Brian Maher of the Daily Reckoning quotes Murray Rothbard and me in his incisive critique of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which has lately been embraced by proponents of the “Green New Deal.”

A common myth about capitalism — and its associated ideology, (classical) liberalism — is that capitalism and liberalism somehow “force” people to prefer consumption and profit maximization above all other value systems.

This idea remains common among left-wing critics of liberalism like George Monbiot who maintains that liberalism essentially brainwashes people into abandoning their own families and communities in order to attain an unattainable ideal of “individualism.”

When I write about Social Security, I normally focus on the program’s huge fiscal imbalance ($44 trillion and climbing).

What happens when politicians see that their monster stimuli have not delivered? They bring the next rabbit out of a hat. They need a new name and a new magic solution to make citizens believe in the magic of demand-side policies despite the constant failure of those same plans.

Today would have been the 90th birthday of Burt Blumert, one of the greatest personalities of the modern libertarian movement. Burt was the indispensable man behind the scenes and was a key figure in the Mises Institute, the Center for Libertarian Studies, and LewRockwell.com. He was one of Murray Rothbard’s closest friends; and when you met him, it was easy to see why Murray liked him. He was a genial and kind person and a source of wise counsel to all those fortunate to know him. Burt was the founder of Camino Coins and a principal figure in the hard money community.

In what its supporters have claimed is “visionary,” the congressional media darling, Alexandria Occasio-Cortez (AOC) has released her short-awaited Green New Deal , and she has called for nothing short of destruction of life as we have known it:

In his various writings, the champion of the monetarist school, Milton Friedman, argued that there is a variable time lag between changes in money supply and its effect on real output and prices. Friedman holds that in the short run changes in money supply will be followed by changes in real output.

However, in the long-run changes in money will only have an effect on prices. All this means that changes in money with respect to real economic activity tend to be neutral in the long-run and non-neutral in the short-run. Thus according to Friedman,

This week Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a preliminary summary of her grand vision for a Green New Deal. Prior to its unveiling, the youngest rising star of the Democratic Party had already managed to get the support of leading members of Congress, including all of the party’s current leading Presidential candidates. Unfortunately for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the document was met with widespread ridicule for advocating policies such as building high-speed rail to Hawaii, eliminating combustible engines, and guaranteed government jobs – even for those “unwilling to work.”

T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, Civil Rights Pioneer
David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito
Oakland: Independent Institute, 2018, xxii + 339 pp.

Jason Jewell (jjewell@faulkner.edu) is a professor of humanities at Faulkner University.

Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 21, no. 3 (Fall 2018) full issue, click here.