On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks condemned Vice President Kamala Harris’s “gouging” proposal as part of her 2024 presidential campaign, stating that her plans express a level of economic illiteracy.

Brooks further pointed out that the idea assumes America had all the years of low inflation under Obama and under the Bushes but suddenly got greedy and started price gouging under the Biden-Harris administration. Brooks also suggested that the Biden administration’s overstimulation of the economy contributed to rising inflation.

“The real core problem is it expresses a level of economic illiteracy which is kind of surprising in a responsible Democratic candidate,” Brooks said. “The idea behind greedflation is that we had all these years of low inflation under Obama and under Bushes. And I guess people weren’t greedy then. And then Biden gets in, and suddenly, magically, they all get greedy and start price gouging. And they do it at [Kroger], at Harris Teeter, at H-E-B. Suddenly, there’s this massive price gouging. And she thinks she can prosecute it. That’s not why inflation surged. Inflation surged because we had a pandemic, which screwed up supply chains and productivity, then the Biden administration overstimulated the economy, too many dollars chasing too few goods. Obama administration officials Larry Summer[s] and Jason Furman said at the time, this is going to cause inflation. Lo and behold, it did.”

Earlier in the show, Brook said he agrees with experts who say Harris’ economic plan is bad for the country.

“I think the child tax credit is a good thing. She wants to de-regulate housing, so we can get more homes. But the price gouging is just — well, Catherine Rampell, The Washington Post columnist and a ‘NewsHour’ contributor, said it’s impossible to exaggerate how bad this policy is, and I agree with that. And Catherine had a good line that if your opponent is calling you a Communist, maybe don’t lead with price controls. And so, price controls just create shortages. They create black markets. We’ve seen it happen in Venezuela. We’ve seen it happen in the Soviet Union. Price controls just don’t work. What’s worse about that, first, it’s trying to address a problem that does not exist. Grocery prices, inflation has been less than 1% for the past year. It’s over. We had a surge, but it’s over. The problem does not exist.”