Howard Pyle, The Burning of Jamestown, an early-twentieth-century illustration, not an eyewitness view. Public domain.
When wartime price controls came off in 1946, households that had saved because there was little to buy met a sharp rise in prices, especially for food.
A stretched household on a fixed wage watched the grocery take the raise the war had seemed to lock in.
A household with war bonds and a list of postponed needs spent into the jump, which felt like freedom and used the savings faster than a controlled price would have.
A grocer or a manufacturer that had been held under a ceiling could charge what the rush of buyers would bear, and did.
Congress took apart the Office of Price Administration’s power through 1946 rather than keep a wartime ceiling on a peacetime market.
Prices rose quickly as households spent savings on goods that were back in the stores.
Wages did not all move in the same month, so 1946 felt like a pay cut to families who had not changed jobs.
Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics (2005)