Another Dem mistake! Threatened price controls won’t curb Biden-flation

[Kamaji]

Another Dem mistake! Threatened price controls won’t curb Biden-flation

By Stephen Moore
April 6, 2022

President Joe Biden is the opposite of Harry Truman. “Give ’Em Hell, Harry” had a famous sign on his desk in the Oval Office: “The Buck Stops Here.” That meant that when things went wrong, he shouldered the blame — as any good chief executive of a company or a country should do.

What Biden is best at when things go wrong is pointing his finger at someone else. He passes the buck. The Afghanistan debacle? The Pentagon brass told me to do it. The disaster at the border? Blame Congress for not authorizing enough money.

High gas prices? Blame Russian President Vladimir Putin. Runaway inflation? Price gouging by American companies.

The obvious solution to $5-a-gallon gas, surging prices at the grocery store and higher drug and hospital costs is to stop the multitrillions of dollars of debt-spending in Washington that is dumping cheap money into the economy.

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Now the Biden administration complains that producers are taking advantage of product shortages and supply-chain constraints by jacking up their prices. He wants to penalize the meat packers for the high beef prices, the poultry industry for the rising expense of a chicken dinner, the drug companies for the high cost of pharmaceuticals and the oil and gas industry for recording record profits while gas prices soar.

He wants the Federal Trade Commission and other regulatory agencies to impose price ceilings to be monitored by an army of federal price-control police.

This is economic amnesia. We tried all these government manipulations in the 1960s and 1970s. The ruinous price regulations on industry made inflation worse. Back then we had Soviet-style central planners imposing price limits on everything: long-distance phone calls, oil and gas, airlines, rail service, trucking and banking services.

This was supposed to protect consumers, but by making it illegal for prices to rise, we got hit with empty shelves, shortages and gas lines.

The price ceilings became de facto price floors. Inflation shot up from 5% to 8% to 10% by 1980.

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Source:  https://nypost.com/2022/04/06/threatened-price-controls-wont-curb-biden-flation/

[andy58-in-nh]

Government causes a problem by interfering in the market economy with taxes and regulations.
Government pretends to solve the problem by issuing mandates.
The mandates cause new problems, which the government blames on market forces.
Government issues regulations to assure enforcement of the original mandates, including fines and mandates.
The regulations result in unexpected behavioral changes, fostering the development and use of alternative markets and services.
Government identifies the new uses as a problem and decides to interfere with new taxes and regulations.
Rinse and repeat.

[Kamaji]

Government causes a problem by interfering in the market economy with taxes and regulations.
Government pretends to solve the problem by issuing mandates.
The mandates cause new problems, which the government blames on market forces.
Government issues regulations to assure enforcement of the original mandates, including fines and mandates.
The regulations result in unexpected behavioral changes, fostering the development and use of alternative markets and services.
Government identifies the new uses as a problem and decides to interfere with new taxes and regulations.
Rinse and repeat.

[Hoodat]

Here it is in terms that even Biden can understand:

[Kamaji]

Here it is in terms that even Biden can understand: