Thought of the Day # 6

Mises said in a lecture in the 1960s:

“The government and the journalists who were writing for the government told us about this ‘deficit spending.’ It was wonderful! It was considered something that would improve conditions in the whole country. But if you translate this into more common language, the language of the uneducated, then you would say ‘printed money.’ The government says this is only due to your lack of education; if you had an education you wouldn’t say ‘printed money,’ you would call it ‘deficit financing’ or ‘deficit spending.’

“Now what does this mean? Deficits! This means that the government spends more than it collects in taxes and in borrowing from the people; it means government spending for all those purposes for which the government wants to spend. This means inflation, pushing more money into the market; it doesn’t matter for what purpose. And that means reducing the purchasing power of each monetary unit. Instead of collecting the money that the government wanted to spend, the government fabricated the money. Printing money is the easiest thing.

Every government is clever enough to do it.”