Lionel Robbins writes concerning deflation (”Consumption and the Trade Cycle,” Economica , Volume 12, [35-38], November 1932, pp. 418):”the belief that there is nothing detrimental to the smooth working of the economic machinery in the changes which result in a consumers’ goods price index falling with increased productivity, is not the esoteric
A few years ago, March 2000 in fact , I came across an e-mail that was impossibly dumb. It called for a “Gas-Out.” The idea was to boycott gasoline for a few days. This action would drive the price of gas down, and at the same time, it would show “Big Oil” that if they tried to raise prices again, we’d hurt them. The increase in gas prices have
When economic times are good, people pay very little attention to the work of economists. Only when an economy experiences a downturn do people come to economists asking how this latest disaster happened and how do we get out of it. Unfortunately, the economist tends to speak in a cryptic language using references to things like the NAIRU, the
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.