Price Controls

World Cup tickets are a hot commodity with prices through the roof. Naturally, governments want to do what governments always do unsuccessfully: levy price controls.

World Cup tickets are a hot commodity with prices through the roof. Naturally, governments want to do what governments always do unsuccessfully: levy price controls.

Mises’s focused analysis of price controls: why fixing prices produces shortages and demands for still more controls, and what that reveals for the theory of social organization as a whole.

The central essay: interventionism as a supposed economic system, the real nature of intervention, and how price ceilings, minimum wages, and similar measures defeat their own aims—leaving only a choice between the free market and socialism.

In making threats against oil companies for "price gouging," President Trump shows he knows no more about prices than he does about the real effects of tariffs.

Chris Calton links California's housing crisis to three books published in the 1960s that spawned three ideological movements, each of which handed activists and bureaucrats new tools to block development and destroy private property rights one permit hearing at a time.

California has been seen as the nation’s “Promised Land” for many years, but in the past 25 years, people have left due to high housing costs and high taxes. The state’s future is about to become a lot worse, as socialists are rising in power here.

California has been seen as the nation’s “Promised Land” for many years, but in the past 25 years, people have left due to high housing costs and high taxes. The state’s future is about to become a lot worse, as socialists are rising in power here.

President Trump’s so-called populism really is a mish-mash of protectionism, increased government spending, price controls, and some deregulation. Don’t expect good results.

The question is not whether a politician’s intention is good. The market does not care about intentions. It responds to incentives.