'..over-indebtedness as a moral problem..'<blockquote>'Stark sees over-indebtedness as a moral problem and, by reputation, is something of a rottweiler when it comes to fiscal correctitude.
..
“The Government should be even more ambitious in cutting the public deficit ratio, which is still at double-digit level.”
..
..Dublin is increasingly winning plaudits for its execution of the bailout plan and notional Irish borrowing costs have eased. Stark warns, however, that sentiment could suddenly turn against Ireland. To guard against that, he says the Government should proceed further, faster down the path of fiscal recovery.
“The spreads of Government bonds over German bonds have come down. This is a positive sign, but it is not a given that this downward trend will continue.
“Ireland needs to rebuild confidence in financial markets. This requires a lot of hard work and also tough decisions, which have to be well communicated to the public.'
- Arthur Beesley and Derek Scally,
Ireland needs to speed up austerity effort to ensure bailout success, September 12, 2011</blockquote>
Context '2014 Looks Like the Next Good Year'<blockquote>
'..had horrible pain for three years but since then Scandinavia has boomed.''In the 1930s, those hoping for economic recovery got lucky in the British political cycle and unlucky in the American one (and even more unlucky in the German cycle). In Britain, the economically capable National Government took office in August 1931. Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain promptly banished Maynard Keynes from the Treasury (condemning him to six years of inferior investment returns, since he had been cut off from his sources of information) and instituted an anti-Keynesian economic policy of public spending cuts and a modest Imperial Preference tariff that proved remarkably successful. By 1933, the British economy was recovering fast, and 1932-37 provided the fastest peacetime five-year growth period since Lord Liverpool's era over a century before.'
- Martin Hutchinson,
2014 Looks Like the Next Good Year, September 12, 2011</blockquote>
'..the verification principle, I should like to mention another criticism advanced against it. Many opponents of logical positivism contend that the criterion is self-refuting. It itself is neither analytic nor verifiable: Therefore, by application to itself, it is meaningless. The Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden was probably the first to advance this criticism, and it has been set forward very effectively by Hans Hoppe..'<blockquote>'The logical positivists or Vienna Circle met under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, a professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna. Although Schlick led the group, his own views were not in all respects characteristic of the Circle. As an example, he believed that ethics was a science, while most logical positivists regarded ethical assertions as empirically meaningless.
Probably the most philosophically important member of the group was Rudolf Carnap, a German by birth but resident in Vienna. Ironically, Ludwig von Mises' brother, Richard von Mises, belonged to the Circle, as did Karl Menger, the son of the Austrian School's founder. Another member, Felix Kaufmann, was also a participant in Ludwig von Mises' seminar. Nevertheless, like all the members of the Circle, he strongly opposed Mises' deductive approach to economic method.
The group at its inception was not very influential. Eric Voegelin, who was in Vienna during the 1920s and 1930s, once told me in conversation that the logical positivists were usually regarded as eccentric and deranged. Voegelin's own negative view of the group perhaps colored his memory, but his testimony is nevertheless significant. The Circle became much more influential after the rise of Adolf Hitler to power in 1933. The European political situation, culminating in the German annexation of Austria in March, 1938, forced most of the logical positivists into exile. Many of them wound up in the United States and secured posts at major universities. It is largely owing to the logical positivist influence on American philosophy that most American economists reject praxeology. They regard Mises' method as old fashioned and scholastic, allegedly not in keeping with the dictates of scientific philosophy.
The essence of logical positivism can for our purposes be quite simply stated. All empirical statements, i.e., statements about the world, must be testable. If a statement cannot be tested, then it has no empirical meaning. By "testable" or "verifiable" the positivists meant "capable of being perceived by the senses." This is the famous verifiability criterion of meaning, the Vienna Circle's most noted principle.
..
Before leaving the verification principle, I should like to mention another criticism advanced against it. Many opponents of logical positivism contend that the criterion is self-refuting. It itself is neither analytic nor verifiable: Therefore, by application to itself, it is meaningless. The Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden was probably the first to advance this criticism, and it has been set forward very effectively by Hans Hoppe. I shall not discuss this objection in detail here: suffice it to say that if carefully handled the criticism strikes home.
..
At every stage in the development of Austrian economics, philosophy has been an accompanying though not dominating presence. Action, that leitmotif of praxeology, has in the Austrian tradition received a distinctly Aristotelian analysis. Austrian economics and a realistic philosophy seem made for each other.'
- David Gordon,
The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics</blockquote>