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Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Boris Yeltsin's 1989 Houston Grocery Store Visit Exposes the Fatal Flaw in Kamala Harris's Price Control Agenda
When Soviet leader Boris Yeltsin spontaneously visited a Houston grocery store in 1989, he marveled at the abundance created by free market capitalism, declaring that even the poorest American ate better than Soviet leaders. Now Kamala Harris proposes federal price controls on groceries, the same failed communist policy that created the barren Soviet stores Yeltsin contrasted with American prosperity. History shows price controls lead to shortages and famine, from Roman Emperor Diocletian in 301 AD to the French Revolution. With grocery store margins already razor-thin, Harris's economic plan threatens to transform American supermarkets into Soviet-style scarcity. The real solution to high prices isn't government control, but cutting overspending, lowering energy costs, and growing the economy.
It's easy to overlook what a modern miracle American grocery stores represent. Within any neighborhood, there are multiple grocery stores overflowing with thousands of selections—condiments, jams, peanut butters, sausages, produce from around the world, frozen dinners, fresh food, and seafood from every ocean. Americans have it so good that we don't even teach our children that a grocery store is a modern miracle. This abundance didn't happen by accident—it's the direct result of free market capitalism, entrepreneurialism, and economic freedom.
Boris Yeltsin's Eye-Opening 1989 Houston Visit
This miracle was on full display on September 16, 1989, when future President of the Soviet Union Boris Yeltsin visited the United States as part of a thawing of hostilities between the two superpowers. In a spontaneous decision, Yeltsin told his team he wanted to see an American grocery store for himself. He had heard things about how Americans had food on demand, and he wanted to witness it with his own eyes.
Yeltsin, a man raised in communism and a defender of totalitarian communism, walked into a Randalls grocery store in Clear Lake, Houston. What he saw amazed him. He roamed the aisles nodding his head in disbelief. Shoppers and employees stopped him to shake his hand and say hello. Though this was 1989 and not everyone carried smartphones, so selfies weren't a thing, the moment was nonetheless historic.
Yeltsin's reaction was revealing: "You have 40,000 different options at this store," he marveled. "Even the Politburo does not have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev himself eats as well as a poor person in America."
The leader of the Soviet Union couldn't believe that Americans could get ice cream on demand, that lettuce, onions, and whatever else they wanted was simply available. He was shocked. He called it "heaven on Earth" and asked if this was an exception, a special store chosen to impress him. The shoppers he randomly engaged assured him: No, this is America. In America, we have abundance. In America, we have prosperity.
The Competition of Economic Systems
Remember the context. The Soviet Union had embraced Marxist totalitarianism. The Cold War was a competition of ideas: Would Western free market capitalism prove to be the better way forward, or would top-down communistic dictatorship and totalitarianism prevail? The fact that stores like Randalls existed on every street corner in America amazed Yeltsin.
By contrast, a Russian grocery store was vastly different—barren, with everything financed by the government, subject to price controls and central planning. "To each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was the Marxist slogan, but in practice it meant scarcity and deprivation.
A Russian Soviet grocery store featured bland, disgusting, old food because there were no market principles driving it. Everything was decided by government bureaucrats. The stores looked as if people were living in the third world. Gray, brown, and yellow food. Citizens would spend two or three hours in line each day, and when the food ran out, it was out.
There are stories of Russians who came to the United States after the Cold War visiting supermarkets and loading up on tons of meat because they thought it was "meat day." In the USSR, meat would usually only be available one day a week, and then it would run out. There are stories of people buying up all of one product just so they could watch in astonishment as workers came out and restocked the shelves. The idea of having even more of something "in the back" was unheard of for people from communist nations.
Yeltsin and Gorbachev, the most powerful people on the planet, were in charge of one of the wealthiest, largest countries in the world—the Soviet Union—and they did not eat as well as a pauper in the United States of America.
The Root of Leftism: Ingratitude
It is easy to take for granted what we have in our grocery stores. It is easy to overlook the modern miracle of how free market capitalism works—from an entrepreneur who thinks they can make better ketchup, to the assembly line that ensures you get your Dijon mustard, to the olive oil imported from Greece. This is the incredible product of entrepreneurialism: You can get tuna from Japan, olive oil from Italy, feta cheese from Greece, all while you can get back to your home and complain that you are an oppressed person in this country.
At the root of leftism is ingratitude. At the root of leftism is mobilizing resentments. Of course, there are problems in this country. It's hard to afford groceries right now. People are voting more with their stomachs than even with their hearts or their heads, which is totally understandable.
Kamala Harris's Soviet-Style Price Controls
But Kamala Harris wants to take us back to Soviet grocery stores. Harris is hearing the concerns of the American people about high grocery prices, but her solution is alarming. According to The Washington Post, Vice President Kamala Harris will unveil a proposed ban on "price gouging."
Harris's narrative is that inflation isn't real—that grocery stores are just too greedy, charging extra money for no reason. This is ridiculous. Anyone who knows how grocery store margins work understands they are among the thinnest margins of any market. Democrats are trying to say corporations are greedy and they're price gouging, but we know why prices are actually going up: When you have more dollars in the system than goods and services, prices go up.
Inflation is the most proven way to crush an economy and a country. Government overspending is the reason we get inflation, and Kamala Harris was the tiebreaking vote on trillions of dollars of unnecessary government overspending that flooded the zone with dollar bills and raised grocery prices.
Now she's saying we're going to implement price controls. This is terrifying. If she were to win, she would be at war against one of the most firmly settled rules of economics.
The 1,700-Year History of Failed Price Controls
Literally 1,700 years ago, Roman Emperor Diocletian tried to stop inflation with his Edict on Prices. It failed. During the French Revolution, the revolutionary government passed the Law on the Maximum, capping prices on food. It failed. Instead, what did it lead to? Famine.
If you come in with price controls, you are going to have food shortages. Kamala Harris has been saying time and time again it's time for the federal government to do more. The Washington Post reports that she wants federal price controls on groceries. It's the same reason why rent control doesn't work in New York, San Francisco, and DC. These cities don't have lower rent—they have the highest rent in the country and constant housing shortfalls. Then a small handful of people get apartments way below the market rate, but the overall problem worsens.
The Political Appeal of Bad Economics
Here's the problem: Politically, this could work. Economics is not the public's strong suit. Price controls sound good on the surface. But you will enter into the Soviet grocery store era quickly if Kamala Harris gets her communist way of promising price controls on your groceries.
The solution is not to take a page from the Soviets. The solution is lower energy costs, cut government overspending, and grow the economy. That's how you achieve the abundance that made Boris Yeltsin marvel at American prosperity—not through government control, but through economic freedom.
