While these accusations are vague, they clearly do not apply to the supermarket sector. In 2022, when inflation peaked, the average profit margin for a supermarket was 2.3%. This profit margin was not only lower than in 2021 (2.9%), but is also well below the average corporate profit margin of 8-9%. What makes the exploitation argument even stranger is that profit margins fell further in 2023 to 1.6%.

While shortages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have caused supplier prices to rise faster than overall inflation, grocers are clearly the worst profiteers ever as they exploit consumers and charge exorbitant prices. Grocery retailing is a low-margin, high-volume industry. Consumers are not being exploited or ripped off. They can go to the grocery store of their choice and find tens of thousands of products.

As is too often the case, good economics makes bad politics. Blaming corporations is politically expedient. Scapegoating corporations also lends a semblance of logic to the Democrats’ preferred price control policies. After all, if corporations raising prices cause inflation, it follows that banning them will fix it.

The problem is that history is not on the vice president’s side. American economic history is full of failed price controls.

For example, to counter inflationary pressures resulting from World War II, FDR implemented an extensive system of price controls and rationing.

While prices stopped rising while controls were in place, problems of scarcity and “shrinkflation” replaced the visible price increases. Finally, price controls were lifted in 1946, and annual inflation soared to over 20% in 1947.

President Richard Nixon also failed to learn from history, instituting a wage and price control regime in 1971 that froze wages and prices for 90 days. The controls were then gradually lifted. Instead of relief, the move led to “shortages and long lines,” according to the John Locke Foundation, “frustrate[ing]consumers for years.”

The list of examples goes on, but the theme is the same: price controls fail to stop inflation and end up imposing costs that far exceed the burdens of the original inflation. Importantly, the adverse effects of usury laws are not limited to inflation targeting. These controls never work, no matter what they promise, and often result in perverse, if not downright cruel, outcomes.

Today, usury laws can still be found in local laws across America. Take the case of John Shepperson, a Kentucky man who bought 19 generators at Home Depot, took time off work, rented a truck, and drove 600 miles to Mississippi, where victims of Hurricane Katrina needed electricity in 2005. “John offered to sell his generators for twice the price he was paying for them to cover his costs and make a profit,” says economist Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute.

Although “people were eager to buy his generators,” Mississippians who needed them never got the chance to do so. Shepperson was arrested for violating Mississippi’s price-gouging law and held for four days. The generators were confiscated, Perry says, and never made it to consumers with urgent needs. The prices Shepperson wanted to charge were high. But when locally available generators sold out, as happens in emergencies, those who arrived after the last one was purchased became victims of both the storm and laws that create artificial scarcity.

Historically, price controls have failed to deliver on the hopes of their proponents because such policies fail to address the root causes of the problem and produce a range of harmful and unintended consequences. The Harris price-gouging plan follows the same script. It fails to understand the causes of inflation and fails to consider the harmful consequences that price caps inevitably produce.

Given history, the best we can hope for is that the vice president’s proposal is just a flattery to voters, and that she has no intention of following through on it. Otherwise, consumers will pay a very high price.

More must-read commentary published by Fortune:

The opinions expressed in the comments on Fortune.com are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

Recommended reading:
In our new special issue, a Wall Street legend gets a radical makeover, a tale of crypto injustice, poultry kingpin misconduct, and more.
Read the stories.