Other Columns by Thomas Sowell
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Those underlying realities are not changed in the slightest by price controls. You might as well try to deal with someone's fever by putting the thermometer in cold water to lower the reading.

Municipal transit used to be privately owned in many cities, until local politicians' control of fares kept those fares too low to buy and maintain buses and trolleys, and replace them as they wore out. The costs of doing these things were not reduced in the slightest by refusing to let the fares cover those costs.

All that happened was that municipal transit services deteriorated and taxpayers ended up paying through the nose as city governments took over from transit companies that they had driven out of business -- and government usually did a worse job.

Something similar has happened in rental housing markets, where rent control laws have kept the rents too low to build and maintain rental housing. Whether in Europe or America, rent-controlled housing is almost invariably older housing and more deteriorated housing.

Costs don't go away because you refuse to pay them, any more than gravity goes away if you refuse to acknowledge it. You usually pay more in different ways, through taxes as well as prices, and by deterioration in quality when political processes replace economic process.

But the lure of the free lunch goes on.

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Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.

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