Quotes About Economics

When the price of coal falls because production has increased while demand has remained unaltered, then, for example, those retailers are involved who have taken supplies from the wholesale dealers at the old higher price but are now able to dispose of them only at the new and lower price. But this alone will not account for all the social changes brought about by the increase of production of coal. The increase in the supply of coal will have improved the economic position of the community.

Inflationism is that monetary policy that seeks to increase the quantity of money.

Naive inflationism demands an increase in the quantity of money without suspecting that this will diminish the purchasing power of the money.

Other inflationists realize very well that an increase in the quantity of money reduces the purchasing power of the monetary unit. But they endeavour to secure inflation none-the-less, because of its effect on the value of money; they want depreciation, because they want to favour debtors at the expense of creditors and because they want to encourage exportation and make importation difficult.

The function of money is to facilitate the business of the market by acting as a common medium of exchange.

Every expansion of the personal division of labour brings advantages to all who take part in it.

The attempt to restrain prices within limits has to be given up. A government that sets out to abolish market prices is inevitably driven towards the abolition of private property.

They did not suffer shipwreck because the entrepreneurs were not public-spirited, as the socialist-etatistic legend has it. They were bound to fail because the economic organization based upon division of labour and private property in the means of production can function only so long as price-determination in the market is free.

The balance-of-payments theory forgets that the volume of foreign trade is completely dependent upon prices; that neither exportation nor importation can occur if there are no differences in prices to make trade profitable.

One must rather ask how much could be produced if competition among producers were abolished.

Even in ancient times general recognition must have been accorded to the view which later in the shape of the maxim pecunia pecuniam parere non potest was to be the basis of all discussion of the problem of interest for hundreds and even thousands of years, and Aristotle undoubtedly did not state it in the famous passage in his Politics as a new doctrine but as a generally-accepted commonplace.2

What is called "orthodox" economics is in most countries barred from the universities and is virtually unknown to the leading statesmen, politicians, and writers. The

If Capitalism improves the economic position all round, it is of secondary importance that it does not raise all to the same level. A social order is not bad simply because it helps one more than the other.

Every word of etatistic thought is contradicted by the doctrines of sociology and economics; this is why etatists endeavour to prove that these sciences do not exist. In their opinion, social affairs are shaped by the State. To the law, all things are possible; and there is no sphere in which State intervention is not omnipotent.

For the etatist, money is a creature of the State, and the esteem in which money is held is the economic expression of the respect or prestige enjoyed by the State. The more powerful and the richer the State, the better its money. Thus, during the War, it was asserted that 'the monetary standard of the victors' would ultimately be the best money. Yet victory and defeat on the battlefield can exercise only an indirect influence on the value of money.

The central element in the economic problem of money is the objective exchange-value of money, popularly called its purchasing power.

In the case of money, subjective use-value and subjective exchange-value coincide. Both are derived from objective exchange-value, for money has no utility other than that arising from the possibility of obtaining other economic goods in exchange for it.

The exchange-value of money is the anticipated use-value of the things that can be obtained with it.

By 'the objective exchange-value of money' we are accordingly to understand the possibility of obtaining a certain quantity of other economic goods in exchange for a given quantity of money; and by 'the price of money' this actual quantity of other goods.

For when the Law of Price declares that a good actually commands a particular price, and explains why it does so, it of course implies that the good is able to command this price, and explains why it is able to do so. The Law of Price comprehends the Law of Exchange-Value.

If we assume that all men have the same capacity and application for work and if we disregard the disutility of labor, labor in such a world would not be an economic good. If

Mises showed that the end of private property would mean the end to economic rationality.

Our whole civilization rests on the fact that men have always succeeded in beating off the attack of the re-distributors.

Before an economic good begins to function as money it must already possess exchange-value based on some other cause than its monetary function. But money that already functions as such may remain valuable even when the original source of its exchange-value has ceased to exist. Its value then is based entirely on its function as common medium of exchange.1