Friedrich August von Hayek’s letter to the editor, published in The Times on February 21, 1981, and republished in the supplied 2022 version, challenges the causal assumption embedded in a newspaper headline. Its argument consists of an analogy followed by a pointed question: falling inflation and deepening recession need not be contradictory developments.
Sir, I take it you would not head an article: ‘Withdrawal symptoms increasing despite increasing reduction of drug intake’.
The analogy presents economic distress as a possible consequence of withdrawing a sustaining but harmful influence. If inflation resembles drug dependence, reducing it may initially intensify difficulties rather than immediately relieve them. Hayek thereby questions the expectation that successful disinflation should coincide with economic recovery.
Why, then, do you allow your front page to be opened (February 14) by the headline, “Recession deepening despite sharp fall in inflation rate”, which makes quite as much sense?
The argumentative hinge is “despite”: it frames recession as occurring contrary to what declining inflation would lead one to expect. Hayek’s comparison instead makes their coexistence intelligible as a withdrawal process. The letter supplies neither empirical evidence nor a developed account of that mechanism; its force lies in exposing how journalistic wording can carry an unexamined economic interpretation. Its relevance is this compact distinction between removing an underlying problem and escaping the immediate costs of adjustment.
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