The Capitalist Professor with George Reisman, Ph.D. - Free College Courses on Capitalism

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