As predicted, Mugabe's sale-prices-on-command approach to countering inflation is a shattering failure. Constraining prices by legislative fiat always fails, no matter what. Any time you hear about a politician proposing a price control to "help" someone run, do not walk, to the nearest available voting booth and toss him or her out as quickly as possible. Were it to happen at the national level, it would have the nice indirect effect of tossing out all of the more egregious members of the Democratic party, perhaps the thin wedge needed to get me to consider voting for one of them.

The regime is now Stalinist in everything but name, so the next step will be for them to start shooting people. It took, what, a few weeks for the economy to shrivel and die? I'd give them another week, a month at the most, before we start reading stories about executions for the treasonous sabotage of the enlightened leader's economic plan. And those will be the lucky ones. The way regimes like this treat the children of their "enemies" is simply too horrible to detail.

Will that be what finally causes the people to bring down the government? No, probably not. Sadly, history shows the only way regimes like these fall is if their leader starts screwing around with his neighboring countries, or he dies. The army will be far too busy murdering the country's middle class and business sectors to cause its neighbors any grief, and, like Castro, Mugabe shows no signs of having the decency to just hurry up and die already.

Oh don't worry, it can't happen here. The progressives did their almighty best to take US apart in the 70s and (thanks to the timely intervention of Mr. Reagan) failed. They're nowhere near as powerful now as they were then. But those of you who support things like higher corporate taxes or more regulation to achieve economic "fairness" should take a long, hard look at Zimbabwe. What Venus is to global warming, Zimbabwe is to economic policy.

Via Instapundit.