Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 102 of Eamonn Butler’s paper “Price Controls Have Been Disastrous Throughout History,” which is Chapter 7 of The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions About Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy (Ryan A. Bourne, ed., 2024) (footnotes deleted; typo corrected; link added):

Price regulation nearly did in George Washington’s revolutionary army. The legislature of Pennsylvania, where Washington was based, decided to control the prices of food and other commodities the army needed. Their hope was to reduce the cost of the war, but farmers simply refused to sell their produce at such low prices. Some even took their produce to the British, who paid market prices in gold. In the harsh Valley Forge winter of 1777, Washington’s army nearly starved. John Adams complained that the “improvident act” of price controls had “done great injury” and unless repealed, would “ruin the state and introduce a civil war.”