Ludwig von Mises on Money and Inflation.pdf - The Ludwig von ...

ever, conditions are influenced by this situation. ere has been a general
rise in prices. You hear about it; you read about it; people compare prices
and talk about it enough. Yet I shouldn’t exaggerate what has happened already
to the dollar. What has happened to the dollar is still not something
that makes a catastrophe unavoidable. If you were to go to certain other
countries—Brazil or Argentina, for instance—you would be in a country
which also has inflation, but a much bigger inflation. And if you ask a
man in Brazil what he considers a stable money which does not drop in
purchasing power, he would say, “e U.S. dollar . . . that’s wonderful!”
Of course, when compared with his country’s money.
e problem of money, the practical problem of money today in the
whole world is precisely this: e governments believe that in the situation
which I have pointed out before, when there is a choice between
an unpopular tax and a very popular expenditure, there is a way out for
them—the way toward inflation. is illustrates the problem of going
away from the gold standard.
Money is the most important factor in a market economy. Money was
created by the market economy, not by the government. It was a product
of the fact that people substituted step-by-step a common medium of
exchange for direct exchange. If the government destroys the money, it
not only destroys something of extreme importance for the system, the
savings people have set aside to invest and to take care of themselves in
some emergency; it also destroys the very system itself. Monetary policy
is the center of economic policy. So all the talk about improving conditions,
about making people prosperous by credit expansion, by inflation,
is futile!
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