Mises Daily

We are able to make more sense of all this insanity if we use the Austrian lens to observe that money doesn't have to be a force for human motivation. It is, rather, a tool of calculation.

People want to be happy.

So it was in 1920 and 1921. The government didn't intervene and voila normalcy returned.

We define a bubble as the outcome of activities that have emerged on the back of loose monetary policy of the central bank.

Abolish Social Security completely and instantly — or Ron Paul's more politically viable answer, which would permit current payers to opt out of the system completely.

If a thing has to be used as a medium of exchange, public opinion must not believe that the quantity of this thing will increase beyond all bounds. Inflation is a policy that cannot last.

The real economic problem in all this is not whether we will get given commodities or services at given marginal costs but mainly by what commodities and services the needs of the people can be most cheaply satisfied.

Inflation, to sum up, is the increase in the volume of money and bank credit in relation to the volume of goods. It is harmful because it depreciates the value of the monetary unit, raises everybody's cost of living, imposes what is in effect a tax on the poorest (without exemptions) at as high a rate as the tax on the richest, wipes out the value of past savings, discourages future savings, redistributes wealth and income wantonly, encourages and rewards speculation and gambling at the expense of thrift and work, undermines confidence in the justice of a free enterprise system, and corrupts public and private morals.

Even if the claims about the alleged crisis in manufacturing were true, the ultimate response is a big "So what?" There is nothing sacrosanct about manufacturing jobs.

Doing something you haven't done before releases dopamine to the brain, "which gooses the action system of your brain." And through this process, a feeling of satisfaction is gained.