Kamala’s Price Control Scheme is the Fast Road to Famine

Empty shelves, starving people—nothing is more emblematic of socialism. And if Kamala Harris gets her way, Americans will be next to experience the horrors of Big Government central planning.

Harris announced her plan to ban “price gouging”—misread from her teleprompter as “price gauging,” oops—to stop the inflation she caused with Joe Biden’s Build Back Better boondoggle. That scheme, along with the Inflation Reduction Act, injected trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy in government spending, inflating prices for everyday goods to levels unseen since Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s—as much as 20 percent for certain essentials.

Her solution to that Harris-made mess: Venezuela-style government price controls for food and groceries.

Briefly capping prices on food and water during a hurricane is one thing. What’s Harris is proposing guarantees you don’t just pay more for each, but get less—or none at all.

The Hugo Chavez communist regime tried this in Venezuela beginning in 2003, barring supermarkets from charging more than a fixed price for things like sugar and milk. Within months, they transformed the most prosperous nation in South America into a totalitarian nightmare where thousands have died from malnutrition and nearly 8 million have fled out of a population totaling just 30 million. This in a country famed for its fertility and ability to grow virtually anything.

Soon eggs cost more than a month’s wages. Inflation skyrocketed to 3,365 percent. Food shortages rose by 20 percent in just 3 years, and by 2011 were a staggering 9 times higher than before Chavez’s price controls were implemented.

The communists’ response: Declare inflation “illegal.”

Grocery store in Venezuela before and after price fixing began

So people hoarded toothpaste, toilet paper, and other essentials faster than grocers could stock supplies.

Grocery stores have to buy food from farmers, but if they can’t sell for more than they buy it for those supermarkets can’t afford to stock shelves—so they don’t.

Chavez didn’t stop there. Soon the regime fixed prices across the economy, sending even the farmers and other producers into a tailspin. When that scheme failed, the communist government began nationalizing whole industries—stealing hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland from everyday people. No private company could compete with the government farms, so they didn’t… and people starved.

(WATCH: He Survived Venezuelan Socialism & Has a Warning for America)

No Food for You

Empty store in Caracas, Venezuela. Credit: Marco Bello/Reuters

Empty store in Caracas, Venezuela. Credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Don’t think that the Harris scheme will end any differently. We’ve already seen that poverty, hunger, and violence can happen in America just like anywhere else. And when Harris’ scheme collapses—like it has in every place that’s tried it—expect the radical Democrats to begin stealing private property to “fix” the problems they created.

That’s why even liberals are aghast at Harris’ insane “solution” to massive inflation.

Jon Taffer explains the madness well:

Bureaucrats fixing prices is a key component in socialism, which is really what’s driving the Harris-Walz agenda. Both have praised communism and the Marxist ideology that’s failed in every single country where it’s been tried, from China, to Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and of course the dismal Soviet Union.

Tim Walz, for instance, has bizarrely fond ties to China and the Chinese Communist Party that Congress is now investigating for breach of military protocol while he was in the National Guard.

Here’s the kicker: We’ve already tried fixing prices in America, and it devastated the economy for years.

In Aug. 1971, President Richard Nixon—himself hardly a communist—ordered “a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States” for 90 days, with all increases approved by an unaccountable “Pay Board” and “Price Commission.” And it was extremely popular, with 75 percent of Americans supporting the plan.

Thanks to the “Nixon shock,” Inflation quickly leaped up to double-digit levels and persisted throughout the 1970s, causing artificial shortages of gas and oil that Americans still shudder to recall decades later.

Will it work this time? Are you really prepared to find out?

(READ MORE: Kamala Harris’s FBI Is Gaslighting You About the Crime Wave)