Vice President Kamala Harris‘s presidential campaign unveiled an economic plan last week indicating that she would enforce the “first-ever federal ban” on food price hikes.

The proposal has received a wave of criticism, including from some unlikely sources.

“It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Kamala Harris’s price-gouging proposal is,” wrote Washington Post economics columnist Catherine Rampell, who received an advance copy of the proposal. “If your opponent claims you’re a ‘communist,’ maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls.”

Rampell is no conservative or free market warrior. She simply understands that price controls are bad policy.

While some are arguing that Harris has since backed away from her price control proposal — her remarks on Friday offered fewer details than the fact sheet distributed to reporters — this doesn’t appear to be the case.

In a press release, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) said Harris supports his price control bill, the Price Gouging Prevention Act.

Many appear eager to deny that Harris actually supports price controls on groceries, even though her campaign issued materials saying she does, and for good reason. Nearly all economists agree that price controls are harmful. It’s not just that price controls have been wrecking economics for the last 4,000 years — they are embarrassing to professional economists, a kind of flat-earth economics.

“This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who served in the Obama administration, said of the proposal in an interview with the New York Times.

Despite the pernicious effects of price controls and their stepchild-like treatment in economic circles, many politicians continue to support them for reasons that are not difficult to grasp. While price controls are destructive economically, they can be effective politically, as the 1972 presidential election shows.

In 1971, during the height of the Vietnam War, inflation was at a more than 15-year high, and President Richard Nixon feared it might cost him reelection. To combat rising prices, Nixon was considering creating a federal wage-price control board. There was just one problem.

”Here’s my concern about the freeze,” Nixon said of the wage-price control proposal. “The goddamned things will not work. They didn’t work even at the end of World War II. They will never work in peacetime.”

This didn’t stop Nixon, however. The Nixon tapes reveal that on Aug. 12, 1971, Treasury Secretary John Connally told the president that creating a federal price control board would send a message to the average voter: “To him, [it] means you mean business. You’re going to stop this inflation. You’re going to try to get control of this economy.”

Three days later, in a nationally televised address, Tricky Dick announced he was “ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States.” Following the 90-day freeze, all increases in prices or wages would require approval from a “Pay Board” or “Price Commission.”

Nixon’s price controls could be a case study in public choice theory, the school of economics that strips politics of its romantic veneer and explores the often perverse incentives that drive public policy. Nixon coasted to reelection in 1972 — within a few years, inflation had doubled to nearly 12%, and people were experiencing a new social trend: gas lines.

Rampell, Furman, and others may fear Harris is putting her election at risk because of her backward economic proposals. Perhaps they are right, but maybe not.

The reality is that Harris needs to find someone to blame for the inflation that has plagued America for the past three years. President Joe Biden attempted to downplay inflation and deflect responsibility, and the results were not good. Harris has opted for a different strategy. Instead of downplaying inflation, she is leaning into it but blaming it on greedy corporations.

Blaming inflation on corporations instead of the powers in Washington who print the money and spend it is shameless. Harris is manipulating voters in a way guaranteed to make their lives harder. Price controls are a loaded gun aimed at the poor. They won’t work economically, and her campaign almost certainly knows it.

But the strategy might work politically. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has employed a similar tactic in Canada. As economist Bryan Caplan reminds us, it’s a mistake to believe that voters are rational — even if it’s impolite to discuss voter irrationality because of what he calls “democratic fundamentalism.”

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The sad truth is that voters do not always punish politicians for their rotten economic policies. Sometimes, they are rewarded for them. Just ask Nixon’s ghost.

But as Venezuelans, Argentines, and countless others can attest, sometimes the consequences of voting for economic madness are much worse than long gas lines.

Jon Miltimore is senior editor at the American Institute for Economic Research. Follow him on Substack.