"I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments"
About this Quote
The subtext is classic Hayek: governments can’t resist the temptation to spend beyond what voters would tolerate if the bill arrived honestly. Inflation becomes the stealth tax that doesn’t require a roll-call vote. It shifts wealth from savers to debtors, from wages that adjust slowly to state obligations that get easier to pay back in cheaper money. “For the gain of governments” narrows the suspect list. This isn’t a vague complaint about “mismanagement.” It’s an allegation of incentive: political institutions are structurally rewarded for short-term relief and punished for long-term discipline.
Context matters. Hayek wrote in the shadow of two world wars, the Great Depression, and the rise of technocratic macroeconomic management. Across Europe and beyond, extraordinary public debts, currency crises, and postwar reconstruction made monetary expansion feel like necessity. Hayek’s point is that “necessity” is often the story power tells itself. By recasting inflation as a political technology, he aims to strip it of neutrality and force a harder question: if money is a public trust, why is its debasement so reliably convenient for the people who control it?
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined (Friedrich August von Hayek, 1978)
Evidence: Nobody has yet written a full history of these developments. It would indeed be all too monotonous and depressing a story, but I do not think it an exaggeration to say that history is largely a history of inflation, and usually of inflations engineered by governments and for the gain of governments, though the gold and silver discoveries in the 16th century had a similar effect. (Chapter IV (excerpted in Mises Daily as part of chapters 4–6; exact page not verified from a first-edition scan)). This sentence appears verbatim in the text published as “Down with Legal Tender,” which explicitly states it is excerpted from chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Hayek’s Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined. That makes the primary source Hayek’s book (not the later web republication). Many quote sites omit Hayek’s original wording (“and usually of inflations… and for the gain…”) and/or remove the clause about 16th-century gold/silver discoveries. Other candidates (1) The Inflation Myth and the Wonderful World of Deflation (Mark Mobius, 2021) compilation98.1% Mark Mobius. * Friedrich August von Hayek , economist : “ I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is larg... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hayek, Friedrich August von. (2026, February 11). I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-do-not-think-it-is-an-exaggeration-to-say-22664/
Chicago Style
Hayek, Friedrich August von. "I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments." FixQuotes. February 11, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-do-not-think-it-is-an-exaggeration-to-say-22664/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments." FixQuotes, 11 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-do-not-think-it-is-an-exaggeration-to-say-22664/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
