Mamdani’s new tenant advocate wants to seize private property
Original: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/01/06/mamdani-weaver-mayor-nyc-housing/
Archive: https://archive.ph/u7MhS
Mamdani’s new tenant advocate wants to seize private property
Socialists keep dreaming of collectivism, as New Yorkers suffer from unserious housing policy.
Editorial board
January 6, 2026
It didn’t take long for the warmth of collectivism to heat up the debate around home ownership in New York City. In one of his first actions as mayor, Zohran Mamdani relaunched the Office to Protect Tenants and appointed Cea Weaver as its director. Weaver, a fellow member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has claimed homeownership is a “weapon of white supremacy” and clamored to “seize private property!”
How Weaver plans to navigate the little problem of constitutionally protected property rights is left unclear. But in the words of the mayor on election night, “there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” It’s sad but unsurprising Weaver has taken a place in Mamdani’s administration, years after she was reportedly passed over for a spot on the City Planning Commission because of opposition on the city council. “Guess it’s easier to name a communist to a position that doesn’t require confirmation,” said New York State Assembly member Kalman Yeger (D).
Mamdani was elected in November to tackle affordability, but his opening moves suggest the housing crisis will worsen under his leadership as he works to expand rent controls and prioritizes socialist platitudes over serious housing policy. A news conference on his first full day in power, when he announced Weaver’s appointment, was held outside 85 Clarkson Avenue: a rent-stabilized apartment building in Brooklyn whose owner, the Pinnacle Group, is currently involved in a bankruptcy case.
Having toured the apartments, Mamdani witnessed for himself the eroding pipes, busted floorboards and poor maintenance – all common consequences of rent controls wherever they are tried. As we have repeatedly warned, capping what landlords can charge tenants, especially below market rate, leads to unlivable accommodations and a broader rise in average rent costs. It does not lead to cheaper, nicer rental options.
Mamdani is also launching “Rental Ripoff” hearings — an opportunity for tenants in the five boroughs to publicly level their grievances against “bad” landlords in the court of public opinion. A far cry from a housing court, these Chavismo-style stunts will do nothing to help New Yorkers struggling to make rent.
Mamdani and Weaver might enjoy fantasizing about a collective utopia without property rights. In reality, renters are going to be left fending for themselves as they navigate ever-dilapidating housing conditions.
Zohran Mamdani: “When I’m Mayor, slumlords will be held accountable for safety and repairs. If they won’t, we’ll put them out of business.” Me: “Actually, when you become mayor, you will also become the biggest slumlord in New York City.”
https://x.com/ZohranKMamdani/status/1910714770249961729
https://x.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1987710215475650811
In the four minute video posted below, the housing conditions at a three bedroom apartment at a public housing project in the Bronx in New York City are absolutely horrible.
There are rats, roaches, and black mold.
There are leaks in every room.
And every time the tenant calls maintenance to ask for repairs, the government employees always make up some bogus excuse for why they can’t fix anything.
And why should the government employees fix anything, when they know they can’t get fired?
And as all of this is going on, the federal government is giving them $30 million per week to make these repairs.
Since they’re not actually making these repairs, what are they really spending that money on?
The video also says that at other apartments in the same building, sometimes there is no heat, sometimes there is no hot water, and sometimes there is even no running water at all.
Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9PJOrDaXk
In Context: Zohran Mamdani’s use of phrase ‘seizing the means of production.’ What’s it mean?
https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jul/03/seizing-means-production-Zohran-Mamdani/
In Context: Zohran Mamdani’s use of phrase ‘seizing the means of production.’ What’s it mean?
By Amy Sherman
July 3, 2025
A phrase Zohran Mamdani used in 2021 made the rounds in media reports and social media after the 33-year-old won the Democratic primary in the New York City mayoral race.
A self-described democratic socialist, Mamdani used the phrase “seizing the means of production” during a live streamed conference of the Young Democratic Socialists of America in February 2021.
A White House spokesperson highlighted Mamdani’s use of the phrase in an email to PolitiFact July 1, days after we published our June 26 fact-check of President Donald Trump who called Mamdani “communist” in a Truth Social post. The White House didn’t send us evidence to support Trump’s statement before our fact-check was posted; multiple political scientists and communism experts told us Mamdani’s mayoral race positions did not amount to communism. We rated Trump’s statement False.
The spokesperson sent us a June 30 New York Post article highlighting Mamdani’s 2021 remarks as a newly elected state assemblyman and a 2020 Mamdani tweet praising a young leader. (We won’t dwell on the latter post because Mamdani’s point isn’t clear.) Fox News, Mediate and CNN pundits flagged his resurfaced remarks.
After reviewing the tape and re-interviewing experts, we decided not to change our False rating. Mamdani’s views in the mayoral race do not reflect communism, and experts found his 2021 remark too brief to reach detailed conclusions.
Mamdani, a foreclosure housing prevention counselor, won the state assembly race in 2020. A significant part of his 2020 platform was calling for the right of tenants to renew their lease and protections against rent hikes. In his 2025 mayoral platform, Mamdani calls for free buses and child care, more affordable housing and a handful of city-owned grocery stores. He faces a general election in November.
A Mamdani campaign spokesperson, Andrew Epstein, said, “There is nothing in his platform or in his record regarding seizing the means of production.” On NBC’s Meet the Press, Mamdani said that he is not a communist and is fighting for working people and against income inequality.
We wanted to share with our readers what experts had to say about Mamdani talking about “seizing the means of production.” What Mamdani said in 2021
About a month after taking office in 2021, Mamdani spoke to a Young Democratic Socialists of America virtual conference.
Throughout his roughly 40-minute remarks, Mamdani praised democratic socialism. The relevant portion of the clip starts around minute 10, when he spoke about acting on an agenda based on conviction of beliefs, whether they are popular or not.
“But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel), right, or whether it’s the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.
“And what I want to say is that it is critical that the way that we organize, the way that we set up our you know, set up our work and our priorities, that we do not leave any one issue for the other, that we do not meet a moment and only look at what people are ready for, but that we are doing both of these things in tandem, because it is critical for us to both meet people where they’re at and to also organize and organize for what is correct and for what is right and to ensure over time we can bring people to that issue.”
Was that a clear call for communism?
Experts in political parties and movements said Mamdani’s passing remark is associated with communism, but it’s hard to say much more about Mamdani’s views because he did not elaborate.
Ted Henken, a Baruch College sociology and Cuban culture professor, said whether “seizing the means of production” qualified as communist would depend on policy depth. “Many capitalist countries seize control of strategic areas of production or service; oil and minerals is a good example in Mexico and Brazil,” Henken said.
Mamdani also said that there was disagreement over the goal, Henken noted.
“A tweet or soundbite from a few years ago is different from the policies he has outlined in his mayoral platform and nowhere does he advocate ‘seizing the means of production’ there,” Henken said. “His policies rather seek to implement socialist style regulation of key public needs and services in areas like housing, food, education and transportation via higher taxes on the very rich.”
Anna Grzymala-Busse, a Stanford University international studies professor, said that seizing the means of production is a socialist and communist goal. “The difference is that with communism, there is also one ruling party that brooks no opposition and no pluralist civil society,” she said.
Harvey Klehr, an Emory University emeritus professor of politics and history, told us that communists “issued calls to seize the means of production. (Karl) Marx had identified these as the mines, mills and factories that produced the raw materials and goods of industrial civilization.”
Democratic socialists “have long eschewed rhetoric about seizing the means of production,” Klehr said. “In the 20th century it became a defining difference between communists and socialists. When socialist governments came to power in England in 1945 and France in the 1980s, they did not seize the means of production but nationalized some industries and compensated owners.” Later, he said, they walked it back.
As for Mamdani, he said, “there is no way of telling exactly what Mamdani means by using that phrase, but it is redolent of authoritarian communists’ language.”
Geoffrey Kurtz, an associate political science professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, said listening to the video clip and watching Mamdani, “I had the impression that Mamdani intended that phrase as lighthearted hyperbole. I see no reason to assume that the phrase conveys anything precise about what he thinks.”
This video shows the kind of government owned housing that Zohran Mamdani wants to build more of in New York City
In the four minute video posted below, the housing conditions at a three bedroom apartment at a public housing project in the Bronx in New York City are absolutely horrible.
There are rats, roaches, and black mold.
There are leaks in every room.
And every time the tenant calls maintenance to ask for repairs, the government employees always make up some bogus excuse for why they can’t fix anything.
And why should the government employees fix anything, when they know they can’t get fired?
And as all of this is going on, the federal government is giving them $30 million per week to make these repairs.
Since they’re not actually making these repairs, what are they really spending that money on?
The video also says that at other apartments in the same building, sometimes there is no heat, sometimes there is no hot water, and sometimes there is even no running water at all.
Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9PJOrDaXk
I have four questions for Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, and anyone else who believes that billionaires should not exist
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
October 24, 2025
Bernie Sanders said:
“Billionaires should not exist.”
Source:
https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1176481898685710337
Zohran Mamdani said:
“I don’t think that we should have billionaires.”
Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VowT8L8Uu6k
I have four questions for Sanders, Mamdani, and anyone else who believes that billionaires should not exist.
But first, I’d like to present some background information before I ask those four questions.
Aluminum used to be so expensive that it was considered a precious metal. When they built the Washington Monument, they put a 20 pound piece of aluminum at the top. At the time, it was the biggest piece of refined aluminum in the world.
Since then, some greedy capitalists figured out how to make aluminum so cheap that today, people throw aluminum foil into the garbage.
Those greedy capitalists became billionaires because of what they did.
And we are all better off as a result.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall%E2%80%93H%C3%A9roult_process
The same thing is true for the people who created LEGO, Harry Potter, and so many other things. Those people became billionaires. And they did so by making other people better off.
Wikipedia has a list of billionaires per country. I clicked twice on the part where it says “rate,” so it would show the number of billionaires per capita in each country. Here is a screenshot of this that shows which countries have the highest number of billionaires per capita. This is only part of the list. The total number of countries that have billionaires is a lot longer, and you can read the complete list at the link.
The thing that I find most interesting about that screenshot is that it shows that Sweden actually has more billionaires, per capita, than the United States.
If you go to the link and read the entire list, you will see that there are certain countries that are not on the list, because they don’t allow people to become billionaires. North Korea and Cuba are two of these countries.
Regarding the countries that don’t allow people to become billionaires, immigration patterns prove that no one wants to live in those countries. All of the immigration regarding those countries is out of those countries. No one moves into those countries.
Now that I have presented this background information, here are my four questions for Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, and anyone else who believes that billionaires should not exist:
1) Would you rather be a middle class person today, or the richest person in the world 200 years ago?
2) Based on that wikipedia list, would you rather live in a real world country that has lots of billionaires, or in a real world country where it’s impossible for people to become billionaires?
3) Why do you think it’s a bad thing that the creator of Harry Potter became a billionaire?
4) What do you think of the fact that Sweden has more billionaires, per capita, than the U.S.?
Since Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani, and other people believe that billionaires shouldn’t exist, I asked Grok what would happen if the government were to seize Elon Musk’s wealth.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
July 30, 2025
Bernie Sanders said:
“Billionaires should not exist.”
Source:
https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1176481898685710337
Zohran Mamdani said:
“I don’t think that we should have billionaires.”
Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VowT8L8Uu6k
I asked Grok:
Some people, such as Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, say that it’s wrong for anyone to be a billionaire. Twitter has a hashtag called #BillionairesShouldntExist. Some also say that rich people “hoard” their money. What percentage of Musk’s wealth is in the form of shares of stock in the companies that he created? What is the combined total value of his shares of stock in the companies that he created? What would happen to the value of those shares if the government seized them? What would happen to the economy? What effect would if have on the number of jobs that those companies have? What effect would it have on the 401Ks and IRAs of middle class people? Compare and contrast the government seizing all of Musk’s shares to a farmer cutting down all of their fruit trees in order to make firewood. Do the Scandanavian countries allow people to be billionaires? If so, what is the per capita rate of billionaires in those countries compared to the U.S.? Would seizing Musk’s stock be compatible with the policies of the Scandanavian countries? Would seizing Muks’s stock be more associated with democratic socialism, or with communism? What are some countries that don’t allow people to become billionaires?
(end of my question)
This is Grok’s answer:
Let’s dive into your questions with a libertarian lens, emphasizing private property and individual achievement, while addressing each point systematically. I’ll use available data to ground the answers and avoid speculation where possible.
1. What percentage of Elon Musk’s wealth is in the form of shares of stock in the companies he created?
Elon Musk’s wealth is predominantly tied to his ownership stakes in companies he founded or co-founded, particularly Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. As of May 2025, his net worth is estimated at $424.7 billion (Forbes) or $381 billion (Bloomberg Billionaires Index). The majority of this wealth comes from his shares in Tesla and SpaceX, with smaller contributions from xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
Tesla: Musk owns approximately 13% of Tesla’s shares, equating to about 412.6 million shares out of 3.164 billion, valued at roughly $124 billion as of July 2025 (based on a $1 trillion company valuation). In November 2020, around 75% of his wealth was derived from Tesla stock, though this proportion dropped to about 37% by December 2022 after selling nearly $40 billion in shares. As of 2025, Tesla remains a significant but not dominant portion of his wealth due to SpaceX’s rising valuation.
SpaceX: Musk owns an estimated 42% of SpaceX, valued at $350 billion in December 2024, contributing approximately $147 billion to his net worth.
xAI: Musk owns about 54% of xAI, valued at $50 billion in November 2024, adding roughly $27 billion.
Neuralink and The Boring Company: These are smaller contributors. Neuralink is valued at $9 billion, and The Boring Company at $7 billion. Assuming Musk owns significant stakes (e.g., 90% of The Boring Company and a similar portion of Neuralink), these might add roughly $13 billion combined.
Calculation: Estimating conservatively, Musk’s wealth in shares from these companies (Tesla: $124 billion, SpaceX: $147 billion, xAI: $27 billion, Neuralink + Boring: $13 billion) totals approximately $311 billion. Dividing by his Forbes net worth of $424.7 billion, about 73% of his wealth is tied to shares in these companies. The remaining wealth includes other assets (e.g., X, personal loans collateralized by shares) and minor cash holdings, as Musk has described himself as “cash poor.”
2. What is the combined total value of his shares of stock in the companies he created?
As calculated above, the combined value of Musk’s shares in Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company is approximately $311 billion. This figure is based on:
Tesla: $124 billion (13% of $1 trillion).
SpaceX: $147 billion (42% of $350 billion).
xAI: $27 billion (54% of $50 billion).
Neuralink + Boring: ~$13 billion (estimated high ownership stakes).
3. What would happen to the value of those shares if the government seized them?
If the government seized Musk’s shares in Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, the immediate and ripple effects would likely be catastrophic for their value:
Market Reaction: Seizing Musk’s shares would signal a major disruption in these companies’ leadership and vision, as Musk is seen as integral to their innovation and success. For Tesla, a public company, the stock price would likely plummet due to investor panic over losing Musk’s influence. Posts on X suggest that if Musk were to sell his shares voluntarily, Tesla’s value could “implode,” and a government seizure would amplify this effect due to its coercive nature. SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company, being private, would face valuation drops in private share sales, as investor confidence in their future without Musk’s leadership would erode.
Valuation Impact: Tesla’s market cap could drop significantly (e.g., a 35% plunge in 2025 reduced its value by over $400 billion due to unrelated concerns). SpaceX’s $350 billion valuation could similarly collapse if Musk’s 42% stake were seized, as private investors would likely demand steep discounts. The smaller companies (xAI, Neuralink, Boring) would face even greater uncertainty, potentially rendering shares nearly worthless in the short term.
4. What would happen to the economy?
Seizing Musk’s shares would have broad economic consequences:
Stock Market Shock: Tesla’s potential collapse would ripple through the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, where it’s a major component. A sharp drop in Tesla’s $1 trillion valuation would affect index funds, ETFs, and portfolios, causing widespread losses.
Innovation Stagnation: Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI drive advancements in electric vehicles, space exploration, and AI. Government seizure could disrupt operations, delay projects (e.g., Tesla’s Cybertruck, SpaceX’s Starship), and deter future entrepreneurial ventures, slowing economic growth in tech sectors.
Global Competitiveness: The U.S. leads in tech innovation partly due to companies like Musk’s. Seizure would signal hostility to private enterprise, potentially pushing investment and talent overseas, weakening America’s economic edge.
Investor Confidence: Such a move would undermine trust in U.S. markets, as property rights are a cornerstone of capitalism. Foreign and domestic investors might pull back, reducing capital flows and economic activity.
5. What effect would it have on the number of jobs that those companies have?
Musk’s companies employ thousands directly and support hundreds of thousands indirectly through supply chains.
Tesla: Employs over 140,000 people globally (2024 data). A stock collapse could lead to layoffs, factory closures, or reduced expansion (e.g., Gig neutropics at Berlin Gigafactory).
SpaceX: Employs around 13,000 (2023 estimate). Disruption could halt contracts (e.g., $20 billion with NASA), leading to job cuts.
xAI, Neuralink, Boring Company: Smaller workforces but critical to niche innovation. Seizure could stall projects, reducing hiring or causing layoffs.
Total Impact: A conservative estimate suggests tens of thousands of direct jobs at risk, with broader supply chain impacts (e.g., battery, aerospace, construction) affecting hundreds of thousands.
6. What effect would it have on the 401Ks and IRAs of middle-class people?
Middle-class 401Ks and IRAs often include Tesla stock directly or through mutual funds and ETFs (e.g., S&P 500, Nasdaq). A seizure-induced Tesla stock crash (e.g., 35% drop in 2025 cost $400 billion) would reduce retirement account values significantly. SpaceX, being private, has less direct impact, but its suppliers and related industries could affect broader market funds. Posts on X highlight that retirement funds holding Tesla shares would lose value, potentially delaying retirements or reducing payouts.
7. Compare and contrast the government seizing Musk’s shares to a farmer cutting down all their fruit trees for firewood.
Similarities:
Destruction of Value: Both actions destroy productive assets. Musk’s shares represent ownership in companies generating innovation, jobs, and economic growth, like a farmer’s fruit trees produce crops. Cutting them down for short-term gain (firewood or government revenue) sacrifices long-term benefits.
Irreversible Loss: Both are difficult to reverse. Replanting trees or rebuilding companies takes years, with no guarantee of restoring prior value.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term: Both prioritize immediate gain (firewood, budget funds) over sustainable wealth creation.
Differences:
Scale and Impact: Seizing Musk’s shares affects millions (employees, investors, consumers) and global markets, while a farmer’s decision is localized. The economic ripple effect of seizure is far larger.
Intent: A farmer cuts trees for survival (e.g., heat), while government seizure might be ideological (e.g., wealth redistribution), punitive, or fiscal. The farmer’s act is self-directed; seizure is coercive.
Reversibility: Trees can be replanted relatively quickly; rebuilding companies like Tesla or SpaceX could take decades due to their complexity and Musk’s unique role.
Libertarian Perspective: Both violate the principle of productive property use. Seizing Musk’s shares undermines the incentive to create wealth, akin to a farmer losing future harvests, but on a societal scale it risks discouraging entrepreneurship, which libertarians see as the engine of prosperity.
8. Do Scandinavian countries allow people to be billionaires? If so, what is the per capita rate of billionaires compared to the U.S.?
Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland) allow billionaires, operating mixed economies with strong welfare systems but no outright ban on extreme wealth. They have fewer billionaires due to smaller populations and high taxes, but wealth creation is possible.
Billionaires Per Capita (2025 estimates, Forbes/Bloomberg):
United States: Population ~340 million, ~800 billionaires. Per capita rate: ~2.35 billionaires per million people.
Norway: Population ~5.5 million, ~12 billionaires (e.g., shipping, oil, retail). Per capita: ~2.18 per million.
Sweden: Population ~10.5 million, ~40 billionaires (e.g., IKEA, H&M). Per capita: ~3.81 per million.
Denmark: Population ~6 million, ~10 billionaires (e.g., Lego, shipping). Per capita: ~1.67 per million.
Finland: Population ~5.5 million, ~5 billionaires. Per capita: ~0.91 per million.
Iceland: Population ~0.4 million, ~1 billionaire. Per capita: ~2.5 per million.
Comparison: Sweden has a higher per capita rate than the U.S., driven by global brands like IKEA. Norway and Iceland are comparable to the U.S., while Denmark and Finland have lower rates. High taxes and redistribution reduce wealth concentration, but billionaires exist due to global business success.
9. Would seizing Musk’s stock be compatible with the policies of Scandinavian countries?
Seizing Musk’s stock would be largely incompatible with Scandinavian policies:
Scandinavian Model: These countries use high taxes and redistribution to fund welfare, not outright asset seizure. Property rights are respected, and wealth creation is encouraged, though taxed heavily. For example, Sweden’s wealth tax was abolished in 2007 due to capital flight.
Seizure: Confiscating private shares without compensation resembles expropriation, rare in Scandinavia outside wartime or extreme legal violations. It would violate their commitment to property rights and market economies, potentially driving entrepreneurs away.
Libertarian View: Seizure would be a gross violation of property rights, a core libertarian principle, and even Scandinavia’s social democracies avoid such measures to maintain economic dynamism.
10. Would seizing Musk’s stock be more associated with democratic socialism or communism?
Democratic Socialism: Advocates high taxes and redistribution within a capitalist framework, as in Scandinavia. It does not typically involve seizing private assets without compensation, focusing instead on progressive taxation and public services. Seizing Musk’s stock would be an extreme departure, inconsistent with democratic socialist policies that respect private property.
Communism: Involves state ownership of the means of production, often through seizure of private assets. Seizing Musk’s shares aligns more closely with communist policies, as seen in historical examples like the Soviet Union’s nationalization of industries.
Conclusion: Seizure is more associated with communism due to its coercive redistribution of private property, contrary to democratic socialism’s reliance on taxation within a market economy. Libertarians would argue both systems infringe on property rights, but communism’s approach is more extreme.
11. What are some countries that don’t allow people to become billionaires?
Few countries explicitly ban billionaires, but some effectively prevent billionaire-level wealth through policy or economic structure:
Cuba: State-controlled economy nationalizes major industries, preventing private wealth accumulation. Private businesses are heavily restricted.
North Korea: Total state control over resources and production eliminates private billionaires. Wealth is concentrated in the regime.
Venezuela: Hyperinflation, nationalization, and economic collapse have eroded private wealth. Former billionaires (e.g., in oil) have largely fled or lost wealth.
Historical Examples: Soviet Union, Maoist China, and other communist states seized private assets, preventing billionaire-level wealth. Modern China allows billionaires but imposes strict controls, with occasional crackdowns (e.g., Jack Ma).
Libertarian Perspective: These systems destroy incentives for innovation and productivity, leading to economic stagnation. Musk’s achievements, enabled by property rights, would be impossible in such environments.
Final Thoughts
Seizing Musk’s shares would likely devastate his companies, the economy, jobs, and middle-class retirement accounts, akin to a farmer destroying their orchard for fleeting gain. Scandinavian countries allow billionaires but redistribute wealth through taxes, not seizures, which aligns more with democratic socialism than communism. Countries that prevent billionaires typically do so through state control, not market-based policies. From a libertarian perspective, Musk’s wealth represents the productive use of private property, and its seizure would undermine the principles of individual freedom and economic progress.
Any specific aspect you’d like to explore further?
(end of Grok’s answer)
KSHB, the NBC News affiliate in Kansas City, Missouri, did this news story on the city’s government owned grocery store: “Sun Fresh Market on Kansas City, Missouri’s eastside in decline, with rotten odors, empty shelves”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkJYUQkYkp0
Kansas City, Missouri, shut down its prison. They give free bus service so the serial criminals can go to the city run grocery store and continuously harass the customers. This is exactly what Zohran Mamdani wants to do to New York City.
https://x.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1946372643814248718
Original: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/07/18/city-owned-grocery-stores-crime-funding/
Archive: https://archive.ph/ls7iz
Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani have both said that billionaires should not exist. This information from Grok tells us which countries meet that criteria, and which ones do not.
https://x.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1942015133875601709
I asked Grok:
Please list the per capita number of billionaires in each the following countries: the United States, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, and Laos. Please rank the list starting with the higher per capita number of billionaires. For each country, list the name of the country, and the number of billionaires per capita. No long essay.
This is the answer that it gave:
Below is a ranked list of the per capita number of billionaires (per million people) for the requested countries, based on Forbes’ 2025 Billionaires List and 2025 population estimates.
Iceland: ~2.56 (1 billionaire, 0.39 million population)
Sweden: ~2.86 (30 billionaires, 10.5 million population)
United States: ~2.37 (813 billionaires, 343 million population)
Norway: ~2.18 (12 billionaires, 5.5 million population)
Singapore: ~1.80 (43 billionaires, 5.7 million population)
Denmark: ~1.67 (10 billionaires, 6.0 million population)
Finland: ~1.25 (7 billionaires, 5.6 million population)
Netherlands: ~0.67 (12 billionaires, 18 million population)
Germany: ~0.64 (54 billionaires, 84 million population)
France: ~0.63 (43 billionaires, 68 million population)
Canada: ~0.45 (45 billionaires, 42 million population)
United Kingdom: ~0.43 (45 billionaires, 67 million population)
Belgium: ~0.26 (3 billionaires, 11.7 million population)
Japan: ~0.24 (30 billionaires, 125 million population)
South Korea: ~0.19 (10 billionaires, 51 million population)
North Korea: 0 (0 billionaires, 26 million population)
Cuba: 0 (0 billionaires, 11 million population)
Venezuela: 0 (0 billionaires, 28 million population)
Zimbabwe: 0 (0 billionaires, 16 million population)
Eritrea: 0 (0 billionaires, 3.7 million population)
Laos: 0 (0 billionaires, 7.6 million population)
Notes:
Billionaire counts are sourced from Forbes 2025 or estimated based on recent trends.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sylvanlebrun/2025/04/01/the-countries-with-the-most-billionaires-2025/
Population figures are approximate for 2025 from World Bank and similar sources.
Countries with 0 billionaires (North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Laos) have no recorded billionaires due to economic or political constraints.
(end of Grok’s answer)
Zohran Mamdani: “… we firmly believe in… seizing the means of production…” Skip to 10:05
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3IbPk-sqKY
In 2021, Zohran Mamdani said he wants to “seize the means of production,” and to abolish private ownership of housing, and to have multiple families share the same kitchen and the same bathhouse.
Resurfaced video shows NYC mayoral hopeful saying he wants to replace private homes with communal living
Zohran Mamdani’s 2021 video reveals plans for communal housing with shared laundry, kitchens and bathhouses
By Alec Schemmel
July 3, 2025
Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has come under fire from critics who label him a “communist” – a charge he dismisses as a distraction.
However, the criticisms may not be as unfounded as Mamdani claims. Videos show the NYC mayoral candidate espousing language and theories rooted in communist revolutionary language.
In one 2021 video, Mamdani urges fellow socialists at a conference to not compromise on goals like “seizing the means of production.” In a second video, released on YouTube by progressive advocacy group The Gravel Institute that same year, Mamdani discusses the need to turn housing from a private commodity to a public one, calling for luxury condos to be replaced with communal style living that would include things like shared laundry facilities and food co-ops.
“Why do so many people end up homeless?” Mamdani asks in the video. “It’s not because there aren’t enough homes to go around, there are plenty of empty homes. No. It’s because housing people is not a primary goal of developers or landlords. Their goal, simply put, is to make a profit.”
According to Mamdani, this is a problem. He lamented in the video that housing is “a consumer product, just like clothes or cars” that private businesses sell on the market to make a profit. As a result, Mamdani complains, there is plenty of housing for “the rich” but not nearly enough opportunities for poor and working-class people.
“[It’s] not efficient or beneficial for the rest of society,” Mamdani says. “Housing doesn’t have to be seen as a market at all.”
In the video, Mamdani points to post-war communist Vienna as an example of how removing privatization from the housing market can be good for society. However, he does concede that currently in Vienna, “residents still pay part of their earnings in rent to cover operational costs and a sizable chunk of the population lives in private housing.”
After describing the so-called Vienna model, during which he puts forth a vision of communal living with shared laundry, kitchens, food co-ops, bathhouses, pharmacies, lecture halls, swimming pools and more, he suggests a way forward that includes establishing “community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership.”
“If we want to end the housing crisis, the solution has to be moving toward the full de-commodification of housing,” Mamdani says. “In other words, moving away from the status quo in which most people access housing by purchasing it on the market and toward a future where we guarantee high quality housing to all as a human right.”
President Donald Trump has referred to Mamdani as a “100% Communist Lunatic” and vowed to “save New York City” from Mamdani if he gets elected. He has suggested a willingness to withhold federal funds from the city if Mamdani doesn’t “behave.”
“As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social Wednesday. “Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards. I’ll save New York City, and make it ‘Hot’ and ‘Great’ again, just like I did with the Good Ol’ USA!”
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani’s campaign for comment but did not receive a response.
These photos of a South African farm show the effects of the country’s land reform.
These photos of a South African farm show the effects of the country’s land reform.
I got these two photos from this link:
Original: https://martinplaut.com/2024/09/02/the-utter-failure-of-the-south-africas-agricultural-reforms/
This is the first photo. The caption says, “Irrigated fields of potatoes and other vegetables at Dawn Valley farm in 2002, six years before the land claim settlement. (Source: Google Earth Pro).”
This is the second photo. The caption says, “A satellite image of the same fields in 2022, shows few signs of any cultivation. (Source: Google Earth Pro).”
The Marxist African National Congress that was elected by South African voters does not know how to run the farms that it took over
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
May 12, 2025
Associated Press just reported:
https://apnews.com/article/chickens-euthanized-animal-neglect-farm-61459549d78555f7fe121d6461b6bd41
Animal welfare officers faced the grisly task of euthanizing more than 350,000 chickens by hand after they were left starving and cannibalizing each other when a South African state-owned poultry company ran out of money to feed them, officials said Tuesday.
I’m an anti-communist who has always been very much against government owing or controlling farms, whether it be in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Cuba, Zimbabwe, or any other country.
The fact that the Marxist African National Congress that was elected by the voters of South Africa couldn’t figure out how to feed these 350,000 chickens on a government-run farm does not surprise me one bit.
What exactly did they think was going to happen when the government decided to take over these farms?
https://apnews.com/article/chickens-euthanized-animal-neglect-farm-61459549d78555f7fe121d6461b6bd41
Thousands of chickens euthanized in South Africa after they were left starving and eating each other
May 6, 2025
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Animal welfare officers faced the grisly task of euthanizing more than 350,000 chickens by hand after they were left starving and cannibalizing each other when a South African state-owned poultry company ran out of money to feed them, officials said Tuesday.
The National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or NSPCA, said it wasn’t able to say for certain how many other chickens had already died by the time its officers reached several neglected poultry farming sites because of the “mass cannibalism” that took place among the birds.
The NSPCA managed to save more than 500,000 chickens, it said.
“It was a harrowing scene,” the NSPCA said in a statement. “Skeletal chickens huddled together, chickens eating one another, feeding lines stripped bare.”
The chickens were owned by Daybreak Foods, a major poultry supplier owned by South Africa’s state asset management company Public Investment Corp.
NSPCA officers were first alerted to a crisis at one farm on April 30. The organization uncovered at least five other farms in northern South Africa with multiple sites on each farm where birds had been left to starve, it said.
Daybreak Foods was denied permission to take the birds to a slaughterhouse because they were too small.
There was no immediate response to an email message seeking comment from Daybreak Foods late Tuesday.
Company spokesperson Nokwazi Ngcongo told the Daily Maverick news outlet that the birds went unfed for a period of time due to financial challenges affecting feed delivery. She said efforts had been made to limit animal suffering as much as possible.
Nazareth Appalsamy, the manager of the NSPCA’s farm animal protection unit, told The Associated Press that the mass culling began last Wednesday and was only completed on Monday. Around 75 animal protection officers were tasked with euthanizing the chickens that weren’t able to recover one by one, Appalsamy said.
“Culling took a real toll on the staff, being exposed to such extreme measures,” he said.
The NSPCA said the chickens hadn’t been fed for more than a week and pledged to file a court case against Daybreak Foods under animal protection laws for abandoning its responsibilities.
The South African government said it is in talks with Daybreak Foods leadership over its financial troubles.
Trump Offers South African Farmers Expedited Citizenship
Original: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/world/africa/trump-south-africa-farmers-citizenship.html
Archive: https://archive.ph/JhtOl
Trump Offers South African Farmers Expedited Citizenship
The president falsely claimed on social media that the South African government was confiscating farmland, echoing previous statements that the country was mistreating white people.
By John Eligon
March 7, 2025
The United States will immediately start offering a rapid pathway to citizenship for South African farmers, President Trump said in a social media post on Friday, falsely claiming that South Africa’s government was confiscating their land “and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT.”
The post largely echoed what Mr. Trump has previously said about South Africa, including in an executive order last month in which he suspended all American aid to the country and offered refugee status to Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority.
In January, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa signed into law a measure that would allow the government to take land in the public interest without providing compensation; shortly after, Mr. Trump began criticizing the South African government. Elon Musk, who is from South Africa, has backed the president’s statements with his own social media posts that accuse the country’s government of having openly racist laws.
“A bad place to be right now,” Mr. Trump wrote of South Africa on Friday.
His post comes as the South African government is preparing a trade deal to offer to Mr. Trump, hoping that it will settle tensions, stave off further punitive action and convince him to keep a close relationship with South Africa. Mr. Ramaphosa had previously said that Mr. Trump was spreading misinformation and that he was looking forward to meeting with the U.S. president to clear the air.
“We are not going to partake in counterproductive megaphone diplomacy,” Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for Mr. Ramaphosa, said in response to Friday’s post. “We remain committed to building a mutually beneficial bilateral trade, political and diplomatic relationship with the United States. Obviously, it must be a relationship that is based on mutual respect and respect for our independence and sovereignty.”
Mr. Trump’s post on Friday departed from his executive order in one crucial way. The order specifically offered refuge to Afrikaners, the descendants of European colonizers who led the apartheid regime. But his post said that farmers could flee to the United States. While most of the major commercial farmers in South Africa are white, most farmers overall are Black, and many of them produce food to feed themselves and their families.
It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will extend refugee status and rapid citizenship to Black farmers. Since returning to office in January, Mr. Trump has made it a priority to crack down on the influx of refugees into the United States.
Some conservative Afrikaners have tried to capitalize on Mr. Trump’s support. A delegation of them met with White House officials in Washington last week, asking for U.S. funding to help build their own communities. They also asked for the United States to put pressure on the South African government to repeal laws meant to address the inequalities created under apartheid that they believe discriminate against white people.
Many Afrikaner activists have said that they would rather live in an improved South Africa than flee to the United States.
South African president signs controversial land seizure law
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9w4n6gp5o
South African president signs controversial land seizure law
January 24, 2025
By Khanyisile Ngcobo
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed into law a bill allowing land seizures by the state without compensation – a move that has put him at odds with some members of his government.
Black people only own a small fraction of farmland nationwide more than 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid – the majority remains with the white minority.
This has led to frustration and anger over the slow pace of reform.
While Ramaphosa’s ANC party hailed the law as a “significant milestone” in the country’s transformation, some members of the coalition government say they may challenge it in court.
The law “outlines how expropriation can be done and on what basis” by the state, the government says.
It replaces the pre-democratic Expropriation Act of 1975, which placed an obligation on the state to pay owners it wanted to take land from, under the principle of “willing seller, willing buyer”.
The new law allows for expropriation without compensation only in circumstances where it is “just and equitable and in the public interest” to do so.
This includes if the property is not being used and there’s no intention to either develop or make money from it or when it poses a risk to people.
The president’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said that, under the law, the state “may not expropriate property arbitrarily or for a purpose other than… in the public interest”.
“Expropriation may not be exercised unless the expropriating authority has without success attempted to reach an agreement with the owner,” he added.
The signing of the law comes after a five-year consultative process as well as the findings of a presidential panel set up to look into the issue.
The pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA), the second largest party in the government of national unity (GNU), says it “strongly opposes” the law and was consulting with its lawyers.
It says that while it supports legislation addressing land restitution, it takes issue with the process followed by the country’s parliament to enact this law.
The Freedom Front Plus, a party which defends the rights of the white minority and is also in the GNU, vowed to challenge the constitutionality of the law and do “everything in its power” to have it amended if it is found to be unconstitutional.
One of the sticking points for the party was the law’s possible threat to private ownership.
Outside of the coalition government, the Economic Freedom Fighters, known for its radical views on nationalisation and land distribution, has called the move a “legislative cop-out” by the governing party.
The party also says the law will not help resolve the contentious issue of land restitution in South Africa.
Delaware Chancellor Judge Kathaleen McCormick is a communist. After Tesla shareholders voted to pay Elon Musk $56 billion for doing such a good job of driving up the value of their Tesla stock, Judge McCormick voided the vote because she thought the amount was “incredible” and “unfathomable.” Then the shareholders voted to approve it a second time, and Judge McCormick voided that vote too.
Capitalism is based on private ownership of property, combined with a legal system that allows people to voluntarily enter into contractual agreements for mutual benefit.
Communism is based on the idea that these things are morally wrong.
Delaware Chancellor Judge Kathaleen McCormick is a communist. After Tesla shareholders voted to pay Elon Musk $56 billion for doing such a good job of driving up the value of their Tesla stock, Judge McCormick voided the vote because, according to her own ruling, she thought the amount was “incredible” and “unfathomable.”
Then, the stockholders cast a second vote in favor of the same pay package. And again, Judge McCormick voided it.
Delaware Chancellor Judge Kathaleen McCormick is a communist. She does not believe in private property. She does not believe in freedom of contract.
Elon Musk and anyone else who believes in private property should withdraw their incorporation form Delaware, and relocate to a different state – one that does believe in private property. Texas seems like a good choice.
Communism is evil.
Farmers have hoarded land for too long. Inheritance tax will bring new life to rural Britain
Prices and rents will fall under Rachel Reeves’ plans, enabling a younger generation with new ideas to enter the field
By Will Hutton
November 17, 2024
One of the baleful dimensions of our times is the way that the conversation about what constitutes the good society is framed by the rich and their interests. A conception of the common good withers; instead it is replaced by the existential importance of private wealth, private interests and private ownership to societal health. Nowhere is this more exposed than in the debate over taxation, and in particular the taxation of inherited wealth – as the debate over the past fortnight has dramatised.
Half a million people die every year. Under the reforms to inheritance tax relief on agricultural land proposed in the budget, about 500 individuals who inherit land worth more than £2m (£3m if they were married to the deceased) will join the rest of society and have inheritance tax levied on their bequest – albeit at half the rate, with an enlarged exemption and 10 years to pay it, concessions not made to the rest of us. How fortunate and privileged are they?
Yet ever since, the National Farmers Union, Historic Houses, the Tory party, the rightwing media and, inevitably, Elon Musk have behaved as if the move represents a new communist dictatorship. Edward Stanley, the 19th Earl of Derby, denizen of Merseyside’s Knowsley Hall where his family has lived since 1385, represented their united view. “Taking 20% of a business away every generation is just a shockingly awful concept for a government that wants growth,” he told the Financial Times. Positioning himself as a wealth-creating small business, he insisted it “would kill off farming and heritage businesses” like his. According to the lobby, a new age of Jacobin terror has been unleashed – production will collapse, rural Britain will be devastated, and all for a trivial amount of money. Rarely have 500 very privileged people got so hysterical – and commanded so much attention.
There is no acknowledgment of the potential wider benefits that go beyond the non-trivial contribution the tax will make to relieving the crisis in public services. The hoarding of land that has gone on since the bung was introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, which has so steadily driven up land prices and farmers’ rents, will at last be checked as some of the larger estates are obliged to sell parcels of land to pay inheritance tax, as they did before 1984 without the world falling in, rather than be enabled to own it in perpetuity. Young farmers, now increasingly crowded out of the market, will get a chance to buy land: there is the prospect of a levelling off, even a fall, in farm rents. New life and ideas will be brought to the rural economy as innovative, energetic farmers enter the market – and production even increases.
As importantly, a key principle that has underpinned all human societies – that we have a right to share in the bounty of inherited assets – will be reaffirmed. Whether ancient Rome or feudal Europe, societies have taken the view that just because an individual got lucky and came out of the right womb, they are not entitled to inherit everything without paying some levy or tribute on their inherited wealth. After all, wealth is enjoyed in a societal context and society made a contribution to the existence of the wealth. Of course society should share in the transfer, if only in a minor way, and the principle should extend to everyone, with as few exceptions as possible. Far from a death tax, it is a life tax on undeserved good luck.
Why so much fuss? Part of the problem is that rural Britain has never escaped the cultural trappings of feudalism. It is now largely forgotten, but in 1883 the Conservative party, to fight the rise of progressive liberalism and its emergent outrider socialism, set up the mass membership Primrose League, whose adherents formally accepted the vital role that the “landed estates of the realm” played in an idea of imperial, free-enterprise Britain. It was a direct response to William Gladstone’s creation of “succession duty” in 1881 codifying the longstanding practice of levying a duty on the transfer of landed assets – and the principle had to be fought to the last. Within a decade its members, incredibly, outnumbered trade unionists.
The Earl of Derby speaks to that Primrose League tradition, arguing that his family is less a 650-year beneficiary of the baronial carve-up of England after the Norman conquest and more an employment-generating small business. Selling a little of the estate to pay inheritance tax is off limits; instead, the assumption is that the tax will have to be paid from the business’s cashflow, to preserve the estate in perpetuity – hence the over-egged predictions of devastation. In the wider economy, the creation of perpetual monopolies would be widely criticised as not only unfairly entrenching wealth and power but stifling the process of creative churn that is at the heart of economic vitality. Britain’s landed estates are excused from the same criticism.
It is a political and cultural achievement that must be challenged today with the same energy it was challenged by Liberal leaders in the run-up to the First World War. The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, calling for the government to suspend the measure, forgets Gladstone’s succession duty, William Harcourt’s introduction of estates duty in 1894 and David Lloyd George’s imaginative plans to break up the monopoly of land ownership. Yet, while the non-royal dukes might no longer have automatic membership of the House of Lords, they still own as much of Britain as they did then. Davey should not cosy up to Musk and co, inflaming the hysteria, but rather back Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves who, to their credit, are holding the line.
But Labour needs to win the argument, and to be convincing that argument must be made from first principles. Inheritance tax springs from the universally held belief that society has the right to share when wealth is transferred on death as a matter of justice. This is not confiscation, especially if the lion’s share of the bequest is left intact. It is asking for a share. The principle should apply to all estates and to everyone. It is fair. It limits the entrenchment of wealth and privilege. It breaks up monopoly, especially of land. It enlarges the tax base. It gives the next generation a chance. Any other argument is the special pleading of plutocrats – and should be seen as such.
Cuba’s newly legalized private businesses are paying their workers many, many times more than what they had been making when they worked for the communist government.
https://x.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1844554537182388317
https://twitter.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1844554537182388317
https://miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article276456256.html
Woke Students Support Socialism… Until It’s Applied To Their GPA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym8kcHc6dC4
In the long run, the only way to enforce price controls on food is to adopt communism. This explains the step by step process of how that happens.
https://x.com/RobertMSterling/status/1824840348008391127
By Robert M Sterling
August 17, 2024
People need to stop overreacting about Kamala’s plan to reduce food inflation, as if it would lead to communism, mass starvation, and the end of America.
I worked in M&A in the food industry. Here’s a step-by-step summary of what would actually happen:
1. The government announces that grocery retailers aren’t allowed to raise prices.
2. Grocery stores, which operate on 1-2% net margins, can’t survive if their suppliers raise prices. So the government announces that food producers (Kraft Heinz, ConAgra, Tyson, Hormel, et. al.) also aren’t allowed to raise prices.
3. Not all grocery stores are created equal. Stores in lower-income areas make less money than those in higher-income areas, as the former disproportionately sell lower-margin prepackaged foods (“center of the store”) instead of higher-margin fresh products like meat (“perimeter of the store”). Because stores in lower-income areas aren’t able to cover overhead (remember, even if their wholesale costs are fixed, their labor, utilities, insurance, and other operating expenses aren’t fixed… yet), grocery chains start to shut them down. Food deserts in rural areas and in low-income urban areas alike become worse.
4. Meanwhile, margins for food producers are also quickly eroding. Their primary costs (ingredients, energy, and labor) aren’t fixed, and their shrinking gross profits leave less cash flow available to cover overhead, maintain facilities, and reinvest in additional production capacity.
5. Grocery chains, which have finite shelf space, start to repurpose their stores (those they didn’t have to shut down, I should say) to sell more non-price-controlled items—everything from nutrition supplements to kitchenware to apparel—and less price-controlled food products. Your local Kroger or Safeway starts to look and feel more like a Walmart.
6. Food producers stop making products with lower margins. Grocery chain start competing with each other to secure inventory. Since they can’t compete by offering stronger prices (remember, producers aren’t allowed to raise prices here, and, even if they could, grocery chains no longer have the gross profit to bear price increases), they compete on things like payment terms.
7. Small grocery chains start to shut down entirely, or get sold to larger chains like Kroger. In addition to not being able to cover fixed costs, a major reason for this is because they can no longer reliably secure delivery of products, due to producers prioritizing sales to larger customers, which are able to leverage their stronger balance sheets to offer superior payment terms.
8. Smaller food producers—which typically sell via distributors, rather than directly to grocery chains—start to go out of business. Because these producers have an additional step their value chains, and because they have lower volumes over which to spread their fixed costs, their cost structure is inherently disadvantaged compared to major food producers. When grocery stores aren’t able to raise prices, cutting product costs becomes all the more important, and deprioritizing purchases from smaller producers is an easy way to do so.
9. As supply chains break down, lines start to form outside grocery stores every morning. Cities assign police officers to patrol store parking lots, and food producers draft contingency plans to assign armed escorts to delivery trucks.
10. The federal government announces a program to issue block grants for states to purchase and operate shuttered grocery stores. The USDA also seizes closed-down production facilities.
11. The government announces that prices for all key food costs—corn, wheat, cattle, energy, etc.—are also now fixed, to stop “profiteers” from gouging the now-government-operated food industry.
12. Shockingly, the government struggles to operate one of the most complex industries on the planet. The entire food supply chain starts imploding.
13. Communism, mass starvation, and the end of America quickly ensue.
Hey wait a second
When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/15/kamala-harris-price-gouging-groceries/
When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?
It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Kamala Harris’s price-gouging proposal is.
By Catherine Rampell
August 15, 2024
“Price gouging” is the focus of Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic agenda, her presidential campaign says. She’ll crack down on “excessive prices” and “excessive corporate profits,” particularly for groceries.
So what level counts as “excessive,” you might ask? TBD, but Harris will ban it.
That’s the thing about price gouging: As has been said of hardcore pornography, you know it when you see it.
It’s not hard to figure out where this proposal came from. Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.
In a news release Wednesday, her campaign said the first 100 days of her presidency would include the “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries — setting clear rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”
What are these “clear rules of the road” or the thresholds that determine when a price or profit level becomes “excessive”? The memo doesn’t say, and the campaign did not answer questions I sent seeking clarification.
The most likely template for Harris’s proposal is a recent bill from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). (Harris co-sponsored similar legislation with Warren in 2020, when Harris was a senator.) Warren’s bill would ban any “grossly excessive price” during any “atypical disruption” of a market. Alas, no definition was provided for these terms, either; rather, the bill would empower the Federal Trade Commission to enforce bans using any metric it deems appropriate.
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 FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.
At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price growth by fiat. (There’s a reason narrower “price gouging” laws that exist in some U.S. states are rarely invoked.) At worst, it might accidentally raise prices.
That’s because, among other things, the legislation would ban companies from offering lower prices to a big customer such as Costco than to Joe’s Corner Store, which means quantity discounts are in trouble. Worse, it would require public companies to publish detailed internal data about costs, margins, contracts and their future pricing strategies. Posting cost and pricing plans publicly is a fantastic way for companies to collude to keep prices higher — all facilitated by the government.
Normally, the government doesn’t like collusion. In fact, the Harris campaign’s statement about her anti-“price gouging” agenda highlights a case she won as California attorney general against companies colluding to fix prices for LCD flat screens. Presidential administrations of both parties have similarly pursued cases against cartels and other anti-competitive conduct.
That’s because price-fixing is already illegal. And it should be! It’s important to distinguish between real cartel behavior (whether among TV-makers or meatpackers) vs. temporary spikes in prices and profits due to high demand or supply-chain disruptions. Harris’s economic advisers are either too confused or lazy to tell the difference. They don’t seem to know the history of these kinds of policies and apparently haven’t thought very hard about what would make markets more competitive or improve the lives of voters.
They don’t even seem terribly familiar with what’s happening to grocery prices, where the battle against inflation has, believe it not, pretty much already been won.
On Wednesday, a government report showed that grocery prices in July were up a measly 1 percent from last year, as the White House itself touted. Indeed, annual grocery price inflation has hovered around that level for the past eight months, way down from the double-digit inflation in mid-2022.
Additionally, profit margins for supermarkets are notoriously thin. Despite Harris’s (and Warren’s) accusations about “excessive corporate profits,” those margins remained relatively meager even when prices surged. The grocery industry’s net profit margins peaked at 3 percent in 2020, falling to 1.6 percent last year. If that sounds high, note that the average net profit margin (what’s left over after expenses) for all public companies nationwide is 8 percent.
So what actually happened with grocery inflation, if not “price gouging” (however defined)? Superstrong consumer demand plus major supply disruptions (the coronavirus pandemic, bird flu, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, etc.) pushed prices and profits up. Once those shocks abated and consumers started spending down their pandemic savings, price growth cooled.
These are the kinds of facts the Harris campaign should be explaining to consumers, not exploiting for demagogic gain because push-polling suggests people are mad about “greed.”
But more to the point: If your opponent claims you’re a “communist,” maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls. We already have plenty of economic gibberish coming from the Republican presidential ticket. Do we really need more from the other side, too?
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 