# Think Tank > Austrian Economics / Economic Theory >  Austrian economics is folly

## goedelite

Growth out of a stagnant economy is impossible without aggregate demand.   Keynes was never wrong from the Versailles Treaty to his "General Theory on Employment, Interest and Money".    The Austrian "school" is not a school; it is a propaganda mechanism for servants of the plutocracy.

The so-called "free market" and the "invisible hand" are distortions of what Adam Smith actually wrote in his "Wealth of Nations", that few commentators have actually read.  

The argument is over!   Continuing in the present course of ignorance will destroy the viability of the human race through human generated climate change.   It will kill billions of people by 2100.    Only government can prevent this from happening, and the time left for it to make radical changes in our production of greenhouse gases is limited to a few years - if not already too late.    Socialism is necessary for continuing human life and civilization.

Mr Ron Paul is right on foreign policy, but he is dead wrong on the domestic economy, I regret to write.

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## willwash

Welcome to Ron Paul Forums, where Keynesianism and Progressive ideas about wealth redistribution are always met with warm welcome!

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## goedelite

Thank you!   I like your quotation of Andrew Jackson.  It is apt in connection with the "too big to fail" bailouts of 2009.    We need institutions that regulate money supply, I believe.   The big question is who and how, and who regulates them!   I am not knowledgeable enough in this area to have answers.

I have read that Jackson was not opposed to vipers and thieving banks, so long as they were local rather than in Washington or New York.

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## willwash

> Thank you!   I like your quotation of Andrew Jackson.  It is apt in connection with the "too big to fail" bailouts of 2009.    We need institutions that regulate money supply, I believe.   The big question is who and how, and who regulates them!   I am not knowledgeable enough in this area to have answers.
> 
> I have read that Jackson was not opposed to vipers and thieving banks, so long as they were local rather than in Washington or New York.


Small local private banks issuing loans on depositor funds is fine.  As long as the dollar is backed by gold, the potential for "thievery and vipery" is minimal, and one can always change banks or store his own money.

A secret conglomerate which prints nonexistent fake money and loans it at interest, without limit, to the government is not.

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## goedelite

May I ask, since we live in an age of science and exploration deep into the earth's crust and under the seas, what would serve the place of gold (or any other rare commodity) were it no longer to be rare?

Also, do I understand, in the case that gold continued to be rare, what would be recommended when the limitation on the money supply by its tie to gold acted as a restraint on growth?   Would the amount of backing required for the money supply then be adjusted?   If so, with an adjustable backing, would we not be back to the problem we now have:  a money supply adjusted for the convenience of those who control the adjusting?

Of course, all of this is academic, because I believe that what is now in control of our future is global climate catastrophe.

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## willwash

> May I ask, since we live in an age of science and exploration deep into the earth's crust and under the seas, what would serve the place of gold (or any other rare commodity) were it no longer to be rare?
> 
> Also, do I understand, in the case that gold continued to be rare, what would be recommended when the limitation on the money supply by its tie to gold acted as a restraint on growth?   Would the amount of backing required for the money supply then be adjusted?   If so, with an adjustable backing, would we not be back to the problem we now have:  a money supply adjusted for the convenience of those who control the adjusting?
> 
> Of course, all of this is academic, because I believe that what is now in control of our future is global climate catastrophe.


Gold will always be relatively rare.  Sure, new sources might be discovered, but it is highly unlikely that vast new reserves will be found to crash the value thereof of the existing supply.  Most of us here at RPFs will deny categorically that expansion of the money supply is necessary for economic growth, so when you ask things like "but how will we expand the money supply" the answer is "we won't, and that's the whole point."   Denying central authorities (whether that's government or a secretive central bank) the ability to expand the money supply is the entire point of commodity backed currency. The result will be a slow, gradual deflation as population grows faster than the world supply of gold and silver (as happened for the first 150 years of our history) rather than slow, gradual inflation of the past 100.  This is a good thing.  Inflation hurts the poor and middle class more than anyone else.  And please don't talk to me about home mortgages unless you want to start a whole new thread about it.

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## jmdrake

> Growth out of a stagnant economy is impossible without aggregate demand.   Keynes was never wrong from the Versailles Treaty to his "General Theory on Employment, Interest and Money".    The Austrian "school" is not a school; it is a propaganda mechanism for servants of the plutocracy.
> 
> The so-called "free market" and the "invisible hand" are distortions of what Adam Smith actually wrote in his "Wealth of Nations", that few commentators have actually read.  
> 
> The argument is over!   Continuing in the present course of ignorance will destroy the viability of the human race through human generated climate change.   It will kill billions of people by 2100.    Only government can prevent this from happening, and the time left for it to make radical changes in our production of greenhouse gases is limited to a few years - if not already too late.    Socialism is necessary for continuing human life and civilization.
> 
> Mr Ron Paul is right on foreign policy, but he is dead wrong on the domestic economy, I regret to write.


 What the hell does Austrian economics have to do with climate change?  I've seen some incoherent posts in my time, but this takes the cake.  And for the record Keynes didn't write the Versailles Treaty.  (That treaty led to World War II by the way).  

Here is the problem with your whole thesis.  You assume that the "hand of government" is a benevolent hand.  For some reason you don't trust the government with foreign policy, but you do trust it with monetary policy.  That trust is misplaced.  We lived fine without a Federal Reserve until 1913.  But less than 2 decades after the creation of the Federal Reserve we had the great depression.  That alone should tell you something.

Now it's interesting that you say "Continuing in the present course of ignorance will destroy the human race".  I agree.  *That's why the Federal Reserve needs to at least be audited!*  Oh I know.  You are looking to fix the ills of the human race by even more government control when that's the cause of the problem.

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## jmdrake

> May I ask, since we live in an age of science and exploration deep into the earth's crust and under the seas, what would serve the place of gold (or any other rare commodity) were it no longer to be rare?
> 
> Also, do I understand, in the case that gold continued to be rare, what would be recommended when the limitation on the money supply by its tie to gold acted as a restraint on growth?   Would the amount of backing required for the money supply then be adjusted?   If so, with an adjustable backing, would we not be back to the problem we now have:  a money supply adjusted for the convenience of those who control the adjusting?


It's not about gold.  It's about not having a central bank creating fake money and allowing competing currencies.  Bitcoins aren't backed by gold.  And it's interesting that you support our current fiat currency while opposing our warlike foreign policy.  Do you not understand that the two are linked?  The only reason the U.S. dollar is worth anything is because of what is known as the "petro dollar."  What that means is that in order to buy oil, nations must first convert their money to dollars.  The U.S. makes money off of every transaction.  In return for this, we have guaranteed the security of the major OPEC nations through our military might.  Iraq was about to go off the petro dollar prior to the first Gulf War.  Libya was about to go off of the petro dollar before we sided with Al Qaeda and overthrew Khadafi.  Assad was about to go off the petro dollar as well.

See: https://www.google.com/#q=assad+petrodollar




> Of course, all of this is academic, because I believe that what is now in control of our future is global climate catastrophe.


Yeah....I used to believe that manmade global warming feces too before I got educated.  Carbon credits are the next "bubble" the globalists pushing to replace the petro dollar.

See: https://www.google.com/#q=carbon+cre...dollar&spell=1

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## goedelite

> What the hell does Austrian economics have to do with climate change? ....  And for the record Keynes didn't write the Versailles Treaty. ...
> ....


1. Impending climate change catastrophe dwarfs all other questions, including this one.  That is the point you missed.
2. True, Keynes did not write the Versailles Treaty, but I thought all literate people knew that he wrote, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace", which predicted what followed the Versailles Treaty.
3. Glad we agree on the Federal Reserve!   Auditing is a good first step.
4. We have big federal government mostly in foreign and military affairs. 
5. The reason we have, since 1934, federal government in domestic social matters is because state and local governments rarely met their responsibilities therein.  Local governments are controlled by local business people, who don't want to pay taxes to help anyone but business people.  

My last word.   Thanks for your interest.

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## jmdrake

> 1. Impending climate change catastrophe dwarfs all other questions, including this one.  That is the point you missed.


Except: 

1) the earth hasn't warmed since 1998.

See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/p...d-in-1998.html

and

2) The two subjects still have nothing to do with each other.  

Seriously, it's retarded to start attacking someone because you don't agree with his economics and in mid thought switch to a subject that has *nothing* to do with economics.  Start a new thread if global warming is so important to you.




> 2. True, Keynes did not write the Versailles Treaty, but I thought all literate people knew that he wrote, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace", which predicted what followed the Versailles Treaty.


Do you think anyone here agrees with the Versailles Treaty?  There were *many* people against it including, at one time, Winston Churchill.  That Keynes was also against it means nothing.




> 3. Glad we agree on the Federal Reserve!   Auditing is a good first step.


Okay.  So do you understand that the *main reason* Ron Paul is against the Federal Reserve is because of his understanding of Austrian Economics?




> 4. We have big federal government mostly in foreign and military affairs.


We have a big federal government in any affair you can think of.  That said most people here are against both the welfare state and the warefare state.  So....what's your point?  




> 5. The reason we have, since 1934, federal government in domestic social matters is because state and local governments rarely met their responsibilities therein.  Local governments are controlled by local business people, who don't want to pay taxes to help anyone but business people.


The reason state and local governments don't do as much locally is because of the size and scope of the federal government.  Also, do you have any relatives who lived through the great depression?  I do.  All of them are black and none of them had much money at the time.  None of the were ever in danger of starvation either.  They had gardens, chickens, cows, pigs etc.  And people, in the country at least, took care of each other.  The problem with the "great society" is that more and more people are 100% dependent on the government.  Eventually the petro dollar will collapse.  When that happens American money will be as worthless as German money was prior to World War II.  What good will all those welfare checks be then?  And how will people, who have now totally forgotten how to survive, do so?

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## acptulsa

Let's talk about folly, shall we?




> 'It just looks to me like communism is such a happy family affair that not a communist wants  to stay where it is practiced.  It's the only thing they want you to have but keep none for themselves.'--_Will Rogers_





> 'Communism is like prohibition; it's a good idea but it won't work.'--_Will Rogers_


Socialism has failed, and failed, and failed again.  And it isn't hard to see why.  While the common people have their good ideas squelched, those in charge of micromismanaging everything busy themselves with consolidating their power and figuring out ways to bleed off even more wealth for themselves.  Thus in the 1920s we see American farmers finding ways to increase their yields, while Stalin was figuring out ways to starve his people just to keep them from having the strength to rebel against him.  Which isn't to say that the free market always has the long term in view.  It doesn't.  Some of those methods from the 1920s led to the depleted soil which, in turn, led to the Dust Bowl.  But where was Stalin's long-term thinking?  And where is the Soviet Union today?

In the end, our own experience with socialism is hardly encouraging.  It was tried during World War I, with railroads being among the major industries that were nationalized.  The economy tanked.  It was _bad._  Then Harding and Coolidge and a somewhat sensible Congress undid all that, and the result was the Roaring Twenties.  Since that time, we've had slowly creeping socialism, and a slowly declining economy, to the point that today nobody even says 'ignorance of the law is no excuse' any more because there aren't enough hours in a lifetime to read the whole federal legal code.  And despite the fact that the march of progress _should_ have improved our lives, we are all more poor than we have been in anyone's memory who is less than eighty years old.

We could use another Roaring Twenties.  Beats sitting around starving on the government dole.  No one is benefitting but the biggest stockholders in the biggest corporations, as those megabusinesses don't have to worry about small business competition in an environment where starting your own business requires having three lawyers and five CPAs on staff.

So, we have a situation where our quality of life is degraded because when we want to fix what ails our local fire departments, we find they're just doing what Washington tells them to, and we can't fix that because we'd have to convince at least twenty million voters that out local fire department is more important than gay marriage, abortion, and their own local fire departments combined.  Then we wage war on the coal producers, which leads us to fight more wars over oil (do you have _any_ idea how much carbon a jet fighter/bomber spews?), and leads us to poison the whole China Sea with radiation from nuclear power gone wrong.  This is an improvement?  Fighting wars over petroleum and the the petrodollar--wars which are an _elective_ production of carbon, not merely a matter of 'coal produces _x_% more carbon than something else--is your way to save the environment?

Is Austrian economics folly?  Perhaps.  Perhaps every human endeavor is folly.  But socialists are well acquainted with the concept of choosing the lesser evil.  And the lesser evil ain't socialism.

But please--talk about folly yourself.  You seem to be the expert.

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## mczerone

> Thank you!   I like your quotation of Andrew Jackson.  It is apt in connection with the "too big to fail" bailouts of 2009.    We need institutions that regulate money supply, I believe.   *The big question is who and how, and who regulates them!   I am not knowledgeable enough in this area to have answers.*
> 
> I have read that Jackson was not opposed to vipers and thieving banks, so long as they were local rather than in Washington or New York.


The bolded part is where you reveal your inner-Austrian. Incentives, Regulatory Capture, and Knowledge Theory come into play (all concepts utilized by the Austrians, if not unique to them).

Just like libertarians often get chided for "not wanting any regulations" - your concern for managing money misses the point of the libertarians. It's not that there shouldn't be regulations, but that there shouldn't be State regulations. There should be consumer choice, market pressures, and price signals to guide entrepreneurs in devising regulatory bodies that meet the needs of consumers with the best use of resources and the best firm structure.

The Austrian solution (if there is a singular strain of thought) is to simply free money from the State; to allow competing currencies. This allows many people to regulate their own money supply, consumers to pick what is working best, and gives price signals that reduce the knowledge problem for the common person to but a few factors that are subjective to them.

Your argument here is identical to the soviet food problem: Everyone needs food, so the govt nationalizes food production. But no one person knows how to best provide or audit a system of food production, and without price signals the system not only is destined to fail, but is destined to grow and hurt the poorest people the worst as it tries to get better and meet it's mandate.
I don't know if you're a sarcastic troll or an opposition troll, but your stated concerns belie your unsubstantiated accusations in the OP.

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## goedelite

I said I would not reply further, and I shall not.

Thanks for your interest, everyone!

Best holiday wishes for all!

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## acptulsa

> I said I would not reply further, and I shall not.


Your concession is accepted.  Glad we could help you out, and a Merry Christmas to you, too.

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## helmuth_hubener

> Growth out of a stagnant economy is impossible without aggregate demand.   Keynes was never wrong from the Versailles Treaty to his "General Theory on Employment, Interest and Money".
> The argument is over!   Continuing in the present course of ignorance will destroy the viability of the human race through human generated climate change.   It will kill billions of people by 2100.


How, exactly, will _increasing_ aggregate demand _reduce_ human generated climate change?

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## Zippyjuan

> Gold will always be relatively rare.  Sure, new sources might be discovered, but it is highly unlikely that vast new reserves will be found to crash the value thereof of the existing supply.  Most of us here at RPFs will deny categorically that expansion of the money supply is necessary for economic growth, so when you ask things like "but how will we expand the money supply" the answer is "we won't, and that's the whole point."   Denying central authorities (whether that's government or a secretive central bank) the ability to expand the money supply is the entire point of commodity backed currency.* The result will be a slow, gradual deflation* as population grows faster than the world supply of gold and silver (as happened for the first 150 years of our history) rather than slow, gradual inflation of the past 100.  This is a good thing.  Inflation hurts the poor and middle class more than anyone else.  And please don't talk to me about home mortgages unless you want to start a whole new thread about it.


Deflation would also apply to your wages. Who does that help or hurt the most?  The wealthy get the least percent of their incomes from wages.  Poor and middle class get most if not all of their income from wages. 

Did we have a "slow, gradual decline" in prices and wages when we were on a gold standard? 




> (as happened for the first 150 years of our history)


What did happen then? 


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...on_Ancient.svg

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## Zippyjuan

> It's not about gold.  It's about not having a central bank creating fake money and allowing competing currencies.  Bitcoins aren't backed by gold.  And it's interesting that you support our current fiat currency while opposing our warlike foreign policy.  Do you not understand that the two are linked?  The only reason the U.S. dollar is worth anything is because of what is known as the "petro dollar."  What that means is that in order to buy oil, nations must first convert their money to dollars. * The U.S. makes money off of every transaction.*  In return for this, we have guaranteed the security of the major OPEC nations through our military might.  Iraq was about to go off the petro dollar prior to the first Gulf War.  Libya was about to go off of the petro dollar before we sided with Al Qaeda and overthrew Khadafi.  Assad was about to go off the petro dollar as well.
> 
> See: https://www.google.com/#q=assad+petrodollar
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah....I used to believe that manmade global warming feces too before I got educated.  Carbon credits are the next "bubble" the globalists pushing to replace the petro dollar.
> 
> See: https://www.google.com/#q=carbon+cre...dollar&spell=1


The US government does not make money selling dollars to businesses or countries to use in transactions.

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## NorthCarolinaLiberty

> We have big federal government mostly in foreign and military affairs.


Mostly in entitlements and welfare for your bum friends.




> It will kill billions of people by 2100.


How many "billions" out of six billion?





> Local governments are controlled by local business people, who don't want to pay taxes to help anyone but business people.


Who do you help?





> The so-called "free market" and the "invisible hand" are distortions of what Adam Smith actually wrote in his "Wealth of Nations", that few commentators have actually read.


Did you read it?




> I am not knowledgeable enough in this area to have answers.


See reply above.





> My last word.


Good.  Get a job.





> Austrian economics is folly.


Lib males are folly.  Man up.




> I regret to write.


You're not the only one.






> Best holiday wishes for all!


Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown.









Upshot: No rep given.  Lib dumb is offset by trolling entertainment value.

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## acptulsa

> The US government does not make money selling dollars to businesses or countries to use in transactions.


The richest banks in the world do.

And the more artificial demand can be created for that dollar, the more the world's richest banks can make money the old fashioned way--print it--without causing hyperinflation here.

But hey.  Nice non-denial denial.  The half-truth you told was certainly true.

So, the progs and the shills defend the elastic rubber-check money so we can have more wars over the petrodollar.  Forgive them, Lord, and soften their hearts; they know not what they do.

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## Henry Rogue

> May I ask, since we live in an age of science and exploration deep into the earth's crust and under the seas, what would serve the place of gold (or any other rare commodity) were it no longer to be rare?


The existence of gold deposits and the physical ability to extract and mint gold doesn't guarantee the feasibility to do so. Valuable resources must be shifted into the production of gold in order to increase its supply.  As the cost of production increases, margins shrink. At some point production becomes unprofitable. If you don't believe me, consider aluminum, an abundant element in the Earth's crust yet costly to produce, which is why recycling aluminum is profitable. 

  The same thing applies to the production of paper currency. At some point it becomes unprofitable to do so, as demonstrated by events in Zimbabwe circa 2009. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper...on_in_Zimbabwe Eventually it becomes unprofitable even for a central bank to print paper.  Profit margins are realized in the early stages of gold production, minimizing overproduction, whereas overproduction of paper currency isn't realized till the later stages of production, usually after the overproduction has already occured.  In other words, at some point mining gold costs more than the gold used to fund it, ensuring scarcity. Where as paper currency loses its value after it has been circulated. 




> Also, do I understand, in the case that gold continued to be rare, what would be recommended when the limitation on the money 
> supply by its tie to gold acted as a restraint on growth?   Would the amount of backing required for the money supply then be adjusted?   If so, with an 
> adjustable backing, would we not be back to the problem we now have:  a money supply adjusted for the convenience of those who control the adjusting?


The expansion of a medium of exchange is not synonymous with the expansion of an economy. I suppose unless the medium of exchange is irreducibly measurable. However, markets allow for more than one medium of exchange provided that ratios aren't artificially fixed.

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## kcchiefs6465

> May I ask, since we live in an age of science and exploration deep into the earth's crust and under the seas, what would serve the place of gold (or any other rare commodity) *were it no longer to be rare?*
> 
> Also, do I understand, in the case that gold continued to be rare, what would be recommended when the limitation on the money supply by its tie to gold acted as a restraint on growth?   Would the amount of backing required for the money supply then be adjusted?   If so, with an adjustable backing, would we not be back to the problem we now have:  a money supply adjusted for the convenience of those who control the adjusting?
> 
> Of course, all of this is academic, because I believe that what is now in control of our future is global climate catastrophe.


People should be able to trade in whatever they find valuable. Some prefer metals, some prefer paper, others prefer a variety of things. 

Some would prefer not to be forced to accept depreciating pieces of pulp as tender for a debt.

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## jmdrake

> The US government does not make money selling dollars to businesses or countries to use in transactions.


Indirectly it does.  It makes money by printing it out of thin air.  That would cause runaway inflation but for the deal that Richard Nixon struck with Saudi Arabia to only sell oil in dollars.

http://inflationdata.com/articles/20...odollars-gold/

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## goedelite

You wrote that the expansion of the currency supply is not the same as the growth of the economy.   I never said or implied it was.   What I wrote meant that unless the money supply keeps up with growth,  the money itself through scarcity becomes more valuable:  that is deflation.   Deflation prevents businesses from repaying its debts and causes bankruptcies.  It slows the economy:  why buy now when prices are falling?  I think you must know all this; so I find your answer puzzling.

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## goedelite

You wrote "Mostly in entitlements and welfare for your bum friends."    You do not adhere to the forum rules.   You do not deserve attention.

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## helmuth_hubener

> Growth out of a stagnant economy is impossible without aggregate demand.   Keynes was never wrong from the Versailles Treaty to his "General Theory on Employment, Interest and Money".
> The argument is over!   Continuing in the present course of ignorance will destroy the viability of the human race through human generated climate change.   It will kill billions of people by 2100.


How, exactly, will _increasing_ aggregate demand _reduce_ human generated climate change?

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## goedelite

Though I am convinced that human generated climate change of catastrophic proportions is inevitable, given the control of our governments by the fossil fuel industry, life must go on until the end.   Thus, I do what is really illogical:  I pursue life as if nothing has changed with respect to the prospects of continuing civilization - such as we have - and continuing life.   I engage in all the usual activities, including writing to forums,  because there is really nothing else to do.  

The answer to your question is that increasing aggregate demand would probably worsen human generated climate change by stimulating economic growth - as it is measured without account for such externalities as the future of human life on this planet.

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## Lucille

> Growth out of a stagnant economy is impossible without aggregate demand.   Keynes was never wrong from the Versailles Treaty to his "General Theory on Employment, Interest and Money".    The Austrian "school" is not a school; it is a propaganda mechanism for servants of the plutocracy.
> 
> The so-called "free market" and the "invisible hand" are distortions of what Adam Smith actually wrote in his "Wealth of Nations", that few commentators have actually read.  
> 
> *The argument is over!*   Continuing in the present course of ignorance will destroy the viability of the human race through human generated climate change.   It will kill billions of people by 2100.    Only government can prevent this from happening, and the time left for it to make radical changes in our production of greenhouse gases is limited to a few years - if not already too late.    Socialism is necessary for continuing human life and civilization.
> 
> Mr Ron Paul is right on foreign policy, but he is dead wrong on the domestic economy, I regret to write.


LOL

"Shut up," he explained.  Typical fascist prog. 



The Vampire Economy: Italy, Germany, and the US
http://direct.mises.org/library/vamp...germany-and-us

Once More, with Feeling: Our System Is Not Socialism, but Participatory Fascism
http://blog.independent.org/2012/10/...atory-fascism/

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## erowe1

> Continuing in the present course of ignorance will destroy the viability of the human race through human generated climate change.   It will kill billions of people by 2100.    Only government can prevent this from happening, and the time left for it to make radical changes in our production of greenhouse gases is limited to a few years - if not already too late.


Which is it? That our government can stop climate change from happening? Or that it's already too late?

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## helmuth_hubener

> The answer to your question is that increasing aggregate demand would probably worsen human generated climate change by stimulating economic growth


Well, OK.  So you want to worsen human generated climate change.

I, on the other hand, want to let people be free to live their lives in peace.

You will probably not be surprised to know I find no particular reason to adopt your view instead of my own.  Mine is much more appealing, rational, and mutually respectful.  Yours is very unappealing, by being self-contradictory and counter-productive to progress and life.

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## goedelite

> Which is it? That our government can stop climate change from happening? Or that it's already too late?


I don't know, and I don't think anyone knows if the worst effects of human generated climate change can be averted.   Scientists have warned us since the 1980s.  Few paid attention then, and today our ruling elite are still, for the most part, change deniers.   They have the money, the control of the media, and the congress and WH.   There is little that ordinary citizens, no matter how well informed can do without getting their heads broken by police.   Even if people could overturn the rule by the corporate elite,  I think it is already too late to avert climate change and, in my opinion, only radical measures can avert its worst extremes.

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## erowe1

> Did we have a "slow, gradual decline" in prices and wages when we were on a gold standard? 
> 
> 
> 
> What did happen then? 
> 
> 
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...on_Ancient.svg


You post that chart as though it provides an obvious answer to your questions. It's not as easy to interpret as that. But it looks to me like, over the period from the 1780's until the Civil War (when federal payment in specie was suspended), the amount of deflation slightly exceeds the amount of inflation. And the same appears to be true of the period after the Civil War up to 1914.

If so, then the answer to your question is, yes, on average, we did have a slow gradual decline in prices and wages while on the Gold standard.

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## Lucille

LOL  Ra is not welcome in the Church of Global Warming.

Global Warming Fascist Movement & Academic Welfare
http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/0...demic-welfare/



> But there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence whatsoever that the planet is going through some warming stages created by mankind. That is total nonsense. This is like the Precession of the Equinox that takes 25,800 years to complete and to move just one degree takes 72 years. This is why one person could never have made such an observation.
> [...]
> I have reviewed the cyclical discoveries of Sallie Baliunas. Ice core samples were taken going back thousands of years and what was discovered is that* the sun is indeed a thermal dynamic system that beats like your heart and there is a 300 year cycle between maximum and minimum. Do not confuse short-term trends or local observations for a few decades and assume we have altered the entire planet.*


Global Warming -tis the SUN
http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/0...ng-ts-the-sun/

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## erowe1

> I don't know


The thing is, when you just state, matter-of-factly, that our government can stop climate change, that makes it sound like you do know.

And this point is pretty important.

I highly doubt that it's true. Nothing the government does will save any lives from whatever the future effects of climate change will be. All that will be accomplished will be a devastating loss of life and livelihoods in the here and now as a result of those regulations.

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## goedelite

> Well, OK.  So you want to worsen human generated climate change.


No, you confuse my reply on the efficacy of Keynesian economics to increase aggregate demand and economic recovery with a desire to continue the same destructive capitalism that has been denying human generated climate change (HGCC).   My view is that the major problem facing human beings is not economic stagnation in the western industrialized countries - though that is bad enough!   It is HGCC.   If the extremes of the latter may stil be escaped, which I doubt, it would be even more necessary in a salvaged civilization to scrap the broken capitalist system and institute a form of democratic socialism in which workers controlled the means of production, a form of anarcho-syndicalism as it is sometimes called.    But this is all hypothetical, dependent on the survival of human civilization.   For many reasons, the odds are poor:  HGCC, nuclear rearmament, imperialistic competitions for diminshing resources,  world population growth, religion, ignorance, and disease.

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## jmdrake

> I don't know, and I don't think anyone knows if the worst effects of human generated climate change can be averted.   Scientists have warned us since the 1980s.


Back in the 1970s these same fake scientists warned us about global cooling.



As was as ignorant of this shift as you apparently are.  I bought the global warming Kool Aid (no pun intended) and thought I had to fight against global warming in order to fight globalism.  You see I saw the fake PBS documentary "After the Warming" that predicted that global since we won't do what is "necessary" to stop global warming, a global government will be brought in once the environment is destroyed.  What I didn't realize is that this was reverse psychology.  Those who want global government are fear mongering using fake environmentalism the same way the fear monger using fake terrorism.

See:






> Few paid attention then, and today our ruling elite are still, for the most part, change deniers.   They have the money, the control of the media, and the congress and WH.   There is little that ordinary citizens, no matter how well informed can do without getting their heads broken by police.   Even if people could overturn the rule by the corporate elite,  I think it is already too late to avert climate change and, in my opinion, only radical measures can avert its worst extremes.


The power elite are using you and you don't even realize it.

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## Vanguard101

Menger-Bawer-Mises-Rothbard is all that matters

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## helmuth_hubener

> No, you confuse my reply on the efficacy of Keynesian economics to increase aggregate demand and economic recovery with a desire to continue the same destructive capitalism that has been denying human generated climate change (HGCC).   My view is that the major problem facing human beings is not economic stagnation in the western industrialized countries - though that is bad enough!   It is HGCC.   If the extremes of the latter may stil be escaped, which I doubt, it would be even more necessary in a salvaged civilization to scrap the broken capitalist system and institute a form of democratic socialism in which workers controlled the means of production, a form of anarcho-syndicalism as it is sometimes called.    But this is all hypothetical, dependent on the survival of human civilization.   For many reasons, the odds are poor:  HGCC, nuclear rearmament, imperialistic competitions for diminshing resources,  world population growth, religion, ignorance, and disease.


OK.  Well, I think I understand your world-view fairly well.

How certain are you that you are correct about everything?  100%?  Because if you are willing to consider other points of view and learn new things and entertain new ways of thinking, I would be interested in having a dialogue with you about some of my thoughts concerning some of these very real issues you've raised.  But if it's 100%?  Well, you can't talk to a person like that.  At least, I'm not interested in doing so.

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## philipped

Shoutout to the solid troll game for the first 2 posts from OP lol.

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## NorthCarolinaLiberty

> You wrote "Mostly in entitlements and welfare for your bum friends."    You do not adhere to the forum rules.   You do not deserve attention.


Yet, you just gave me attention.  Relax anyway, Holly Golightly.  Half the stuff I post is in jest, and nobody here takes me seriously anyway.

But okay, if you want to be serious, then yes, that is bum behavior.  Where do you get off telling me that I need to contribute to others for welfare?  Do you voluntarily contribute to people on welfare?  What is your personal record of giving?

By the way, you said you were leaving.

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## otherone

_“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.”
― George Orwell, 1984_

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## otherone

_“In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
― George Orwell, 1984_

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## Chester Copperpot

the op is a joke....

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## otherone

_“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?”
― George Orwell, 1984_

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## otherone

_“Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.”
― George Orwell, 1984_

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## otherone

> The argument is over comrades!   Continuing in the present course of ignorance will destroy the viability of the human race Oceania through human generated climate change.   It will kill billions of people by 2100.    Only government Big Brother can prevent this from happening, and the time left for it to make radical changes in our production of greenhouse gases is limited to a few years - if not already too late.    Socialism is necessary for continuing human life and civilization.

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## ThePaleoLibertarian

Even if Keynesian Economics is correct (which it isn't), the prescriptions it advocates for will create a society of endlessly increasing bureaucracy. Keynes said that spending must be increased to help save an economy during a deflationary recession. The bureaucracies the state creates during said recession will not go away once they do their job-the nature of bureaucracy itself makes that impossible. Even if it was proven that Keynes was right (which he wasn't) I'd still be against it.

OP needs to read some economic history, though. Keynesianism dominated economics until the stagflation they said was impossible happened (not to mention the numerous other prediction-fails Keynesians are famous for). After that, the Austrian school critiques reemerged, the Chicago school counter-narratives began to solidify and Keynesians themselves (the honest ones anyway) had to do some massive overhauls to their theories. NeoKeynesian and post-Keynesian economics has a healthy dose of Neoclassical thought within it. Classical Keynesians are walking anachronisms.

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## Carson

Ever notice that the people trying to find fault in sound money have an unlimited supply of counterfeit to drive their argument?

Sound currency doesn't need to be backed solely by gold or silver. It could be printed against anything with a real intrinsic value by anyone. 

To argue that only someone with nothing can issue currency is so far out there as to be believed for some of us. 

Now we've allowed them to takes us to the cleaner and they pretty much have everything, control everything, and control every government around the globe and we continue to babel on.

We've been had.

It's time to use Eminent Domain and restore all of our everything back to ourselves. A fair value in return would be nothing. The same thing we received when our everything was looted.

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## philipped

> Only government can prevent this from happening. Socialism is necessary for continuing human life and civilization.


This is one of my favorite lines from people because half the time they rarely understand how socialism will rob them of their individual freedom.

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## Ronin Truth

"Deck the halls with boughs of folly! Tra, lah, lah, lah, lah .......... lah, lah, lah, lah!"

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## Henry Rogue

> You wrote that the expansion of the currency supply is not the same as the growth of the economy.   I never said or implied it was.   What I wrote meant that unless the money supply keeps up with growth,  the money itself through scarcity becomes more valuable:  that is deflation.   Deflation prevents businesses from repaying its debts and causes bankruptcies.


Why would an increase in my dollar's purchasing power cause me to default on a loan? It could have the opposite affect, more purchasing power per dollar allows me to buy what i need with less dollars, which leaves me with more dollars to repay a loan.




> It slows the economy:  why buy now when prices are falling?


Different people have have different reasons for buying now, just as different people have different reasons for putting off purchasing till into the future. Time Preferences is a real thing or no one would be willing to pay interest, preferring to wait instead. I assume you need to eat, would you still buy food?




> I think you must know all this; so I find your answer puzzling.


http://mises.org/library/deflation-biggest-myths
I know that deflation isn't the bogeyman you believe it is. As for gold? Like I said in a previous post, there can be more than one medium of exchange, as long as rates aren't fixed.

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