[ptero]

I didn't claim that the cause of the problem was with manufacturing capacity.

But if the US didn't have implicit price controls ("just try raising prices 3x at this time of national need, you will regret it" from politicians), the deficits would have resolved in a week. My 2c.

[rhelz]

Sure, if there were not price controls, the shelves would have been full of toilet paper.....but a large segment of the population wouldn't have been able to afford to buy it.

I don't know if you've ever been so poor that you couldn't buy toilet paper. But I sure have, and let me tell you, sneaking napkins from starbucks, and getting ink all over your hands from using newspapers goes from being inconvenient to being massively depressing real quick.

What kills me are these "sunshine capitalists" who just loooove the free market when they are making money, but who are the fist to cry "shortages!!!" and complain about the market value of engineering talent when it comes to spending money.

[ptero]

Heh, I have grown up not having the toilet paper -- workers paradise, stores carrying mostly the necessities, and luxuries like the toilet paper are only for the few big cities. Using scraps of paper does not kill you. And dental work without Novocaine does not kill you either (although I sure prefer it done with Novocaine now).

But living in this workers paradise I have seen real people suffer from the lack of medication that was available to anyone in the West. The party leadership did not find it necessary (or easy) to produce it locally, so it was only available to those with the right connections. And so on.

I am now a well-off, spoiled American (and the above reads like an O'Henry? story about two rich gentlemen arguing in a restaurant on who had it harder during their youth), but first impressions linger and I will take capitalism over socialism any day. Yes, capitalism has many failings, but replacing the guidance of money with the wise rule of the elite will always lead to a Venezuela-type mismanagement. My 2c.