Jim Hightower's Lowdown
Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown
Isn’t It Odd That Public Officials Support Corporate Price Gouging?
23
10
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Isn’t It Odd That Public Officials Support Corporate Price Gouging?

23
10
“Billionaire Tears” mug available in Elizabeth Warren’s campaign store.

Corporate lobbyists and politicians recently jumped all over Kamala Harris for her proposal to outlaw price gouging by food giants and grocery chains.

The partisans piled on Harris, sputtering like old Joe McCarthy that she was pushing “Soviet-style” government price-setting. Of course, these latter-day McCarthyites were either lying, ignorant, or both. Far from promoting price-setting, Harris was blasting price gouging. Big difference.

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The ugly truth is that most public officials have quietly been pro-gouging for decades. By refusing to enforce anti-trust laws, they’ve helped conglomerated food giants steadily amass monopoly power over the production, processing, and marketing of food in nearly every American community. Big brand names then use that brute force to crush independent competitors, cheat customers, and consolidate even more power for themselves.

That is illegal. We have national laws, like the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act, that prohibit corporations from rigging the rules to control markets and rip off consumers. But, since unlimited corporate campaign donations have flooded into our elections, monopolists have essentially bought off officials in both parties who now ignore antitrust law, rebranding such market thuggery as “free enterprise” efficiency.

Thus, local and state governments routinely hand out millions of our tax dollars to subsidize big name supermarket chains, meatpacking factories, dollar stores, and other giants – all in the name of “consumers” and “competition.” No one mentions that these public giveaways provide the monopolistic market clout that allows the national outfits to clobber independent businesses, shrivel local competition and – voilà – gouge consumers.

This is Jim Hightower saying… So, Harris is right to call out grocery gouging and to push stronger actions to stop it, but action number one is to enforce the anti-monopoly laws already on the books.

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Jim Hightower's Lowdown
Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown
Author, agitator and activist Jim Hightower spreads the good word of true populism, under the simple notion that "everybody does better, when everybody does better."