These two essays are actually a series of lectures delivered by the author in the 1950's and they discuss problems that are still very relevant today.
In the first essay <i>The Problem of Economic Order</i>, Roepke shows how socialism, contrary to its partisans' claims, does not solve the problems that arise from the market economy--in many ways socialism aggravates them. He addresses three different forms of socialism: 1) The redistributive type- the government taxes income and redistributes it among the lower earning population, while leaving the business world alone otherwise, as in many Western countries today, 2) The Marxian type- industries are nationalized so that government becomes the owner of the means of production, as in the USSR, 3) The St. Simonian type- government controls how various industries interact with each other to produce goods or services while leaving formal ownership to private owners, as in Nazi Germany. One of the things I learned from this essay is that inflation tends to lead to increased collectivist tactics on the part of the government: As money loses its value in inflation, prices go up, and the government tries to cover up the inflationary effects through wage or price controls, at least for necessities. This leads to shortages of the things people want the most, and overproduction of nonessentials whose prices are not subject to the controls, what Roepke calls "the artistic ash-tray economy."
In the second essay <i>Welfare, Freedom, and Inflation</i>, Roepke concentrates on the first type of socialism, which in the West at least is the most popular kind. He discusses how the establishment of a provider state both increases inflation and decreases freedom and emphasizes the point that increased credit and investment that is not backed up by increased savings leads to inflation.
I am not an economist, but I found these essays very clearly written and I learned a lot from them.
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