The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans whose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks. The less these quacks are able to advance plausible objections to an economist’s argument, the more furiously do they insult them.

" We were discussing the distribution of income and whether you should have progressive income taxes. There he became a visiting professor at New York University. In America Mises' work first influenced that of economists such as Benjamin Anderson Leonard Read and Henry Hazlitt as well as writers such as former radical Max Eastman legal scholar Sylvester J.

He became a prominent figure in the Austrian School of economic thought and is best known for his work on praxeology. Mises had a significant influence on the libertarian movement in the United States in the mid-20th century. Fearing a Nazi takeover of Switzerland where he was living at the time Mises emigrated to the United States in 1940.