Joe Biden is demanding that corporations stop their price gouging and bring prices down to where they were when he took office.
“Any corporation that has not brought their prices back down, even as inflation has come down, even as the supply chains have been rebuilt, it’s time to stop the price-gouging,” Biden said at the launch of a new White House supply chain initiative, “Give the American consumer a break.”
King Canute would have had better luck commanding the tides not to come in.
Biden doesn’t understand that the prices we’re paying for goods and services now are not coming down, probably ever. True, the rate of price increases has slowed. But the underlying cost of almost all things that the American people buy on a weekly or monthly basis, including groceries, auto insurance, rent, and electricity, are way up and have that new level of prices built in.
Think of prices from the 1980s (I do so often and with great lament). One dollar in 1982 had the same purchasing power as $3.12 today. This isn’t because corporations are greedy and gouge the American consumer (not as a general rule). It’s that the price increases from the 1980s and…
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