Other Schools of Thought

Recorded at Mises University 2003.

Recorded at the Mises Institute, May 1994.

William Anderson writes: "I admit to being a regular reader of Krugman's columns, and I suspect that many of my fellow economists on all sides of the ideological divide read him as well, which is one reason the Times has made him a featured star. Of course, being of the Austrian School of Economics, I find very little in Krugman's statements on economics with which I can agree."

Because of their minority status, most budding Austrian economists must endure graduate training in the mainstream orthodoxy before earning their Ph.D.s. A recent graduate of New York University highlights the major differences between Austrian economics and the neoclassical, New Keynesian paradigm: method, choice, money, institutions, time, and the business cycle.

The collection of prices and quantities contained in, for instance, GDP figures, are an arbitrary choice on the part of the government. And we have no reason to believe that a dollar measure of GDP reflects anything constant about the satisfaction the citizens receive from the dollars they spend. Ultimately, GDP measures nothing more than how many dollars were spent in a nation's economy on selected goods and services. 

Why did Hayek see the economy's capital structure as being so central to our understanding of industrial fluctuations? Just how did his ideas line up against those being developed by John Maynard Keynes? And why did Hayek eventually all but abandon the research program that had so energized him in those early years? Roger Garrison explains.

Most ordinary folk today live far better than did the Sun King himself. That advance in prosperity has not been built on government intervention, on needless consumption, nor on monetary debasement or otherwise the bilking of ones' creditors. It was built on savings being converted into capital.

In the writings of modern evangelical environmentalists runs a disturbing theme: the idea that it is possible for a small group of individuals to improve upon our use of the environment through coercion. In the name of stewardship, they lay claim to control of every aspect of our lives.

If the government actually believed that the homeland would be safer due to its actions overseas, why does it impose (under the threat of violence) a terrorism insurance requirement? And why do its warnings of impending doom seem to be increasing rather than decreasing?

Of all the false charges leveled against capitalism, the indictment of promoting or requiring imperialism and warfare is most certainly the least deserved. Given recent events, this proposition has received much undeserved attention, but is by no means new. This claim has a long legacy, tracing back at least to 19th century critics of Political Economy.