Inflation is the surest way to trigger a Pavlovian response from politicians, whereby they blame monopolists, middlemen, greedy entrepreneurs, profiteers, and price gougers. In 1793, French Revolutionaries fueled inflation by running persistent deficits that they monetized. Their response was to instill fear — courtesy of the guillotine — by blaming productive French citizens for being greedy. Luckily, the guillotine has long been ditched, but the common tropes used by the Biden administration and its allied members of Congress to deflect blame for inflation have not. 

While the money supply has increased by more than 30 percent since 2020, and the Federal government deficit is above 5 percent of national income with no end in sight, Democrats have preferred to blame the private sector. Their most recent target is RealPage, a US software provider that analyzes supply and demand dynamics in the rental real estate market to help landlords price their properties. President Biden went so far as to say “we’re cracking down on big landlords who break antitrust laws by price-fixing and driving up rents.” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and nine Democratic co-sponsors introduced the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act earlier this year. This type of Advil politics, where the government attempts to treat the symptoms instead of the underlying causes of inflation, comes with costly unintended consequences.