The Next Step in Canada's Descent: Price Controls on Food

What could go wrong?

I’ve spilled more than my share of digital ink about the frightening and sudden decline of Canada, but the country’s recent news makes me more pessimistic than ever about the future of our northern neighbors.

In the grand scheme of things, Canada is dealing with many of the same issues as we are in America. Out-of-control monetary and price inflation, spiking home prices putting home ownership out of the reach of many, and authoritarian government actions during covid have combined to paint Canadians into a dark corner.

And unfortunately for Canadian citizens, the Canadian government is on the case:

Also experiencing “record profits” — the Canadian government

Everything will be on the table in Canada— except food.

That’s because price controls don’t do anything but distort and eventually break the free market. If it costs $2 to make a loaf of bread you can only sell for $1, how long do you keep selling bread at a loss before you go broke? (Not long, unless you’re government.)

And we used to know this.

Price controls are advocated as a method of controlling inflation. People assume that inflation means rising prices and that it exists only when and to the extent that businessmen raise their prices. It appears to follow, on this view, that inflation would not exist if price increases were simply prohibited by price controls.

Actually, this view of inflation is utterly naïve. Rising prices are merely a leading symptom of inflation, not the phenomenon itself. Inflation can exist, and, indeed, accelerate, even though this particular symptom is prevented from appearing. Inflation itself is not rising prices, but an unduly large increase in the quantity of money, caused, almost invariably, by the government. In fact, a good definition of inflation would be, simply: an increase in the quantity of money caused by the government. Rising prices as a chronic social problem are a consequence of governments overthrowing the use of gold and silver as money and putting in their place unbacked paper currencies and checking deposits whose quantity can be increased without limit and virtually without cost.

As in the US, Canada printed a TON of money during the covid years. In fact, roughly 25% of Canadian dollars in existence were printed in the last few years! It’s no wonder that citizens are lamenting the loss of their purchasing power.

Yet this result is no surprise — in fact, many of us were screaming DURING the covid years that printing gobs of money would result in inflation. “Nonsense,” the ‘experts’ declared. “There will be very little inflation.” They were then forced to pivot to “The inflation is transitory” before finally settling on “inflation is coming down and putting more money in the pockets of Americans” — because the ‘leaders’ obviously think we don’t understand inflation is CUMULATIVE. (To be fair, a sizeable percentage of people probably DON’T understand this.)

But if the government of Canada is printing and spending so much money, just what exactly ARE they spending it on? Here’s a recent example:

Click to enlarge - original link

$650 million to “our friends” in Ukraine! While Canadians are struggling simply paying for food and shelter, Trudeau continues to shovel money hand-over-fist to be blown up by the war machine in Europe. (As an added bonus, he does it while complaining about global warming and levying carbon taxes!) This should be a wake-up call to all Canadians about the REAL priorities of the Canadian government. (Ditto for us here in the States.)

And just like assisted suicide and attacks on free speech, what happens in Canada is NOT staying in Canada.

This is sort of off-topic, but take a look at the banner on that City of Chicago page:

1. Safe and effective

2. Protect you AND THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU

3. Reduces spread of covid-19

(I wrote an article about Chicago and its vax pass if you want to dive into this issue.)

These are exactly the kind of people who would attempt to open a government-owned grocery store. Reality doesn’t matter, the narrative is everything! The “leaders” don’t want to talk about businesses fleeing the city due to crime, so instead they swoop in to save the city from the consequences of their own actions.

No doubt when the shelves are empty in both Canada AND Chicago, the “leaders” will blame others and come up with even bigger and dumber ideas to fix the problem — and the descent will continue.

It’s enough to make me scream!

Afraid of commitment? Buy me a coffee on Ko-fi — no subscription required!