>>72736
>Reducing imports will reduce German exports, and thus result in increased unemployment.
Tariffs and importation quotas always reduce prosperity, whether they increase unemployment or not. Ricardo's Law is still as true as it was in the past.
>Response: German exports will not be reduced by a decrease in German imports, since we will primarily reduce imports from those countries from which we imported more than we exported, those with which we had a negative balance of payments. According to the official Reich Statistical Office, Germany had a negative balance of payments of about 270 million marks within countries outside Europe during the first quarter of 1932.
>Balance of payments
Mercantilist bullshit. Currency is not wealth. Shouldn't the Nazis have known, because Gottfried Feder repeatedly hammered that point home? The guy was a heck, but he wasn't wrong on everything.
>Protecting domestic production will lead to a general increase in prices.
It will.
>Response: That will not happen, since to the extent German production increases, welfare payments will decline. Public expenses will therefore be lower, and distributed to a larger range of productive activity. There will, therefore, be no new burdens on the economy, but rather a lesser burden.
That's like saying diet coke isn't unhealthy, because to the extent that you start drinking more of it, you'll do less meth. The welfare state hurts the economy, but so does protectionism.
>Giving up the gold standard means inflation, according to the bourgeois-Marxist press
Not directly, but in practice, it does.
>Response: England gave up the gold standard on 21 September 1931. The pound’s rate of exchange fell by 70%, but the domestic purchasing power of the pound remained unchanged.
Britain didn't give up the gold standard then. From What Has Government Done to Our Money, page 95:
>The gold-exchange standard worked as follows: The United States remained on the classical gold standard, redeeming dollars in gold. Britain and the other countries of the West, however, returned to a pseudo-gold standard, Britain in 1926 and the other countries around the same time. British pounds and other currencies were not payable in gold coins, but only in large-sized bars, suitable only for international transactions. This prevented the ordinary citizens of Britain and other European countries from using gold in their daily life, and thus permitted a wider degree of paper and bank inflation. But furthermore, Britain redeemed pounds not merely in gold, but also in dollars; while the other countries redeemed their currencies not in gold, but in pounds. And most of these countries were induced by Britain to return to gold at overvalued parities. The result was a pyramiding of United States on gold, of British pounds on dollars, and of other European currencies on pounds—the “gold-exchange standard,” with the dollar and the pound as the two “key currencies.”
>According to Nr. 4, Part A, page 16 of the semi-official Vierteljahrshefte für Konjunkturforschung (volume for 1931/32):
>"There were only slight increases in prices. Up to November, wholesale prices increased by about 8%, then declined as a result of developments on the world market. Thus, after a temporary increase, prices fell again. The increase in wholesale prices was largely due to adjustments resulting from prices determined abroad to the revaluation of the pound. Domestic prices were either not affected at all, rose only slightly, or even declined.”
I'm not checking all of this data, days are too short as it is and arguing against a priori statements with empirical evidence is fucking retarded.