Day: September 28, 2020

by Kristoffer Mousten Hansen From time to time, Austrian economists, goldbugs, and other economists on the saner end of the spectrum warn of the inflationary dangers of modern central bank policies. The most famous case of this was Bob Murphy’s bet with David Henderson that the Federal Reserve’s policies after the financial crisis of 2008 would result in high, i.e., double digit inflation. Unfortunately for Murphy, he lost this bet, and, more generally, the much-dreaded (or in the case of central banks, much-hoped-for) inflation has so far failed to materialize. This is true both when one looks at the official inflation measures and even when one consults alternatives such as shadowstats. What explains this apparent failure of Austrian commentators? The Basics In order to underst...

by Ludwig von Mises The complete confiscation of all private property is tantamount to the introduction of socialism. Therefore we do not have to deal with it in an analysis of the problems of interventionism. We are concerned here only with the partial confiscation of property. Such confiscation is today attempted primarily by taxation. The ideological motivations of such action are immaterial. The only question of interest to us is merely: What is sought by these measures and what is actually accomplished? Let us first consider taxes which directly or indirectly affect incomes only. In all countries there is today a tendency to tax larger incomes at higher rates than smaller incomes. In the case of incomes which exceed a certain amount most countries tax away, even nominally, u...