The Harris-Walz campaign has said they want to create a federal ban on corporate price gouging (usually mentioned when folks talk about price hikes in grocery stores). I see economists complaining about variations of this policy being bad, e.g. leading to food desserts. But as far as I can tell there hasn’t been anything specific proposed. Could someone explain our best guess at what they are proposing, and if it’s been serious analyzed/tested elsewhere?
They cite existing legislation in the states; maybe explaining what that legislation does/how it works would be helpful?
It’d probably involve a healthy bit of statistical analysis, basically measuring price increases against measured inflation rates and prosecuting anyone statistically outside the standard without a justifying factor like a different formulation for the product or significantly better quality to justify being more expensive.
As for what the punishment would be, I’d say either fining them twice the value of the excess profit, or forcing them to cut prices on all products to twice the margin they went over by until they’ve lost twice the value they effectively stole.