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Historically, the overwhelming majority of Americans have ignored death certificates and the topic of how they are processed, produced, and compiled for purposes of government statistics.
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While in the natural sciences a laboratory experiment can isolate various elements and their movements can be followed through, there is no equivalent in the economic discipline. The introduction of econometrics and model building is an attempt to produce a laboratory where controlled experiments can be conducted.
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“Truth will out” is the most popular fairy tale in Washington. Members of Congress are clashing over whether politicians will appoint an “independent” commission to reveal the facts behind the January 6 Capitol ruckus. Proponents are portraying the issue as a simple choice between “truth or Trump.”
In the field of economics, any narrative overly vague, poorly defined, or which cannot be substantiated is probably untrue. The current narrative garnering ever increasing media attention goes something like this:
“Inflation was extremely high in the 1970’s so the Fed raised rates and controlled inflation.”
For Mises, liberalism first emerged and expressed itself in the nineteenth century as a political movement in the form of “peaceful nationalism.” Its two fundamental principles were freedom or, more concretely, “the right of self-determination of peoples” and national unity or the “nationality principle.” The two principles were indissolubly linked. The primary goal of the liberal nationalist movements (Italian, Polish, Greek, German, Serbian, etc.) was the liberation of their peoples from the despotic rule of kings and princes.
