Tengo la impresión de que los gobiernos han pagado precios muy caros en términos de empleo para bajar la inflación pero, más allá de lo que piense (que poco importante), en la revisión del debate aparecieron algunas joyitas para compartir.
Por ejemplo, James Buchanan y Richard Wagner son dos excelentes economistas. Conservadores, pero excelentes. No se trata de un Arthur Laffer (por elegir alguien de afuera) o de un Cachanosky (por elegir alguien de por aquí). No. Son dos titanes de los cuales uno aprende siempre.
Sin embargo, en el capítulo 5 de su Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of John Maynard Keynes desarrollan su aversión a la inflación y, entre otras cosas, dicen:
“We do not need to become full-blown Hegelians to entertain the general notion of zeitgeist, a "spirit of the times." Such a spirit seems at work in the 1960s and 1970s, and is evidenced by what appears as a generalized erosion in public and private manners, increasingly liberalized attitudes toward sexual activities, a declining vitality of the Puritan work ethic, deterioration in product quality, explosion of the welfare rolls, widespread corruption in both the private and the governmental sector, and, finally, observed increases in the alienation of voters from the political process. We do not, of course, attribute all or even the major share of these to the Keynesian conversion of the public and the politicians. But who can deny that inflation, itself one consequence of that conversion, plays some role in reinforcing several of the observed behavior patterns. Inflation destroys expectations and creates uncertainty; it increases the sense of felt injustice and causes alienation. It prompts behavioral responses that reflect a generalized shortening of time horizons. "Enjoy, enjoy"—the imperative of our time—becomes a rational response in a setting where tomorrow remains insecure and where the plans made yesterday seem to have been made in folly”.Otra joyita, menos valiosa porque es más fanático y menos inteligente, es la propia cita que ellos hacen de Wilhelm Röpke en su Welfare, Freedom and Inflation [Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1964], p. 70) diciendo:
"Inflation, and the spirit which nourishes it and accepts it, is merely the monetary aspect of the general decay of law and of respect for law. It requires no special astuteness to realize that the vanishing respect for property is very intimately related to the numbing of respect for the integrity of money and its value. In fact, laxity about property and laxity about money are very closely bound up together; in both cases what is firm, durable, earned, secured and designed for continuity gives place to what is fragile, fugitive, fleeting, unsure and ephemeral. And that is not the kind of foundation on which the free society can long remain standing"¿No será mucho almirante?
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