Tag Archives: 1870s

In this recent stream on economics, Academic Agent attempts to defend Rothbard’s views on the American economy in the 1870s.[embedded content]In my Twitter debates on this issue with Academic Agent – who is an unusually ignorant libertarian – I directed him to my post here.I said explicitly in that post that, while Rothbard was correct that there was no depression in the sense of a fall of GDP/GNP of 10% or more, Rothbard was nevertheless wrong to claim that the 1873–1878 period saw...

It doesn’t matter how many times Rothbard’s view of the 1870s is refuted, Austrians and libertarians simply continue to shun reality and repeat Rothbard’s errors (such as here and here).It can’t hurt to review the data.First, industrial production. The best and most recent index of US industrial production in this era is Davis (2004) (see Hanes 2013: 121), which draws on many more industrial products and services than other, older indices.The data from Davis shows that US industrial...