Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How Not to Fight Inflation

02/14/1978 Robert L. Scheuttinger Eamonn F. Butler

Tags: Big Government, World History

By special arrangement with the authors, the Mises Institute is thrilled to bring back this popular guide to ridiculous economic policy from the ancient world to modern times. This outstanding history illustrates the utter futility of fighting the market process through legislation. It always uses despotic measures to yield socially catastrophic results.

It covers the ancient world, the Roman Republic and Empire, Medieval Europe, the first centuries of the U.S. and Canada, the French Revolution, the 19th century, World Wars I and II, the Nazis, the Soviets, postwar rent control, and the 1970s. It also includes a very helpful conclusion spelling out the theory of wage and price controls.

This book is a treasure, and super entertaining!

Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls by Schuettinger and Butler

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Meet the Author

Robert L. Scheuttinger

Robert Schuettinger was educated in a one-room schoolhouse in Charlotte, Vermont. He later studied under Nobel Laureate and Mises Institute founding board member F.A. Hayek at the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago, where he also edited the New Individualist Review with Ralph Raico.

Price Fixing in Ancient Rome

10/03/2019 Mises Daily Robert L. Scheuttinger Eamonn F. Butler

[This article is excerpted from the book Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How Not to Fight Inflation, chapter 2: “The Roman Republic and Empire.”] As might be expected, the Roman Republic...

Postwar Rent Controls

02/08/2012 Mises Daily Robert L. Scheuttinger Eamonn F. Butler

Rent-control laws cause housing shortages.

Wage and Price Controls in the Ancient World

02/27/2009 Mises Daily Robert L. Scheuttinger Eamonn F. Butler

For the past forty-six centuries (at least) governments all over the world have tried to fix wages and prices from time to time. When their efforts failed, as they usually did, governments then put the blame on the wickedness and dishonesty of their subjects, rather than upon the ineffectiveness of the official policy. The same tendencies remain today.

View Robert L. Scheuttinger bio and works

References

The Heritage Foundation, 1978

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