Some thoughts after the election results. In short, if you care about liberty and not just Trump, now is the time to be extra vigilant and ensure that the people who want unchecked authority don’t Wormtongue their way into power again in the next four years.
My written notes here.
The final section of Rothbard’s book is an extended discussion of Rothbard’s concepts of the Gross (or Net) Private Product, and an argument about how to calculate government depradations against the private product remaining in private hands.
The appendix contains a number of tables of data on economic statistics from 1929 through 1932, providing calculations of Private Product and Depradation as well.
One thing worth noting is that the Table VI in the Fifth Edition is an error. That table is supposed to contain government expenditure numbers but the receipt numbers from Table VII are reproduced there mistakenly.
The corrected content of Table VI is as follows:
| Federal | State & Local | Total | |
| 1929 | 4 | 9 | 13 |
| 1930 | 4.2 | 9.7 | 13.9 |
| 1931 | 5.5 | 9.7 | 15.2 |
| 1932 | 4.4 | 8.8 | 13.2 |
My reconstruction of Table VI comes from combining appropriate figures from Tables IV and V.
For my full show notes, go here.
This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.
References
Census Bureau, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789-1945
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1949/compendia/hist_stats_1789-1945.html
NY Tax Foundation, The Tax Burden In Relation To National Income and Product
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/tax-burden-relation-national-income-and-product/
(pdf direct link)
https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/ra4.pdf
Fabricant and Lipsey, The Trend of Government Activity in the United States Since 1900
https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/trend-government-activity-united-states-1900
(specific section cited by Rothbard)
https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/trend-government-activity-united-states-1900/appendix-d-data-government-purchases-payrolls-transfers-and-expenditures
Chapter 12 is the wrap-up, about the last few months of Hoover’s term and Hoover’s unwarranted confidence in his actions. Along for the ride are some overall statistics from the start of the depression until he left office as well. There are also some ominous references to FDR’s incoming New Deal.
See my show notes here.
This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.
References
Saloutos, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West…
https://archive.org/details/agriculturaldisc00salorich
Fisher, 100 Percent Money
https://cdn.mises.org/100%20Percent%20Money_Fisher.pdf
Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars…
https://books.google.com/books/about/Fifty_Billion_Dollars.html?id=Ql8UAQAAMAAJ
https://archive.org/details/fiftybilliondoll0000jone
Clark, Central Banking Under the Federal Reserve System
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/central-banking-federal-reserve-system-314
Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare
https://archive.org/details/economicspublicw0000ande/page/n3/mode/2up
Willis, The Banking Situation
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/will93128-fm/pdf
Angly, Oh Yeah?
https://books.google.com/books/about/Oh_Yeah.html?id=rTWMAAAACAAJ
Kent Cooper, Kent Cooper and the Associated Press
https://archive.org/details/kentcooperassoci0000coop
Ayres, The Chief Cause of This and Other Depressions
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Chief_Cause_of_This_and_Other_Depres.html?id=DpVszwEACAAJ
Phillips, Banking and the Business Cycle
https://mises.org/library/book/banking-and-business-cycle
Davies, Depression and Recovery
https://archive.org/details/depressionrecove0000dale
https://books.google.com/books/about/Depression_and_Recovery.html?id=E8ovAAAAYAAJ
National Industrial Conference Board, Salary and Wage Policy in the Depression
https://archive.org/details/salarywagepolicy0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up
Levinson, Unionism, Wage Trends, and Income Distribution
https://books.google.com/books/about/Unionism_Wage_Trends_and_Income_Distribu.html?id=oamMAAAAIAAJ
Morris, The AFL in the 1920s: A Strategy of Defense
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2519356
Monthly Labor Review 35 (3)
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/september-1932-608220?page=25
Monthly Labor Review 35 (4)
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/october-1932-608221?page=8
Just some quick thoughts on why monetary inflation might look “good” from an econometric perspective, while hiding the negative effects.
The shortest argument seems to be that the “positive GDP” effects of monetary inflation hit immediately, while the “negative GDP” effects hit later. That allows politicians and economists to blame other factors for the downturn.
It’s also worth remembering that GDP makes the mistake of assuming a dollar spent by the government is equivalent to a dollar spent by the private sector, as far as satisfying the actual needs and wants of people.
I’ve handled that fallacy in this article at the Mises Wire.
Most of this part of the chapter is devoted to the efforts and agitation to reflate prices up to their pre-depression levels.
Fortunately, quite a few of these efforts fizzled out, but enough made it into official policy that the economy suffered another blow at the end of the year, after a small uptick.
Today’s short video was inspired by an awful video about aluminum cans and the environment.
The Nirvana Fallacy is not the only mistake this guy makes, but it is the most frequent one.
False declarations of human “rights,” failure to understand the profit motive, a top-down view of the economy… there is a lot of foolishness to cover!
Today I’m working through a thing I keep hearing people say. “Everything is political.”
It’s a very odd saying, in my mind, for a variety of logical and philosophical reasons.
First of all, it’s a declaration of totalitarianism. It seems very strange to me for people to just agree with totalitarians. It’s a slave mentality.
Absolute power and an absolute obligation for people to obey that power is not a path to good incentives, or good rulers.
It also encourages the kind of thinking… “It’s just politics,” used as a rationalization for all kinds of evils applied to innocents.
Even if we soften it to “Everything affects politics” or “politics affects everything,” we find ourselves walking down the same totalitarian path, just with nicer words around it.
It’s a misunderstanding of something being a thing and something having an effect on a thing. It’s reminiscent of Wickard v. Filburn, which held that products that you make yourself and consume yourself affect interstate commerce, and therefore are interstate commerce. That’s not necessarily true, and even if it were, it gives politicians more (if not unlimited) political power, which is exactly what we don’t want.
There’s a difference between these three things:
There might be a bit of gray area in between, but it seems like these are real distinctions.
This fallacy also creeps into public goods theory (which Hoppe dismantled).
Anyway, just some thoughts I wanted to get out there.
Chapter eleven of America’s Great Depression covers Hoover’s continued flailing as during 1932 as all of his policies make the depression worse.
In this part, we’re covering about half of the chapter, up through the section “Governmental Relief,” ending on page 301 in the Fifth Edition. (Next week we will spend most of our time on the two sections detailing the inflation in 1932.)
Chapter ten covers the events of 1931. Basically, after massive state intervention didn’t fix the problem in 1929 or 1930, Hoover gets the great idea that more government intervention will fix the problem in 1931 and 1932… with disastrous results.
Up until 1930, Hoover had (at least) resisted the swan song of massive government control over the economy and huge federal relief programs. During 1930, that resistance waned and set the stage for the rest of the depression.
Alternative places to watch the video are on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.
Get my full notes here.
References
(FYI, Rothbard cites a bunch of defunct journals and magazines in this chapter that are practically impossible to find outside of university library archives these days, but I did my best.)
Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare
https://archive.org/details/economicspublicw0000ande/page/n3/mode/2up
Clark, Central Banking under the Federal Reserve System…
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/central-banking-federal-reserve-system-314
Aldrich, The Causes of the Present Depression and Possible Remedies
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Causes_of_the_Present_Depression_and.html?id=iijIAAAAMAAJ
Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization…
https://mises.org/library/book/economic-mind-american-civilization-1606-1865-volume-one
Bernstein, The Lean Years…
https://archive.org/details/leanyearshistory0000bern_f7p8/page/n5/mode/2up
Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
https://archive.org/details/herberthoovergre0000warr_f2d0
Hayes, Activities of the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment
https://books.google.com/books/about/Activities_of_the_President_s_emergency.html?id=7QHJAAAAMAAJ
Congressional Record 75, including January 11, 1932
https://archive.org/details/sim_congressional-record-proceedings-and-debates_january-04-19-1932_75/page/1654/mode/2up
Monthly Labor Review 32 (1931), including p. 834
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/april-1931-608201?page=62
Wolman, Wages in Relation to Economic Recovery
https://books.google.com/books/about/Wages_in_Relation_to_Economic_Recovery.html?id=Vh1QAQAAMAAJ
Angly, Oh Yeah?
https://books.google.com/books/about/Oh_Yeah.html?id=rTWMAAAACAAJ
Salary and Wage Policy in the Depression
https://archive.org/details/salarywagepolicy0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up
Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.462199
(I had no luck finding any electronic resource for the very old Barron’s issues referenced in footnote 17 on page 270)
Putnam, Is Wage Maintenance a Fallacy, in Journal of the American Bankers’ Association
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015086750646&q1=putnam&start=1
Divine, American Immigration Policy
https://archive.org/details/americanimmigrat0000divi/page/n7/mode/2up
Abbott, Public Assistance
https://archive.org/details/publicassistance0001edit/page/n3/mode/2up
Schlesinger, The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933
https://archive.org/details/ageofrooseveltcr0000unse/page/n3/mode/2up
Fusfeld, The Economic Thought of Franklin D. Roosevelt
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Economic_Thought_of_Franklin_D_Roose.html?id=tRZUQwAACAAJ
Monthly Labor Review 33 (1931) containing p. 1341-1342
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/june-1931-608203?page=10
Wendt, The Role of the Federal Government in Housing
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Federal-Government-in-Housing.pdf
Nash, Herbert Hoover and the Origins of the RFC
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1892269
Monthly Labor Review 33 (1931), containing pages 1049-1057
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/monthly-labor-review-6130/november-1930-608195?page=9
Frederick, Readings in Economic Planning
https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/228876
alternate link:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Readings_in_Economic_Planning/Xo_XAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=frederick%20%22readings%20in%20economic%20planning%22
Loth, Swope of G.E.
https://archive.org/details/swopeofgestoryof00loth/page/n5/mode/2up
Donham, Business Adrift
https://archive.org/details/businessadrift0000wall
Coit, Mr. Baruch
https://archive.org/details/mrbaruch00coit_0
The Magazine of Wall Street including December 14, 1929, unfortunately I could find no better link…
https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/QKxLAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU6OH-gd-IAxWCkO4BHXobAEIQre8FegQIAxA1
Tugwell, The Democratic Roosevelt
https://archive.org/details/democraticroosev00tugw
Stocking, Stabilization of the Oil Industry…
https://www.jstor.org/stable/46
Watkins, A Planned Economy Through Coordinated Control of Basic Industries
https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Planned_Economy_Through_Coordinated_Co/aOcyHAAACAAJ?hl=en
Seeing a lot of people, including libertarians, oddly enough, pronouncing these blanket oppositions to what the corporate media calls “political violence.”
This is another case of people failing the Bastiat test–looking only at the bare surface level of such a policy, and failing to account for its secondary effects.
Worse yet, these oppositions actually seem to preach from a moral perspective, and not merely a strategic one. Yet another blundering oversight.
Because what kinds of activities do you have to disavow in order to oppose “political violence?”