What scares me most, however, is that she might actually believe what she said a few years ago about equality of outcomes.
It’s not just that she’s bad on big issues. She also has statist inclinations when looking at smaller issues.
Consider the case of rental housing. In the past, she’s pushed for a proposal to subsidize renters. Now she has a plan to interfere with the pricing strategies of rental companies.
In a column for the Foundation for Economic Education, I wrote about her bizarre proposal. Here are some excerpts.
…when the government creates inflation, politicians foolishly often try to stem its damage through price controls. …The latest iteration of this backward thinking comes from Kamala Harris’s economic platform. After overseeing debilitating inflation as part of the Biden administration, Harris is now advocating for policies that will exacerbate the problem rather than solve it. …Among the most troubling of Harris’s proposals are her calls for a national rent control scheme and the prohibition of pricing algorithms that help landlords set rents based on market conditions. …Harris’s desire to ban the software landlords use to analyze market conditions is another misguided attempt to interfere with basic economic principles. Software isn’t responsible for high rents—it’s only responsible for making market conditions more apparent to everyone. If a landlord attempts to price their units too high, the software suggests a decrease in pricing. That is why Dallas and Phoenix have lower rental prices than in California’s largest cities, even though Dallas and Phoenix have more landlords using algorithms. Algorithmic software’s interest lies in supply and demand curves, not price gouging. Banning these tools will not lower rents; in fact, doing so would create more inefficiency in the rental market, further distorting prices and worsening the housing crisis. Sort of like breaking your thermometer because the weather is too hot or too cold.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that she wants to micro-manage and harass landlords. After all, Harris has a track record of supporting price controls.
Nonetheless, it is disappointing that the Vice President’s knee-jerk response is always to have more and bigger government.
P.S. There are two reasons to criticize politicians. First, when they propose bad ideas (and Harris is definitely in that category), and second, then they oppose good idea. Regarding that latter category, Harris (like Trump) does not want to save America from a future entitlement crisis.
Dan Mitchell is co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and Chairman of the Board. He is an expert in international tax competition and supply-side tax policy.
