Jeff joins John O’Donnell and Merlin Rothfeld to discuss the health of the US economy.

Trump’s $1-trillion infrastructure spending plan continues to be one of his less controversial proposed policies. In Washington, and even among many in the general public, there is a consensus that government spending on more roads and bridges is always necessarily a slam dunk. 

This is stated matter-of-factly in a recent CNN article about the president’s plan: 

[This article is excerpted from chapter 21 of Human Action.]

In an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, May 20-21, 2017 under the pretentious title “An Einstein for the Dismal Science,” Eric Maskin made extravagant claims for the significance of Paul Samuelson. For Maskin, himself a Nobel laureate in economics, Samuelson was one of the three “most important creative economists of the 20th century” (The other two were Kenneth Arrow and John Maynard Keynes.)

Ludwig von Mises dedicated a great amount of ink to the role that ideas play in shaping society. Not only does his analysis illustrate why it is so important to educate the public on topics such as economics, but also explains the enormous danger posed by widely accepted political myths.

While the Federal Reserve has an explicit dual mandate to keep prices stable and maintain full employment, they have unofficially taken on new goals like maintaining financial stability. Bernanke, Yellen, and other officials have noted how traditional monetary policy is a limited and blunt tool to accomplish this goal, which is why the Fed has, in recent years, exercised and flexed its regulatory muscle.

Recognizing the calamitous erosion of incentives that would be brought about by a straight guaranteed-income plan, some reformers have advocated what they call a “negative income tax.” This proposal was put forward by the prominent economist, Professor Milton Friedman, of the University of Chicago, in his book Capitalism and Freedom, which appeared in 1962. The system he proposed would be administered along with the current income tax system.

According to traditional economics textbooks, the current monetary system amplifies initial monetary injections of money. The popular story goes as follows: if the central bank injects $1 billion into the economy, and banks have to hold 10% in reserve against their deposits, this will allow the first bank to lend 90% of this $1 billion. The $900 million in turn will end up with the second bank, which will lend 90% of the $900 million. The $810 million will end up with a third bank, which in turn will lend out 90% of $810 million, and so on.