Planning for Freedom: Let the Market System Work; A Collection of Essays and Addresses

by Ludwig von Mises, Bettina Bien Greaves

Overview

In this anthology, Mises offers an articulate and accessible introduction to and critique of two topics he considers especially important: inflation and government interventionism. Mises believes inflation, that is monetary expansion, is destructive; it destroys savings and investment, which are the basis for production and prosperity. Government controls and economic planning never accomplish what their proponents intend. Mises consistently argues that the solution to government intervention is free markets and free enterprise, which call for reforming government. For that, ideas must be changed to “let the market system work.” There is no better “planning for freedom” than this.

The seventeen essays in Planning for Freedom: Let the Market System Work are tied together by one overarching idea, best expressed by Mises in the capstone essay “Profit and Loss.” The essays in the final section of the book summarize Mises’s contributions to economic thought and emphasize his firm belief in the power of ideas.

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century.

Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar and trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education and was a senior staff member at FEE from 1951 to 1999.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780865976610
Publisher:	Liberty Fund, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/19/2008
Series:	Liberty Fund Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Liberty Fund Edition ix

Part 1  The Free Market Economy versus Government Planning
1    Planning for Freedom (1945) 3
2    Laissez Faire or Dictatorship (1949) 15
3    Capital Supply and American Prosperity (1952) 25

Part 2  Money, Inflation, and Government
4    Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism (1950) 41
5    Inflation and Price Control (1945) 53
6    Economic Aspects of the Pension Problem (1950) 61
7    Wages, Unemployment, and Inflation (1958) 68
8    The Gold Problem (1965) 76

Part 3  Mises: Critic of Inflationism and Socialism
9    Benjamin M. Anderson Challenges the Philosophy
      of the Pseudo-Progressives (1950) 85
10  Lord Keynes and Say's Law (1950) 95
11  Stones into Bread, the Keynesian Miracle (1948) 101
12  Liberty and Its Antithesis (1960) 111

Part 4  Ideas
13   My Contributions to Economic Theory (1940) 119
14   Economic Teaching at the Universities (1952) 125
15   The Political Chances of Genuine Liberalism (1951) 134
16   Trends Can Change (1951) 138
17   Profit and Loss (1951) 143

Index  173

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November 2008

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