(Congressional Agenda) – Mark Levin, popular conservative pundit and Fox News contributor, decided that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, needed a lesson in economics, so he shared part of a test given to sixth graders on the topic during his program on Sunday evening. The inspiration for Levin’s lesson came from the unveiling of Harris’s plan to deal with inflation, which includes the implementation of price controls that failed miserably here in the US back in the 1970s. They’ve also been tried in communist nations, causing food shortages and a lack of production of consumer goods.
When has common sense and the testing of such policies in the past ever played a role in swaying the radical left away from big government interference in economics? Never. Because liberals don’t listen to reason, nor do they actually pay attention to science. All that matters is the pursuit of their fabled utopian society and perfection of the human race. Both of which are impossible, especially through legislation and hive mind groupthink, but, again, leftists are delusional, so they won’t accept reality.
You know an economic plan is bad when a liberal Washington Post columnist writes an op-ed slamming it, by saying, “It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food.”
“Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The [Federal Trade Commission] would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk,” the columnist continued.
Economic experts interviewed by ABC News were mostly in agreement with the columnist’s criticisms.
“Former President Donald Trump said Harris is ‘running on the Maduro plan,’ referring to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Trump argued it is ‘like something straight out of Venezuela or the Soviet Union. This announcement is an admission that her economic policies have totally failed and caused really a catastrophe for our country,'” The Western Journal reported.
President Trump EXPOSES Kamala's true plan for the economy: "She's running on the Maduro plan." pic.twitter.com/dfyCFtFeYR
— MAGA War Room (@MAGAIncWarRoom) August 15, 2024
“The new floor for prices created by the Joe Biden-Harris administration policies is about 20 percent higher than when they took office. Harris, as vice president, cast the tie-breaking votes in the Senate for the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in 2021 and the over $1 trillion Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which economists on both sides of the political aisle saw as inflationary, because the legislation created a false a demand using borrowed and printed federal government dollars that overheated the economy,” the piece divulged.
During Levin’s program on Sunday evening, the pundit remarked, “This show is a public service. It’s a public service to educate somebody who is utterly illiterate when it comes to economics. And that would be Vice President Kamala Harris, who seeks to be president of the United States.”
“I’ve taken the liberty of pulling a 6th grade economics test off of the internet,” the host added, “… because clearly she did not get a course in basic economics and hasn’t read a book on it lately, either.”
Levin asked a couple of questions, however, he remained focused on the law of supply and demand. When the demand for something exceeds the available supply, the price goes up. When the supply is greater than the demand, the price goes down. When you mess around with this basic reality, you cause a great deal of havoc.
He went on to read from the test, “What determines the prices of goods in a market economy? a) customs and traditions, b) government agencies, c) supply and demand, d) customers.”
The answer is C.
“Levin then proceeded to show a video put together by the Competitive Enterprise Institute on the manufacturing of a lead pencil. It noted the thousands of people that are needed to create the pencil that is made up of four basic components: cedar wood shaft, graphite lead, rubber eraser, and a metal ferrule that attaches the eraser to the shaft. The raw materials for these components come from all over the world, requiring people to harvest and mine them and others to decide where to purchase them from, based on current market conditions,” the report explained. “They must then be transported thousands of miles to be manufactured into a pencil. Many decisions are made along to way to get to the finished product and into the hands of a consumer.”
Levin, holding up a pencil, declared, “The federal government doesn’t know how to make this pencil.”
“Do you know what Kamala Harris wants to do to this pencil? She wants to break it. You know how you break it? Taxes, regulations, interference, harassment, legal investigations,” he stated, breaking the pencil to make his point.
“You see how complicated it is to make a pencil? Imagine running a health care system … Imagine running the energy system in this country … Or how about our food chain,” Levin told his viewing audience.
The host finished the segment by saying, “Kamala Harris tells you, ‘We’ve got to get prices down. We’ve got to get food costs down.’ I sit here constantly in amazement that the arsonist is telling us how to put out the fire.”
This is why it’s critical that former President Donald Trump takes home the victory in November. Someone who has less than a basic grasp of economics should not be in charge of crafting policy or signing policy into law that has the potential to destroy the financial institutions in our country.
Copyright 2024. CongressionalAgenda.com
Not only are price controls historical failures for thousands of years, but enforcement requires controlling other things. Shortages result in barter. Goods and services exchanged in cashless transactions are considered evasions of income and sales taxes.