Corporate lobbyists and politicians recently jumped all over Kamala Harris for her proposal to outlaw price gouging by food giants and grocery chains.

The partisans piled on Harris, sputtering like old Joe McCarthy that she was pushing “Soviet-style” government price-setting. Of course, these latter-day McCarthyites were either lying, ignorant, or both. Far from promoting price-setting, Harris was blasting price gouging. Big difference.

The ugly truth is that most public officials have quietly been pro-gouging for decades. By refusing to enforce anti-trust laws, they’ve helped conglomerated food giants steadily amass monopoly power over the production, processing, and marketing of food in nearly every American community. Big brand names then use that brute force to crush independent competitors, cheat customers, and consolidate even more power for themselves.

That is illegal. We have national laws, like the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act, that prohibit corporations from rigging the rules to control markets and rip off consumers. But, since unlimited corporate campaign donations have flooded into our elections, monopolists have essentially bought off officials in both parties who now ignore antitrust law, rebranding such market thuggery as “free enterprise” efficiency.

Thus, local and state governments routinely hand out millions of our tax dollars to subsidize big name supermarket chains, meatpacking factories, dollar stores, and other giants – all in the name of “consumers” and “competition.” No one mentions that these public giveaways provide the monopolistic market clout that allows the national outfits to clobber independent businesses, shrivel local competition and – voilà – gouge consumers.

This is Jim Hightower saying… So, Harris is right to call out grocery gouging and to push stronger actions to stop it, but action number one is to enforce the anti-monopoly laws already on the books.

Do something

Want to fight monopolization and the centralization of markets? Here are a few places to start:

* The American Economic Liberties Project is part of a growing, cross-ideological movement to combat monopolistic corporations and the systems that entrench their power.

* The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has a thorough resource for starting in your town, from banking and broadband to pharmacy and food: Fighting Monopoly Power: How States and Cities Can Beat Back Corporate Control and Build Thriving Communities

We also love our friend J.D. Scholten’s newsletter, You're Probably Getting Screwed, and Zephyr Teachout’s “Break ‘em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech and Big Money.” Here’s our interview from 2021 with her:

Jim Hightower's Lowdown is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jimhightower.substack.com/subscribe