Guess who finally updated her campaign website? And with just a day before her first presidential debate ... and only second media appearance since her anointment as nominee?

Having seen her momentum deflate like a Patriots football, Kamala Harris finally went public with her agenda, at least in general strokes. Team Kamala finally added an Issues page to her official campaign website, and it's filled mainly by the rehashed Bidenomics that Harris attempted to pass off last month. It even includes the absurd reference to price-gouging that economists across the spectrum laughed off when Harris first floated the argument, another leftover from Joe Biden's inflation excuse-making.

But at least Biden got the terminology correct:

OMG. Kamala said "Price Gauging" instead of "Price Gouging"...

I get misspelling it, but how do you not realize you are saying the completely wrong word?pic.twitter.com/e0EzVRFeol

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) August 16, 2024

Harris may use the correct word on her page in this instance, but she slings the same effluvium to explain high prices during her term as VP. To "bring down costs," Harris pledges to fight "bad actors," which only proves that she still doesn't know economic terminology:

As President, she will direct her Administration to crack down on anti-competitive practices that let big corporations jack up prices and undermine the competition that allows all businesses to thrive while keeping prices low for consumers. And she will go after bad actors who exploit an emergency to rip off consumers by calling for the first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries, which will build on the anti-price gouging statutes already in place in 37 states.

There is a big difference between "cost" and "price," at least in economic terms, and that's the difference in putting together a coherent policy. Prices are market mechanisms that represent an equilibrium between producer cost and consumer value. Cost is what producers have to pay to bring a product or service to market. A plan to reduce costs would address issues like energy production, shipping efficiencies, access to resources and component parts, and so forth. 

Harris, however, wants to impose price controls, which thwart market equilibrium and have nothing to do with costs. By forcing prices to be lower than market equilibrium, governments discourage production, which in turn creates shortages that eventually result in high prices on black markets and an absence otherwise for consumers. Ironically, the grocery industry has one of the most efficient markets for price setting, where retailers typically see net profit margins in the 1-3% range. 

Grocery bills skyrocketed due to costs, not prices. Those costs shot upward because of inflation across the entire production-to-market line, caused in part by spiked demand due to excessive stimulation and interventions and mishandled supply-chain crises, both by the Biden administration. Rather than reverse those or at least pledge to stop such stupid interventions, Kamala Harris pledges to double down on them. 

For instance, Harris remains attached to her other stimulus intervention in the housing market despite pushback on that from economists as well. This too is nothing more than a regurgitation of Joe Biden's agenda:

Vice President Harris has put forward a comprehensive plan to build three million more rental units and homes that are affordable to end the national housing supply crisis in her first term. And she will cut red tape to make sure we build more housing faster and penalize firms that hoard available homes to drive up prices for local homebuyers.  Vice President Harris knows rent is too high and will sign legislation to outlaw new forms of price fixing by corporate landlords. 

As more new homes are built and affordable housing supply increases, Vice President Harris will provide first-time homebuyers with up to $25,000 to help with their down payments, with more generous support for first-generation homeowners. 

Housing prices are up because of a supply shortage and rising demand. The federal government has very little to do with the shortage, as I have written in the past; that results from state and local land-use restrictions, over-bureaucratized permitting, and taxes. Harris can't do much about those issues, but she can make the demand worse with this proposal, which would be almost directly inflationary. WaPo columnist Catherine Rampell made this point immediately after Harris first floated the idea, along with Harris' promise to attack "price gauging":

RAMPELL: ... It leads to shortages. It leads to black markets. You know, plenty of uncertainty. And beyond that, the specific way this bill was written might actually increase prices because of some of the other language in it, things like requiring companies, public companies to disclose in their quarterly reports, the quarterly earnings reports, how they're setting prices, which is a great way to help them collude, which normally we don't want them to do.

So anyway, you know, the devil's in the details, I guess, for that bill. But it's really hard for me to imagine any form of legislation that preserves the spirit of what she's proposing that would not be, you know, at best do nothing, at worst cause a lot of harm.

SANCHEZ: So not a fan of the price gouging ban portion of her proposals. But, Catherine, what about the plan to offer this homeowner subsidy, $25,000, to first time home buyers? Obviously, housing costs have become a concern for many Americans. Would that actually help, or would that drive, as some critics have argued, home prices up? 

RAMPELL: So that piece of her plan, I think, is likely to just drive prices up. We already have really strong demand for housing, the problem is that there isn't enough supply if you just give people even more money to spend on housing. Regardless of who they are, that's probably just going to get passed through to the sellers.

So it sounds nice, particularly for people who maybe don't have a lot of savings, but it's just going to get eaten up at, you know, if you get $25,000 and a tax credit, I think you should expect prices to go up more or less by $25,000.

Three weeks later, Harris is still spewing the same rehashed Biden generalities. That's true about the border too, and is even vaguer now on the border wall -- which Harris never mentions:

Vice President Harris and Governor Walz believe in tough, smart solutions to secure the border, keep communities safe, and reform our broken immigration system. As Attorney General of California, Vice President Harris went after international drug gangs, human traffickers and cartels that smuggled guns, drugs, and human beings across the U.S.-Mexico border. As Vice President, she supported the bipartisan border security bill, the strongest reform in decades. The legislation would have deployed more detection technology to intercept fentanyl and other drugs and added 1,500 border security agents to protect our border. After Donald Trump killed the border deal for his political gain, she and President Biden took action on their own—and now border crossings are at the lowest level in 4 years, their administration is seizing record amounts of fentanyl, and secured funding for the most significant increase in border agents in ten years. As President, she will bring back the bipartisan border security bill and sign it into law. At the same time, she knows that our immigration system is broken and needs comprehensive reform that includes strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.

A fortnight or so ago, Harris -- or more accurately, unnamed campaign advisers -- signaled that she now supports the wall. The only indication of that in this section is her support for the ludicrous proposal from 2021, which funded less than 15 miles of new wall construction. 

Generally speaking, Harris only speaks in vague terms on issues. She wants to sell her "values" more than policy, and that leaves her essentially copying Joe Biden's policy agenda while calling it "a new way forward." It's anything but, however; it's the same old incompetent policies, this time in the hands of an even more incompetent executive.