A recent campaign commercial from Pennsylvania Democrat Senator Bob Casey has plumbed the depths of childishness.  Casey (in his campaign against Republican Dave McCormick) runs an ad on social media that depicts “corporate CEOs” sneaking into stores at night and replacing boxes of cereal with smaller boxes of cereal.  The CEOs are unidentified and shadowy, thus qualifying them as stereotypical villains.  The commercial claims that this box-switching is the cause of inflation.

One response, instead of pointing out the many entrenched fallacies of this ad, merely accuses Casey of hypocrisy because he accepts corporate donations.  Although the response certainly is true, it misses the giant lie staring us in the face, as if Casey’s critics do not understand economics, either.

The real offense from this ad is not that Casey accepts corporate money.  That point is relatively trivial.  It is far more important that Casey and the Democrats (and some Republicans) voted continuously for stimulus bills, spending bills, increases to the debt limit, foreign aid, etc.  Casey’s party pushes “reparations” around the country, “environmental” programs, federal takeover of medicine and nationalization of every aspect of our lives.  There is not now, nor will there ever be enough tax revenue to pay for these programs.  The shortfall of available dollars is made up for by governmental creation of “money.”  The more the government spends, the more money it creates.  Creation of that money is “inflation” and results in runaway prices that we see in the stores.

Sometimes companies reduce the size of their packages in order to avoid or delay raising prices.  The effect is the same.  Consumers pay more for less.  Dollars buy fewer goods.  Dollars retain less buying power because Senator Casey and his allies have created more dollars.  For many decades, our government has bought votes by creating more dollars and spreading them around.  Every time we demand or accept some government program or government money, that money creates upward pressure on prices and results in our spending more for the same goods.

Leftist voters truly are ignorant of the cause of inflation, and their politicians want it that way.  On cue from the official explanations, the followers will bounce from the cereal box theory to COVID to Putin to the “supply chain” to “climate change” to “greed” to “price-gouging” or any other phrase that their politicians feed them.  Casey promises to solve the problem with legislation that would prevent CEOs from changing boxes.  Such an approach could appeal to a large voting bloc only in an environment in which inflation remains a mystery.  Casey’s proposal, even without the label, amounts to a price control.  Any attempt to regulate the size of the container would retain all of the drawbacks of price controls, including shortages and empty shelves.  Regulating packaging is a hidden way of imposing price controls, just as shrinking the box is a hidden way to raise the price.

Casey’s proposal is a more subtle version of Kamala’s recent price control announcement.  But even Kamala’s usual allies have stepped away from her attempt to impose price controls on the U.S. economy.

Despite recent announcements to the effect that inflation has weakened, the Democrats continue to focus on prices.  The Democrats realize that the Consumer Price Index excludes prices in the all-important food and fuel sectors.  Consumers continue to face rising prices among their most common purchases — a reality that spurs the Democrats’ recent proposals.  We can only hope that they do not take their own proposals seriously and that they would not want to preside over the type of chaos that plagues Venezuela.  But we cannot trust their good judgment and must accept them for who they say they are.

Yet another Casey ad concludes with the following warning about the consequences of his opponent winning.  “Dave McCormick would get even richer, while you pay more.”  Pay more what?  The ad does not say.  More taxes?  The Democrats have already proposed broad tax increases, so a Casey victory will not prevent that outcome.  Higher prices?  The Democrats have no intention of curtailing runaway spending, so a Casey victory will not prevent that outcome either.  We will definitely “pay more” of something if Casey and the Democrats win.  But the ads never finish the thought — preferring instead to rely on the usual “hedge fund” “corporate CEO” hate words to generate an emotional response among the Democrat base.  The base hear the hate words and engage in the electoral equivalent of a temper tantrum without ever knowing what they are supposed to fear “paying more” of.

Democrats’ extremism has been limited in recent years only by voters and the courts.  If their power becomes further entrenched, we cannot expect them to exercise self-restraint when their ads demonstrate such contempt for the intelligence of their supporters.

Image via PickPik.