Why can’t the government just set a concrete price for everything (Rent, groceries, etc) and forbid it from ever changing? That would prevent inflation from ever happening, right?
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Say that rent is worth $700, and the only people willing to rent out their place anymore are people whose places are worth less than $700. No one would be bothered to build rentals if they knew the value of the finished product would be capped low. Resources would move *away* from giving renters a place to live, and *towards* everything and everyone else. Suddenly, you’ve forced the exact opposite of what you wanted to happen, to happen.
Ultimately, price is not an actual quality of an item, it’s a product of other factors, mainly supply and demand. Fixing prices will only bend supply and demand to fit that new intersection. If you want more people to be housed, the only possible way to do that (unless you already screwed up the market, then you could just reverse your screw ups) is to increase supply. Supply can refer to a lot of things though, the supply of the materials, the amount of product produced (houses/apartments in this case) or even the total number of manufacturers (like with insulin). Increase supply, and you undermine high prices. Fix prices low, and you undermine supply.
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