The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 7 of 10)

This appears to be part of a disturbing trend in this country to marginalize any person whose life is defined by his or her strong religious convictions. The really smart people who say they believe that science and reason alone are sufficient to explain everything are convinced that only uneducated bumpkins believe stuff like the creation narrative of Genesis or in a God powerful enough to be the author of life. They prefer to put their faith in a theory that has yet to discover a process capable of producing a universe with the complexity we see all around us.

p>Instead, they choose to call the rest of us fanatics because we don't accept the ideas they cling to with a religious fervor the envy of any true believer. I once heard a religious fanatic defined as anyone who is more religious than you. When it comes to belief in blind chance and random processes as the creating agents of our universe, these folks are far too religious for me. What if I thought one of them shouldn't be President of the United States? br> -- Rick Arand br> Lee's Summit, Missouri /p> p> CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE br> Re: Brian S. Wesbury's Abused and Depressed : /p>

Thank you for Brian S. Wesbury's review of Amity Schlaes's The Forgotten Man. I can't wait to read it. Brian writes, "Ludwig von Mises once said that a stable value for our money is as least as important as a constitution or a bill of rights. He probably said this after observing firsthand the things that Ms. Shlaes's excellent research has uncovered." Actually, Mises predicted the Great Depression in the 1920s based on the Austrian business cycle theory that excessive credit expansion creates the boom and the succeeding bust.

However, according to Wesbury, Schlaes writes, "For the working man, 'deflation made it seem as though life were stacked against him.'" While fixed payments for mortgages and taxes would be difficult to pay if wages fell in step with prices, wages didn't fall during the Depression. Those who had jobs should have felt no difficulty paying taxes and mortgages. Also, falling prices made those incomes worth even more. Adjusted for deflation, wages actually rose during the depression. But those inflexible wages also made it necessary for employers to shed workers and created massive unemployment.

p>Most economists are deathly afraid of deflation, but as Mises and Hayek demonstrate, prices will naturally fall at the same rate as production increases if the money supply remains fixed, and that will cause the wages of the working man to be worth more each year, instead of less as happens under inflation. Low, moderate inflation that lulls people to sleep hurts the working man far more than moderate deflation. After all, no one complains about the continuous deflation in the electronic and computer industries, and no one should complain about the fact that Wal-Mart has deflated the prices of food and clothing for millions of Americans who are humble enough to shop there.

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