We are seeing a surge in new governmental measures to control market prices, as politicians get edgy due to inflation. “Don’t blame us — look at all we’re doing to fight rising prices!” they yell.

Cato Institute has just released a new book examining this problem, and Ryan Bourne discusses it in this AIER article:

Price controls are making a comeback across the United States. Federal, state, and local governments increasingly control rents, minimum wages, interest rates on short-term loans, healthcare prices and premiums, credit card late fees and even food delivery service charges. The sharpest inflation burst since the early 1980s has also seen Democrats demand a federal anti-price gouging law, anti-”junk fees” rules, and even efforts to prevent companies engaging in “shrinkflation” or algorithmic dynamic pricing.

Unfortunately, the economics profession is largely missing from the frontlines in this war. Quite a few of them have chosen to turn a blind eye to the problems that always arise when governments meddle with the price system. Many also benefit from connections with big government and don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.

Bourne continues:

“This self-serving buck-passing has been successful: the idea that the overall inflation of this period owes to profit-seeking and one-off supply-shocks, rather than monetary largesse, is now the anthem of large segments of the population. And once you believe that corporate profit-puffing or Vladimir Putin is driving up specific prices and from that inflation, why shouldn’t the state step in and simply stop it happening through price controls?”

Yes, and let’s add that a bigger than ever segment of the public is economically illiterate due to years of indoctrination by “progressive” teachers and professors who want people to think that free markets are their enemy and government regulations their friend. Therefore, fewer and fewer Americans are able to evaluate or even comprehend the arguments against price controls.