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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – The Kamala Harris food price-gouging proposal is one of the dumbest ideas to come down the pike in awhile. It makes the false claim that greedy grocery store owners are keeping their prices high for their own profits. That simply isn’t true, and is being offered to cover-up Biden-Harris policies that caused inflation to spike.
Consider the price of two items, milk and soda.
Costco and Sam’s Club sell a gallon of milk for about $2.50. The mom and pop corner grocery store sells it for $4.50. Are customers at the smaller store being gouged? Of course not. A larger retailer buys in bulk, at a lower price, because they sell hundreds of gallons of milk each day. Sam’s Club, part of the Wal Mart corporation, has its own milk distribution center in many parts of the country. Since they’ve eliminated the middleman, they can offer lower prices to their customers. If a smaller grocery store tried to buy at that volume, the milk would spoil before it left their store.
Kamala proposes the government, not the regular buying and selling within the economy, to set the price. If the government sets milk at $3 a gallon by decree, big box stores raise their prices – costing consumers. And the neighborhood store, which loses money on $3 milk, goes out of business.
Soda? My soft drink of choice is Diet Coke. It costs $2.68 for a two-liter bottle at Wal Mart. It sits on the shelves next to Sam’s Club Diet Soda, at $1. Wal Mart knows that if Diet Coke is priced at $3.50, like it is at a convenience store, they won’t sell any. I already opt for the cheaper store brand if it tastes about the same. Kwik Trip cannot sell $1 soda. Should the Kamala Harris administration order them to lower their prices?
Kamala Harris will never concede that prices went up during the COVID years, because of Biden-created supply chain problems mostly because of unnecessary restrictions on the trucking industry. A trucker, alone in the cab of his rig, had zero chance of spreading COVID to anyone. Yet they were saddled with needless limits on where they could drive and what they could deliver. To create needless slowdowns of food deliveries to grocery stores emptied the shelves and forced prices up.
But with this hairbrained price gouging proposal, she’s hoping you’ve forgotten that.
Chris Conley
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