Economics in One Lesson
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. - Henry Hazlitt
A nice overview of Henry Hazlitt’s book Economics in One Lesson.
Hazlitt’s Logic, For Those Who Care About Freedom
[American Affairs, 1946.]
Here is Henry Hazlitt exercising his gift for lucidity to produce a book entitled Economics in One Lesson. If there were such a book this would be it. It deals with those “economic fallacies that are at last so prevalent that they have almost become new orthodoxy,” — to the point that now there is not a major government in the world whose economic policies are not influenced or in fact determined by them.
He undertakes to expose them by analysis and reason and to chase them into the ground. But in the first place, how did they get abroad in this garb of respectability? How is their worldwide vogue to be explained?
Mr. Hazlitt’s explanation is that people have lost the habit of thinking beyond the present. They have been beguiled by the saying, “In the long run we are all dead.” They want everything today; let tomorrow take care of itself.
Filed Under: Economy
