Mises made a great points that put a lot of pressure on socialist arguments that became difficult to reconcile. He points out that in an economy, there is an excess of loss. If you speak of profits, you must also speak of losses. This makes profit a rare commodity.

Think about an economy and business, and all of its costs and failures, and how much profit you make relative to those losses. It's quite small. A lot of folks speak as if it's all profit

Inflation has been used as a way to conceal bad economic policy.

Inflation is a form of taxation. Currently, the government is receiving a record amount revenue. If spending stayed the same, then the debt and deficit would plummet. Instead, the deficit and debt have not only NOT plummeted, but Biden is on track to add the same amount of debt as Trump did with the COVID lockdowns. To give some perspective, here is a chart to show the revenue. Now imagine this flow of money, but still managing to accrue massive debt and the deficit even staying the same or not going to zero.

If it doesn’t default to 10 years, set it to 10 and look at that jump. That’s the amount of money the Biden admin has to play with. This tells us his spending is outrageous.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W006RC1Q027SBEA

A byproduct of capitalism is involuntary unemployment (Mises; Human Action). It’s only part of the truth to believe that unemployment in the market economy is due to a lack of opportunities, because when a market economy is efficient and at maximum production, there will be some unemployment. Full employment can be an indication of a lack of efficiency, and it could indicate that the economy isn’t maximizing labor and production, which means higher prices, which lowers demand and lead to unemployment. (Hazlitt; Economics in One Lesson. Also Kraken). This means, that total full employment, or zero unemployment, is NOT a good thing. There is always a surplus of work to be done when the wants and the needs of the consumer haven’t been satisfied.

OTOH, socialism creates voluntary employment. (Mises, Human Action). Unemployment for socialism and the Market economy can be for different reasons, making the causes even more difficult to analyze and explain, because the market economy causes unemployment for economic reasons, but socialism can cause unemployment for non-economic reasons. (Kraken’s conclusion).

You can start to see why socialism isn’t an economic theory.

Changes made to the definitions. Expanded on “socialism” and added Austrian economics, for those of you who didn’t know what it was.

I mentioned in another thread that under capitalism, prices have a tendency to fall over long periods of time. In any given short period of time, they can go up, however, the trend is always down. The only time it goes up is with government interference, including inflation.

One thing that can cause prices to go up is “price parity”. This is an interference strategy meant to create uniform pricing under the guise of consumer interest. Price parity is becoming a popular idea again, so I thought it would be a good topic for the thread tonight. The problem with it is that is kills competitive pricing, and has a terrible affect that ends up INCREASING prices.

Price parity was originally used just before the Great Depression and was one of major interferences that helped create the Great Depression. Farming was booming in 1909 to 1915. In order to keep this going, price parity was applied, which ended up spiking the prices of farm commodities and food.

To give an example of how this would work if we applied it to other products, and to show how prices actually trend downward in a free market, Hazlitt gave some examples and evidence of these trends.

In 1912, a Chevrolet touring car would have cost $2150. By 1942, a much improved Chevy sedan cost $900. With price parity, that same Chevy sedan would cost $3270. In 1909, a pound of aluminum cost 22.09 cents. By 1946, it was down to $.14 a pound. With price parity, it would have written to $.41 per pound.

Anti-competitive strategy of price parity, increases prices so fast and dramatically, that efficiency in productivity, cannot even remotely keep up. if this tactic were to be applied to all commodities, the entire economy would crash, because the consumer would no longer be able to afford anything.

The scary thing is, price parity is being recycled as a new idea again. Price paridy creates a cartel, which would violate antitrust laws, but when the government does it, it’s illegal