Pro-Con, Progress-Congress II

From today's WSJ, an excellent commentary titled "Gasbags" by two former Texas Congressmen (Bill Archer and Chalres Stenholm), who apparently understand basic economics (see excerpts below), in contrast to Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), sponsor of the Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act, who could use some remedial economic lessons about price controls.

1. "Government intervention to control prices, reduce demand or increase supply, however temporary, will create more instability in the marketplace, not less."

2. "The reality is that there has never been a legitimate finding that gasoline price increases were caused by any manipulation of the markets."

3. "History and basic economics teach us that price caps result in shortages in the market and hardships for consumers."

4. "Even when price controls have been designed carefully and included very specific rules defining legal prices and specific enforcement mechanisms, they have proven to be failures of enormous consequence."

See a previous post on the same topic.