The Road to Price Controls

If [policymakers] err on the side of inflation, there will be widespread complaining about rising prices to be sure, but that diffuse message is quite drowned in the rising babble of specific demands and concrete proposals from identifiable interest groups -- to compensate me, to regulate him, to control x's prices, and to tax y's excess profits", etc." Axel Leijonhufvud, 1975 "What lies at the base of the whole effort to fix maximum prices? There is first of all a misunderstanding of what it is that has been causing prices to rise. The real cause is either a scarcity of goods or a surplus of money...the political support for such policies [price controls] springs from a...confusion in the public mind. People do not want to pay more for milk, butter, shoes, furniture, rent, theater tickets, or diamonds. Whenever any of these items rises above its previous level the consumer becomes indignant, and feels that he is being rooked." Henry Hazlitt, 1946.