Whose Policies Are Stuck in the Past?

By Dominic Pino

Thursday, August 15, 2024

 

Republicans sometimes get a lot of grief for being stuck in the 1980s on policy. This is little more than trying to dismiss arguments for being old rather than for being wrong. Obviously, a lot has changed since the ’80s, and it’s not a matter of copy-pasting that policy agenda for today. But at the very least, the U.S. is currently facing a rising cost of living, the accumulation of past regulations that stifle present growth, and a communist-dictatorship adversary plus an aggressive Iran. It just might be the case that tax cuts, deregulation, and peace through strength are at least reasonable policies to try in response to those circumstances.

 

Democrats, on the other hand, are stuck in the 4th century. Their brilliant new policy idea, Kamala Harris’s only one so far, is price controls. Noah Rothman writes, “This float is light on details, but the dispatch indicated that Harris would enforce her plan to impose price stability on the market by decree via the Federal Trade Commission, which would be empowered along with state attorneys general ‘to investigate and levy penalties on food companies that violate the federal ban.'”

 

Imposing price stability by decree was Diocletian’s idea of good policy. The Edict on Maximum Prices was issued in 301 by the Roman emperor. Harris promises fines for price-gougers; Diocletian promised the death penalty for profiteers — it was a more bloody time then. Price controls go back even further: There were price controls in the Code of Hammurabi, and archaeologists have discovered price controls a few centuries before then, ca. 1750 b.c.

 

For thousands of years, politicians have used price controls to deflect responsibility for their own failures. They don’t work, and they create new problems. If the choice is being stuck in the ’80s with policies that won the Cold War, ushered in 40 years of low inflation, and have kept the U.S. a relatively low-tax country, or being stuck in the 4th century with price controls and economic decrees, it’s a no-brainer which policy agenda is better.