The causes of inflation are philosophical.
by Dan Schwartz
New Ideal – Ayn Rand Institute
With the recent high rates of inflation, Americans can hardly ignore the devastating effects of their lost purchasing power. Prices of food, gas, and housing are up, and retirement accounts are down. Meanwhile, as Ayn Rand said under similar circumstances fifty years ago, our leaders are “chanting that they want to help” while “pouring paper refuse on the flames.” Her lecture, delivered at the Ford Hall Forum in 1974 (when the inflation rate was 11 percent), was titled “Egalitarianism and Inflation.” She later described it as presenting “a metaphysical approach to economics: the cause, the mechanism, and the moral meaning of inflation.”
Rand’s profound analysis of inflation is as relevant today as it was then. Rand wants us to understand why mankind never seems to learn its lesson: economics alone, without philosophy, is insufficient. In this article she draws a philosophical lesson with epistemological and moral dimensions.