Quotes from Henry Hazlitt

In sum, so far as the politicians are concerned, the lesson that this book tried to instill more than thirty years ago does not seem to have been learned anywhere.

For it is the very commodities selected for maximum price-fixing that the regulators most want to keep in abundant supply. But when they limit the wages and the profits of those who make these commodities, without also limiting the wages and profits of those who make luxuries or semiluxuries, they discourage the production of the price-controlled necessities while they relatively stimulate the production of less essential goods.

It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths.

But men in their role of taxpayers will be subsidizing themselves in their role of consumers. It becomes a little difficult to trace in this maze precisely who is subsidizing whom. What is forgotten is that subsidies are paid for by someone, and that no method has been discovered by which the community gets something for nothing.

Philip Wicksteed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911; John Bates Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 1899; Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888; Karl Menger, Principles of Economics, 1871; W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 1871; John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848; David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817; and Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

The simple truth is that there is an optimum rate of replacement, a best time for replacement. It would be an advantage for a manufacturer to have his factory and equipment destroyed by bombs only if the time had arrived when, through deterioration and obsolescence, his plant and equipment had already acquired a null or a negative value and the bombs fell just when he should have called in a wrecking crew or ordered new equipment anyway.

There is no limit to the amount of work to be done as long as any human need or wish that work could fill remains unsatisfied.

They tell us how much better off economically we all are in war than in peace.

For as Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers nearly two centuries ago, "A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.

No man burns down his own house on the theory that the need to rebuild it will stimulate his energies.

When your money is taken by a thief, you get nothing in return. When your money is taken through taxes to support needless bureaucrats, precisely the same situation exists.

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. 2

The progress of civilization has meant the reduction of employment, not its increase. It is because we have become increasingly wealthy as a nation that we have been able virtually to eliminate child labor, to remove the necessity of work for many of the aged and to make it unnecessary for millions of women to take jobs.

The quickest way to detect error in analogy is to carry it out as far as it will go—and further. Every analogy will break down somewhere. Any analogy if carried out far enough becomes absurd.

Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers nearly two centuries ago, "A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.

Another way to find whether an analogy is fallacious is to see whether you can discover a counter analogy. Surely this is the most effective practice in refuting analogy in argument.

It is best to avoid analogy except for purposes of suggestion, or as a rhetorical device for explaining an idea already arrived at by other means.

En ello consiste la fundamental diferencia entre la buena y la mala economía. El mal economista sólo ve lo que se advierte de un modo inmediato, mientras que el buen economista percibe también más allá.

Theory is the best guide for experiment—that were it not for theory and the problems and hypotheses that come out of it, we would not know the points we wanted to verify, and hence would experiment aimlessly

la economía es la ciencia que calcula los resultados de determinada política económica, simplemente planeada o puesta en práctica, no sólo a corto plazo y en relación con algún grupo de intereses especiales, sino a la larga y en relación con el interés general de toda la colectividad».

demand and supply are merely two sides of the same coin. They are the same thing looked at from different directions. Supply creates demand because at bottom it is demand. The supply of the thing they make is all that people have, in fact, to offer in exchange for the things they want.

es forzoso que examinemos no sólo los resultados inmediatos que su adopción producirá, sino también los resultados a largo plazo; no sólo las consecuencias primarias, sino también las secuelas secundarias, y no sólo sus efectos sobre un sector determinado de intereses, sino sobre toda la colectividad.

all government expenditures must eventually be paid out of the proceeds of taxation; that inflation itself is merely a form, and a particularly vicious form, of taxation. Having

Examinar los problemas en su integridad y no fragmentariamente: tal es la meta de la ciencia económica.