Friedrich August von Hayek’s letter to the editor of The Times (March 29, 1980), republished in 2022, argues that stopping inflation requires both conceptual clarity and a politically feasible timetable. Responding to the newspaper’s description of reduced inflation as “deflation,” Hayek distinguishes a slower increase from an actual contraction:
I do not deflate a bladder or balloon by blowing a little less strongly into it.
The analogy does not imply that reducing inflation is painless. Hayek explicitly acknowledges that its effects resemble those of deflation and maintains that, under prevailing conditions, an interval of fairly severe depression is unavoidable. His distinction therefore clarifies the policy being pursued without denying its economic costs.
The letter then moves from terminology to political feasibility. Once the prospective depression is acknowledged, Hayek argues, a government cannot plausibly prolong the adjustment over five years. Against that extended timetable, he identifies monetary restraint as something achievable much sooner:
So far as the crucial supply of money is concerned, there can be no doubt that its excessive increase can be terminated in the course of weeks or months.
This monetary claim supplies the premise for his concluding fiscal demand: if rapid action is the only politically possible route to stopping inflation, government must put its finances in order on a similarly compressed schedule. The letter’s distinctive move is to connect accurate economic language with the political sustainability of painful adjustment. It asserts the necessity of speed, but does not specify the budgetary measures needed to achieve it.
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