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your money into long term construc–
tive, serving uses. Rather, infiation
rewards those who put their money
into non-productive uses. Gold, silver,
art, antiques all do well in infiationary
times, but their production creates
comparatively few jobs and adds little
to the general standard of living.
Stocks, bonds and bank accounts all do
poorlyin infiation butdomuch more to
create jobs, produce new goods and
raise the amount of real wealth extent
in the world.
The true nature of inflation is
revealed when you consider that the
big winners in the German super–
inflation of 1923 were furs, per–
fumes, jewelry, expensive hotels, and
nightclubs! These are all the kind of
investments you make to consume on
yourself- and which create few ben–
efits for others. They are hardly the
kind of investments that represent
any strength of moral character.
In short, infiation not only robs
you of your money, but also saps the
general economy's ability to produce
real goods and services. When the
amount of real wealth being created
by constructive effort is held down, it
means that life is more painful and
poverty more extant.
The Economics of Sodom and
Gomorrah
You cannot erode the economic vir–
tues of hard work, thrift, stability
and honesty, and put in their place a
"grab i! now" mentality, without
destroying moral character in other,
even more vital areas.
lnfiation is not just a matter of
economics.
It
is, as Austrian econo–
mist Wilhelm Roepke said, "a moral
disease, a disorder of society." Blunt–
ly, inflation contributes to a virtual
collapse of sexual morality.
The moral horrors of infiation were
vividly brought out in the famed
hyperinfiation in Germany in 1923.
The Oermany of the l920s saw infla–
tion wipe out the dowries of middle
class girls. As Otto Friedrich records
in his history ofGermany in the 1920s,
Befare The Deluge,
middle class girls
"saved and saved so that they could get
married. When the money became
worthless, it destroyed the whole sys–
tem for getting married, and so it
destroyed the whole idea of remaining
chaste until marriage."
The general moral decline saw
April 1980
THIS IS WHA T PASSED
for money during the German hyperinffation of 1923. Original/y
a banknote for 2 mi/lion marks, it was later overprinted toread 60,000,000,000 marks.
Berlín become a virtual Babylon of
sexual conduct. Prostitution was
rampant. The connection between
infiation and prostitution has been
described by Klaus Mann, son of the
German novelist Thomas Mann'. The
prostitutes of the Friedrichstrasse in
Berlín, Mr. Mann wrote, were "like
fierce amazons, struttirig in bigh
boots made of green, glossy leather.
One of them brandished a supple
cane and leered at me as
1
passed
by ... she whispered into my ear:
'Want to be my slave? Costs only six
billions and a cigarette. A bargain.
Come along, honey!"
Transvestitism was rampant too.
Mr. Friedrich records that "any Ber–
lín lady of the evening might turn out
to be a man," and Berlin of the time
gained an international reputation
for its "pervert balls," where
"hundreds of men costumed as
women and hundreds of women cos–
tumed as men danced under the
benevolent eyes of the police."
It
was a time of the "collapse of all
values."
In our time, it is no accident that
the steady decline in sexual moral
conduct coincided with the steadily
increasing infiation r.ates of the late
l960s and early 1970s.
Inflation also contributes its share
to the weakening of the family. Infia–
tion takes a devastating toll in hous–
ing costs. Such costs, plus higher
interest rates (also the result of infia–
tion- interest rates are merely the
"cost" of money), have made it
impossible for all but the most
affluent or fortunate families to
afford to own their own homes with–
out the wife working.
Throughout the Western world the
standard of living achieved in the
l960s could not have been main–
tained in the 1970s but for the influx
of millions of wives and mothers into
the work force. Child rearing and the
general cohesiveness of family life
have suffered. Divorce rates. in the
infiated 1970s have increased sub–
stantially over what they had been in
the Less infiated 1960s.
But infiation cuts even deeper spir–
itually. It actually punishes the
building of godly character; it pro–
motes the worst forms of cynical
selfish hardheartedness: the novelist
who lived through German infiation
of the l920s, Thomas Mann, identi–
fied what inflation does to human
character when he wrote:
"There is neither system nor jus–
tice in the expropriation and redistri-
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