There is growing talk that if inflation doesn’t ease soon, the White House may impose “temporary” price controls on voter-sensitive products, such as beef, chicken, gasoline, heating oil and various prescription drugs.
This episode of What’s Ahead explains why such a move would be disastrous. Several thousand years of experience demonstrate that controls don’t work. They make things worse, because they attack the symptoms, not the underlying cause, which is the lowering of the currency’s value. Price controls end up exacerbating shortages.