Every week over 26 weeks, I’ll be publishing a précis of a chapter of Henry Hazlitt’s brilliant 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson, prepared by Michael Dowsett during his internship. The index page is here.
This week, Taxes Discourage Production, which discusses how taxes and government spending inhibit progress, hamper the development of real wages and worsen unemployment. The original chapter is only two pages and can be read here.
Every week over 26 weeks, I’ll be publishing a précis of a chapter of Henry Hazlitt’s brilliant 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson, prepared by Michael Dowsett during his internship. The index page is here.
This week, Public Works Means Taxes, which explains that people forget the unseen cost of political infrastructure projects…
Every week over 26 weeks, I’ll be publishing a précis of a chapter of Henry Hazlitt’s brilliant 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson, prepared by Michael Dowsett during his internship. The index page is here.
This week, The Blessings of Destruction, an extension of The Broken Window Fallacy.
Every week over 26 weeks, I’ll be publishing a précis of a chapter of Henry Hazlitt’s brilliant 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson, prepared by Michael Dowsett during his internship. The index page is here.
This week, The Broken Window, an old fallacy about the supposed blessings of destruction.
Every week for the next 26 weeks, I’ll be publishing a précis of a chapter of Henry Hazlitt’s brilliant 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson, prepared by Michael Dowsett during his internship. The index page is here.
This week, in just 189 words, The Lesson.
Of course, there is no substitute for reading the book: buy, download.
As Labour pours another £11bn of poison into the wells, I find myself reflecting on the economics of the Left, people who seem to be lamenting coming “Tory cuts” after so much “Labour investment”.
In the first place, Labour plan their own substantial cuts. More to the point, Labour’s spending was funded not by sustainable prosperity, but by one long credit expansion unbacked by real savings, which has now, inevitably, come to an end.
Left-wingers’ admirable intentions seem to be unmatched by a reasonable understanding of the means to bring about the good ends they intend.
The shortest and surest way to understand basic economics is, purportedly, Henry Hazlitt’s famous Economics in One Lesson:
Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore. The long-run consequences of some economic policies may become evident in a few months. Others may not become evident for several years. Still others may not become evident for decades. But in every case those long-run consequences are contained in the policy as surely as the hen was in the egg, the flower in the seed.
From this aspect, therefore, the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence:
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.
Nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today are the result of ignoring this lesson. Those fallacies all stem from one of two central fallacies, or both: that of looking only at the immediate consequences of an act or proposal, and that of looking at the consequences only for a particular group to the neglect of other groups.
