VIKTOR ORBAN AND JOE BIDEN CONCUR.

In the grand fiction that state action to cap prices "lowers costs."  It will not turn out well.  Hungary first:

Viktor Orbán is a hero to American national conservatives. So when in January 2022 the Hungarian Prime Minister announced he would supplement price caps on fuel and mortgage rates by mandating that sugar, flour, sunflower oil, chicken breasts, pork legs, and certain milk products be sold to consumers at lower October 2021 prices, some of this anti–free market cohort celebrated his decisive action to "protect families" from inflation. "But, but, but, what would Milton Friedman say!" tweeted Compact magazine editor Sohrab Ahmari, mocking advocates of market economics. This was "the party of the state for the win."

We get the same sort of nonsense out of the Jarrett regency, whether it's selling off the strategic petroleum reserves, putting price caps on insulin sales, or somehow pretending that limiting individual Medicare payments "lowers costs".  Earlier today came the nonsense.  "We’re going to keep lowering costs for families — from lowering costs in healthcare, prescription drugs, clean energy — because we passed that legislation. We’re going to be rolling it out this whole year."  We have much to look forward to.

Well, we know what Friedman would have said: These price controls will not work as you intend. Limited to a small range of goods, they won't dampen even measured inflation rates. They cannot suppress actual inflationary pressure, which is determined by the intersection of total spending and output. Even if almost all prices were controlled, as in the U.S. during World War II, a lower measured inflation would ill reflect the reduced quality and product reformulations that sellers would reach for to circumvent price controls. When controls are removed, the official price level would surge again anyway.

Yes, and the sort of emergency measures a government takes when there is a war on is not an endorsement of emergency measures when there is not a war on.  Let the national conservatives, whoever those are, in Hungary and the United States recall the lesson, and pray that technocrats of the Welfare Economics Paradigm sort eventually realize the error of their ways.

Rather than reaching for a scapegoat, national conservatives should heed the lesson. They may believe that the national interest demands overriding market outcomes, especially when war is undoubtedly squeezing living standards. But junking market prices has a cost, even if it's your ideological ally doing the junking.

Logic and content will carry the day. Wishful thinking does not.