Steve Hayward of Power Line follows the writing of a financial analyst Robert Stirling. Stirling writes what well might ensue if Kamala Harris' food price controls are enacted and enforced.
Hayward has posted what Stirling predicts, it's bad and it feels real. Its 13 steps are too long to post here, each is a paragraph. I've given you the edited topic sentence of each step.
1. The government announces that grocery retailers aren’t allowed to raise prices.
2. Grocery stores (snip) can’t survive if their suppliers raise prices. So the government announces that food producers (snip) also aren’t allowed to raise prices..
3. Because stores in lower-income areas aren’t able to cover overhead (snip), grocery chains start to shut them down.
4. Meanwhile, margins for food producers are also quickly eroding.
5. Grocery chains, which have finite shelf space, start to repurpose their stores (snip) to sell more non-price-controlled items. (I noted this yesterday)
6. Food producers stop making products with lower margins. Grocery chains start competing with each other to secure inventory.
7. Small grocery chains start to shut down entirely, or get sold to larger chains like Kroger.
8. Smaller food producers—which typically sell via distributors, rather than directly to grocery chains—start to go out of business.
9. As supply chains break down, lines start to form outside grocery stores every morning.
10. The federal government announces a program to issue block grants for states to purchase and operate shuttered grocery stores.
11. The government announces that prices for all key food costs—corn, wheat, cattle, energy, etc.—are also now fixed.
12. Shockingly, the government struggles to operate one of the most complex industries on the planet.
13. Communism, mass starvation, and the end of America quickly ensue.
It starts to feel Soviet at about step 9. Events like these are why a substantial fraction of Venezuela's population has moved here as illegal aliens. Where in blazes can we go if this occurs? Let's not find out, do you agree?
