Question: Does Kamala Harris have an original thought in her head?

Answer: Not on economics, clearly. Today, Harris rolled out her economic and tax policies, both of which borrow heavily from Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Harris has endorsed Trump's tax exemption on tips, and now has embraced Vance's plan to offer tax credits for each child born to a household. 

But what about her bold new plan to address inflation in shelter costs, the biggest driver of cost-of-living increases now? Here's the New York Times description of Kamala Harris' "new" plan:

To address the national housing shortage, Ms. Harris plans to call for the construction of three million new housing units in the next four years, an increase from the two million new homes that Mr. Biden promised during his re-election campaign.

She will provide up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time home buyers and expand an existing tax incentive for developers who build affordable rental housing.

Put aside for the moment the merits (or demerits) of this idea for now. As the NYT hints, this is nothing more than a rehash of Biden's own plans, only tweaked a bit in the numbers. Biden outlined the same policy demands in March before the State of the Union address. Harris basically lifted this from the White House website:

We are starting to see some progress. More housing units are under construction right now than at any time in the last 50 years, rents have fallen over the last year in many places, and the homeownership rate is higher now than before the pandemic. But rent is still too high, and Americans who want to buy a home still have difficulty finding one they can afford. That is why President Biden has a landmark plan to build over 2 million homes, which will lower rents, make houses more affordable, and promote fair housing. ...

Down Payment Assistance for First-Generation Homeowners. The President continues to call on Congress to provide up to $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-generation homebuyers whose families haven’t benefited from the generational wealth building associated with homeownership. This proposal is estimated to help 400,000 families purchase their first home.

One can certainly argue that there's nothing new under the sun, especially on government policies, and that's true to some extent. But this new plan and its rollout is being sold by Team Kamala and her media sycophants as her plan, and as an effort to differentiate herself from Bidenomics. It's neither; it's Biden's plan and it's Bidenomics. It's all but identical to the economic plan created by her current boss, only with Trump and Vance tax policies added to the mix.

And let's reflect a bit on this "down payment assistance" plan, too. As I discuss with Duane Patterson in our upcoming Week in Review, this is the same kind of demand-spiking policy that created runaway inflation in 2021. Inflation in shelter markets is caused by too little supply, not too little loose cash. Boosting demand by increasing the loose cash will make the problem even worse by sending prices even higher as more people compete for the same too-small number of units. 

It's a replay of the March 2021 'American Rescue Plan' that dumped almost $2 trillion in cash into people's pockets in the middle of multiple supply-chain crises. It's a sugar-high demand approach when what's required is supply-side expansion.

Biden and Harris do claim that they will expand the number of units through tax credits, incentivizing loans for affordable housing, and an "innovation fund." However, the fruits of those projects -- assuming they bear any fruit at all -- would be years in the distance. The subsidies would take effect immediately and amplify inflation rather than solve it. And these policies would at best only impact the margins of the housing shortage even in the long run, because that's largely a result of state and local regulatory and tax policies, especially zoning codes that restrict residential growth. 

By the way, price controls have also been a part of Bidenomics, at least rhetorically speaking. Biden has tried to shift blame for inflation onto "corporate greed" for the last three years and threats to combat "price gouging" have routinely appeared in Biden's economic lectures. David covered the sharp criticism about Harris' attempt to pick up where Biden left off from Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, but she's not the only voice on the Left arguing that Harris is all wet. Obama economic adviser Jason Furman scoffs at the idea, especially when it comes to grocery-store prices:

“It’s a highly competitive market,” Jeremy Schwartz, a senior U.S. economist at Nomura, told DealBook. “There’s not much profit margin for retailers and little wiggle room for policy to make an impact” on pricing.

“There are trade-offs with all these policies,” he added. “Typically, if you think about groceries, the trade-off could be shortages if you have price controls.”

Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who worked in the Obama administration, also warned about potential market disruptions that such pricing policies could unleash. If prices don’t rise as demand grows, companies might be less inclined to increase supplies. “This not sensible policy and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” he told the Times.

Furman also rebuked Biden two years ago when he made "greedflation" part of his defense of Bidenomics:

The idea is that big companies have seized on inflation to jack up prices more than necessary. The White House has backed the claim, and congressional Democrats have introduced bills that target price gouging. Proponents of the theory have a catchy term for it: “greedflation.”

For Democrats, it is a convenient explanation as inflation turns voters against President Biden. It lets Democrats deflect blame from their pandemic relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, which experts say helped increase prices. And it lets them recast inflation as the fault of monopolistic corporations — which progressives have long railed against.

Not all progressives are on board. Jason Furman, an economist who served under Barack Obama, told me that greed was not an important factor in the rise of inflation. He described the focus on price gouging as a distraction from the real causes and solutions.

In the end, this supposedly New Kamala Plan is just a rehashed version of Bidenomics, including its failed premises and its bad execution. The only thing new about it is all of the Media Joy-Joy that it's getting today ... and even that seems in short supply.