Thursday, May 31, 2012

Video: Inflation Propaganda in 1933 Resonates Today

How do you promote more government intervention?

Simple, use demand side macro economics where mathematical aggregates are presumed to replace people's valuations and preferences and therefore people's actions.

The same propaganda made to promote inflation in the 1930s (from an MGM informercial), based on demand side macro, has fundamentally been the same propaganda used today.

For statists, inflation IS the Holy Grail to any SOCIAL ills.

Yeah, based on their naive and absurd logic Zimbabwe should have been the most prosperous nation on earth.
(video: Hat tip: Professor William Anderson)


Here is a reminder why inflation will ALWAYS fail over the long run. From the great Professor Ludwig von Mises, (bold emphasis mine)
The favor of the masses and of the writers and politicians eager for applause goes to inflation. With regard to these endeavors we must emphasize three points.

First: Inflationary or expansionist policy must result in overconsumption on the one hand and in malinvestment on the other. It thus squanders capital and impairs the future state of want-satisfaction.

Second: The inflationary process does not remove the necessity of adjusting production and reallocating resources. It merely postpones it and thereby makes it more troublesome.

Third: Inflation cannot be employed as a permanent policy because it must, when continued, finally result in a breakdown of the monetary system.
And it should be noted that in Zimbabwe's case (or many other episodes of hyperinflation) had been the result of the third point--failed attempt at the permanence of inflationary policies.

Let us not forget today's crisis has been borne out of, or a product of EARLIER inflationary policies where the repercussions has been manifested through MALINVESTMENTS and unwieldy DEBT. This is the BOOM BUST cycle.

Yet, the approach by contemporary central bankers and governments have been to resort to more MORE inflationism thereby increasing the intensity of the inevitable crisis. And this is what we are seeing today and will worsen as time goes by.

The idea that inflation can be tamed or modulated represents myopia or presumptuousness or stultified thinking. Once monetary inflation has been set loose, no one will exactly know how and when money will percolate into the economy and this is why hyperinflation exists. (yes inflationistas overestimate on the superiority of their knowledge, when they can't even predict the markets!!!)

The answer to our economic ills is NOT government but ECONOMIC FREEDOM or to allow the necessity of adjusting production and reallocation of resources according to will of the consumers.

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