No Private Sector Experience and It Shows

On the day word comes that Javier Milei, the libertarian economist turned President of Argentina, fixed that nation’s housing crisis by ending rent control, Kamala Harris proposed government command-control policies to fix price gouging.

Milei, by ending rent control and restrictions on evictions, incentivized landlords to add new housing to the market in Argentina that they had refused to rent because, among other things, once rented the government set rental rates and restricted evictions on those who did not pay.

Not only did more housing get added to the system, but rental costs have gone down with the government subsides out of the picture.

Kamala Harris wants the government to impose price controls, which has historically led to shortages and bread lines across communist countries.

On top of that, Harris now wants the government to provide $25,000 for a first time homeowner’s down payment.

The down payment is only one issue. Interest rates and supply are other issues complicating the picture. But if the government provides a subsidy, basic economics would tell us the price of a new home will go up by $25,000 as the seller captures the subsidy and the value.

No, it is not price gouging when every home increases by that much in an uncoordinated fashion. It is basic economics.

The problem here is that neither Harris nor Walz have any private sector experience in their professional career. They do not know how the real world works. They have lived dependent on tax dollars their entire professional lives. It shows. Those policies would be economically ruinous.

This just opens another avenue for Trump, who has apparently found his messaging now, pointing out Harris’s Day One was 3.5 years ago and she’s embracing the policies of Maduro in Venezuela. More of this, please.

Side note: notice price gouging wasn’t an issue until Kamala Harris cast the tie vote to pass the Biden-Harris stimulus plan that provoked inflation.