Quotation of the Day…

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…  is from pages 190-191 of Robert Higgs’s 1988 paper “Crisis and Quasi-corporatist Policymaking: The U.S. Case in Historical Perspective” as this paper is reprinted in the superb 2004 collection of some of Bob’s essays, Against Leviathan:

The third phase [of Nixon’s scheme to control wages and prices], which began in January 1973, involved a shift from administrative review by the government to self-administration (ostensibly of the same rules) by companies and unions. During this phase, prices and wages surged. Dismayed, President Nixon imposed another across-the-board freeze in June 1973, followed by a final phase of bureaucratically administered controls until the program expired on April 30, 1974. The whole program had worked so poorly and had created so many artificial shortages, black markets, and social conflicts that no one minded much when it ended.