During any period of inflation expectations, calculations, plans are bound to be based upon an extrapolation of that degree of inflation. After all, … - Enoch Powell

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During any period of inflation expectations, calculations, plans are bound to be based upon an extrapolation of that degree of inflation. After all, we all extrapolate—we have to form notions of what is to come from what has just gone. Then, if inflation in fact tails off or is eliminated, a certain proportion of those expectations are defeated, in some cases disastrously; and until resources have rearranged themselves and expectations have re-formed themselves upon the basis either of reduced inflation or of stable money values, there will be transitional unemployment of resources, including labour. Anyone who purports to reduce or end inflation without causing transitional unemployment is either deceiving himself or deceiving others; and those who object to a method which undeniably holds the key to inflation that it would cause unemployment...are really saying, though they do not dare to do so openly, that they would rather inflation continued than that additional, transitional unemployment should be incurred; for if inflation is slowed down or eliminated by whatever means—by prayer, by magic, by prices and incomes policy, or by control of the money supply—that is the result which will follow.

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About Enoch Powell

John Enoch Powell (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974), then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974–1987), and was Minister of Health (1960–1963).

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Alternative Names: J. Enoch Powell John Enoch Powell
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Additional quotes by Enoch Powell

The Tory principle is the opposite: to trust the people. This has been expressed in practical terms in our actions in the last twelve years. We dismantled and abolished the economic controls, licensing, rationing and powers of direction inherited from the war and post-war Socialism; we restored a market for savings and abandoned the rigging of artificial rates of interest, which had been a fruitful cause of inflation; we imposed on the nationalised industries, apart from those restored to the free economy, the discipline of making comparable profits with what similar investments elsewhere would produce, and we undertook a major surgical operation on the railways to enable them also to earn profits; in our trade policy we sought the widest and most competitive markets for our exports... in taxation policy we have aimed at leaving to the individual earner and the individual firm the free disposal of as large a proportion as possible of their income or profits; finally there is our determined and increasingly successful effort to keep for our money that stability of value which enables people to take their own decisions about spending and saving in terms which have a meaning.

A victorious continental enemy, determined to absorb this United Kingdom into its dominions, could not have dictated at Westminster a more comprehensively humiliating surrender than the Act which Parliament passed in 1972 in order that this country should become part of the European Economic Community. It enacted that the laws of an external authority should prevail over our domestic laws, it gave an external authority the power to legislate and tax without the consent of Parliament, it placed in the hands of that external authority the whole control of Britain's trade. Moreover, those who counselled it did so on the express ground that Britain was obsolete as a nation state. Wilhelm II could not have demanded so much; I doubt if Hitler would have demanded more. I can still only half believe that I was myself an unwilling witness to my country's abnegation of its own national independence... I can only say that I will never accept as fait accompli the renunciation of our national independence and the destruction of our parliamentary sovereignty which took place in 1972.

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Inflation is caused by a continuing surfeit of money; inflation can therefore be controlled or prevented only by striking at the source of money surfeit. It follows that all prices and incomes policies are irrelevant and futile, whether they are voluntary or compulsory. If the surfeit of money continues, then all prices and incomes must rise accordingly.

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