Sublime

Saint Milton Friedman taught us that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. A central bank, by printing too much money, can bring about inflation and destroy a currency, all things being equal. But that is the tricky part of that equation, because not all things are equal.

George Stigler, a thirty-five-year-old economist at the University of Minnesota. Inflation had diluted the 40-cent minimum wage, and people were calling for an increase to 60 or even 75 cents an hour, which translates to $9.51 and $11.88 in June 2022 dollars. “Economists have not been very outspoken on this type of legislation,” Stigler wrote. “It

Monetarists generally oppose Keynesian efforts to spend money to eliminate unemployment, arguing that in the long run, the effect on unemployment will be eliminated while causing inflation. Instead, Monetarists prefer tax cuts to stimulate the economy, because they argue that the free market will better allocate resources than government spending.

It would be far better, if that were the choice—which it isn’t—to have maximum production with part of the population supported in idleness by undisguised relief than to provide “full employment”