anything, is what matters. She’s already part of an administration that has live antitrust suits or investigations on rent, meat, supermarkets, Ticketmaster, gaming, oil, pharmaceuticals, et al, and one that has brought down the price of inhalers, epipen’s, insulin, and airline tickets, as well as radically cut junk fees on credit cards and bank overdraft charges, and mostly ended hospital surprise billing practices.

Still, she’s promising specifics beyond what Biden has done, putting forward anti-monopoly laws involving pricing on housing, food, and medicine, while deemphasizing big tech. On rent, for instance, Harris says she seeks to block Wall Street from buying up homes, and to end the rent-fixing conspiracy of RealPage and corporate landlords, which has driven up rents.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-price-gouging-vs