I took a one-week seminar under Ludwig von Mises in the summer of 1962. He had been brought to Southern California by the shadowy intellectual figure, Andrew Joseph Galambos, an engineer.
He was born in 1881. He was 81 years old in 1962. He may not have been "at the top of his game." But he was better than most of the professors I had been forced to endure by three years of the university system, and I was in an above-average university. Every evening for five nights, I listened to Mises. I was an accomplished speaker by age 20. I could judge a successful speaker. I was impressed by how clear he was. He was not a spellbinder, but academics rarely are. Robert Nisbet was, but he was a rarity. In any case, I did not take a class from Nisbet for another four years.
The Mises Institute has posted a lecture by Mises from 1968. He was a year away from retirement. He was probably the oldest professor in America. He was 87 years old.
He spoke on inflation. Inflation was about to begin in the United States. The Johnson administration was fighting two wars: the war in Vietnam and the war on poverty -- Richard Goodwin's clever phrase. LBJ was unwilling to raise taxes. The Federal Reserve was about to become accommodating under Arthur Burns, who took over as Chairman on February 1, 1970.
Spend an hour. Get a sense of just how good Mises was.
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