"The federal government, in guiding the economic destiny of the country, must be staffed largely with those who are unaware of how little they know, who have no qualms about their ability to plan and regulate the national economic growth, set wages, prescribe hours of work, write the price tags for everything, decide how much of what shall be produced, expand or contract the money supply arbitrarily, set interest rates and rents, subsidize with other peoples' earnings whatever activity strikes their fancy, lend billions not voluntarily entrusted to them, allocate the fruits of the labor of all to foreign governments of their choice - in short, decide what shall be taken from each Peter and how much of the 'take' shall be paid to each Paul.
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"If the bureaucracy is not checked, it will tend to build, in the name of peace, a defense against every conceivable contingency - so much 'security' that 'the secured' are without resources - helpless and hopeless.
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"Our inflationary scheme in the U.S.A. is a brilliant legerdemain: it is so complex that hardly anyone can understand it! We monetize debt; that is, the more the government spends, the more is the money supply expanded. Since the start of deficit financing and monetized debt, our quantity of dollars has enormously increased. Anyone with an eye to trends can observe that the dollar has declined in value and that prices are on the upswing."
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Leonard E. Read, author of Conscience of the Majority, Government - An Ideal Concept, Miracle of the Market, Students of Liberty, Why Not Try Freedom?, Elements of Libertarian Leadership, and other books and articles, was President of the Foundation for Economic Education, organized in 1946.
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