Inflation. Exposition and critique of alternative theories of rising prices, leading to the conclusion that the quantity theory of money is the only valid explanation. The meaning of inflation. Its roots in deficits, the welfare state, and the unemployment and easy money arguments.
Further effects of inflation: a. growth in government, including wage and price controls; b. the redistribution of wealth and income; c. the undermining of saving and capital accumulation and the productivity of labor; d. how inflation sets the stage for depression and deflation—why it is not a cure for unemployment or a source of capital; e. why inflation tends to accelerate to the point of destroying credit and ultimately money itself.
The current state of inflation.
READINGS
Keynesianism and Neo-Keynesianism. Exposition and critique of the Keynesian analysis: the unemployment-equilibrium doctrine and the IS curve; the consumption and savings functions; the diminishing marginal efficiency of capital; liquidity preference and the liquidity trap; compensatory fiscal policy and the multipliers. The economic consequences of Keynesianism.
READINGS
Relationship of the net-consumption/net-investment theory to the time-preference and productivity theories. The alleged problems of underconsumption and lack of “investment opportunities.” How the demand for capital goods and labor can permanently exceed the demand for consumers’ goods and the rate of profit be positive. More on why savings cannot outrun the need for savings; the automatic adjustment of the rate of saving to the need for capital.
READINGS
Capital accumulation and its causes. The role of saving. The role of technological progress and the productivity of capital goods. The role of economic freedom. Critique of the secular-stagnation doctrine. National income and consumption.
READINGS
Capital accumulation and its causes. The role of saving. The role of technological progress and the productivity of capital goods. The role of economic freedom. Critique of the secular-stagnation doctrine. National income and consumption.
READINGS
The role of saving in spending and income payments. Saving versus hoarding. Saving and aggregate economic accounting: the national income/net national product identity. J. S. Mill’s proposition that demand for commodities is not demand for labor and the issue of double counting.
READINGS
The role of saving in spending and income payments. Saving versus hoarding. Saving and aggregate economic accounting: the national income/net national product identity. J. S. Mill’s proposition that demand for commodities is not demand for labor and the issue of double counting.
READINGS
Mass unemployment: the causes and the remedy. Real wages and the productivity of labor. Is government intervention to promote labor unions and raise wages in the self-interest of the wage earners or is its actual effect to cause unemployment and hold down the rise in real wages?
READINGS
Say’s Law. Monetary demand and real demand; why only more production and supply can increase real demand. Say’s Law and the harmony of long-run self-interests. Say’s Law and the impossibility of a general overproduction; why falling prices caused by increased production do not represent deflation.
READINGS
The economic problem and its denial: production versus consumption—the scarcity of wealth versus the alleged scarcity of the need or desire for wealth; the making of goods versus the making of work. Opposite appraisals of the causes of depressions, and of the economic effects of machinery, worker competition, war, government spending, population growth, advertising, foreign trade, imperialism, and technological progress.
READINGS
The origin and evolution of money and the contemporary monetary system: from barter to media of exchange, to gold and silver commodity money; 100 percent reserve banking and fractional reserve banking; standard money, fiduciary media, and fiat money. Central banking: the Federal Reserve System and its powers of money creation. The quantity of money, the demand for money, and the business cycle.
READINGS
The origin and evolution of money and the contemporary monetary system: from barter to media of exchange, to gold and silver commodity money; 100 percent reserve banking and fractional reserve banking; standard money, fiduciary media, and fiat money. Central banking: the Federal Reserve System and its powers of money creation. The quantity of money, the demand for money, and the business cycle.
READINGS
Orientation/review. The dependence of the division of labor on money. The vital connection between money making and productive activity in a division-of-labor society. Money-making and the distinction between production and consumption, productive expenditure and consumption expenditure, capital goods and consumers’ goods. The quantity theory of money. The increase in the quantity of money as the cause of rising prices.
READINGS
1. To provide the student with a comprehensive knowledge of the operations of a free-enterprise, division-of-labor society, with special emphasis on the phenomena of money, production, real wages and the productivity of labor, profit, saving and capital accumulation, and economic progress. The consequences of government intervention with respect to these phenomena will be considered in depth.
2. To teach the student to think of economic phenomena in terms of their long-run effects on all groups, not merely their short-run effects on those directly concerned.
OVERVIEW OF THE COURSE
The course will focus on the current or recent problem areas of the banking system, unemployment, economic stagnation, budget and trade deficits, and inflation, in the light of the contrasting analyses of the Keynesian and “Classical” schools (the latter including the Chicago and Austrian schools). Policy solutions to these problems will be explored—in particular free-market wage rates, balanced budgets with low taxes, and limitation of money-supply growth versus expansionary fiscal and monetary policy.
Two leading themes of the course will be 1) The possibility of continuous capital accumulation and economic progress based on the combination of economic freedom, private ownership of the means of production, division of labor, saving, and technological progress. 2) The ethical implication of the harmony of the rational self-interests of all men under these conditions.
BOOKS FOR THE COURSE
The division of labor and the concept of productive activity. Exposition and critique of the Marxian exploitation theory. The productivity theory of wages. Labor unions and labor legislation. A reinterpretation of modern economic history. The productive functions of businessmen and capitalists, of retailing, wholesaling, and advertising.
READINGS
The division of labor and the concept of productive activity. Exposition and critique of the Marxian exploitation theory. The productivity theory of wages. Labor unions and labor legislation. A reinterpretation of modern economic history. The productive functions of businessmen and capitalists, of retailing, wholesaling, and advertising.
READINGS
The monopoly question. The political versus the economic concept of monopoly. Capital requirements and entry “barriers.” The alleged tendency toward universal monopoly. The predatory-pricing doctrine. Marginal revenue and marginal cost. The pure-and-perfect-competition, oligopoly, and monopolistic-competition doctrines.
READINGS
Economic inequality and economic competition. Equality of opportunity. The law of comparative advantage and the pyramid-of-ability principle. Free international trade. Population growth and the freedom of immigration.
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Universal price controls and de facto socialism. The chaos of socialism. Understanding the collapse of Soviet Russia and the communist bloc on the basis of price theory. The tyranny of socialism.
READINGS
The free market’s efficiency in responding to economic change. Factor prices. Price controls, shortages, and economic chaos. Illustrations from the energy crisis and rent controls. From partial price controls to universal price controls.
READINGS