Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist turned liberal political pundit, praised Vice President Kamala Harris' new economic platform in a column for The New York Times Monday — and tore down former President Donald Trump's efforts to paint it as radical.
He was reacting to Harris unveiling a sweeping plan intended to lower costs for American families — and after Trump responded by calling her a "communist" and giving his own rambling speech attacking Harris' policies that left even Fox News commentators exasperated.
"For one thing, Harris actually outlined her economic proposals, rather than veering off onto topics like who has the biggest crowds and how windmills are killing birds," said Krugman. As for substance, however, "The usual suspects are claiming that Harris revealed herself to be an extreme leftist. Even some middle-of-the-road economic commentators have been hyperventilating, saying that she’s essentially calling for price controls, which is odd, because she didn’t say anything like that.
"All in all, Harris staked out a moderately center-left position, not too different from President Biden’s original Build Back Better agenda, which he was able to implement only in part because in an evenly divided Senate, Joe Manchin had an effective veto."
Among Harris' proposals, he wrote, are an expanded child tax credit to ease poverty in families with children, an ambitious (if difficult to enact) policy on building more housing, and a federal law that prohibits price gouging on groceries — which is not, he stressed, "price controls" as many of her critics have called it, but a policy similar to many anti-gouging laws already on the books in several states.
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"Why do we have laws against price gouging?" Krugman wrote. "Mainly because voters hate it when businesses take advantage of shortages to charge very high prices, but also because when there aren’t effective price limits, businesses sometimes act to make shortages worse — some of us still remember the California energy crisis circa 2001, when power producers reduced supply to drive up electricity prices."
The bottom line, he concluded, is that Harris' economic vision is, "as expected, moderately center-left. And for those determined to view her as a communist — sorry, she isn’t."
