Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [181-200] of 579 Economics quotesEconomics QuotesEconomics Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.~ Alan Greenspan We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.~ Alan Greenspan As long as we issue fiat currency, I see no alternative to a legal tender law.~ Alan Greenspan Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been determined to be the optimum level for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year, but to all that is left over from previous years. At the end of the first year, a dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the second year, the 95 cents is reduced again by 5%, leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20 years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar he saved over those years. By the time he has worked 45 years, the hidden tax will be 90%. The government will take virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime.~ G. Edward Griffin The wages of the average American worker, after inflation and taxes, have decreased 17% since 1973, the only Western industrial nation to so suffer.~ Martin Gross All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people ... turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government ... Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.~ Alexander Hamilton There is no prospect that today's younger workers will receive all the Social Security and Medicare benefits currently promised them.~ Dorcas Hardy Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing.~ Ralph M. Hawtrey The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.~ Friedrich August von Hayek To combat depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection -- a procedure which can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end.~ Friedrich August von Hayek With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.~ Friedrich August von Hayek To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.~ Friedrich August von Hayek The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. ~ Friedrich August von Hayek All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.~ Friedrich August von Hayek To create conditions in which competition will be as effective as possible, to prevent fraud and deception, to break up monopolies -- these tasks provide a wide and unquestioned field for state activity.~ Friedrich August von Hayek There can be no doubt that besides the regular types of the circulating medium, such as coin, notes and bank deposits, which are generally recognised to be money or currency, and the quantity of which is regulated by some central authority or can at least be imagined to be so regulated, there exist still other forms of media of exchange which occasionally or permanently do the service of money. Now while for certain practical purposes we are accustomed to distinguish these forms of media of exchange from money proper as being mere substitutes for money, it is clear that, other things equal, any increase or decrease of these money substitutes will have exactly the same effects as an increase or decrease of the quantity of money proper, and should therefore, for the purposes of theoretical analysis, be counted as money.~ Friedrich August von Hayek If you really want to compete with Russia and China to prevent the 21st Century from being dominated by a new axis of evil, you must first defeat the Church of Global Warming. As long as that’s the official state religion of the Western world, we haven’t got a prayer.~ John Hayward The monetary managers are fond of telling us that they have substituted 'responsible money management' for the gold standard. But there is no historic record of responsible paper money management ... The record taken as a whole is one of hyperinflation, devaluation and monetary chaos.~ Henry Hazlitt We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.~ Chris Hedges Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit.~ Robert Hemphill Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print