Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill 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.