The Biden Administration’s recent flirtation with price controls has made us uncomfortable. We’ve tried to educate the White House that such things are foolish Nonetheless, it’s an idea they keep floating as an antidote to inflation.

Perhaps none of the young minds making economic policy are old enough to remember how bad things got when Richard Nixon tried them in the 1970s. We’ve heard they don’t even teach the folly of price controls to graduate-level students of economics anymore.

It’s gratifying to see Austen Goolsbee, chairman of the CEA under Barack Obama, is joining our campaign to keep this very bad policy from seeing the light of day. In a recent survey of economists conducted by the University of Chicago, he answered a question about it thusly:

Here are some of the overall results:

Seriously. Price controls are such a bad idea Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy worked together to repeal them. Biden may want to build back better but up to now he’s just bringing back the 70s.

The whole survey is worth a look: https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/inflation-market-power-and-price-controls/