Kamala Harris unveils her economic proposals
I call them “proposals” because they might just be in the realm of empty campaign promises to appeal to the voters she’s now courting. It’s also somewhat humorous in a bleak way to remember that fresh-new-face Harris has actually been in power for nearly four years.
Here’s the gist of her economic plan:
Harris’s plan calls for beefing up the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to provide a $6,000 tax cut to families with newborn children, as Democrats have sought to drive a contrast with Republicans on the issue in recent weeks.
The plan would allow for “$6,000 in total tax relief for middle-income and low-income families” for the first year of their child’s life, according to a campaign fact sheet. …
The plan calls for what it described as the “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries,” though it doesn’t offer much detail as to how the proposal would be carried out.
We covered that last bit yesterday.
More:
The plan additionally calls for “new authority” for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general “to investigate and impose strict new penalties on companies that break the rules.” …
Another plan Harris proposed builds upon a previous proposal from the Biden administration that sought to provide first-generation homebuyers with $25,000 in down-payment assistance, along with a tax credit for first-time homebuyers.
Congressional Democrats had previously sought to pass similar legislation as part of President Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better agenda toward the start of his presidency, although the larger effort fell apart as the party struggled to unify amid concerns from moderates over the size and cost of the plan.
And then there’s her copycat “no tax on tips” proposal, mimicking Trump.
Is Harris serious about any of this? Who knows. She’s the original shape-shifter.
More here.
NOTE: Wonder of wonders, the WaPo published an op-ed yesterday that was critical of Kamala’s price control proposal.
From the page of, making the other guys proposals better.
JD Vance had already floated the idea of a $5,000 child tax credit, so Kamala saw Vance’s idea and raised him $1,000.
Kamala Harris One-Ups JD Vance With $6,000 Child Tax Credit Proposal
https://www.aol.com/kamala-harris-one-ups-jd-170910979.html
Brian E:
How about “Copycat Kamala” for a new nickname?
My comment from the open thread:
Harris was here near my neighborhood today for her economic speech. North Carolina is first in the nation in poultry and egg production and second in pork production, with smaller meat packing plants all over the state. So she came to tell us that Big Meat is the problem with inflation. She said that the supply chain problems from COVID have been “fixed for years” but prices never came down again, and federal intervention is needed.
She apparently has no idea how much the prices of fuel, fertilizer, and feed have increased under her administration. And if supply chain problems are all fixed I’d be interested to know her explanation for the persistent shelf shortages at local supermarkets. She is an economic illiterate.
OK, so let’s see:
1. Something tells me the child tax credit will function something like the EITC: it’s money given to people who don’t actually pay taxes. In that case, no thanks.
2. “Federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries.” Who decides what “gouging” is? Will this be applied only at national chains like Kroger and Albertsons, or will it affect boutique stores like Gelson’s that have higher prices because their clientele demands higher end fare?
3. And of course price caps lead to distortions in the marketplace, like artificially created shortages, black markets, and so on.
4. “Penalties on companies that break the rules.” And those penalties (read: fines) will end up getting into the pockets of unions, NGOs, and other well connected Democrat constituencies.
5. Assistance for first time home buyers? I guess we didn’t learn our lesson from Bush 43’s housing crash when anyone with a pulse could get a home loan, but hey, let’s try again.
6. Oh, and “first generation homebuyers.” How do you say “illegal immigrants and their offspring” without saying “illegal immigrants and their offspring”?
First price controls then wage controls and finally forced labor.
Stupid is as stupid does…
She even mispronounced this stupid scheme price gaging but this is dangerous
lunacy
She seems to believe in mmt which is the only dark magic behind this exercise in delusion
The subsidies will bid up the price of homes, of course it does little for the installment payments which they will have to pay which occasions how we got into the subprims hustle in the first place
Giving a lot of people $25K to buy a house is going to raise the price of houses by something in the neighborhood of $25 K. That’s Econ 101….
“Penalties on companies that break the rules.”
That is a direct threat to Musk. They won’t say what the rules are, but Musk broke them.
Housing prices haven’t gotten out of reach by young people just because of inflation.
Scarcity (they aren’t making any more land, and land prices have risen over the years).
Government regulations is also a big reason houses are more expensive. Yes they are less likely to catch fire, better insulated, and tighter allowing less infiltration, but that all costs money.
Some of that is necessary and houses are safer and more energy efficient, but some of it his just building/electrical/plumbing code creep.
When I was in college, I spent several weekends with a fraternity brothers family. They had a 700 square foot house. That’s part of the housing price inflation. They could send their son to a private university ( USC ) and buy him car.
Michael K, there certainly is sq ft inflation.
I grew up in a 1,000 sq ft house
My kids grew up in an 1,800 sq ft house
My grandkids are growing up in 3,000 and 4,000 sq ft houses.
@Brian E, Michael K: Housing price per square foot has hardly changed after correcting for inflation. People do expect bigger houses now for the same number of people. Not to mention more bathrooms.
A median priced new house is 70% more expensive, in real dollars, than in 1973 and is also 62% larger than its 1973 equivalent. And family sizes have got smaller too.
Neo, how about:
KopyKat Kamala
KooKoo Kamala
Kreepy Kamala
etc. 🙂
The housing problem is a classic example of not enough supply. Thirty years ago, I built a home. It took me three weeks and about $300 to get the permits and begin building. Today, it’s more like two years and $35,000.
Developers have to do more long-range planning and financing to get a project off the ground. Knowing what interest rates and the market will be like in two years is a problem. Yet, builders are building over one million new homes this year – even with interest rates at 6%.
Smaller homes in the Puget Sound are selling for $400-$450 per square foot. A 1200 square foot starter home will sell for $500,000 and more depending on location. On the other hand, a 3000 square foot home will only bring $275 – $350 a square foot. IMO, that shows that there’s a shortage of smaller homes. Yet, no builders that I know of are planning to build 1200 – 1700 sq. ft. homes.
There are a few condos with smaller sq. footages but they’re also getting a bigger price per sq, foot.
It’s a strange market and one that may do some crazy things if the demand for houses can’t be met.
Handouts to buyers will not solve the problem. Incentives to builders to build more starter homes might help. Modular homes put on foundations might reduce costs. It’s definitely a problem that needs to be solved. Home ownership is the bedrock of the middle class.
Thirty years ago, I built a home. It took me three weeks and about $300 to get the permits and begin building. Today, it’s more like two years and $35,000.
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Which is to say that regulators in Washington state are unduly constricting supply. You don’t need to subsidize housing (or groceries, or utility bills, or any other sort of mundane expenditure sensitive to considerations of taste and amenity). You do benefit from taking a machete to regulatory thickets and amending tax regimes.
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And, of course, wildly excessive immigration injuries the housing market. This is now a severe problem in Canada.
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Home ownership is the bedrock of the middle class.
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What does that mean?
Population growth has consumed all the easy to build on properties. Hard to build on costs more. Any vacant land around here in western Washington has issues. My house is on 99 pin piles that are around 40-45 feet deep. IIRC, the engineering was done by CH2M Hill.
My next door neighbor had to do some flooding mitigation and required permits from the county, the Army Corps of Engineers, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the three tribes covered by the Point-No-Point Treaty Council and one other agency that I can’t remember. $$$
Population growth has consumed all the easy to build on properties.
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I’ve been told the west coast has some issues the rest of the country does not. Please note, though, that coast-to-coast you could (at an ordinary suburban density) put the entire non-agriculture population on < 5% of the land area. Population per se is not the issue.
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Apart from that, it's fairly common in metropolitan areas to have regulatory impediments to increasing density on a particular plot of land. Subdividing a lot and putting in a second dwelling, adding a guest cottage, taking a boarder, cutting up an extant residence into apartments, replacing a single-family home with a three-story apartment building, &c. All challenging if not verboten.
The Dems don’t need to worry about the Harris platform being leaked to the electorate. Remember how the Clinton staffers removed the W keys from all the White House typewriters?
Well when the NPR newsroom went to put together a piece on the Harris economic policy Friday announcement, they found their copy of MS Word was missing the words “Price” and “Controls”! Can’t find ’em anywhere!
Public television and public radio have been biased for nearly 50 years, but they used to acknowledge alternative viewpoints. Wm F. Buckley had an occasional series on public television for > 30 years and discussion programs like Agronsky & Company and The McLaughlin Group had starboard opinion offered (James Jackson Kilpatrick, Robert Novak). Robert MacNeill and Jim Lehrer were fairly professional. Now, the only characters you see on public television are poseurs like David Brooks and Margaret Hoover.
@Chases Eagles:Population growth has consumed all the easy to build on properties. Hard to build on costs more. Any vacant land around here in western Washington has issues.
Been to Eastern Washington lately? Lots of easy to build on land is being built on. The Tri-Cities has more than doubled in population since 2000 and has been growing about 3.5% per year since 2020, currently over 300K.
Huge parts of this country are not being used and have easy to build on land. A lot of people don’t have to commute anymore and can live as far from their jobs as they like.
Western Washington uses zoning laws to make it much harder to build new housing; while as you say a lot of the easily buildable land is used, it’s not dense housing. Seattle has 69% of its area zoned for single-family housing, compared with Los Angeles at 57% and San Francisco’s at 49%. If the bigger cities in Western Washington zoned denser that would free up more housing in Western Washington, but they don’t wanna.
Yes people in neighborhoods zone single family want to keep it that way. Big effing surprise. Wyoming is empty. Why don’t more people want to live there? It is a mystery.
Yes people in neighborhoods zone single family want to keep it that way.
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Why ‘neighborhoods’ and not ‘blocks’? You debar commercial strips from whole neighborhoods, you get suburban mall mess.
“Yes people in neighborhoods zone single family want to keep it that way.”
Unless you live in Connecticut, and I imagine other blue states. There, the state passed a couple of laws in the name of equity, where such neighborhoods are now required to also have a certain percentage of “equitable housing”; ie high density, low income housing. Have to break into those racist middle to high income communities. The state also passed a “mansion tax” where the state imposes a property tax on “mansions” to help build those “equitable housing”. The state defined a “mansion” as a home valued over $350k !
Interesting, as I keep in touch with the FB page from our former town which is very rural’ more cows and chickens than people. Lately the people there keep expressing shock at their town property taxes going up by 30%, electric rates doubling, and the impact of the above laws destroying the nature of the town. Yet, they keep voting democrat. So glad I’m gone.
Unless you live in Connecticut, and I imagine other blue states. There, the state passed a couple of laws in the name of equity, where such neighborhoods are now required to also have a certain percentage of “equitable housing”; ie high density, low income housing.
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Why not require people to respect the streetscape and height limits, to undertake steps to protect the neighbors from noise, eyesores, and excess loads on public works, and then let them develop their residential lot per their preferences? Group homes, halfway houses, party houses, drug dens, and hot bunking are properly restricted, sanctioned, or debarred. Small apartment buildings should not be.
@Chases Eagles:Yes people in neighborhoods zone single family want to keep it that way. Big effing surprise.
At least you admit that it’s because people are using government to keep new people out. It’s not actually that there’s no more buildable land.
Wyoming is empty. Why don’t more people want to live there?
You don’t have to go so far as Wyoming, Eastern Washington is just a couple hours away, and people ARE going there. People are moving to Texas and other parts of the South too. My next door neighbor sold their 3-bedroom for about 3/4 of a million and moved to Texas where they bought twice as much house with money left over.
‘Home ownership is the bedrock of the middle class.
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What does that mean?’ – Art D.
For most people in the middle class, a home is their major financial anchor and provides them with a stability that renters don’t have. Yes, reenters can be middle class, but owning a home is the base upon which family legacies are built.
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“Which is to say that regulators in Washington state are unduly constricting supply.” – Art D.
I thought my example illustrated how regulation has slowed the building process. But maybe I should have spelled it out for the obtuse.
Most of the regulation here in WA is based on protecting the salmon runs. Which is a joke. For 30years they have been doing more and more drastic regulation to protect the salmon, and it hasn’t worked. (The definition of insanity). What will protect the salmon is getting the tribes to take less fish. Can’t do that – the Boldt decision in 1974 made it legal for the tribes to take all the salmon they want. And they have. And the salmon are now endangered.
The other regulation that has been anti-housing was the Growth Management Act of 1994. The main thrust has been to get people out of their cars and onto public transportation. A madman’s dream considering the geography of WA., and the existing infrastructure.
What will protect the salmon is getting the tribes to take less fish.
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Specifically, setting a global quota via environmental science and then sorting it into three subsets: a commercial quota distributed via multiple-price auction, a sport quota distributed via multiple price auction, and a sport quota distributed via lottery. You need to police poaching harshly.
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Not sure how restricting the construction of dwellings is supposed to properly allocate a common property resource.
The main thrust has been to get people out of their cars and onto public transportation.
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Again, restricting building will not do that. Promoting via land use planning the juxtaposition of residential streets with commercial boulevards (each equipped with sidewalks) would assist in that endeavour. Another thing which would promote that would be financing the maintenance of limited-access highways with tolls and financing the maintenance and amortization of the regular road network with motor fuel excises and vehicle registration fees (and, coincidentally, reducing property and sales taxes accordingly). If we’d been sensible, this would have been done 50 years ago. People tend to resent it when costs formerly opaque are made explicit. (Another thing you might have done to promote mass transit is replace buses with light rail. Fat chance of that).
One other thing. ‘Affordable housing’ is commonly ‘awardable housing’, and will be occupied by people who have connections to local Democratic pols.
I think she’s the least prepared candidate to be president that we’ve had since the beginning of 1900. I wouldn’t trust her to run a small bodega.
In Washington state (especially on the west side) protection of watersheds and potential salmon spawning areas has been used to restrict and regulate land use; be it forestry, farming, or framing (building new houses). It’s how regulators work and live.
Cause and effect.
I spent 15 years of work life protecting salmon spawning areas on the Columbia River from hexavalent chromium; called Grant County PUD every morning “What is the discharge plan for Priest Rapids dam today?” I then planned my work for the day on the shoreline accordingly.
we have a trust fund for roads and bridges, but it has already been spent the two rounds of stimulus spending in 2009 and 2021, were disastrous and didn’t actually build any bridges that we can see,
it’s a deconstruction dismantling agenda,
“Affordable housing” got us into the 2008 bubble. Harris’s policy is different and the effects would be different, but her approach could be every bit as disastrous. Politicians ought to bear history in mind and avoid repeating the same old slogans.
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Kamala says we an afford her economic policies because they are “investments” in the country that will make us richer. That idea sounded impressive to me when I heard Milton Shapp say it in the 1970s, but we’ve all grown older since then and should recognize that as more false and empty campaign rhetoric.
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The problem with shifting the tax burden is that the new and higher taxes are passed and the old taxes on other things don’t go away and aren’t decreased. The public employees’ unions that support the Democrats guarantee that local and state taxes won’t go down.
The problem with shifting the tax burden is that the new and higher taxes are passed and the old taxes on other things don’t go away and aren’t decreased.
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We cannot amend the tax code at all. Thanks for your wisdom.
Harris ignored the question– “how are you going to pay for your proposals” and reverted to the standard liberal line that ‘it’s an investment that will pay off’ at some future time.
As Abraxas points out, this will just lead to another financial crisis. It’s a laudable goal, home ownership, but we want to avoid the time and sacrifice home ownership requires.
We thought we had new tools to spread the risk sufficiently to absorb the risk through credit default swaps and mortgage backed securities, but the real needle that burst the bubble was greed. This is speculation on my part, haven’t done sufficient research, but people started believing the increased values would make the payments; people pulled equity out as fast as it appeared; people bought houses that the increased value would give them the ability to meet the obligations.
CDS turned into a betting tool, MBS took on more risk than thought by the credit agencies gaming the system.
People can still own houses– they just need to lower expectations. First homes won’t be mansions and sweat equity is still a good and valuable aid.
because the premise was wrong, Roger Ferguson a young economist at the Boston Fed, came up with the notion, that systemic discrimination, was behind the lack of housing, so we come up with redline, and create a whole infrastructure of subprime driven by government diktat, the CRA revisions played a large part of it, through various vehicles and community agitating, who was the expert in this,
banks were encouraged to lend to those who were less likely to be able to affords the houses, Ferguson ended up at one of the Feds San Francisco, and I think now runs a hedge fund
see why I say the incentives for good policy are almost entirely backwards, and folly is almost mandatory in these cases,
Gretchen Morgenstern was the sherpa on these matters, but because she doesn’t have a glib answer like the players in the big short, mostly composite characters except for Dr
Michael Bury, she doesn’t get the attention,
instead those who deemed subprime a solid bet, like Jim Cramer or Joe Stiglitz get to tell the tale,
Deco
You appear to have a sense that your plans aren’t going to be adopted. You just don’t like anyone else saying it.