US Vice-President Kamala Harris’s newly-unveiled consumer price controls are bound to "scare off" US voters.
The Democratic presidential hopeful's policies, "even limited and unspecified as they currently are," are bound to "scare off" many Americans, Alexey Zubets, Vice rector of the Financial University of the Russia Federation, told Sputnik.
There are "certain similar features" between what Harris proposes and the way prices were fixed in the Soviet Union by the State Planning Committee, commonly known as Gosplan, he noted, but added that the US "has not yet reached that point."
“It is clear that these are only general features, because in the Soviet Union, regulation was much stricter," Zubets said. "The trend he is not so much towards what the Soviet Union had, but rather in the direction of the European social model where, again, there are various instruments for price management, including in the consumer market.”
But even moves in the general direction of something reminiscent of a European welfare state "frighten Americans very much, because they understand that this will lead to higher taxes." Zubets stressed.
Harris unveiled her economic policy agenda on Friday at a campaign rally in North Carolina — set to be a key battleground state in November.
Her pledges include bringing down the price of groceries, prescription drugs and other goods pushed up by inflation via a federal ban on price gouging.
She also announced plans to tackle the housing crisis through $25,000 home-buyer grants and offer support to the middle class to ease the cost of living.
"When I am elected president, I will make it a top priority to bring down costs and increase economic security for all Americans," Harris said at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh. "I will take on the high costs that matter most to most Americans, like the cost of food."
She also promised an expansion of Child Tax Credit to give families with newborns a $6,000 tax deduction.
Harris other pledges include a $35 cap on out-of-pocket costs for insulin and cancelling medical debt.
Harris's economic program agenda will likely “present a problem for her,” Zubets predicted.
“You have to understand that America is a fundamental country from the point of view of capitalism, where market values are deeply rooted," the pundit said. "In general, for Americans, preserving the basic values of the market economy is a fundamental thing that they worry about… Therefore, any other alternative scares them off.”
To resolve the housing crisis in the US, Harris also proposed the construction of "3 million new homes and rentals that are affordable for the middle class."
That is to be incentivized with a tax break for builders putting up properties for first-time home buyers.
A $40-billion fund under consideration by the VP could help local governments deal with the lack of housing supply.
Harris has also argued in favor of a Stop Predatory Investing Act — a bill aimed at limiting tax breaks for large investors and private equity firms that bulk-buy single-family rental homes.
As far as the proposal for building cheap housing is concerned, it is anyone’s guess “how the real estate market will react to it,” said Zubets.
Currently, there are not enough homes on the US market, with factors ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to inflation and rising mortgage rates feeding into the shortage. Affordability has been singled out as one of the main constraints on the housing market.
The commentator noted that the real estate market is one of the main drivers of the US economy.
"If the government throws 3 million social houses onto the market out of the blue and gives them to the poor, it is not clear whether this will be some kind of long-term lease or just gifts to the underprivileged," Zubets said.
"This will lead to serious changes in the real estate market," he warned. "Those financial companies, banks, and business people who are engaged in housing construction, they can incur losses simply due to the devaluation of the housing that is already on the American market.”