Deflation and Liberty
Should Austrians fear a deflationary spiral?
After a century of inflationist policies and propaganda, most economists assume deflation to be a dreaded monetary policy to avoid at all costs.
However, Jörg Guido Hülsmann argues differently in “Deflation and Liberty”:
“Deflation is far from being inherently bad. Quite to the contrary, it fulfills the very important social function of cleansing the economy and the body politic from all sorts of parasites that have thrived on the previous inflation. The dangers of deflation are chimerical, but its charms are very real. There is absolutely no reason to be concerned about the economic effects of deflation—unless one equates the welfare of the nation with the welfare of its false elites. In contrast, there are many reasons to be concerned about both the economic and political consequences of the only alternative to deflation, namely, reflation—which is of course nothing but inflation pure and simple.”
Join the Mises Circle to discuss the economics of inflation and deflation and their political implications.
HTML: http://mises.org/daily/3231
PDF & ePub: http://mises.org/document/3726/
When: Monday, March 18th at 7pm CST
Where: Waggener 308
Can’t join us in person? Tune in to the Google+ Hangout. A link will be sent out when we go live.
The Joker took Guido Hülsmann a little too seriously.
