Free Republic

“The future of human liberty…means the future of civilization.” “Only if the modern state can be held within a strictly limited agenda…can it be prevented from regimenting, conquering, and ultimately devouring the society which gave it birth.” “A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.” “Contrary to age-old prejudices, the wealth of the rich is not the cause of the poverty of the poor, but helps to alleviate that poverty.” “Inflation itself is a form of taxation. It is perhaps the worst possible form, which usually bears hardest on those least able to...

On Appeasing Envy By Henry Hazlitt Any attempt to equalize wealth or income by forced redistribution must only tend to destroy wealth and income. Historically the best the would-be equalizers have ever succeeded in doing is to equalize downward. This has even been caustically described as their intention. "Your levellers," said Samuel Johnson in the mid-eighteenth century, "wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves." And in our own day we find even an eminent liberal like the late Mr. Justice Holmes writing: "I have no respect for the passion for equality,...

Paul Krugman recently declared that our real economics problem is this: "What's limiting employment now is lack of demand for the things workers produce." Not surprisingly, this issue has been thrown about in socialist literature for more than a century. The idea that an economy operates only if workers are paid "enough to buy back the product" is an important assumption behind Marxism. Keynesians have embraced this fallacy, and the pursuit of solutions based on "buy back the product" is the main reason our economy today is in crisis and will remain so for years to come. It has been...

Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine-the special pleading of selfish interests. While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only...

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Henry Hazlitt on the Bailout Daily Article by Scott A. Kjar | Posted on 10/15/2008 Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson needs to change his reading list. Instead of reading the balance sheets and income statements of the failing banking industry, he needs to read Henry Hazlitt's classic book Economics in One Lesson. It will cost Paulson far less than the $700 billion that he is spending on the bailout, and he might just learn a little economics in the process. Hazlitt delivers his "one lesson" in chapter 1, and proceeds to spend the rest of the book giving examples. His...

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