VP Harris advocates price controls, so I am sending her a copy of my textbook.

TRUTH IN BLOGGING: I was political appointee in the Trump administration (Chief Economist of the Antitrust Division).

VOX on regulating rents:

Harris’s remarks to cap rents echoed a recent proposal from the Biden administration just two weeks earlier to limit rent hikes to 5 percent nationwide over the next two years for all landlords who own more than 50 units. (They estimate this would cover over 20 million units across the country.) The Biden plan — which would require congressional approval — would exempt not-yet-built units, so as to not discourage much-needed new housing. The two-year rent cap, Biden officials said, would serve as a way to drive down costs while new housing was under construction.

Harris’s seeming embrace of the Biden plan isn’t the first time she’s expressed support for rent control. In 2019, after Oregon adopted a then first-of-its-kind statewide rent control measure, she tweeted in praise of the bill signing. “No one should ever have to choose between paying their rent each month or feeding their children,” Harris wrote. As a senator, she also introduced legislation to offer tax relief to renters who earned less than $100,000 if they spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities.

ANALYSIS: 

• Chapter 2: Voluntary transactions create wealth by moving assets to higher valued uses. Price controls deter some transactions by limiting the range of agreements between sellers and buyers. 
• Chapter 8: With a price ceiling below the market clearing price, there will be more buyers than sellers. Who gets to buy?  In Sweden, politically connected buyers are more likely to be chosen.
• Chapter 9: In the long run, assets will exit the industry, or new supply will not enter, exacerbating the very problem (high prices) the price controls were designed to solve.  Although VP Harris seems to be aware of this problem, she thinks she can solve it by creating an exception for new supply. However, would-be builders will wonder how long before their new supply becomes old and subject to the controls?  
• And don't forget the increase in the number of government bureaucrats to enforce the new rules.

RELATED:  This is the third time I have had to send out an unsolicited copy of my textbook:  President Maduro (Venezuela, below), The Pope, and now VP Harris.

UPDATE (MarginalRevolution):

Here is the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell on Harris’s price control policy:

It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Some far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.