A few quotes from our man Mises; all the bold font is his words, my bolding.
Dig yourself a hole, those who disagreed with me. You will need it to hide in.
When the gov-
ernment prints a piece of paper, it doesn’t cost more to print “100” than
it does to print “10” or “1” on this same piece of paper. And the market
situation, the situation for all human exchanges, the whole economic sys-
tem is undermined, destroyed, by the governments when they consider it
advisable to increase the quantity of money by increasing the quantity of
government money.
In fact, all of Chapter Four, on the gold standard, breathes not a word of the mysteries of the trade cycle, but hammers home again and again that the sheer act of money printing destrys an economy. Go, my children, and read to your satisfaction. “Money and Inflation”, that’s the book.
Oh, here’s another:
The main thing with regard to money is the question, how to restrict, how
not to increase, its quantity.
See that, guys? Inflation and deflation are not equal boogey men. Inflation= bad. Deflation= not a problem.
Another priceless one:
Now there is a doctrine that says there is not enough gold. The rea-
son why these critics of gold are against the gold standard is due to their
belief that the quantity of moneymust be increased. Now the quantity of
money adjusts itself necessarily through prices to the demands of thepub-
lic. Yet, there are authors, professors, textbookwriters, who tell us there is
not enough money…
And he goes on to dismiss them as nutjobs.
Gem the next:
The problem is not to increase the quantity of money.The problem is
to increase the quantity of those things which can be bought with money.
And if you are increasing the quantity of money, and you are not increas-
ing the quantity of things which can be bought withmoney, you are only
increasing the prices which are paid for them. And in time, if the in-
crease in money continues, the whole system becomes a system without
any meaning and really without any possible method of dealing with it.
Tell me how that means rising prices is benign.
For those who like cute anecdotes:
In the years after the First World War, American economists frequently
visited Vienna and I had the pleasure of talking with them, and explaining
inflation and conditions as they prevailed at that time in Austria and in
other European countries. And, as you know, when people are talking
about economic problems, they are talking and talking until finally it is
late in the evening, very late in the evening. And so it was. Then I told
them, “I will now give you an explanation as to why conditions in the
country are not so satisfactory. I will takeyou for a little walk to the center
of the city, past a definite building.”This was at 11 o’clock or midnight.
And we went. It was very quiet. But then they heard a noise, the sound
of the printing machines that were printing banknotes day and night for
the government. The result in Vienna was very modest you know; the
American dollar which had been five Austrian crowns became 14,000 or
17,000 Austrian crowns. The inflation was bad, you are right. But this
was a very modest inflation; the achievement of inflation in Germany was
much greater you know. It took billions of marks to make one
U.S. dollar. You consider this a joke, but it was a tragedy of course. For
the people whose property it destroyed, it was a catastrophe.
Want more about how “benign” inflation is?
Inflation today is probably the most important phenomenon in polit-
ical life and political conditions. Fortunately there is still in this country,
and I hope it will succeed one day, a very reasonable opposition against
inflationary measures. But for many governments it is simply a question
of being in a situation of needing more money and they think it is per-
fectly reasonable to increase the quantity of money. If we want to have a
system of money that works and operates, one must not increase the quan-
tity of money without realizing at every step that one is approaching a very
dangerous point, the point at which the whole thing breaks down.
More:
Where does inflation start?
It starts as soon as you increase the quantity of money. And where does
the danger point begin?That is another problem.The question cannot be
answered precisely. People must realize that you cannot give a statesman
advice: “This is the point up to which you may go and beyond this point
you may not go” Life is not as simple as that. But what we have to realize, what we have to
know when we are dealing with
money and monetary problems, is always the same. We have to realize that
the increase in the quantity of money, the increase of those things which
have the power to be used for monetary purposes, must be restricted at
every point.
Got that, Mr Inflation is Benign?
OK enough is enough. I won’t do your research for you. But know this, our man Mises constantly hammers home that PRICE INFLATION, not the trade cycle, is the biggest problem on Earth. He repeats this over and over and over, so that even the meanest intelligence can get it. This may be very useful to some here with exaggerated ideas of their intellectual capacity, or who think Mises didn’t “pay attention” to price inflation.
OK, the hard core nutjobs here won’t be moved, Their silly minds are frozen into zombie states, unable to learn. But those who really want to know something, those who are curious, spend the half hour or so needed to read this 95 page book. Learn something.
