didn’t Jimmy Carter try that...I think they called it Voluntary Wage and Price controls...it ended up making inflation worse. IIRC
As Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman correctly predicted, however, Nixon’s gambit ended “in utter failure and the emergence into the open of the suppressed inflation.” The people would pay the price — but not until after he’d coasted to a landslide re-election in 1972 over Democratic Sen. George McGovern.
By the time Nixon reimposed a temporary freeze in June 1973, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw explain in The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, it was obvious that price controls didn’t work: “Ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets.”
The Democrats pulling a play from the Nixon playbook. Ironic, isn't it?
It was Nixon who instituted price controls in 1971. It increased inflation and resulted in shortages. It was a disaster.
It was Nixon who instituted price controls in 1971. It increased inflation and resulted in shortages. It was a disaster.
Those Carter years and inflation, boy those were miserable times.
Nixon
Nixion froze prices, it was a flop.