Mises Daily Monday: Krugman is confused as to why so much technological growth in recent years has not led to more economic growth. The answer lies in the fact that true technological change requires funding — and thus real savings — to be implemented.
But can the debate really be as one-sided as I portray it? Well, look at the results: again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above. I’m Krugtron the Invincible!
For a few years now, a modern form of Luddite-ism has decried a seemingly ramped-up use of technology that is expected to upend labor markets in the near future to degrees heretofore unseen. In this world, what we know as fast food restaurants will become completely self-serve, with iPad-ish screens used to order French fries and machines in the kitchen to prepare them.
Appendix: The Myth of Free Banking in Scotland
“FREE BANKING” IN SCOTLAND
ABSTRACT: Throughout his works on methodology, Mises presented economics as part of a more comprehensive science of human action, praxeology. The relation between the two was hierarchical.
XVI. Central Banking in the United States IV: The Federal Reserve System
1. THE INFLATIONARY STRUCTURE OF THE FED
XVII. Conclusion: The Present Banking Situation and What to Do About It
1. THE ROAD TO THE PRESENT
XV. Central Banking in the United States III: The National Banking System
1. THE CIVIL WAR AND THE NATIONAL BANKING SYSTEM
The Civil War wrought an even more momentous change in the nation’s banking system than had the War of 1812. The early years of the war were financed by printing paper money—greenbacks—and the massive printing of money by the Treasury led to a universal suspension of specie payments by the Treasury itself and by the nation’s banks, at the end of December 1861. For the next two decades, the United States was once again on a depreciating inconvertible fiat standard.
