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From: Chris Buckley <alan@sabir.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Three Body Problem
Date: 21 Aug 2024 01:26:09 GMT
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On 2024-08-21, Dimensional Traveler <dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:
> On 8/20/2024 8:05 AM, Chris Buckley wrote:
>> On 2024-08-19, Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 18 Aug 2024 20:00:50 GMT, Chris Buckley <alan@sabir.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2024-08-18, Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> On Sat, 17 Aug 2024 13:42:46 -0500, Lynn McGuire
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Incredibly sad.  And the Democrat candidate here in the USA is talking
>>>>>> freezing food prices and making grocery stores report any changes in
>>>>>> their prices, causing huge paperwork and never ending bureaucracies.
>>>>>
>>>>> The presumed Democratic candidate for President (she won't be the
>>>>> candidate until the convention chooses her) appears to be talking
>>>>> about artificially raising prices and keeping them raised far longer
>>>>> than the economic situation requires. And I don't want to see a quote
>>>>> from 5 years ago on the topic; people's ideas change over time.
>>>>>
>>>>> I suspect you have happened on a Putin/Trump Talking Point and have
>>>>> swallowed it whole. Surely by now you realize that these things are
>>>>> useful only as projections onto the Dems of what Trump (and so the
>>>>> Republicans, as long as they do not disavow him and all his works and
>>>>> all his ways) would like to do. Which is fine in itself -- it's always
>>>>> helpful to know what the other guys are planning.
>>>>
>>>> How about a quote from 4 days ago?
>>>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/
>>>>     In a news release Wednesday, her campaign said the first 100 days
>>>>     of her presidency would include the “first-ever federal ban on
>>>>     price gouging on food and groceries — setting clear rules of the
>>>>     road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit
>>>>     consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and
>>>>     groceries.”
>>>>
>>>> We know so little about Harris's policies; this is not a good first policy!
>>>
>>> The claim was that she proposed "freezing food prices and making
>>> grocery stores report any changes in their prices".
>>>
>>> Your quote simply doesn't back that up in any way.
>>>
>>> But keep on trying. Who can say what Kamala may have said, say, 15
>>> years ago in a private conversation now being outed by someone from
>>> memory with no backup at all. Or some source of similar likely
>>> validity.
>> 
>> Yes, freezing prices is a slight exageration of putting price controls
>> on, but only slight.  The mechanisms for enforcing them are the same: how
>> do you envision them as different?
>> 
>> 
>>> This is actually an /excellent/ first policy -- going directly at the
>>> malefactors.
>> 
>> What malefactors???
>> 
>> However, I would suggest she have someone actually
>>> /study/ the situation to see if the problem she is trying to solve
>>> actually exists -- that is, that the higher grocery prices actually
>>> /are/ price-gouging and not legitimate economic behavior.
>>>
>>> There is no point in solving a problem that does not exist.
>> 
>> I agree with all of this. I would have no objection (other than a
>> mild waste of time and money) if she had proposed an urgent study of grocery
>> prices and whether "price gouging" is happening. But she didn't.
>> 
> Numerous studies have already been done that show price gouging has been 
> going on ever since the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

Please give citations to the studies that prove price gouging has been
done in supermarkets or that it is responsible for inflation of
grocery prices. Lots of accusations, lots of fuzzy thinking and waving
of hands, but nothing that is at all conclusive or even somewhat
convincing. Profits went up very slightly, but that's what happens you
give people hundreds of billions of dollars, directly and indirectly;
they buy more groceries!

Chris