What Will Happen to the Pure Interest Rate If People Were Certain that the World Would End in the Near Future?

There are other elements that enter into the determination of the time-preference schedules. Suppose, for example, that people were certain that the world would end on a definite date in the near future. What would happen to time preferences and to the rate of interest? Men would then stop providing for future needs and stop investing in all processes of production longer than the shortest. Future goods would become almost valueless compared to present goods, time preferences for present goods would zoom, and the pure interest rate would rise almost to infinity. On the other hand, if people all became immortal and healthy as a result of the discovery of some new drug, time preferences would tend to be very much lower, there would be a great increase in investment, and the pure rate of interest would fall sharply.

—Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, 2nd ed. of the Scholar’s ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009), 444.

The Final Market Rates of Interest Reflect the PURE Interest Rate PLUS OR MINUS Entrepreneurial Risk and Purchasing Power Components

In the purely free and unhampered market, there will be no cluster of errors, since trained entrepreneurs will not all make errors at the same time. The “boom-bust” cycle is generated by monetary intervention in the market, specifically bank credit expansion to business. Let us suppose an economy with a given supply of money. Some of the money is spent in consumption; the rest is saved and invested in a mighty structure of capital, in various orders of production. The proportion of consumption to saving or investment is determined by people’s time preferences—the degree to which they prefer present to future satisfactions. The less they prefer them in the present, the lower will their time preference rate be, and the lower therefore will be the pure interest rate, which is determined by the time preferences of the individuals in society. A lower time-preference rate will be reflected in greater proportions of investment to consumption, a lengthening of the structure of production, and a building-up of capital. Higher time preferences, on the other hand, will be reflected in higher pure interest rates and a lower proportion of investment to consumption. The final market rates of interest reflect the pure interest rate plus or minus entrepreneurial risk and purchasing power components. Varying degrees of entrepreneurial risk bring about a structure of interest rates instead of a single uniform one, and purchasing-power components reflect changes in the purchasing power of the dollar, as well as in the specific position of an entrepreneur in relation to price changes. The crucial factor, however, is the pure interest rate. This interest rate first manifests itself in the “natural rate” or what is generally called the going “rate of profit.” This going rate is reflected in the interest rate on the loan market, a rate which is determined by the going profit rate.

—Murray N. Rothbard, America's Great Depression, 5th ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000), 9-10.

Levying Income Taxes Causes a Shift to a Higher Proportion of Consumption and a Lower Proportion of Saving and Investment

There is another, unheralded reason why an income tax will particularly penalize saving and investment as against consumption. It might be thought that since the income tax confiscates a certain portion of a man’s income and leaves him free to allocate the rest between consumption and investment, and since time preference schedules remain given, the proportion of consumption to saving will remain unchanged. But this ignores the fact that the taxpayer’s real income and the real value of his monetary assets have been lowered by paying the tax. We have seen in chapter 6 that, given a man’s time-preference schedule, the lower the level of his real monetary assets, the higher his time-preference rate will be, and therefore the higher the proportion of his consumption to investment. The taxpayer’s position may be seen in Figure 86, which is essentially the reverse of the individual time-market diagrams in chapter 6. In the present case, money assets are increasing as we go rightward on the horizontal axis, while in chapter 6 money assets were declining. Let us say that the taxpayer’s initial position is a money stock of 0M; tt is his given time-preference curve. His effective time-preference rate, determining his consumption/investment proportion, is t₁. Now, suppose that the government levies an income tax, reducing his initial monetary assets at the start of his spending period to 0M′. His effective time-preference rate, the intersection of tt and the M′ line, is now higher at t₂. He shifts to a higher proportion of consumption and a lower proportion of saving and investment.

—Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, 2nd ed. of the Scholar’s ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009), 916-917.

It Is Fallacious to Assume that the State Can Simply Add or Subtract Its Expenditures from that of the Private Economy

The breakdown of the economic system into a few aggregates assumes that these aggregates are independent of each other, that they are determined independently and can change independently. This overlooks the great amount of interdependence and interaction among the aggregates. Thus, saving is not independent of investment; most of it, particularly business saving, is made in anticipation of future investment. Therefore, a change in the prospects for profitable investment will have a great influence on the savings function, and hence on the consumption function. Similarly, investment is influenced by the level of income, by the expected course of future income, by anticipated consumption, and by the flow of savings. For example, a fall in savings will mean a cut in the funds available for investment, thus restricting investment.

A further illustration of the fallacy of aggregates is the Keynesian assumption that the State can simply add or subtract its expenditures from that of the private economy. This assumes that private investment decisions remain constant, unaffected by government deficits or surpluses. There is no basis whatsoever for this assumption. In addition, progressive income taxation, which is designed to encourage consumption, is assumed to have no effect on private investment. This cannot be true, since, as we have already noted, a restriction of savings will reduce investment.

Thus, aggregative economics is a drastic misrepresentation of reality. The aggregates are merely an arithmetic cloak over the real world, where multitudes of firms and individuals react and interact in a highly complex manner. The alleged “basic determinants” of the Keynesian system are themselves determined by complex interactions within and between these aggregates.

—Murray N. Rothbard, “Spotlight on Keynesian Economics,” in Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard, ed. David Gordon (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), 233-234.

The "Cyclically Balanced Budget" Was the First Keynesian Concept to be Poured Down the Orwellian Memory Hole

Originally, Keynesians vowed that they, too, were in favor of a “balanced budget,” just as much as the fuddy-duddy reactionaries who opposed them. It’s just that they were not, like the fuddy-duddies, tied to the year as an accounting period; they would balance the budget, too, but over the business cycle. Thus, if there are four years of recession followed by four years of boom, the federal deficits during the recession would be compensated for by the surpluses piled up during the boom; over the eight years of cycle, it would all balance out. 

Evidently, the “cyclically balanced budget” was the first Keynesian concept to be poured down the Orwellian memory hold, as it became clear that there weren’t going to be any surpluses, just smaller or larger deficits. A subtle but important corrective came into Keynesianism: larger deficits during recessions, smaller ones during booms. 

—Murray N. Rothbard, “Keynesianism Redux,” The Free Market 7, no. 1 (January 1989): 3.

Government Investment Is a Form of Socialism and Fascism Is Private Ownership Subject to Comprehensive Government Control and Planning

Yes, let the state control investment completely, its amount and rate of return in addition to the rate of interest; then Keynes would allow private individuals to retain formal ownership so that, within the overall matrix of state control and dominion, they could still retain “a wide field for the exercise of private initiative and responsibility.” As Hazlitt puts it,

Investment is a key decision in the operation of any economic system. And government investment is a form of socialism. Only confusion of thought, or deliberate duplicity, would deny this. For socialism, as any dictionary would tell the Keynesians, means the ownership and control of the means of production by government. Under the system proposed by Keynes, the government would control all investment in the means of production and would own the part it had itself directly invested. It is at best mere muddleheadedness, therefore, to present the Keynesian nostrums as a free enterprise or “individualistic” alternative to socialism.

There was a system that had become prominent and fashionable in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s that was precisely marked by this desired Keynesian feature: private ownership, subject to comprehensive government control and planning. This was, of course, fascism.

—Murray N. Rothbard, “Keynes’s Political Economy,” in The Rothbard Reader, ed. Joseph T. Salerno and Matthew McCaffrey (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2016), 202-203.

The State Apparatus, the 4th Class of Society, Is a “Deus Ex Machina” External to the Market Guided by Scientific Philosopher Kings

To develop a way out, Keynes presented a fourth class of society. Unlike the robotic and ignorant consumers, this group is described as full of free will, activism, and knowledge of economic affairs. And unlike the hapless investors, they are not irrational folk, subject to mood swings and animal spirits; on the contrary, they are supremely rational as well as knowledgeable, able to plan best for society in the present as well as in the future. 

This class, this deus ex machina external to the market, is of course the state apparatus, as headed by its natural ruling elite and guided by the modern, scientific version of Platonic philosopher kings. In short, government leaders, guided firmly and wisely by Keynesian economists and social scientists (naturally headed by the great man himself), would save the day. In the politics and sociology of The General Theory, all the threads of Keynes’s life and thought are neatly tied up.

And so the state, led by its Keynesian mentors, is to run the economy, to control the consumers by adjusting taxes and lowering the rate of interest toward zero, and, in particular, to engage in “a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment.”

—Murray N. Rothbard, Keynes, the Man (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), 50.

Only Continual Doses of New Money on the Credit Market Will Keep the Boom Going and the New Stages Profitable

We have seen that the reversion period is short and that factor incomes increase rather quickly and start restoring the free-market consumption/saving ratios. But why do booms, historically, continue for several years? What delays the reversion process? The answer is that as the boom begins to peter out from an injection of credit expansion, the banks inject a further dose. In short, the only way to avert the onset of the depression-adjustment process is to continue inflating money and credit. For only continual doses of new money on the credit market will keep the boom going and the new stages profitable. Furthermore, only ever increasing doses can step up the boom, can lower interest rates further, and expand the production structure, for as the prices rise, more and more money will be needed to perform the same amount of work. Once the credit expansion stops, the market ratios are reestablished, and the seemingly glorious new investments turn out to be malinvestments, built on a foundation of sand.

—Murray N. Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, 2nd ed. of the Scholar’s ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009), 1002.

Keynes Severed the Evident Link Between Savings and Investment, Claiming the Two Are Unrelated

There is a subset of consumers, an eternal problem for mankind: the insufferably bourgeois savers, those who practice the solid puritan virtues of thrift and farsightedness, those whom Keynes, the would-be aristocrat, despised all of his life. All previous economists, certainly including Keynes’s forbears Smith, Ricardo, and Marshall, had lauded thrifty savers as building up long-term capital and therefore as responsible for enormous long-term improvements in consumers’ standard of living. But Keynes, in a feat of prestidigitation, severed the evident link between savings and investment, claiming instead that the two are unrelated.

In fact, he wrote, savings are a drag on the system; they “leak out” of the spending stream, thereby causing recession and unemployment. Hence Keynes, like Mandeville in the early eighteenth century, was able to condemn thrift and savings; he had finally gotten his revenge on the bourgeoisie.

By also severing interest returns from the price of time or from the real economy and by making it only a monetary phenomenon, Keynes was able to advocate, as a linchpin of his basic political program, the “euthanasia of the rentier” class: that is, the state’s expanding the quantity of money enough so as to drive down the rate of interest to zero, thereby at last wiping out the hated creditors. It should be noted that Keynes did not want to wipe out investment: on the contrary, he maintained that savings and investment were separate phenomena. Thus, he could advocate driving down the rate of the interest to zero as a means of maximizing investment while minimizing (if not eradicating) savings.

—Murray N. Rothbard, “Keynes’s Political Economy,” in The Rothbard Reader, ed. Joseph T. Salerno and Matthew McCaffrey (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2016), 199-200.

The Austrian Contribution Was to Posit the Deviation of the Market Rate from the Natural Rate as the CAUSE of the Trade Cycle

The price mechanism, then, coordinates economic activity. In a trade cycle, economic activity somehow becomes uncoordinated. In particular, in the crisis stage of the cycle an overproduction of capital goods exists. As such, any adequate theory of the cycle must explain how this situation of disequilibrium in this specific market arises. What keeps the interest rate from performing its coordinative function? 

Once again Wicksell’s framework proved helpful. Wicksell posited another interest rate, the ‘market rate of interest’. The market rate is influenced by banks’ lending activities and can differ from the natural rate: Specifically, it will fall below the natural rate whenever banks increase the amount of credit. Wicksell used the natural rate / market rate distinction to discuss movements in the general price level. The Austrian contribution was to posit the deviation of the market rate from the natural rate as the cause of the trade cycle. 

—Bruce Caldwell, ed., editor’s introduction to The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, vol. 9, Contra Keynes and Cambridge: Essays, Correspondence, by F. A. Hayek (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995), 15.

The Assumption that Consumption and Investment Move in the SAME Direction Over the Business Cycle Is Fundamental to Keynesian Macroeconomics

Hayek emphasized the trade-off between consumption today and consumption tomorrow (via saving and investment today): “The physical quantity of consumer goods per capita can only be increased by consistently devoting a larger part of productive resources to capitalistic investment rather than to immediate consumption.” One can illustrate the trade-off by drawing a production possibilities frontier between consumption and investment, as Roger Garrison has done in his important work developing Hayekian macroeconomics, particularly in the book Time and Money. Although the trade-off derives directly from the assumption of scarcity, and is today taken for granted by economists in the context of growth theory, Hayek noted that it is implicitly denied by all those economists who “assume that the demand for capital goods changes in proportion to the demand for consumer goods.” The most prominent such economists in 1932 were the “underconsumption” theorists of economic depressions, including John Maynard Keynes in his Treatise on Money  of 1930, which Hayek cited in this connection. Keynes amplified the underconsumption theme in his General Theory of 1936. The assumption that consumption and investment move in the same direction over the business cycle (by contrast to the trade- off acknowledged in the analysis of long-run growth) has been fundamental to Keynesian macroeconomics up to the present day.

—Lawrence H. White, ed., editor’s introduction to The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, vol. 11, Capital and Interest, by F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), xxi.