A recent article in Bloomberg Markets by Michelle Jamrisko brings welcome news. “The gold standard is one of the oldest ideas about money, but the hardest of hard-money hawks sense an opening to breathe new life into it.” Unfortunately, those in search of information about the gold standard and its supporters will find little of use in the article.
From 20 to 22 April, a group of young scholars from all across Europe convened at the CEVRO Institute in Prague for the Second Austrian Economics Meeting Europe (AEME). Founded in 2014 at Mises University, and in the spirit of it, the AEME is an organisation that seeks to once a year bring young European students and researchers in the Austrian tradition together for academic discussions.
Chapter XIII. The Wages Fund in Germany
We may now conveniently consider the treatment of the wages fund doctrine by the economists of Continental Europe; and among these, chiefly by the Germans. Chronologically, this phase of the history of the doctrine should have an earlier place; for an unmistakable departure from the lines of reasoning traditional among the English was made by Hermann before the days of the younger Mill.
[Editor’s Note: In the wake of numerous accounts of TSA’s inability to provide quick and efficient security screening at airports, it’s interesting to read what (then) Congressman Ron Paul had to say about creating a new federal agency. This article originally was published on November 19, 2001, as Congress scrambled to “do something” in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Among other measures, the (Republican-led) U.S. House created TSA, with Dr. Paul voting against.]
The Foundation For Economic Education The Freeman 1992
The consumer is not omniscient. He does not know where he can obtain at the cheapest price what he is looking for. Very often he does not even know what kind of commodity or service is suitable to remove most efficaciously the particular uneasiness he wants to remove. At best he is familiar with the market conditions of the immediate past and arranges his plans on the basis of this information. To convey to him information about the actual state of the market is the task of business propaganda.
Chapter XII. Long — Thornton — Mill — Cairnes
We come now to the most dramatic episode in the history of the wages fund doctrine, — the attacks on it by Longe and Thornton, and Mill’s surrender to the latter. Immediately after, came Cairnes’s endeavor to reshape and rehabilitate the doctrine; the first attempt, since Adam Smith’s day, at a deliberate and careful statement of its meaning. All this stir was due, as is usually the case with such a burst of active discussion, to the pressure of practical problems.
In just two years, inflation targeting (namely, the quest for 2 percent inflation) has gone from the lunatic fringe of economics to mainstream dogma. Much of the allure springs from notions that a little inflation motivates people to speed up spending, thereby greatly increasing the efficacy of central bank stimulus. It is touted as a cure for sagging demand and a defense against the (overly) dreaded deflation.
Chapter X. From Ricardo to John Stuart Mill
We come now to the period of active discussion which begins with Ricardo and ends with John Stuart Mill; the period in which the doctrines of the classic economists gradually secured their strongest hold on students and thinkers, and in which the wages fund doctrine is often supposed to have arisen and flourished. All of the writers of the period were contemporaries of Ricardo; most of them knew him, or might have known him, in person.
