Haberler thought wages in postwar Austria must fall to restore competitiveness. He put it plainly in a newspaper article in Vienna in 1933: “The dismantlement of tariffs ­will bring pain to a series of economic sectors . . . ​but the pains of transition ­will not be long term, they ­will also definitely not be worse than the unhappiness that we have been plunged into by years of tariff addiction.” He asked the question: “How can an economy that is more poorly equipped in almost ­every re­ spect withstand the competition of an industry and agriculture working with better production conditions without protecting itself with extra-­ high tariffs?” The answer was ­simple: “The poor economy can compete with the rich when the wages and all other forms of income are correspondingly smaller.” He put it bluntly: “When we have faced the necessary consequences completely, when the standard of living has sunk low enough, income has fallen far enough, then the economy can pro­gress, business as usual. . . . ​When the skilled workers in export industry have moved into the coal mines, maybe into agriculture and other economic sectors too, whose products can be better exchanged for qualified export goods and the rest of the workers, insofar as pos­si­ble, have emigrated, then maybe all ­will be employed again, granted at a pronouncedly lower standard of living.” For Haberler, Austria was a prototypical case of small state in the storms of globalization. As he had written a few years earlier, huge countries like the United States and the British “world empire” might be able to follow policies of stabilizing the internal price level, but small countries needed to remain attractive to foreign investment and therefore had to concentrate on stabilizing their currency. ­There was no escape from the discipline of the world economy.

Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, loc. 185