Reply #14: Nixon's first job was working for John Kenneth Galbraith at the price control board [View All]

[AP]

sending letters around to gas stations telling them that they were charging too much for tires and if they didn't lower prices, the government would take action.

Gas stations aren't selling gas at a loss. You've seen how oil companies are reporting record profits, right? The government could actually make them charge less money at the pumps so that those profit margins fell, and they could do that if they believed that price inflation was cutting into the wealth of regular citizens, which is what the government did effectively during WWII, and which Nixon actually tried to do as president very ineffectively (I think he only tried to regulate the price of milk, and it was very half-hearted).