Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux on May 28, 2012
in Growth, History, Prices, Stimulus
… is from page 231 of my GMU Econ colleague Larry White’s new book, The Clash of Economic Ideas:
In June 1948, a telephone rang in the office of Ludwig Erhard, the German economist who was director of the Economic Administration in the UK-U.S. occupied zone of Germany. At the other end of the line was the American military commander, General Lucius Clay. On Sunday, June 20, Erhard was scheduled to give a radio address detailing a planned currency reform to replace the feeble old Reichsmark with the new Deutsche Mark. Clay’s office had learned that Erhard was also planning, without official approval from the Allied military command, to use the occasion to issue a sweeping order abolishing many of the price controls and rationing directives then in effect. When Erhard came on the line, General Clay said to him “Professor Erhard, my advisors tell me that you are making a big mistake.” Erhard replied, “So my advisors also tell me.”
The decontrol went ahead nonetheless, and Germany’s remarkable economic recovery began.
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Memorial Day
by Don Boudreaux on May 28, 2012
in Civil Society, War
EconLog’s David Henderson is one of today’s most eloquent, thoughtful, and principled opponents of the warfare state. (Governments are really quite good at waging violence. And if the state has a specialty at which it excels above all, it is in the art and science of killing innocent people.) David’s post – featuring insights from the great monetary economist Dick Timberlake – on this Memorial Day is especially worthwhile
(David’s post prompts my vanity to prompt me to link to this [somewhat] related 1994 essay of mine in The Freeman – an essay that tells a true story of two veterans of WWII, both of whom I knew quite well. When all that a human being sees of his or her destructive actions are little puffs of smoke, or the equivalent, no good should be predicted from such actions. Under such emotionally antiseptic conditions, even the most tender-hearted people will be prone to commit massively brutal atrocities.)
And see, while you’re at it, David Boaz’s Memorial Day post.
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Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux on May 27, 2012
in History, Hubris and humility, Man of System, Scientism
… is from Arnold Kling’s recent post at EconLog, “Eugenics and Man at Yale”:
That eugenics was part of the progressive agenda is one of the most heavily-airbrushed features of history.
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Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux on May 26, 2012
in Business as usual, Politics, Taxes
… is from page 179 of the 2006 edition of H.L. Mencken’s 1955 collection Prejudices: A Selection; here, Mencken is speaking of the ordinary citizen of modern-day America:
But he can no more escape the tax-gatherer and the policemen, in all their protean and multitudinous guises, than he can escape the ultimate mortician. They beset him constantly, day in and day out, in ever-increasing numbers and in ever more disarming masks and attitudes. They invade his liberty, affront his dignity and greatly incommode his search for happiness, and every year they demand and wrest from him a larger and larger share of his worldly goods.
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Some Links
by Don Boudreaux on May 26, 2012
in Economics, Growth, Hubris and humility, Inequality, Legal Issues, Prices, Regulation, Seen and Unseen, Stimulus, Video
The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Ryan Young (M.A., GMU) weighs in on the never-ending tsunami of bad, man-in-the-street ‘economics.‘
My former professor Randy Holcombe challenges Paul Krugman’s argument that J.P. Morgan’s recent investment loss is evidence of the need for more government regulation.
I just discovered this April 2011 post by the late and much-missed Larry Ribstein; in it, Larry makes an important Hayekian point.
Grover Cleveland over at Pileus, riffs on Angus (from over at KPC) answering what he would do if he were “supreme leader” of the U.S.
George Will writes about leftists’ commentary on the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare.
University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson, in this brief appearance on CNBC, makes an important point about stock prices. (The background is Facebook’s recent IPO.)
Dan “Bulldog” Mitchell argues that “The evidence is very persuasive that big government is associated with weaker economic performance.”
John Stossel defends – against Media Matters – his report on economic opportunity in America.
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