Ron Paul Breaking Campaign Fundraising Record?
Donations continue to steadily pour into Ron Paul’s campaign. In just twelve hours, over $1,500,000 has been raised, with no slowing down in sight.
I don’t know what the record is for campaign contributions in a single day, but if this doesn’t exceed the record, it has to be coming close. I’ll see if I can find any information on that.
A significant amount of attention was directed at the Ron Paul campaign for bringing in just over $5,000,000 last quarter. So what is to be made of the fact that he will likely top $5,000,000 (today!), less than half way through the fourth quarter?
*UPDATE: Thomas Woods writes: “The all-time record for single-day fundraising during the primary season is $2.3 million.” this just might be broken today.
*UPDATE: ronpaulgraphs.com is experiencing bandwidth issues due to the large amount of people watching Dr. Paul’s fundraising go through the roof. it just recently exceeded $2,000,000!
*UPDATE: well, $2.3 million has easily been passed, but apparently that isn’t the record. according to an email distributed by the Paul campaign, Romney holds the record at $3.1 million. That could very well be exceeded as well. it’s not letting up.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Ron Paul is an idiot. He wants to abandon the UN and the FED. He is an anti-institutionalist, which is pretty much the worst thing that could follow Bush, who is an institution mistreater. There are so many “problems of the commons” in the modern world especiall in enviromental issue, that just cutting down the state and well-functioning institutions (and yes the FED does function well, even though Paul does not have the brains to understand what Bernanke says, when you follow the Congressional hearing, and also a world with the U.N. and with the U.S. in the U.N. is a better world then one in which the U.S. withdraws from the U.N.) The man has got so radical ideas he will further alienate the U.S. in the world. The Ron Paul Robots taking over Youtube and the Internet must stop repeating their monotonous and oh so hip support copy paste and start thinking.
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/6863
November 5th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
if your comment was a little less ad hominem and bit more grounded in fact and reason, you’d have gotten your point across better.
the world has seen some of it’s bloodiest years since the conception of the UN. this quagmire we are fighting in iraq was partly the result of enforcing UN resolutions. participation in the UN harms our sovereignty. it is because of globalist organizations like the UN that we will likely need prescriptions for vitamins soon. the larger the scale of government, the more oppressive and irrational it is.
our current monetary system is seriously flawed. the current housing crisis is a small example of the problems associated with FED induced credit expansions and the busts that inevitably follow. inflation is a serious problem that harms the lower and middle classes disproportionately. the value of the dollar continues to plummet. the result of printing fiat currency out of thin air, is equivalent to a tax. only the large corporations with close government ties benefit because they receive the money before it has diluted the economy.
ron paul’s ideas are no more radical than those of thomas jefferson, grover cleveland, and many other highly respected americans that helped make this the freest, most prosperous country on earth. it may be radical to many people today, but that is only because we have drifted so far.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Not bad for an “unelectable radical fringe long-shot dark-horse candidate.” This is a demonstration of the force the Internet is becoming in elections. No longer can a few corporate news outlets control the entirety of public perception, and it’s hard to deny Paul’s support when he’s pulling in these numbers.
It’s fine to disagree with Ron Paul on some issues– whether it’s the U.N. or anything else– but one would have to be a fool to not realize that he is the most honest, knowledgable candidate in the race.
He runs intellectual circles around all his opponents and his voting record is flawless. He offers Republicans a true return to conservatism (no big government “anti-terror” intrusions, no gross overseas spending) and for the Democrats, he’s the ONLY candidate (besides maybe Gravel & Kucinich) who we can trust to bring the troops home NOW, and not just redeploy them to another country. He’s also quite liberal on social issues like the war on drugs and gay marriage.
November 5th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
right on!
let’s just hope the government is not permitted to regulate the internet in the way it has television and radio.
November 5th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I should also clarify that Ron Paul is not advocating an abolishment of the federal reserve. what he would do is legalize competing “hard” currencies such as gold. i don’t think he would ever advocate a mandatory gold standard. gold was the standard for so many years — until the government basically outlawed it as currency — because that is what the free market chose. it has intrinsic value, it is relatively easily divisible, it is non-perishable, and it is durable. that is what made gold such a good medium of exchange. worthless fiat, paper backed by the word of an irresponsible corrupt government, and printed willy-nilly by a single private bank, does not make a very good medium of exchange.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Sanderwagner is calling “others” robots. Boy has he bought into the media hipe that there’s only one way. March your little robot body down to the polls and vote whichever the media tells you. Suckered right into the spin.
It’s amazing how uninformed people are.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Why is my response not getting published?
November 7th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
I still have my response saved in a notepad can you tell me why it is not appeaing? Thank you
November 7th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
” this quagmire we are fighting in iraq was partly the result of enforcing UN resolutions”
woow wait a second.
Here is the story: Iraq was constantly breaching several U.N. resolutions as are many many countries world doing right now. Then the U.S. government decided internally and very much independently of the U.N. on invading Iraq. However, they tried getting U.N. resolutions for military actions so they could fight the war with more international support. They failed miserably, because this administration is incompetent in the field of communication with allies and because no country was given the feeling of actually being listened to or having a say with regards to shaping policy. They were just left with the famous either you are with us or against us philosophy and thus either able to follow the U.S. or to stay out of the conflict. Most countries opted wisely enough to stay out.
The U.S. without a proper Iraq resolution invaded anyways.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Now the scenario without the U.N.: The U.S. decides unilaterally and without consultation of allies to invade Iraq -> same quagmire.
” this quagmire we are fighting in iraq was partly the result of enforcing UN resolutions” sounds like this government decided to do this war to uphold the unquestioned sovereignity of the U.N.. That’s a very good joke.
The resolutions were used as an argument they did not influence what happened in Iraq at all.
However Bush senior fought a very different war in Iraq. He was able to use the forum provided by such institutions as the U.N. to assemble a great alliance, which resulted in a very successful reasonably planned and widely supported war, which since many interest groups knowing the stakes came together was fought and ended in a way much less harming to global stability than the current one.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
2. ” our current monetary system is seriously flawed. the current housing crisis is a small example of the problems associated with FED induced credit expansions and the busts that inevitably follow.”
I am an econ grad student and I study these things seriously. Now the boom and bust in the housing market is what you historically describe as the business cycle. And how bad such things are depends on how big the boom and bust periods are, i.e. the smoother the business cycle, the better. Now in the 19th century before the FEDs establishment in 1913 you have a much more extreme business cycle than you currnetly have, meaning the bust you have from housing currently is very little compared to the average 19th century bust.
Now on the other hand, as Milton Friedman correctly pointed out the FED did play a negative role in the great depression by not inducing enough confidence into the system to avoid the bank runs. Since then however Central Banks have learned their lessons and since the 50s we have the least cyclical period in measured business cycle history.
When something like subprime is approaching you do at least have the possibilty of experts recognizing in the data that a bust is approaching and smoothing it out by reducing liquidity early enough to soften the boom bust cycle, which is what the FED does pretty good in general, even though Greenspan did not correctly anticipate the magnitude of subprime.
It is not the FED that leads to crisis by credit expansions. It softens the natural crisis arising in economies by rationing and expanding credit at the correct moments. It does the opposite of what you think its doing and the historical data supports the view that it does it correctly.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
3. “only the large corporations with close government ties benefit because they receive the money before it has diluted the economy”:
I don’t understand this. Maybe you mean that the banks can lend money directly from the FED but can do so at different rates than consumers and companies and can thus paying lower interest. If that is what you mean state so and I will try to explain why this makes sense in another post. If you mean something else please explain, I would be highly interested because it is probably a monetary policy or money issuing mechanism I am unaware of.
Generally it has to be noted that apart from the naming process of the Chairman, the FED is almost completely independent from the govenrment, in order to assure that political considerations (for example getting the economy booming before the election) do not affect monetary policy. Therefore your statement seems unlikely to me. But again if there is somehting I am unaware of please explain it to me.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
4. “the larger the scale of government, the more oppressive and irrational it is”
Now that is a very general statement. It’s direct consequence in this absolute form would be anarchy. There are definitely governments that have an unreasonably big size and become self-serving Leviathan’s crippling economies and individual freedoms. Communist Russia and China before Deng Xiaping are perect examples.
But there is several problems that arise when humans do not create certain institutions (sometimes called government). Suppose you live in a village and there is a factory polluting the river therefore degrading your water quality etc. For the factory this makes sense because there is less cleaning cost and more profit. All the individuals in the village are a lot worse off though. However standing up against the factory alone will probably be a losing battle and cost you a lot of time and effort. Therefore no one does anything. What is required is that the villagers coordinate themselves to solve the problem together. Coordination does not however arise spontaneously (maybe in villages this happens at times but for the entire U.S. for example this is hard to imagine). Creating a governmental institution with the mandate to solve such a problem seems a reasonable choice and if the villagers posess such an institution, lets say a mayor they might be better off. This is not defending any government excesses and if the villagers just let the government do everything, they will have different problems, which I am sure you are very well aware of. Government size is a trade-off with gains and losses to different sizes of governments. Nowadays there are however so many problems affecting huge groups of people simultaneously that the size of government maximizing gains and minimizing losses is a lot bigger than it was at the time John Stuart Mill was writing his tracts.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
5. “gold was the standard for so many years — until the government basically outlawed it as currency — because that is what the free market chose. it has intrinsic value, it is relatively easily divisible, it is non-perishable, and it is durable. that is what made gold such a good medium of exchange. worthless fiat, paper backed by the word of an irresponsible corrupt government, and printed willy-nilly by a single private bank, does not make a very good medium of exchange.”
So I take it you are proposing a return to the gold standard.
Here are some consequences pointed out by a much smarter person than me: Brad Delong (http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Politics/whynotthegoldstandard.html)
Loss of control over economic policy. If the U.S. and a substantial number of other industrial economies adopted a gold standard, the U.S. would lose the ability to tune its economic policies to fit domestic conditions.
* For example, in the spring of 1995 the dollar weakened against the yen. Under a gold standard, such a decline in the dollar would not have been allowed: instead the Federal Reserve would have raised interest rates considerably in order to keep the value of the dollar fixed at its gold parity, and a recession would probably have followed.
Recessionary bias. Under a gold standard, the burden of adjustment is always placed on the “weak currency” country.
* Countries seeing downward market pressure on the values of their currencies are forced to contract their economies and raise unemployment.
* The gold standard imposes no equivalent adjustment burden on countries seeing upward market pressure on currency values.
* Hence a deflationary bias which makes it likely that a gold standard regime will see a higher average unemployment rate than an alternative managed regime.
The gold standard and the Great Depression. The current judgment of economic historians (see, for example, Barry J. Eichengreen, Golden Fetters) is that attachment to the gold standard played a major part in keeping governments from fighting the Great Depression, and was a major factor turning the recession of 1929-1931 into the Great Depression of 1931-1941.
* Countries that were not on the gold standard in 1929–or that quickly abandoned the gold standard–by and large escaped the Great Depression
* Countries that abandoned the gold standard in 1930 and 1931 suffered from the Great Depression, but escaped its worst ravages.
* Countries that held to the gold standard through 1933 (like the United States) or 1936 (like France) suffered the worst from the Great Depression
o Commitment to the gold standard prevented Federal Reserve action to expand the money supply in 1930 and 1931–and forced President Hoover into destructive attempts at budget-balancing in order to avoid a gold standard-generated run on the dollar.
o Commitment to the gold standard left countries vulnerable to “runs” on their currencies–Mexico in January of 1995 writ very, very large. Such a run, and even the fear that there might be a future run, boosted unemployment and amplified business cycles during the gold standard era.
o The standard interpretation of the Depression, dating back to Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s Monetary History of the United States, is that the Federal Reserve could have but for some mysterious reason did not boost the money supply to cure the Depression; but Friedman and Schwartz do not stress the role played by the gold standard in tieing the Federal Reserve’s hands–the “golden fetters” of Eichengreen.
o Friedman was and is aware of the role played by the gold standard–hence his long time advocacy of floating exchange rates, the antithesis of the gold standard.
Consequences for the Long-Run Average Rate of Inflation:
Average inflation determined by gold mining. Under a gold standard, the long-run trajectory of the price level is determined by the pace at which gold is mined in South Africa and Russia.
* For example, the discovery and exploitation of large gold reserves near present-day Johannesburg at the end of the nineteenth century was responsible for a four percentage point per year shift in the worldwide rate of inflation–from a deflation of roughly two percent per year before 1896 to an inflation of roughly two percent per year after 1896.
* In the election of 1896, William Jennings Bryan’s Democrats called for free coinage of silver as a way to end the then-current deflation and stop the transfer of wealth away from indebted farmers. The concurrent gold discoveries in South Africa changed the rate of drift of the price level, and accomplished more than the writers of the Democratic platform could have dreamed, without any change in the U.S. coinage.
* Thus any political factors that interrupted the pace of gold mining would have major effects on the long-run trend of the price level–send us into an era of slow deflation, with high unemployment. Conversely, significant advances in gold mining technology could provide a significant boost to the average rate of inflation over decades.
* Under the gold standard, the average rate of inflation or deflation over decades ceases to be under the control of the government or the central bank, and becomes the result of the balance between growing world production and the pace of gold mining.
Under a gold standard, the burden of adjustment is always placed on the “weak currency” country.
* Countries seeing downward market pressure on the values of their currencies are forced to contract their economies and raise unemployment.
* The gold standard imposes no equivalent adjustment burden on countries seeing upward market pressure on currency values.
* Hence a deflationary bias which makes it likely that a gold standard regime will see a higher average unemployment rate than an alternative managed regime
November 7th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
sorry for the complaints… guess my post was just to long… sorry for the inconvenience imposed by the length of posting as well I just wanted to make my points thoroughly.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
“the world has seen some of it’s bloodiest years since the conception of the UN”:
by historical standards the last 60 years are very… very … indeed extremely unusually peaceful and prosperous. Point me out any other time period with such a long period of prosperity and peace for such a huge proportion of the world population. I have to go back to August to maybe find something comparable: and I don’t even think that does because outside of the empire there was too much shit going on…
November 7th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
August=Augustus
November 8th, 2007 at 9:24 am
i have a lot to respond to but i’ll start by saying that the 20th century — which brought us the league of nations and then the equally illegitimate UN — has been THE BLOODIEST century in history. this is a statistical fact.
as john denson wrote:
“The most accurate description of the twentieth century is “The War and Welfare Century.” This century was the bloodiest in all history. More than 170 million people were killed by governments with ten million being killed in World War I and fifty million killed in World War II. In regard to the fifty million killed in World War II, it is significant that nearly 70 percent were innocent civilians, mainly as a result of the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America.”
and Ron Paul wrote this about the UN and other supra-national government:
“The problem is not that the UN is corrupt, or ineffective, or run by scoundrels. The real problem is that the UN is inherently illegitimate, because supra-national government is an inherently illegitimate concept. Legitimate governments operate only by the consent of those they govern. Yet it is ludicrous to suggest that billions of people across the globe have in any way consented to UN governance, or have even the slightest influence over their own governments. The UN is perhaps the least democratic institution imaginable, but both Democrats and Republicans insist on using it to “promote democracy.” We should stop worrying about the UN and simply walk away from it by withdrawing our membership and our money. We should demand a return to real national sovereignty, and respect other nations by rejecting our failed interventionist foreign policy. By doing so we would make the world a more peaceful place.”
November 8th, 2007 at 9:31 am
one of the justifications for the iraq war was saddam’s failure to comply with UN security council resolutions. we have no business going to war for any reason other than to defend our country. the UN has been used to justify foreign aggression on many occasions and it will continue to be abused that way, until we reject the notion of such a counterproductive, bloated, behemoth of an organization.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:32 am
2 points:
1. first you write “the world has seen some of it’s bloodiest years since the conception of the UN” now that is simply not true, the UN was founded after WWII and since then the world has been faring relatively well. Then you just rebut this critique by switching to the 20th century in general. To make this sound more plausible you include the U.N.s unofficial predecessor the League of Nations in your argument. That’s a smart move. However, be reminded that the League of Nations was founded on the Initiative of Woodrow Wilson AFTER WWI. The statistics you cite about the 20th century death rates especially those about civilian deaths etc. include WWI, which had even a lot higher casualty rates then WWII. Therefore they cannot be regarded as relevant for the points we are debating.
Now, you might continue to argue that even after establishing the League of Nations WWII happened and its true but if the League of Nations plays any role in the way to WWII it does so only by being effectively defunct because many of its members strongly refuse to operate through the organization (as Ron Paul wants to do with the UN) and thereby not providing any international forum maybe leading to better communication, smarter handling of the Versaille Treaties, less appeasement towards Germany etc.)
So the only big historical war, which still stands in your argument linking historical bloodiness to international Organizations is WWII and implying a causal link, would mean that Hitler would have been less probable to start this war had the League of Nations not been around. I think you will find very few historians to support that thesis.
2. Your main refusal of the U.N. stems from 2 perspectives.
2.1. it is not directly democratically legitimized because the millions of people in the world have not directly consented to it:
Off course not, their representatives have. If you challenge things on these grounds the entire legislation of the U.S. which has not been approved by the people but their representatives would be questionable. So would the electoral college indirect voting system be and you should just switch to an absolute majority voting system. Karl Popper has written wonderful essays on why this is not the best choice in real-world politics and why transferring power to representatives and letting them make decisions found institutions etc. for a limited time-period, in between the elections is a smart choice.
2.2 It is a huge bureaucratic behemoth that influences our lifes and will probably force “prescriptions on vitamins” on us soon.
Now I have worked as an intern at the U.N. once and I concede that it is bureaucratic, perhaps too much so and that it is ineffective at times. It does not influence the lifes of ordinary people to such an extraordinary extent as is often assumed though. It also plays a very little almost irrelevant aspect in most national budgets (compare it to military expenditures if you want to amuse yourself). Furthermore it is ridiculous to assume that wars are fought because there is a forum in which to justify them. In general communication and negotiation increases the probability of finding agreements looking at common and not common interest and at reducing information assymetry between national agents, which all probably lead to less unjustified violence. Despite some of its disadvantages the U.N. provides an (in many ways still imperfect forum) for countries to negotiate, coordinate policy and find diplomatic, economic and social solutions to many of th problems that affect us globally today. You’re proposed return to isolationism will severely reduce world prosperity. It will dry down trade, immigration, technology and knowledge transfer and many other sources of economic growth. The strong growth periods of 1890-1910 and 1946-2007 are all marked by a trend towards globalization openness and cooperation, while all the indicators of isolationism are up in the dark intermezzo that lies in between
November 8th, 2007 at 11:48 am
“Now I have worked as an intern at the U.N. once and I concede that it is bureaucratic, perhaps too much so and that it is ineffective at times.”
that explains a lot.
the league of nations and the UN have the same underlying premise and hence cause the same general problems.
first off, leaving the UN does not constitute “isolationism.” our current policy is isolationist, because most of the world despises us. secondly, this country has seen its most prosperous years when we followed the advice of people like george washington and thomas jefferson and did not invole ourselves in the conflicts of others, and did not take on the role of the worlds policeman.
trading and talking with other nations openly (free markets) are crucial to peace and prosperity. NAFTA, CAFTA, etc (so called free trade organizations) are not promoting this at all. and the UN does not help in this matter either. that is the difference between isolationism and the non-interventionism that ron paul promotes. i’m not sure why people can’t understand this. using force and the threat of force to impose our ideals on other nations and attempt to ensure that we can obtain commodities — such as oil — at a price we see as reasonable, is not globalization. its imperialism and mercantilism, and leads us further from peace and prosperity. you are advocating the neo-con agenda and criticizing it (i think) at the same time.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Just a fact check on the book you were reading: it says “In regard to the fifty million killed in World War II, it is significant that nearly 70 percent were innocent civilians, mainly as a result of the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America.”
of the 40 million civilian deaths assumed for WWII 16million are in Russia and 11m million were in China. Germany, Italy and Japan have combined civilian deaths of around 2 million people. So the “mainly as a result of the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America.” part is just dead wrong.
Here you can find the stats:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
November 8th, 2007 at 11:56 am
holding the fact that I know the U.N. against me is polemicism. I have no personal stakes or commitment and am unbiased in my judgement, I just have an information advantage. You could as well hold against Ron Paul that he is part of the government
November 8th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Explain to me how NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO are not promoting trade at all. Probably you promote bilateral trade agreements, there is a huge amount of economic literature pointing to the problems of such agreement and there inferiority to multilateral agreements which I can refer you to.
Also the U.S. was not more prosperous under George Washington and the world was a lot less inerconnected so an isolationist policy stance was a lot easier and probably a lot more reasonable policy option than it is these days.
Furthermore, when you classify me as a neocon criticizing the neocons I am surprised, I mean there is more options than being a neocon supporting an aggressive interventionist foreign policy with little emphasis on consultation or just deciding to completely mind one’s own business. Clearly these two options are intelectually the easiest to grasp and work with, because they are very clear cut ideas. But actually I think more in shades of grey and support a pragmatic culture of negotiation, consultation, alliance building and at some points intervening (WWII participation was a good thing after all). No the U.S. should not play the world policeman and they should not let a couple of ideologues manoever it into an ill-concepted and badly justified war, but just staying out of World politics is not the only alternative.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
those trade organizations tend to benefit certain industries and corporations, always at the expense of others. it harms the competition and freedom that would exist in a truly free market.
i’m not holding anything against you. it just explained a lot. and i do take into consideration that ron paul works for the government. like any other politician, i have been very cautious in accepting anything he said.
i’m not classifying you as a neocon. i said that you were advocating the neocon agenda of interventionism, which you are. I understand you think it shuold be done differently. but so did Bush I and Clinton. the fact is…it’s all interventionism, and it all results in less freedom, civil liberties, and prosperity; and more war, and resentment toward the united states.
November 8th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I am not proposing a return to gold standard per se. I don’t think i’m qualified to make a decision like that. I agree with ron paul and many others who feel that we should legalize “hard” currencies like gold and silver. why should we not be free to use and medium of exchange we see fit? why should we be at the mercy of a single private central bank? that is not an attribute of a free society.
alan greenspan has written extensively about the dangers of a monetary system based on fiat money. and even after a long career as the FED chairman, he still has a hard time defending it, and he admits that even he is unable to predict, correctly, the changes in the market.
these choices should be made by individuals in their everyday transactions. not by a small group of bureaucrats. why do people want so badly to delegate their decisions to politicians and bankers?
the gold standard wasn’t perfect just like the free market isn’t, but a monetary policy based on “hard,” market chosen currency would provide the best, most humanitarian and moral means of exchange. there would still be inflation and deflation, but to MUCH lesser extent than what we have seen with fiat currency.
you have to understand that our monetary system is used as a form of taxation. when they print off money, as they recently did to bail the banks out, they inflate the money supply thereby reducing the purchasing power of the dollar. this is a inevitable consequence of more money chasing the same amount of goods. also, when this occurs there is a transfer of wealth from creditors to debtors. so the government, being the largest debtor, gains the most. the poor and middle class take the brunt of it when they are hit with higher prices.
the housing bubble was largely caused by a credit expansion. when credit becomes artificially “easy” to obtain, lending standards are loosened and too many people are seduced into borrowing more than they can handle. all this occurs while prices are beginning to rise, and the economy is struggling.
November 8th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
my ability to articulate the concepts of monetary policy are severely limited. the mises institute is an outstanding resource for information regarding this and any other topic on economics. the website is:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/business-cycle.html
one particular essay on the business cycle, written by Murray Rothbard can be found at:
http://www.mises.org/story/1905
it’s quite lengthy, but well written, and very informative.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:28 am
I don’t want to criticize Austrian economics or the Mises Institute in particular. I have nothing against a sligth libertarian bias as long as it does not turn into ideology either (for a european I might even have a slight bias in that direction as well). But I hope that you are aware that the Mises Institute are a very particular institution that operates far away from the consensus of mainstream economics. They run their own journals and their staff does not seem to publish in any of the big peer reviewed economics journals from what I was able to tell from their website. They also don’t have any staff with tenure in one of the top 20s econ departments. Austrian economics provides a couple of nice ideas but very few good analytical tools (after all the austrians hated math) and is therefore regarded as outdated and unfit for analysis by most economists today.
I just wanted to call your attention on this. I will try to read the article you pointed out as soon as possible though. Currently I have got loads of work on my desk… and thus won’t be able to continue this interesting discussion to soon. Thx for your input and effort and keep on blogging… But extend your scepticism to everything even libertarianism
November 9th, 2007 at 9:15 am
thanks for the information. I realize that austrian economics is not regarded as mainstream. it used to be. the economic principles of the founders was ver much in line with austrian economics. the ideas and writings of ex FED chairman alan greenspan were also very much in step.
when asked who influenced him most as a person and a leader, ronald reagan mentioned von mises, hayek, and bastiat; all strong advocates of austrian economics to say the least.
the keynesian economics taught in the vast majority of schools (except for maybe schools like Hillsdale, which still champions austrian economics), has become the “mainstream” in the US and is fraught with fallacies have been systematically debunked by the austrian school.
to say that “the austrians hated math” is very misleading. they do not hate math, they just don’t believe it is an appropriate method to analyze human action. murray rothbard, one of the more recent austrian economists, was accepted into columbia university as a math major at the age of 16. he was very well versed in mathematics. he received his BA in mathematics and MA in economics from columbia.
math is a powerful tool for most scientific applications, where there is a highly predictable outcome. economics however, is based on the actions of individuals. to use math to describe these actions is hopeless. you are fooling yourself if you think there is a mathematical equation describing the actions of a person or group of people.
i am skeptical of pretty much everything, even libertarianism. that’s why i appreciate comments like yours…it forces me to really think deeply about these issues. it’s impossible to have a good understanding without seriously considering opposing views. i don’t consider myself completely convinced of every aspect of libertarianism. but i haven’t been convinced by an alternate view either.