Denying the reality of economics is on the same level as promoting flat Earth theory. It's time to escape Europe if you can afford it.
Wall Street Journal (10/9/22) reports: "The highest inflation in decades and the steep drop in Russian natural gas exports to Europe have pushed a growing number of governments to experiment with ways to control energy prices. The plans will test the economic wisdom that price controls distort markets and create supply shortages. In the U.K., the new government is planning to cap household energy costs and pay utilities the difference between the cap and market prices, and Germany is working up plans to cap the cost of electricity and natural gas. The European Union has approved both a plan to claw back some energy companies’ profits and redistribute them to consumers, and it is also exploring the creation of a cap on the price of natural gas across the bloc. The U.S. is leading an effort with its allies to cap the global sales price of Russian oil, while a United Nations agency last week called for policymakers to opt for price caps and windfall taxes to fight inflation. Economic textbooks predict that imposing a lower price on a product will reduce its supply. Unless demand is also sufficiently reduced, possibly through rationing, the mismatch between supply and demand can create shortages. Enforcing price controls can also be difficult and require a large bureaucracy. And since controls are usually lifted at some point, higher costs to consumers are only delayed, not prevented. The U.S. imposed price controls during World War II but also rationing. Lines at gasoline stations in the 1970s were blamed in part on price controls imposed at the time."
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