If you ask a liberal politician who their favorite economist is, there are three likely responses. One response is a panicked change of topic. From the slightly more sophisticated politicians who skim the New York Times, you might hear Paul Krugman. From the politicians who style themselves intellectuals of the left, you’d hear Thomas Piketty.
On Super Bowl Sunday, President Biden took to X (formerly Twitter) to skewer consumer brands for “shrinkflation,” a phenomenon where product vendors reduce package sizes without proportionally reducing price, in what essentially amounts to a per unit cost increase for consumers. The video explicitly calls out popular snack brands such as Breyers, Gatorade, and Tostitos— all food products that are likely on the top of consumers’ minds when thinking of inflation.
Elizabeth Warren and others are running around blaming inflation on greedy corporations’ “price gouging.” Of course, this narrative falls apart when you realize producer prices are rising faster than consumer prices. If anything, producers are letting consumers gouge them by not passing on all of their rising costs.
With the “transitory” inflation narrative dead and buried, the powers that be have shifted to a new tactic to deflect their responsibility for rising prices – blame somebody else.
Elizabeth Warren recently claimed that rising prices were due to “price gouging” by “greedy” corporations. But the evidence says otherwise. In fact, producer prices have risen faster than consumer prices. That means businesses have only passed on some of their higher costs to consumers. If anything these “greedy” corporations have allowed consumers to gouge them.
According to Elizabeth Warren, we have a problem. And like every good central planner, she believes she can fix it.
In fact, Warren has made, “I have a plan for that,” a campaign slogan.
These people never learn. They try to micromanage the economy, create all kinds of unseen consequences, blame “capitalism,” and repeat the process.
