Democrats Want You to Keep Paying More. This is How They're Making it Happen.
As inflation hits 40-year highs and Americans pay more for basic goods like food, shelter and transportation, Democrats don’t seem to care. They’re not just playing a fiddle as America burns, but they’re throwing proverbial fuel on the fire.
Whether it’s President Biden shutting down American energy independence, having James Taylor play a party as the stock market crashes or banning the sale of gas-powered cars while American’s can barely afford to put food on the table, Democrats don’t seem to care about how much things cost to average Americans.
In fact, some of our leaders seem upset about the prices that remain low.
Take for example White House Economic Advisor Tim Wu, who complained that low prices of flour are bad as that makes it harder for artisan bread makers to compete. Consider Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who said we need a “climate adjustment fee” — or, more taxes and higher prices at the pump. And of course, there is Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who became famous for wanting to launch a case against Amazon because its prices are too low. None of them have a background in economics or have worked in the private sector, and at least two of them are millionaires.
These policymakers, like many in the Democratic Party, are out of touch with the average American. And they themselves don’t have to worry about affording their groceries, rent or gas.
In fact, the one thing they all have in common is professorship at Ivy League law schools — an industry that has no problem with ever-increasing prices, which neither Wu, Khan nor Warren have brought actions to investigate.
Now, we are seeing the desire to push prices higher make its way into lawsuits. Most recently, this was found in two cases against Amazon from the Democrat Attorneys General of California and Washington, DC. Both suits are ultimately centered around the complaint that Amazon requires third-party sellers to show the lowest prices possible for their goods on Amazon.com. In an effort to make sure that customers have access to low-priced goods, Amazon will not feature a product if it’s being sold lower elsewhere. Amazon is more interested in customers being able to afford the products they need, rather than making a one-off sale and risk losing that customer’s future business. But California and DC’s AGs don’t like this.
In the DC lawsuit, the AG said Amazon’s requirement that a person selling on Amazon.com cannot have a higher price on another site like Walmart.com was bad. Amazon did this to make sure its customers had the lowest prices, but DC’s AG said that because of this requirement, the seller was forced to raise its prices at other retailers. The suit failed miserably, and the DC Court threw it out.
It sounds like an interesting theory until you realize that Walmart.com would happily have the government help it get a lower price against its main competitor — Amazon. This then reveals the ridiculousness of this legal “theory”: that these sellers are so weak that they have to kowtow to Amazon’s pricing demands but so strong they can bully Walmart - the largest retailer on the planet.
In reality, the facts and logic show that Amazon’s policies resulted in lower prices for customers — which is why the judge threw out the DC case. Taken to its logical conclusion, DC’s AG basically argued that Amazon shouldn’t get the lowest prices possible for customers, meaning that the AGs pursuing this case and similar ones, whose job it is to protect citizens, want to raise prices. So much for consumer welfare.
This all circles back to the clear notion that many Democrats, whether they be in the Biden Administration like Khan and Wu, in Congress like Sen Warren or the DC and CA attorneys general, have no interest in lower prices for us. Perhaps, that is ultimately the point.
Carl Szabo is Vice President and General Counsel for NetChoice, and a professor of internet law at the George Mason Antonin Scalia Law School.
