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Economics Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Appendix

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:

FederalState & LocalTotal
19294913
19304.29.713.9
19315.59.715.2
19324.48.813.2
Corrected Table VI from page 345 of the fifth edition. All figures are in billions of dollars.

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

Categories
Economics Political Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter Twelve

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

Categories
Economics Video Link

Inflation: The Econometric Mirage

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.

This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

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Economics Political Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter 11, part 2

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.

Categories
Economics Philosophy Video Link

Aluminum Cans and the Nirvana Fallacy?

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!

This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

“Everything Is Political:” The Totalitarian’s Creed

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:

  1. I exercise political power over X
  2. I do not exercise political power X, but I could
  3. I may not/shall not exercise political power over X

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.

This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.

Categories
Economics Political Video Link

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, Chapter Eleven, Part One

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.)