Pete Buttigieg: Hungry Babies, Regrettably, Are Just the Price of the Free Market
Pete Buttigieg says that in a capitalist economy, the government doesn’t and shouldn’t make baby formula. But around the world, even in the United States, the public sector has stepped in to correct market failures.
Pete Buttigieg speaking in Washington, DC, 2019. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
Someone save us from the free market ideologues before it’s too late.
Sitting down on CBS’s “Face the Nation” this week, transportation secretary and billionaire darling Pete Buttigieg addressed the infant formula shortage that’s sent parents around the United States scrambling to find some way to feed their babies. Asked about the sluggish federal response to a crisis regulators were informed about as far back as October, Buttigieg absolved the Biden administration through a little bit of neoliberal sleight of hand.
“Let’s be very clear,” he said. “This is a capitalist country. The government does not make baby formula, nor should it. Companies make formula.”
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