QuoteProject
If the practice persists of covering government deficits with the issue of notes, then the day will come without fail, sooner or later, when the monetary systems of those nations pursuing this course will break down completely. The purchasing power of the monetary unit will decline more and more, until finally it disappears completely.
Ludwig Von Mises
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Excessive printing of money to cover government deficits leads to the devaluation of currency and eventual economic collapse.

Ludwig Von Mises warns against the dangerous practice of financing government deficits by printing more money. He argues that such actions result in a gradual decline of the currency's purchasing power, ultimately leading to a complete breakdown of the monetary system. This serves as a cautionary tale about the long-term consequences of reckless fiscal policies.

Themes

Monetary PolicyInflationGovernmentCurrencyEconomic CollapseDeficits

In practice

Example use cases

During a lecture on economic policies, you might reference this quote to highlight the dangers of irresponsible financial practices.

More from Ludwig Von Mises

The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Only stilted pedants can conceive the idea that there are absolute norms to tell what is beautiful and what is not. They try to derive from the works of the past a code of rules with which, as they fancy, the writers and artists of the future should comply. But the genius does not cooperate with the pundit.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
The most serious dangers for American freedom and the American way of life do not come from without.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
The public firm can nowhere maintain itself in free competition with the private firm; it is possible today only where it has a monopoly that excludes competition. Even that alone is evidence of its lesser economic productivity.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
Each epoch has found in the Gospels what it sought to find there, and has overlooked what it wished to overlook.
Ludwig Von MisesRead

Similar quotes

When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.
Nick HanauerRead
Firms don't just try to pay as little as possible to get the needed bodies on board; when there is unemployment, they ask themselves how wage cuts would affect the behavior of the employees. Would they quit or feel dissatisfied and work less hard on the firm's behalf if they feel that wage policies are unfair?
Janet YellenRead
Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.
Thomas JeffersonRead
If strong economic conditions can partially reverse supply-side damage after it has occurred, then policymakers may want to aim at being more accommodative during recoveries than would be called for under the traditional view that supply is largely independent of demand.
Janet YellenRead
If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.
Milton FriedmanRead
The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
E. B. WhiteRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.