Americans have been laboring under the burden of inflation for well over a year. We feel the pain everywhere, from the gas pump to the grocery store. Once it became impossible to sell the “inflation is transitory” narrative any longer, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to fight inflation. As a result, the bubble economy is getting shaky. But even some people at the Fed seem to realize this is a fight they can’t win.
In a talk at the Ron Paul Institute, Mises Institute president Jeff Deist called inflation “state-sponsored terrorism.”
How do we apply this grim historical lesson from the Weimar period to America today? How do we tell this story?
First, we explain inflationism in human terms, to personalize it and de-bamboozle it. Make monetary policy vital and immediate, not boring and dry and technocratic. Again, there are enormous moral and civilization components to monetary policy. Inflation not only harms our economy, it makes us worse people: profligate, shortsighted, lazy, and unconcerned with future generations. Professor Guido Hülsmann literally wrote the book on this. It’s called The Ethics of Money Production. This is maybe the greatest untold story in America today: the story of not only how the Fed fundamentally shifted our economy from one of production to consumption, but what it did to us as people. Don’t let them hide behind complex Fed speak the simple reality: monetary policy is nothing less than criminal theft from future generations, from savers, and from the poorest Americans, who are furthest from the money spigot. The idea that reasonably intelligent laypeople cannot understand monetary policy, that it is too important and complex for anyone but experts, is nonsense. We should expose it.
Second, ridicule the absurd idea that “policy” can make us richer. More goods and services, produced more and more efficiently, thanks to capital—and thereby creating price deflation—make us richer. That’s the only way. Not by legislative or monetary fiat.
So we should attack any notion of “public policy” and especially “monetary policy.” Inflationism creates a fake economy, a “make-believe” economy, as Axios recently put it. A fake economy depends on enormous levels of ongoing fiscal and monetary intervention. We call this “financialization,” but we all have a sense that our prosperity is borrowed. We all feel it. Capital markets are degraded: a lot of money moves around without creating any value for anyone. Companies don’t necessarily make profits or pay dividends; all that matters to shareholders is selling their stock for capital gains. It always requires a new Ponzi buyer. But we know intuitively this isn’t right: consider a restaurant or dry cleaner which operated without profit for years in the hope of selling for a gain years or decades later. Only the distorted incentives created by inflationism make this mindset possible. So down with “policy”—what we need is sound money!
Finally, let us not fear being accused of hyperbole or alarmism. Let me ask you this: what happens if we’re wrong, and what happens if they’re wrong? What they are doing, meaning central bankers and national treasuries, is unprecedented. Fake money is infinite, real resources are not. Hyperinflation may not be around the corner or even years away; no one can predict such a thing. But at some point the US economy must create real organic growth if we hope to maintain living standards and avoid an ugly inflationary reality. No amount of monetary or fiscal engineering can take the place of capital accumulation and higher productivity. More money and credit is no substitute for more, better, and cheaper goods and services. Political money can’t work, and we should never be afraid to attack it root and branch. We need private money, the only money immune from the inescapable political incentive to vote for things now and pay for them later. If this is radical, so be it.
History shows us how money dies. Yes, it can happen here. Only a fool thinks otherwise.
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